Essential Tools for a Peaceful and More Inclusive Society:

  Skills and Systems for the Local Conflict Management

23 – 25 November 2022 – Centre International de Formation des Autorites et Leaders Jeju (CIFAL Jeju) organized a hybrid workshop on “Essential Tools for a Peaceful and More Inclusive Society: Skills and Systems for the Local Conflict Management”. The workshop invited 89 participants from 22 countries, including Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Cameroon, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Uganda and Vietnam. 

The three-day workshop was composed of (1) four experts’ lectures, (2) group capstone activities on discovering and managing local conflict management, (3) a field visit. To support both modes of the workshop, CIFAL Jeju made a division between offline and online participation: a two-day program for online participants (focusing on the lecture complemented with the post-workshop assignment) and an entire three-day schedule for offline participants (intensively concentrating on the development of group capstone activities with a field visit for the last day). 

Day 1 and 2 featured four invited experts, Prof. Won Kyung Chang, Associate Professor (Division Chair, Scranton Honors Program), Prof. Dong-Young Kim, Associate Professor, KDI School of Public Policy and Management, Ms. Kah-ul Kim, Protection Associate, UNHCR and Prof. Roland B. Wilson, Associate Professor (Program Coordinator of Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Peace and Conflict Studies Center Asia Founder), George Mason University, Korea Campus. The speakers covered issues including peaceful and democratic resolution and management of public conflict, introduction to conflict management systems at the local level & best practices, measures to protect the vulnerable in conflict situations and basic skills for conflict management skills.   

 Along with the informative lectures, group capstone activities were undertaken for both channels of participants. These activities were carefully planned and designed with continuous advisory from professor Wilson of George Mason University. As a pre-workshop assignment, participants were asked to discover and document their own local conflicts and accordingly, asked to share with groups in the workshop session. Particularly for offline participants, further group activities and the presentation session were carried which was to apply local conflict management skills to their group’s chosen local conflict case. A total of 42 local and public conflicts were archived, and of that 4 cases were scrutinized and studied with possible local conflict management plans. The 4 cases were: Refuse the Fired Coal Power Plant Celukan Bawang (Bali, Indonesia) 2x330 MW, The share of the producing region (Tataouine, Tunisia) from Oil & Gas revenues, Extrajudicial Land Acquisition Issue in Manila (Philippines) for Railway Project and the construction of the Second Jeju (Republic of Korea) International Airport.

On the last day of the workshop, UNITAR CIFAL Jeju organized a 1-day field trip to the Jeju 4 · 3 Peace Park which was created to pass down the historical lessons learned from Jeju 4.3 to the coming generations by paying tribute to the victims and promoting reconciliation and mutual growth, as well as laying a foundation for peace, human rights and education.

In particular, the event is evaluated as a meaningful initiative for the first-ever opportunity to deal with the topic of local and public conflict management for a peaceful society where civil servants and officers from government agencies, and civil society leaders whose work is to directly face the conflicts.