Conflict Transformation, Ngo And Networking

    My presentation mainly based on the experience I gained working as a co-ordinator of the Caucasus NGOs Forum in 1999 - 2000. The Forum today involves around 50 organisations from all over the Caucasus. Its aims include promoting peaceful resolution to the Caucasian conflicts, mutual help, fighting stereotypes of each other, and overcoming isolation of the Caucasian societies from each other.
    The Forum is an example of an NGO network for conflict transformation. During two and a half years of its existence, it has registered successes as well as drawbacks. Its two main successes are organising the meeting of former combatants from all over the Caucasus, and a peace mission to one of the locations where conflict tendencies are brewing: the Karachay-Cherkessia republic of the Russian Federation.
    The Forum experiences also certain difficulties in the process of its institutionalisation. Some of them are typical to any NGO networks - lack of resources. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Forum is a cross-conflict, cross-border, cross-cultural initiative, whereas most of the funders who support NGO work develop separate programmes for different states and even regions in the former Soviet Union. Also, the Forum experiences financial difficulties typical for conflict transformation work in general: as different from the development work or humanitarian assistance in emergencies, conflict transformation delivers intangible rather than tangible results: it works on changing attitudes, perceptions, and institutions, and donors are not always convinced that their investment will deliver significant change in these "soft" areas.
    The Forum is a unique success of networking for conflict transformation purposes, but its participants may still pursue political rather than conflict transformation aims. For the organisations from the breakway regions, such as Abkhazia or Nagorny Karabakh, the Forum provides one of the rare opportunities to present their cause in an international setting. NGOs from recognised states, on the other hand, have many more opportunities to communicate internationally, and their interest in joining the Forum may be different. But the format of the Forum works because all the participants are free to balance the positions of each other. The Forum is successful insofar as no one its participant feels excluded or threatened.
    The Forum is an open network, and its work can be accessed via the Coordinator's office as well as the partners. Some time soon it will have a web-site. However, its openness should be combined with confidentiality when it comes to the matters of importance to the sides in conflict. Thus the role of the Coordinator increases substantially, because in the absence of more formal structures and in between the meetings of the Forum leaders, the Coordinator has to make several decisions a day about how to present information open to the public, authorities, and the international community. His work is based on the tenet "do no harm".
    The concept of networking may be confusing too, especially when it comes to the organisational structures and decision-making. For many NGOs in the former Soviet Union, the most familiar organisational structure is a bureaucratic organisation or a political party. Democracy for them is voting for every decision, whereby simple majority wins. They thus influence the networks to acquire strict hierarchical structures (for instance, they call the Coordinator the Chief Executive), and they believe that only those decisions that have been made via democratic voting procedures are valid. The soft consensus-building process and trusting each other in certain matters, which is typical for informal networks, in this light appear to them sometimes unjust and unfair. The issues of accountability acquire new significance in this respect. Decision-making in such environment becomes often conflict-ridden, and those very actors who declare peace as their aim are unable to avoid unnecessary conflict in their dealings with each other.
    However, these are the growing pains of a process which is healthy and promises in future very different types of human relations and institutions in the places where bloodshed has been shed or is likely to happen.