# **Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory**

**Markus Schultze-Kraft**

## Memory Politics and Transitional Justice

### Series Editors

Jasna Dragovic-Soso, Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK Jelena Subotic, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA Tsveta Petrova, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

### Editorial Board

Paige Arthur, New York University, New York, USA Alejandro Baer, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA Orli Fridman, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia Carol Gluck, Columbia University, New York, USA Katherine Hite, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, USA Alexander Karn, Colgate University, Hamilton, USA Jan Kubik, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA Bronwyn Leebaw, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, USA Jan-Werner Müller, Princeton University, Princeton, USA Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA Kathy L. Powers, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Joanna Quinn, Western University, London, ON, Canada Jeremy Sarkin, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Leslie Vinjamuri, SOAS University of London, London, UK Sarah E. Wagner, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA The interdisciplinary fields of Memory Studies and Transitional Justice have largely developed in parallel to one another despite both focusing on efforts of societies to confront and (re—)appropriate their past. While scholars working on memory have come mostly from historical, literary, sociological, or anthropological traditions, transitional justice has attracted primarily scholarship from political science and the law. This series bridges this divide: it promotes work that combines a deep understanding of the contexts that have allowed for injustice to occur with an analysis of how legacies of such injustice in political and historical memory influence contemporary projects of redress, acknowledgment, or new cycles of denial. The titles in the series are of interest not only to academics and students but also practitioners in the related fields.

The Memory Politics and Transitional Justice series promotes critical dialogue among different theoretical and methodological approaches and among scholarship on different regions. The editors welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines—including political science, history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies—that confront critical questions at the intersection of memory politics and transitional justice in national, comparative, and global perspective.

This series is indexed in Scopus.

#### **Memory Politics and Transitional Justice Book Series (Palgrave)**

Co-editors: Jasna Dragovic-Soso (Goldsmiths, University of London), Jelena Subotic (Georgia State University), Tsveta Petrova (Columbia University)

#### **Editorial Board**

Paige Arthur, New York University Center on International Cooperation Alejandro Baer, University of Minnesota Orli Fridman, Singidunum University Belgrade Carol Gluck, Columbia University Katherine Hite, Vassar College Alexander Karn, Colgate University Jan Kubik, Rutgers University and School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London Bronwyn Leebaw, University of California, Riverside Jan-Werner Müller, Princeton University Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia Kathy L. Powers, University of New Mexico Joanna Quinn, Western University Jeremy Sarkin, University of South Africa Leslie Vinjamuri, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Sarah E. Wagner, George Washington University

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14807 Markus Schultze-Kraft

# Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory

Markus Schultze-Kraft Department of Police and Security Management Berlin School of Economics and Law Berlin, Germany

Georg Arnhold Programme on Education for Sustainable Peace Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) Brunswick, Germany

#### LYRASIS

With the support of more than 30 libraries, the LYRASIS United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Fund has enabled this publication to be available fully open access.

ISSN 2731-3840 ISSN 2731-3859 (electronic) Memory Politics and Transitional Justice ISBN 978-3-030-93653-2 ISBN 978-3-030-93654-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9

© The Author(s) 2022. This book is an open access publication.

**Open Access** This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

*To Sophia*

# Acknowledgements

In a way, this is a deeply personal book. I can only hope that the narrative brought to the page also resonates with a broader readership among scholars and teachers in the fields of peace education and historical memory, especially in countries and societies struggling with protracted violent conflict.

Throughout the writing labour—during seemingly endless months of pandemic lockdown—I have had the fortune to count on the accompaniment of, and the insights from, a group of former students in Colombia as well as from colleagues, peers and friends with whom I have worked over more than two decades on issues related to the subject matters of this book: education for sustaining peace through historical memory.

It would be next to impossible to convey here my thanks to each and everyone who helped me think through a complex and challenging field of scholarly inquiry and educational engagement. In lieu of all of them, I wish to extend my gratitude to the Georg Arnhold Programme on Education for Sustainable Peace and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute and its director, Professor Eckhardt Fuchs, for the generosity with which they supported this research on peace education and historical memory—and the trust they bestowed on me. Katharina Baier of the Georg Eckert Institute/Georg Arnhold Programme and the institute's library staff provided marvellous research and logistical support. Dr. Wendy Anne Kopisch furnished insightful and helpful comments on earlier versions of this research, as did Professor Paul Arthur, Dr. Barbara Christophe, Dr. Gonzalo Sánchez, Dr. María Emma Wills and several of my former students and academic peers in Cali, including David Alzate, David Biojó, Dr. Joe Gazeley, Christina Müller and Camilo Serrano.

Without the excellent rapport with Anne-Kathrin Birchley-Brun and her team at Palgrave Macmillan, the book would not have come together in its present form. I also thank Lyrasis for helping to make this work widely available as an open-access publication. This is a vital and much welcome contribution to supporting learning and research across the world, particularly in the countries of the global South.

This book owes a lot—intellectually and otherwise—to my partner Dr. Julia Gorricho and our daughter Sophia, my two valiant and unwavering companions on the adventurous journey that took us from Europe to the Americas and back again.

# Contents


#### x CONTENTS


# Abbreviations and Acronyms


# Introduction

**Abstract** Education on and for peace in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, protracted violent conflict is up against major challenges. Both conventional and critical approaches to peace education are of limited help to address these challenges. Incorporating a focus on historical memory, without losing sight of its own pitfalls, into peace education can support learners and teachers to come to grips with achieving positive, peace-sustaining change at both the micro (individual) and macro (social and institutional) levels and develop concepts and practices of effective and legitimate alternatives to violence and war. Conceived in these terms, historical memory-oriented peace education also stands to enhance the work-in-progress that is the UN-led sustaining peace agenda, closely aligned as it is with the Sustainable Development Goals. Informed by the author's long-standing work on violent conflict, peace and education in countries of the global South, particularly Colombia, the book presents a comprehensive narrative about the relationship between peace education, historical memory and the sustaining peace agenda, advocating for the adoption of a new perspective on education for sustaining peace through historical memory.

**Keywords** Peace education · Historical memory · Sustaining peace agenda · Violent conflict · Sustainable Development Goals · Colombia

© The Author(s) 2022 M. Schultze-Kraft, *Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory*, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9\_1

For someone who over the years has expended considerable time and effort in grounded armed conflict analysis and university teaching on conflict prevention and resolution in settings as diverse as Colombia, Haiti, Bolivia, Kosovo and Nigeria, among other violence-inflected countries, it would appear that peace education cannot be anything but an inherently valuable and worthwhile undertaking. However, as much as I would like to see education on and/or for peace contribute to making the world a "better, more humane place" (Bar-Tal 2002: 28) the odds are that this is not really happening—or at least we cannot be sure to what extent it is happening.

Working for most of the 2000s out of Bogotá with the International Crisis Group, a global armed conflict prevention and resolution organisation, taught me that (armed) actors' disposition to negotiate and find some middle ground to address entrenched contradictions and/or incompatibilities seldom is fully absent. This notwithstanding, strategic realism and the use of force often trump or are perceived as a necessary precondition for political approaches to ending violent confrontation and, in the best of cases, achieving a state of "passive peaceful co-existence" or "negative peace" (Galtung 2017: 13). Likewise, lecturing throughout the second half of the 2010s at a private university in Cali, one of Colombia's most violent cities, with a remit of teaching peace, conflict and governance studies and International Relations I observed that students were interested in exploring diverse ways to achieve, safeguard and sustain peace in their country (Focus Group 2020). Although removed from their first-hand experiences and social and cultural environments to which course participants would frequently refer when addressing specific issues in the classroom,1 I was struck by the commitment and openness with which they would respond to my offer to examine Colombia's challenges

<sup>1</sup> Among the experiences that students shared were traumatic events, such as the abduction of close family members by the insurgents and criminal organisations as well as instances of stigmatisation by the authorities. Regarding the latter, one female student recounted, for example, how one day representatives of the local mayor's office and the police came to her school in a rural area in the south-western Cauca department to let everybody know that "leftist indoctrination," which they said they knew was happening at the school, would no longer be tolerated. While Cauca had for a long time been a stronghold of the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in Spanish), who managed to exert quite significant control over communities in the province, the official visit to the school took place when the peace talks between the Santos government and FARC were already well underway. The student therefore wondered about the intention behind, and appropriateness of, intimidating pupils and teachers in this way when by comparing them to other peace processes in, for instance, Central America, the Western Balkans and Sub-Saharan Africa.

But there were invariably also those students who would not see much of a problem in advocating violent policy responses to complex political and social problems, such as charting a way out of Venezuela's severe crisis of governance under the embattled Chavista administration of Nicolás Maduro (2013 to present) or addressing street crime and its alleged relationship to homelessness in Cali.<sup>2</sup> When analysing Colombia's protracted armed conflict and touching on the state's responsibility for atrocious crimes, such as pressuring, incentivising and motivating members of the security forces to commit unlawful killings of civilians (UN General Assembly 2010), I would note confusion in the classroom as to what the difference was between security and peace. And why in a democratically constituted state like Colombia security should never come at the expense of the protection of human rights and citizens' fundamental liberties.

This unawareness of—or disenchantment with—some of the basic aspects of social and political life in *peace* struck me as quite remarkable, although it appears not to be an uncommon feature among Colombian higher education students (Focus Group 2020; Girón 2016). After all, the country's schools and universities have long been invested in ethics and democratic citizenship education, which at different critical junctures in Colombia's Republican history also included a focus on peace education (Rodríguez 2016). Today, university students from across disciplines and faculties, ranging from the social sciences and law to the natural sciences, engineering, business administration and medicine, are required to obtain a certain number of core curriculum credits in these broad fields of knowledge and practice (Focus Group 2020; Salas et al. 2019). The degree to

a political solution to the protracted conflict with the insurgents appeared to be within reach.

<sup>2</sup> The insight for peace education that can be drawn from these examples is that in regions of the world where violence is commonly used to "resolve" entrenched political and other conflicts, reality may have a distorting effect on learners' "moral imagination" (Lederach 2005). Put differently, students may well ask themselves why, when violence is omnipresent and "normalised" in reality, they should be expected to analyse it critically and develop non-violent conflict transformation or resolution strategies instead. It seems to me that when conceptualising and designing peace education, especially in violenceinflected political orders and societies, it is important to keep in mind what seminal legal scholar Georg Jellinek refers to as "reality's normative power" (*die normative Kraft des Faktischen*) (Anter 2004).

which they have gained the relevant competences is measured regularly as part of state examinations that students present prior to entering university and during the final semester of their study programmes (Pardo and Medina 2020).<sup>3</sup> Operational and other difficulties aside, I believe that my observation of the existence of a chasm between what Colombian higher education students are asked to "learn" and the ways in which they relate to one another and wider society—and employ, or not, the acquired skills to address intricate real-world problems, such as violent conflict—points to a deeper set of issues.

Comparable to other violence-inflected states and societies, Colombia too is historically torn between "legitimacy and violence" (Palacios 2003a, b). What the noted Colombian historian Marco Palacios seeks to convey with this expression is that in Colombia there are islands of legitimacy where the state and civil society tend to function rather more than less according to democratically established and collectively binding institutions and norms. These select geographical areas and institutional environments are surrounded, however, by a large sea of violent clientelism, self-interested opportunism, organised crime and, as I would add, crimilegality (Schultze-Kraft 2016a, 2017, 2018, 2019). Several years after the signing of the final peace accord between the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in Spanish) in November 2016, a previous version of which had been rejected in a referendum a few months earlier (Schultze-Kraft 2016b), the country remains mired in what Roger Mac Ginty calls a situation of "no war, no peace" (Mac Ginty 2006) and which Colombian analysts refer to as the "armed post-conflict (author's translation)" (Vargas 2015) or "post-accord phase (author's translation)" (Cepeda 2016). This situation is characterised by persisting political, criminal and other forms of direct, structural and cultural violence, including armed groups' targeting of social and civic leaders and conflict victims in rural regions, which negatively condition the feeble implementation of the peace agreement with FARC (Schultze-Kraft et al. 2021).

In a Colombian higher education environment, this challenging societal context may at times translate for learners (and teachers) into

<sup>3</sup> Managed and implemented by the Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES in Spanish), a national-level state entity ascribed to the Ministry of Education, the pre-university Saber 11 exam is taken by 11th graders, while university students are required to take Saber Pro in the last semester of their study programmes.

something like appearing rather than being; embracing—both wittingly and unwittingly—violent solutions to socio-political problems rather than seeking non-violent conflict resolution and transformation; taking essentially unjust and violence-inflected hierarchies as a given rather than standing in for social justice and the protection of fundamental rights and liberties of all citizens; seeking individual advancement at all cost rather than furthering the common good, and so on. Even if stylised and without any claim to being generalisable, this catalogue of personal classroom impressions is not as far from reality as it might seem. Recent research on the added value of education in citizenship competences at Colombian higher education establishments in the period 2011–2017 shows that it ranges from "quite modest to nil" (Pardo and Medina 2020: 83)—a fact that would not surprise Colombian influencer Santiago Rivas, who in a recent account chastises value-oriented education as being nothing but an elite smokescreen for covering up profound social cleavages and inequalities (Rivas 2018). It thus appears that for the purpose of framing peace education in Colombia there is not all that much that can be learned from education in ethics and citizenship competences.

Yet what would be more effective ways to approach education on and/or for peace in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, protracted violent conflict? Galvanised by the Santos administration's institution of the *Cátedra de la Paz* (Peace Chair) in 2014–2015, in the past few years Colombia has seen a string of forums and conferences at higher and vocational education establishments, and the creation and/or further development of university centres and specialised study programmes on peace education and peacebuilding. At the university in Cali I was privy to some of these activities and processes. In my double role of international political science lecturer and graduate programme coordinator with a strong background in grounded policy analysis in armed conflict-affected countries in Latin America and other regions I was keen to contribute to the valuable endeavour of educating on and for peace in Colombia. The problem was, it appeared to me, that everyone whose work was somehow associated with this broad field seemed to have a more or less vague idea about what they thought peace education was and how it could be taught at higher education institutes as well as schools. Yet speaking on the basis of my own experience, in reality, there was little concrete knowledge on peace education as a pedagogical field, including a deeper knowledge of the international but also local debates and discourses, and also little institutional guidance from university authorities. Unsurprisingly, the result was that creative experimentation with study course contents and pedagogical-didactic strategies has been the order of the day (see, for instance, Gómez-Suarez 2017).

This situation struck me as quite unsatisfactory. Rather than continue testing bespoke approaches to peace education in the classroom in a trialand-error fashion I thought it wiser to take a step back to reflect on my teaching experience and examine the strengths and weaknesses of what I call the conventional and critical approaches to, or schools of, peace education. Furthermore, having had the opportunity to participate between 2015 and 2018 in some aspects of Colombia's impressive historical memory work and harbouring a deep, praxis-informed interest in peacebuilding—in Colombia and beyond—I decided to take a closer look at the relationship between peace education, historical memory and the sustaining peace agenda, recently fielded by the United Nations (UN) in close alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus the idea of this book was born.

# 1.1 Aims, Questions and Methodology

This book presents an account of the relationship between education on and/or for peace, the recovery and preservation of historical memory, and the new, UN-led sustaining peace agenda geared towards replacing hitherto dominant yet increasingly questioned international peacebuilding models with a less interventionist, prescriptive and universalising approach aligned with the SDGs. While there are substantial literatures in the fields of peace education, historical memory and peacebuilding, to my knowledge no attempts have thus far been made to draw them together in one single narrative. For several reasons, such an endeavour is of relevance.

Particularly in violence-inflected countries, education on and/or for peace at higher education institutes and schools is a highly challenging undertaking with uncertain outcomes. In this respect, I posit that both the conventional and critical approaches to peace education of the past four decades or longer and their contemporary practice are of limited help. Conventional peace education is often formulaic, normative and morally appellative in outlook and application, failing to address the historical root causes and drivers of conflict and the question of how desired changes at the micro-level of learners' individual attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and values can support pro-peace change at the macrolevel of institutional and social structures. Critical peace education, in turn, is more attuned to the thorny issues of power and exclusion but faces the challenge of showing how the empowerment and emancipation of the marginalised and oppressed through formal and informal education for peace can lead to broader institutional transformation that respects the freedoms and rights of all members of communities.

Regarding historical memory, efforts towards recovering and preserving the individual and collective memories of a violent conflict are considered to be "at the core of processes of healing and reparation following long, violent conflicts or sustained periods of authoritarian rule" (Corredor et al. 2018: 169). Yet such efforts often are not given the centrality they deserve in war-to-peace transitions. Furthermore, not dissimilar to truth commissions entrusted with establishing who-didwhat-to-whom with the goal of contributing to restorative justice, victim reparation and reconciliation, historical memory work too faces the challenge of not connecting with broader social and educational dynamics and sectors. At the same time, historical memory work risks cementing deepseated antagonisms between former adversaries (Bull and Hansen 2016), thus not harnessing its potential for contributing to peacebuilding and the emerging sustaining peace agenda promoted by the UN secretary-general since the mid-2010s.

Although the notion of sustaining peace is still not sufficiently elaborate and theoretically substantiated to serve as a compass to re-orient efforts to promote peaceful conflict management in violence-ravaged countries, it nonetheless offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the ways in which we approach our applied, everyday work on and/or for peace in the classroom and beyond. There is merit in adopting the less prescriptive, value-laden and universalising and, at the same time, more indeterminate, normatively restrained and humble elements that set the discourse on sustaining peace apart from that of conventional international peacebuilding. And while historical memory education as a pedagogical field is still in its infancy and needs to be developed further (Corredor et al. 2018), I suggest there is scope for it to play a role with respect to sustaining peace in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict.

Needless to say, this is no small feat. As stated, the recovery and preservation of the memory of a violent conflict face many pitfalls. Historical memory-oriented peace education may thus appear to be a risky, even reckless undertaking. Not underestimating these challenges, this book puts forward the argument that incorporating a focus on historical memory into peace education can help enhance learners' (and teachers') competences and skills to come to grips with achieving positive, peacesustaining change at both the micro (individual) and the macro (social and institutional) levels and develop concepts and practices of effective and legitimate alternatives to violence and war. Helping to address the shortcomings of the individualising outlook of conventional peace education as well as the potentially antagonising aspirations of critical approaches, didactic tools such as narrative, oral history, remembering and futures visioning are suited to enable learners (and teachers) to work towards healing past trauma and recognising the "other" as a moral agent, opening up space for the surfacing and expression of emotions. In this vein, historical memory-oriented peace education can help promote reconciliation through the generation of more cooperative, trusting and harmonious relationships among individuals and collectives on the basis of new identities shaped by experiences of having witnessed and listened to the suffering of the "other." Strengthening such relationships through historical memory-oriented education on and for peace is of importance for building the resilience of individuals, communities and their wider social and institutional environments vis-à-vis endogenous and exogenous shocks associated with different forms of violence and injustice, thereby contributing to the SDG-aligned sustaining peace agenda.

In line with the above, the presented narrative is guided by the following questions, each of which is addressed in one of the three subsequent chapters that constitute the main body of this book: (1) What are the core tenets, claims and problems of what I call the conventional and critical approaches to peace education? (2) What are the challenges of recovering and preserving historical memory in countries affected by violent conflict? (3) Why and how should historical memory be made part of peace education and what is the relevance of historical memoryoriented peace education for sustaining peace in countries emerging from violent conflict?

Given my relevant professional experience and access to illuminating, hitherto untapped primary and secondary data/sources in Colombia, throughout the book I work with the South American country as a relevant case study to inform and illustrate the presented narrative. Colombia has a long and impressive record of historical memory work dating back decades. The work of the Historical Memory Group (GMH in Spanish) began in 2007 and in 2011 the National Centre for Historical Memory (CNMH in Spanish) was established as an entity ascribed to the presidency. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, since 2016 Colombia has been witnessing a complex war-to-peace transition in which peace education figures as one among various other areas of engagement for the building of sustainable peace. As I write, all three domains addressed in the book's narrative, that is, peace education, historical memory and sustaining peace, are dynamically unfolding.

In terms of methodology, I draw not only on the Colombia-specific debate, much of which has been published in the Spanish language, but also on international research that due to the language barrier has not yet sufficiently been considered in the Colombian context. Further, the book is informed by my own experience as a higher education teacher in the "frontline classroom" at a university in Cali as well as by the insights gained from my work with a focus group of five former Colombian and international students and teaching peers and my participation in Colombia's historical memory process between 2015 and 2018.4 The literature review for this book was conducted at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media between January 2020 and July 2021. Not designed as a systematic review, which would have been beyond the scope of this work, the search focussed on tracing the history of, and seminal as well as recent contributions to, the field of peace education published in English, German and Spanish. It also sought to establish an overview of the conventional and critical schools of peace education, including research on cultures of peace education, as well as a search for research on tertiary peace education and peace education in armed conflict-affected countries, including Colombia. Regarding the latter two fields of knowledge, the review revealed significant lacunae in the extant scholarship.

# 1.2 Structure of the Book

The book is organised in the following way. Chapter 2 discusses the core tenets, claims and problems of what I call the conventional and critical approaches to, or schools of, peace education. Chapter 3 examines the ambivalent and contested concept of historical memory and the challenges of applied historical memory work in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict. Chapter 4 contains my argument in

<sup>4</sup> The focus group's contributions are referenced in the text as Focus Group (2020).

support of historical memory-oriented peace education against the backdrop of the new, UN-led sustaining peace agenda. Chapter 5 contains a brief summary of the presented narrative on education for sustaining peace through historical memory and offers a succinct outlook on future research in this demanding field of scholarly inquiry and educational praxis.

### References


Vargas, Alejo. *Hacia el posconflicto armado en Colombia: Transición de la guerra a la paz*, Documento de Políticas Públicas 6. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional/Centro de Pensamiento y Seguimiento al Diálogo de Paz, 2015. Accessed 10 June 2020: http://pensamiento.unal.edu.co/fileadmin/rec ursos/focos/piensa-paz/policy\_papers/documento\_de\_politicas\_publicas\_6. pdf.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Conventional and Critical Approaches to Peace Education

**Abstract** Peace and education are both "essentially contested concepts." Welding them together in one single term—peace education—raises tough questions about what it is that is being proposed and done. With their normative, morally appellative and culturally universalist focus on the individual learner, conventional conceptions and practices of peace education do not easily relate to variable, heterogeneous and contextdependent notions and realities of peace and education in violenceinflected societies. They also shy away from taking account of asymmetric and unequal power relationships. Evoking the importance of building "cultures of peace" falls short of addressing these realities. Critical approaches to peace education forefront empowering individuals as well as collectives to become agents of social transformation. Education for peace is understood as social action geared towards finding solutions to manifold manifestations of direct, cultural and structural violence, injustice and inequality. Critical peace education is more attuned to the thorny issues of power and exclusion. However, it faces the challenge of showing how the empowerment and emancipation of the marginalised and oppressed through formal and informal education for peace can lead to broader institutional transformation. The chapter illustrates peace education's challenges in relation to the case of Colombia.

**Keywords** Peace education · Cátedra de la Paz (Peace Chair) · Violent conflict · Colombia

© The Author(s) 2022 M. Schultze-Kraft, *Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory*, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9\_2

Since the early days of peace research in the 1960s, it has often been noted that what is labelled peace education or education on and/or for peace is a field of scholarly enquiry and educational praxis that cannot be easily classified and delimited (see, for instance, Banks 1974; Cremin 2016; Galtung 1974; Jaeger 2014; Lum 2013; Mushakoji 1974; Nicklas and Ostermann 1974; Salomon 2002; Wiberg 1974).1 However could it, one must ask, given that both peace and education are terms that defy straightforward definition? Peace—as a notion, reality, ideal and utopia—carries a plurality of meanings, promises and hopes across time and space.2 To some, it may mean the absence of varying forms of direct, structural and cultural violence, as in Johan Galtung's negative conception of the term (Galtung 1969, 2012, 2017).3 For those more inclined towards the Norwegian peace scholar's positive conceptualisation, it may refer to "an optimal environment in which human potential can flourish" (Institute for Economics & Peace 2019: 67), where "hatred, antipathy and indifference" between individuals and collectives, such as communities, states and nations, are replaced by "sympathy" and "cooperation" (Galtung 2012: 53). More emphatically even, peace is seen

<sup>1</sup> It is worthwhile to recall here the observation of Johan Galtung, the seminal Norwegian peace and peace education scholar-practitioner, that in its beginnings peace research had a challenging time becoming established at universities in Europe and North America. When the emerging academic discipline finally moved from the margins and from what today would be called thinktanks into the higher education sector, it was strong on research but weak on education (Galtung 1974). While many efforts have since been made to integrate research and education on peace, and a plethora of study and learning programmes have been set up at universities and specialised training institutes, including in countries of the South, research and education on peace and violent conflict still do not communicate as much as they should with one another (Senghaas, cited in Frieters-Reermann 2009).

<sup>2</sup> In illustration, based on a search of the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge database on "articles published in English since 2000 with 'peace' in their title," Peter Coleman found more than "40 terms distinguishing different types or aspects of peace. […] Peace can differ in a variety of ways, including by level (interpersonal to international to global peace), direction (internal and external peace), durability (from fragile to enduring peace), source or conditions (peace through coercion, democratic participation, economic incentive, etc.), type (negative, positive and promotive peace) and scope (local to global peace)" (Coleman 2013: 103).

<sup>3</sup> According to Galtung, direct violence involves acts geared towards inflicting physical harm and destruction on others, while structural and cultural violence manifest in the exploitation of others and patterns of justification of both direct and structural violence, respectively (Galtung 2012).

as a "moral aspiration, social good, universal value and a human right (author's translation)" (Arias 2016: 244). It is "a linchpin of social harmony, economic equity and political justice," which, however, is always at peril of being "ruptured by wars and other forms of violent conflict" (Webel 2007: 5–6). Dialectic in nature, peace "as social formation has forces and counter-forces" prompting cyclical movement from peace to peacelessness and back again. In this movement, returning to the point of peaceful equilibrium requires, however, that these cycles are "handled non-violently-constructively-creatively" (Galtung 2012: 12). Others still, operating at the fringes of the realist paradigm in International Relations, would like to make us believe—misleadingly, to my mind—that peace is nothing but the seedbed of, and a somehow artificial interval between, never-ending violent conflict and war (Walt 2016).

Not as contentious as peace, education—conventionally defined as the "process of teaching, training and learning, especially in schools, colleges or universities, to improve knowledge and develop skills" (Hornby 2000: 401)—too is not free of ambiguity and controversy. Recall, for instance, the powerful post-colonial critiques put forward by pedagogues like Paulo Freire in the 1960s, who saw modern education as either an elitist instrument designed to integrate (some of) the young into the extant social and economic systems and achieve conformity or to strengthen, in much broader and inclusionary fashion, the upcoming generations' ability to seek freedom and develop their potential to transform the world (Freire 1968; Harber 2004). Several decades later, in the early twenty-first century, education appears to be on the way to becoming more standardised as well as more widely accessible across countries and cultures. But "education is […] in crisis," writes Hilary Cremin, "because it has failed to bridge the growing gap between the rich and the poor. […] Processes of marketisation have resulted in education being reduced to a commodity to be consumed like any other" (Cremin 2016: 5). Significant variations in approach and levels of access to, and provision of, education remain. Pedagogical practice and quality, from primary through to tertiary and vocational education and adult learning, and the very definition of the ultimate ends of education vary, sometimes greatly, within and between countries—and not only between those in the global North and South (Cremin 2016; Tierney 2011). "In many ways," observes Liz Jackson, "global convergence around educational policies, practices, and values can be observed. […] Yet educational borrowing and transferral remain unstraightforward in practice, as educational and cultural differences across social contexts remain, while the ultimate ends of education […] are essentially contested" (Jackson 2020: 17).

Hence, welding together the concepts of peace and education in one single term—peace education—is bound to raise questions, as was already noted by Håkan Wiberg close to half a century ago (Wiberg 1974), about what it is that is being proposed and done; and how it is done and by whom and for what purpose. As a political scientist with a practical interest in peace education in countries affected by violent conflict, I am under the impression that the field continues, after decades of scholarly and applied efforts, to wrestle with defining more clearly its identity as an academic and educational discipline and ground lofty aspirations more firmly in evidence and theory. This is echoed, for instance, by outspoken authors like Ilan Gur-Ze'ev, who chastises peace education researchers and practitioners for not engaging sufficiently with "the reciprocity of its two fundamental concepts, […] peace and […] education; […] and the relation between power and violence [as well as] the fruitful tension between peace and freedom" (Gur-Ze'ev 2010: 172). Others, such as Norbert Frieters-Reermann and Uli Jaeger, highlight peace education's inherent value and desirability but are clear that the field—still— lacks a solid theoretical base which cannot be built without generating more hard evidence about its effectiveness and impact (Frieters-Reermann 2009, 2010; Jaeger 2006, 2014). For the time being, "peace education [therefore] remains […] indispensable but controversial, value-oriented but without a claim to truth (author's translation)" (Jaeger 2006: 16).

# 2.1 Conventional Approaches to Peace Education

The hallmark of conventional peace education scholarship and practice, which is characterised by a normative outlook, is its focus on shaping individual attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values with the aim of shaping "hearts and minds" in support of peace (Salomon 2010). According to one seminal exponent of this school, "*peace studies* tend to focus on the causes of war, and alternatives to war, whereas *peace education* is more generic, attempting to draw out of people their natural inclinations to live in peace. […] Peace educators […] are interested in all distinct aspects of violence from the interpersonal to the geopolitical. They see that education provides an important strategy to achieve peace, because it provides awareness about different peace strategies (emphasis added)" (Harris 2002: 18). Focussed on changing attitudes in individuals, that is, students, but ultimately aiming at bringing about behavioural change, Ian Harris posits that peace education works on five levels: it "(1) […] explains the roots of violence; (2) […] teaches alternatives to violence; (3) […] cover[s] different forms of violence; (4) [understands] peace itself [as] a process that varies according to context; and (5) [recognises that] conflict is omnipresent" (Harris 2004: 6).

Harris' (2002, 2004) approach, as well as that of others writing in a similar vein (Bar-Tal 2002; Harris and Morrison 2013; Howlett and Harris 2010), rests on the premise that peace education "represents an indirect solution to the problems of violence. As a strategy it depends upon millions of students being educated, who first transformed their inner hearts and minds and then must turn work to transform violence" (Harris and Morrison 2013: 31). However, acknowledging that we do not know with certainty "how and why [and whether] peace education programmes work" (Harris and Morrison 2013: 31),4 this scholarship concedes that "the struggle to achieve peace takes place at both the individual and social levels" (Harris 2004: 16). Thus "peace education theory has to account for efforts to achieve peace at both the micro and macro levels" (Harris 2004: 16).

Yet it is precisely this question about how to link the level of the individual, on the one hand, and the social and/or political-institutional or macro-levels on the other that in conventional approaches remains unresolved (Ross 2010). Some scholars have attempted to address the issue by taking recourse to socialisation and reconciliation theory (Bar-Tal 2002; Bar-Tal et al. 2010; Boulding 1974, 2002; Harris and Morrison 2013; Zwick 2006). These approaches are based on the premises that the "emergence and development of the human personality is dependent upon […] the social and material living conditions that exist at a certain point in time in the historical development of a society (author's translation)" (Hurrelmann, cited in Zwick 2006: 13); and that "reconciliation supports and solidifies peace as a new form of intergroup relations and serves

<sup>4</sup> The difficulty of establishing the effects and impact of peace education on students' attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and values is a recurrent topic in the literature. If at all, thus far authors have offered mostly anecdotal evidence about such effects, while it is recognised that there is a need for more systematic and methodologically more sophisticated evaluations of peace education (Bar-Tal 2002; Danesh 2008; Frieters-Reermann 2010; Harris and Lewer 2005; Ross 2010).

as a stable foundation for cooperative and friendly acts that symbolise these relations" (Bar-Tal et al. 2010). Even when the mentioned conception of socialisation has been critiqued for suggesting too plainly that the social and material environment in which humans—especially children and youngsters—live and develop agency is constituted in such a clear-cut manner that individuals can and will adopt established (traditional) cultural norms and values rather unambiguously, it is nonetheless held that peace pedagogy can contribute to "socialising" learners into becoming peaceful, non-violent members of society (Zwick 2006; see also Boulding 1974).

Put simply, pro-peace attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values can be proactively fomented in individuals if and when they are supported by, and reflected in, their broader social and material environment.<sup>5</sup> *Vice versa*, positive socialisation effects achieved through peace education are believed to strengthen and enhance the sustainability of a peaceful environment. Likewise, peace education is styled as "one of the most prominent and efficient methods for promoting reconciliation" because it helps to "construct students' worldview […] in a way that facilitates conflict resolution and […] that prepares them to live in an era of peace […]" (Bar-Tal et al. 2010). However, while one can imagine such positive feedback and reconciliation processes occurring in more stable environments where levels of violent conflict, polarisation and social exclusion and inequality are low, we cannot be sure that this also applies to communities and countries affected by elevated levels of political and other forms of violence. Researchers who are more attuned to the challenges peace education faces in violent contexts and settings characterised by deep ethnic and other cleavages suggest that there is no convincing evidence that would support any such claims.

In this respect, Gavriel Salomon (2002, 2010) is to be credited with contributing a basic three-tier typology of peace education contexts in which he distinguishes between contexts of (a) relative tranquillity, (b) latent ethno-political tensions and (c) intractable and belligerent conflicts.

<sup>5</sup> In an early contribution to this debate, Elise Boulding suggested that the "life experience of persons committed to a belief in, and action on behalf of, non-violent social change" must include such high-aiming features as "optimal opportunities as a child for development of emotional, cognitive and intuitive capacities in home, school and community […]"; "substantial exposure to a variety of adult and peer role models in different kinds of social settings" and "experiences of rewarding social feedback in the playing out of roles and solving problems" (Boulding 1974: 103–104).

While peace education is frequently practised at schools and other educational establishments in countries that may be considered to be settings of "relative tranquillity," such as in Europe and North America, it is in settings with intractable armed conflicts that "peace education faces its real test for here it is about making peace with the real enemy. […] The proposed contextualisation sharpens awareness of the need for peace education programmes to be precisely aligned to the specific conflict setting" (Jaeger 2014: 4). According to Uli Jaeger, peace education in violent conflict settings "aims to initiate and support integrated, holistic learning processes […]. In these learning processes, the main goal is […] to promote constructive ways of dealing with the potential for conflict and violence and thus help build the peace skills of individuals and groups alike" (Jaeger 2014: 5).

Recognising the centrality of the broader social and cultural context in which peace education takes place, the cultures of peace movement, which since the 1990s has been promoted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), seeks to support creating the conditions for fomenting "values, attitudes, modes of behaviour, and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiation among individuals, groups and nations" (UN General Assembly 1998).6 In this conceptualisation of peace education as educating towards building cultures of peace, UNESCO broadly defines culture as "the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their cultural heritage" (UNESCO 2003).<sup>7</sup> According to Christoph

<sup>6</sup> Raised at the international level for the first time at the International Congress on Peace in the Minds of Men in Cote d'Ivoire in July 1989, the culture of peace concept was inspired by a 1986 educational initiative of Peru called "Cultura de Paz." The Sevilla Manifesto of 1986, in which scientists from around the world stated that war and violence have no biological origin and are not to be seen as an essential part of human nature but are social inventions, also served as a catalyst for the launch of UNESCO's Culture of Peace Programme in 1994 (Labrador 2003; Lum 2013). The culture of peace initiative reverberates to this day in the Sustainable Development Goals. Target 4.7 explicitly includes the "promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence" under the heading Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (UN General Assembly 2015).

<sup>7</sup> In a similar vein, Boulding defines peace culture as a "mosaic of identities, attitudes, values, beliefs, and patterns of behaviour that lead people to live nurturantly with one Wulf, "education for peace plays a central role in the development of a culture of peace" (Wulf 2018: 8). *Vice versa*, peace education can only develop its full potential when it is embedded in a culture of peace, and not a "culture of violence and war" (Wulf 2018: 7), since it is in the former that "social structures change, and people's actions are oriented towards the values of peace" (Wulf 2018: 6).

Peace education, which "can contribute to the preservation of peace, [but] […] is not able to secure it" (Wulf 2018: 6), is thus perceived as an intervening variable that can support the building of cultures of peace. To be effective, however, authors like Wulf acknowledge that culturally oriented peace education also has to "deal with the conditions of war, violence and material need, and look for ways of helping to reduce them. […] It does not forget that war and violence are often macro-structurally caused systemic problems, the reduction of which is only partly possible with the help of education. […] Education for peace must continue to draw back on key concepts such as 'organised peacelessness,' 'structural violence' and 'social justice'" (Wulf 2018: 9)—and human rights and inclusive development, one should add. Yet this last point is not strongly reflected in UNESCO-promoted culture of peace discourse and programmes. The focus of such programmes, which are often based on universalising and homogenising conceptions of peace and culture, has been on shaping distinct sets of values, attitudes, beliefs and modes of behaviour of individuals without offering much by way of addressing the structural causes and drivers of organised violence and war.

# 2.2 Critical Approaches to Peace Education

Contentious and ambivalent as they are, peace education scholarship and praxis have always been subject to critical interrogation regarding their purpose, means and goals. At the risk of oversimplifying what has been a protracted, sometimes torturous and enduring debate within the disperse international peace research and education movement, in its earlier days the issue was one of the new fields having difficulty finding their own identity vis-à-vis the more established social science disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, economics and political science (Banks 1974; Wiberg 1974). Self-conscious criticism came mostly from within the field

another and the earth itself without the aid of structural power differentials, to deal creatively with their differences and share their resources" (Boulding 2002: 8).

itself,8 while the social science establishment simply shrugged their shoulders: who cares? With the advancement and diversification of the social sciences in general, and of peace research and education in particular, in the past couple of decades this initial phase of soul-searching has gradually given way to a more self-confident stance.

In my view, critical peace scholars and pedagogues, including those from the South, have contributed in no small manner to this development; not least because they have directed the spotlight away from the conventional—"individualistic and morally-appellative" (Zwick 2006: 2)—focus on influencing and shaping attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values of learners and promoting (universalising and homogenising) cultures of peace (Cremin 2016), to paying more attention to building "*new forms and structures of education* through curricula, pedagogy, participatory learning, dialogue-based encounters, and multiple perspectives on historical narratives (emphasis added)" (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos 2016: 3; see also Spence and Makuwira 2005). In this vein, the promotion of cultures of peace through education is critiqued for striving to govern "peace through global rationalities of security. These rationalities—embodied in programmes of action, training and capacity-building schemes and information-sharing practices—are geared towards investing in people in ways that individualise them and govern their conduct in the future. Campaigns for 'a culture of peace' attempt to make particular individuals and groups responsible for acquiring certain kinds of values of 'peace' and 'security'" (Ilcan and Phillips 2006: 59). In this critical reading, "security is being redefined as a civil, even scientific issue, and [is] no longer seen as a matter of warheads and delivery systems. It is [thus] not surprising that the principal agent for developing a culture of

<sup>8</sup> Among the issues that haunted first-generation peace researchers *cum* pedagogues was whether peace education should be *on* or *for* peace. In other words, should peace education focus on teaching the insights and results gained from academic peace studies (what could be called the "scientific" approach) or should it strive to educate learners so that they would become peaceful and peace-supporting citizens of the world (what could be called the "normative" and "applied" approach) (see, for instance, Nicklas and Ostermann 1974; Wiberg 1974). In a contribution to the debate published in 1974, Galtung called for "peace education [to] be taken seriously" and "peace research, peace action, and peace education […] find[ing] each other and integrate into the natural unified whole" (Galtung 1974: 153). Interestingly, and very much in counterflow to conventional academia, his proposal for how to achieve these important goals is based on the idea that the *form* of peace education ought to guide the development of its *contents*.

peace is thought to be the individual and not so much the state" (Ilcan and Philipps 2006: 63).

In contrast, one of the principal goals of critical peace education and scholarship, influenced as they are by Freire's conscientisation approach, is to "empower learners as *transformative change agents* who critically analyse power dynamics and intersectionalities among race, class, gender, ability-disability, sexual orientation, language, religion, geography and other forms of stratification (emphasis added)" (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos 2016: 4). Here, it is instructive to quote Monisha Bajaj and Maria Hantzopoulos, who offer a crisp characterisation of the differences between critical and conventional peace education.

[…] While all peace educators draw from analyses of violence, critical peace educators pay attention to how *unequal social relations* and *issues of power* must inform both peace education and corresponding *social action*. […] Critical peace education pays close attention to *local realities* and *local conceptions of peace*, amplifying *marginalised voices* through communitybased research, narratives, oral histories, and locally generated curricula. […] Other critical approaches […] also explore the *politics* and possibilities of enacting peace education in places where *contested* narratives, identitybased violence, and entrenched structural violence abound. […] Normative […] frameworks for understanding peace and peace education must be interrogated and challenged across local and regional contexts (emphasis added). (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos 2016: 4, 7)

Critical peace education, with its outlook on local emancipation and empowerment, is sometimes also framed as "pedagogies of resistance […] that encompass reciprocity, solidarity and […] horizontal decision-making structures" (Bajaj 2015: 157). Taking issue with "modern concepts of peace that promote suffocating homogeneity, security, assimilation, false ideals and limited horizons" and are "deeply embedded within warrior ethics, fear and in/security" (Cremin 2016: 3), the critical school perceives peace in an open manner as a desirable context-specific condition of humanity that results from "the abolition of direct or physical violence and structural and cultural violence, [and of] the entrenched inequality and social hierarchies that deprive individuals of their basic human rights" (Bajaj 2015: 156). However, critical discourse concedes that "whether schooling or sites of education themselves can achieve this Herculean task […] is a constant tension in discussions of peace education and critical peace education" (Bajaj 2015: 156; see also Cremin 2016). Furthermore, critical approaches are under pressure to show convincingly how individual empowerment and emancipation could lead to broader collective and institutional transformation—even if such approaches are more cognisant than conventional ones about "the ways in which human agency dynamically interacts with structures and forms of violence" (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos 2016: 4).

While these issues remain to be resolved at the theoretical, empirical and pedagogical levels, they are of little practical import for peace researchers and educators in countries ravaged by all manner of violences, injustices, inequalities and human rights abuses. In other words, in settings characterised by "intractable and belligerent conflict" (Salomon 2002, 2010) and historic "organised peacelessness" (Wulf 2018) where access to education and schooling is limited and highly unequal, promoting peace through education is a task that in any case cannot be accomplished by working (mostly) from within formal institutional structures. Witnessing daily the immediacy of different types of direct, structural and cultural violence and how they affect individuals, families and communities, scholars and pedagogues in countries like Colombia, many of whom are women, would find it difficult *not* to engage in transformative and empowering peace education discourses and practices, including by leaving the confines of schools and higher education institutes and working with victims' and other social organisations at the local level and in rural communities (Focus Group 2020; see also González 2016; Ortega 2016). Their contributions to the field of peace education tend to be of a critical type. However, I suggest that this is primarily the case *not* because they have chosen to work within a critical peace education framework but because their immediate violenceinflected socio-political context leaves them no other option. It is for this reason that I believe that both the critical and conventional schools of peace education in the North have much to learn from their peers in the South, while also ensuring that their own work is shared more broadly across the globe.9

<sup>9</sup> The literature review conducted for this research reveals that meaningful learning and exchange between peace researchers and pedagogues in democratic and prosperous countries, on the one hand, and violence-inflected developing countries on the other remains limited. For instance, Colombian scholars and educators appear to have little access to relevant international debates and discourses, especially to those of Anglo-American and European provenance. This is reflected in the fact that only few international contributions

### *2.2.1 Comparative Features of Conventional and Critical Approaches to Peace Education*

Based on the discussion of conventional and critical approaches to peace education presented in the previous two subsections, which explicitly serves the purpose of broader illustration and is not to be understood as exhaustive, in Table 2.1 below I summarise some key comparative features of the two schools of thought regarding their respective (a) outlook; (b) conceptions of peace, education and pedagogy; (c) underlying theory of change and (d) level of education.

**Table 2.1** Comparative features of conventional and critical approaches to peace education


(continued)

to the field are being discussed in the Colombian literature. This book seeks to contribute to bridging some of the gaps between these distanced academic and pedagogical worlds.


**Table 2.1** (continued)

*Source* Own elaboration based on the literature discussed and cited in this book

### 2.3 Peace Education in Colombia: Context and Challenges

Not a new field of scholarly enquiry and pedagogical praxis, in recent years work on peace education at Colombian schools and higher education institutes has gained momentum. This development has been promoted by the peace process between the Santos administration and FARC, which officially unfolded in Cuba in the period 2012–2016 and resulted in the signing of a final peace accord in November 2016.

<sup>10</sup> Given that peace education scholars and pedagogues often do not specify to which level of education they are referring, my characterisation of this particular feature of the conventional and critical approaches to peace education is tentative.

While the agreement in itself contains only scant references to education, Colombian academia, the educational sector and civil society have seized upon the opportunity afforded by the peace process and several pieces of associated legislation, particularly Law 1448 (2011) on victims and Law 1732 (2014) on the *Cátedra de la Paz* (Peace Chair), to energise peace education. This is evidenced by a flurry of academic and civil society activities in relation to peace education that the country has witnessed in the past few years, such as a string of forums and conferences at higher and vocational education institutes, and the creation and/or further development of several university centres and specialised study programmes on peace education and peacebuilding.<sup>11</sup> On the part of the government, attention to peace education in schools and higher education institutes is reflected in several pieces of legislation, foremost Law 1448 of 201112 and Law 1732 of 2014.13

<sup>11</sup> Among such conferences and forums were the National Meeting on Peace Education (Encuentro Nacional de Educación para la Paz) in October 2015; the First International Congress on Education and Society: the role of education in peacebuilding (Primer Congreso Internacional de Educación y Sociedad: el papel de la educación en la construcción de la paz) at Universidad de La Salle in November 2016; the annual conferences of REDUNIPAZ, a university alliance on peace education dating back to the late 1990s; and a series of public debates organised by Colombia's National Vocational Training Service (SENA in Spanish), in one of which the author of this study participated in Cali in 2017. At the level of the Andean region, the UNESCO Chair on Culture and Education for Peace at Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja in neighbouring Ecuador began establishing collaborations with higher education institutes in Colombia, such as the Centro de Investigación y Estudios en Paz, Conflictos y Desarrollo (CIPAZ) at Universidad de Pamplona (Santander department). Recently created study programmes and higher education centres that focus on peace education or include an emphasis on peacebuilding are the Centro de Estudios en Educación para la Paz at Universidad de La Sabana, the UNESCO Chair on Education and a Culture of Peace at Universidad del Rosario, and the MA in Peacebuilding at Universidad de Los Andes, among others. Entrusted with coordinating the MA in Government at Universidad Icesi in Cali in the period 2016–2018, the author of this book developed the extant curriculum to include a focus on the challenges and governance of peacebuilding in Colombia.

<sup>12</sup> Law 1448, popularly known as "victims' law," is a key piece of legislation proposed by, and adopted during, the Santos administration. Focused on legally recognising the victims of the armed conflict, safeguarding their fundamental rights and providing guarantees for the non-repetition of human rights abuses and atrocious crimes, the law stipulates the creation of a "social pedagogy that promotes the constitutional values that form the basis for reconciliation" and the "design and implementation of pedagogical strategies that empower victims legally (author's translation)" (Gobierno de Colombia 2011: art. 149).

<sup>13</sup> Some Colombian authors also include Law 975 of 2005, the so-called "justice and peace law," in the list of pieces of legislation promoting peace education in contem-

Seeking to institutionalise peace education as part of its broader peace effort, in 2014–2015 the Santos administration instituted the Peace Chair through Law 1732 of 2014 and Regulatory Decree 1083 of 2015. The new legislation, which was elaborated centrally and did not result from broader consultations by the national government with Colombia's wider education sector (Grajales 2018),<sup>14</sup> stipulates that all educational entities in Colombia—from primary school through to university—must establish and operate a *Cátedra de la Paz* by 31 December 2015 (Gobierno de Colombia 2014, 2015). The Peace Chair's stated overarching goal is to "encourage the process of appropriation of knowledge and skills related to territory, culture, economic and social context and historical memory, with the aim of reconstructing the social fabric, promoting prosperity and ensuring the effectiveness of the principles, rights and duties enshrined in the Constitution (author's translation)" (Gobierno de Colombia 2015: art. 2). This is to be achieved through learning, reflection and dialogue on: (a) a culture of peace; (b) peace education and (c) sustainable development.

In keeping with what is an extraordinarily broad underlying conception of peace education, the regulatory decree lists 12 thematic areas that are to constitute the core contents of the Peace Chair: "(a) justice and human rights; (b) the sustainable use of natural resources; (c) protection of the nation's cultural and natural wealth; (d) peaceful conflict resolution; (e) prevention of harassment in schools; (f) diversity and plurality; (g) political participation; (h) historical memory; (i) moral dilemmas; (j) social impact projects; (k) the history of national and international peace accords; (l) life projects and risk prevention (author's translation)" (Gobierno de Colombia 2015: art. 4).

While schools are required to incorporate at least two of the listed thematic areas into their curricula, they can choose which ones at their

porary Colombia (Herrera and Pertuz 2016; Rodríguez 2016). Highly controversial at the time it entered into effect as well as thereafter, Law 975 stipulates that demobilised members of illegal armed groups are entitled to training and education to facilitate their reincorporation into civilian life (Gobierno de Colombia 2005: art. 66).

<sup>14</sup> It is also noteworthy that the legislation gave educational establishments precious little time to introduce peace education into curricula. Issued on 25 May 2015, the regulatory decree stipulates that all pre-school, primary and secondary school programmes are to implement the Peace Chair before 31 December 2015, that is, a mere six months after the legislation's issuance!

own discretion. Furthermore, the legislation does not provide any guidance on whether peace education should be offered as a subject in its own right or whether any two of the 12 broad topics could simply be grafted onto already existing curricula, such as in ethics and democratic citizenship education (Grajales 2018). With respect to higher education, the scope of indeterminacy and flexibility is even bigger. Referring to article 69 of the country's constitution, which stipulates the autonomy and self-determination of higher education institutes, the national government resolved to leave it up to them to decide what they deem opportune and necessary to offer students by way of peace education.

Of course, it is a truism that one cannot expect any piece of legislation—however well-crafted—to result by virtue of its own existence in positive institutional and social change. Furthermore, it should be stressed that Colombian pedagogues and students have seized in creative fashion upon the opportunity presented by the peace process and the *Cátedra de la Paz* to further develop existing local discourses on, and practices of, peace education (Focus Group 2020).15 This sense of a new beginning is well captured in the words of Ignacio Mantilla, who between 2012 and 2018 served as the rector of the National University of Colombia:

Our post-conflict university must set an example and its role will be to build a new culture, grounded in respect and ethics; a culture of peace and progress based on […] equality and social inclusion. [This new culture] should replace political intimidation with participation, […] the pamphlet and the harangue with constructive reflection; it should liberate scientific capacity; and, definitively, it should prevent the vices of politicking from penetrating and becoming entrenched in the university (author's translation). (Mantilla 2016)

This notwithstanding, I believe that overall the Santos administration and lawmakers did the country a small favour with this particular legislation. Ostensibly seeking to pay heed to the SDGs and UNESCO's cultures of peace approach, the terms in which the *Cátedra de la Paz* is framed come across as arbitrary and too broad for the Peace Chair to galvanise the promotion of peace through education (Focus Group

<sup>15</sup> Recent contributions to the literature on peace education in Colombia include Corredor et al. (2018), Diazgranados et al. (2014), Echavarría and Cremin (2019), González (2016), Grajales (2018), Ortega (2016), Salamanca et al. (2016), Vargas et al. (2018), and Villalobos (2018).

2020; Grajales 2018; Ortega 2016). Although thus far no systematic evaluations of current Colombian peace education are available, first indications are that the field is facing significant challenges (Acevedo and Baéz 2018; Focus Group 2020; Gómez-Suarez 2017; Rodríguez 2016; Semana 2019). I suggest that in part this is due to the conceptual fuzziness of Law 1732 and its failure to prioritise certain key contents, such as education on and for the recovery and preservation of historical memory, over more nebulous ones like "moral dilemmas" or the "protection of the nation's cultural and natural wealth."

Determined not to allow the *Cátedra de la Paz* to suffer the same fate as past government initiatives on peace education, which tended to obliterate the long-term structural causes of peacelessness and prioritise a focus on civic and ethical issues (Rodríguez 2016), Colombian peace scholars, pedagogues and students are presently engaged in providing the Peace Chair with deeper and more concrete meaning. This includes orienting the field towards critical reflection and a focus on how it could galvanise broader social action beyond the confines of the classroom (Focus Group 2020). Interestingly, this work-in-progress, which is more in line with critical approaches to peace education, is often associated with the recovery and preservation of historical memory among learners and survivors of the armed conflict (Corredor et al. 2018; Focus Group 2020; Girón 2016; Herrera and Pertuz 2016; Merchán 2016; Ortega 2016; Torres 2016). Leading on from my discussion of the (dis)contents of historical memory, which I offer in the following chapter, I present an argument about the challenges but also the relevance and usefulness of historical memory-oriented peace education in countries wrestling with, and emerging from violent conflict, in Chapter 4.

### References


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# Historical Memory and Its (Dis)contents

**Abstract** Efforts to recover and preserve the historical memory of past violence and injustice are today increasingly widespread in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict. This reflects the rise of memory studies as a distinct field of inquiry as well as the growing recognition of the importance of centrally including the voices of victims in the elaboration of narratives of past suffering and evil. However, as an "essentially contested concept," historical memory faces numerous challenges that have to be navigated when conducting applied historical memory work in violence-inflected settings. Among the pitfalls, historical memory work faces the unresolved tension between history and memory, which gives substance to claims that forgetting should trump remembering. Furthermore, owing to it being anchored in the subjective domain of memory, applied historical memory work risks deepening prevailing patterns of hatred, enmity and exclusion, in addition to being instrumentalised and manipulated by hegemonic societal groups and interests. This notwithstanding, the case of Colombia reveals that under certain conditions historical memory work can yield positive results in terms of giving voice to victims on all sides and honouring their entitlement to recover and preserve the memories of past suffering, thereby helping them to address traumatic past experiences.

**Keywords** Historical memory · Narrative · Violent conflict · Victims · Healing · Colombia

© The Author(s) 2022 M. Schultze-Kraft, *Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory*, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9\_3

Although a quarter of a century has since passed, I have an unusually vivid recollection of walking into the documentation centre of the Mission of the United Nations in El Salvador (MINUSAL)1 and experiencing a deep sensation of awe. It was October of 1997 and I had only just arrived in Central America and my native San Salvador to start the field work for my doctoral thesis on civil-military relations in the aftermath of the armed conflicts that had ravaged El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (Schultze-Kraft 2001, 2005). Still in the pre-digital age, at least at the United Nations, what I found was an arrangement of library stacks lined with innumerable office binders containing basic data about victims of atrocious crimes and human rights violations committed during a decade of war, mostly by the armed forces of the Salvadorean state but also the insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN in Spanish).2 It was as if I had entered a mausoleum where the conflict's estimated 75,000 dead had been laid to rest. This was my first encounter with a meticulous physical record of horrific past events. A novice at the time it left a deep impression on me, though I had no inkling of how

<sup>1</sup> MINUSAL was a remnant of the larger UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), which was deployed in the country between 1991 and 1995 based on UN Security Council resolution 693 (1991). ONUSAL's mandate was to verify implementation of the agreements between the Government of El Salvador and the insurgent Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN in Spanish), including the ceasefire, the reform and reduction of the armed forces, the creation of a new police force, the reform of the judicial and electoral systems, human rights, land tenure and other economic and social issues. See https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/onusalmandate.html. Accessed 12 July 2021.

<sup>2</sup> The archive I visited in 1997 was built by ONUSAL's human rights staff, not the Truth Commission, which however may have used it. According to the available evidence, after the end of the Truth Commission's work in 1993 its records were sent to the UN Department of Political Affairs, which subsequently handed them over to UN Archives for storage. See https://derechoshumanos.udp.cl/cms/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ Relatoria\_Va\_Uses\_of\_Truth\_El\_Salvador\_TC\_archives\_access\_ENG.pdf. Accessed 13 July 2021.

to honour and what to do with this silent shrine of human suffering and evil.<sup>3</sup>

Visiting MINUSAL, I had hoped that in addition to the data and information I would gather through in-depth interviews with some of the few remaining national and international staff I would come across narratives of the armed conflict, including the voices of victims and survivors but also those of soldiers, which could help me in the elaboration of my own analysis. That was a naïve hope, which told as much about my early inexperience as an armed conflict researcher as it did about the way in which the thorny subjects of truth and historical clarification were being approached in El Salvador. Unlike other Latin American countries with histories of violent conflict and/or authoritarian state crime, such as Guatemala, Peru, Argentina and Chile, El Salvador has had a more chequered record of dealing with the past violence that beset the small country in the 1980s and early 1990s. Though at the time touted as a model, the UN-sanctioned truth commission in El Salvador, which was headed by three dignitary-experts from Colombia, Venezuela and the United States and had no Salvadorean staff, achieved little more than putting together a comprehensive final report (United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador 1993). However, elaborated over just eight months (July 1992–March 1993), the report was not based on broader outreach to victims and civil society. The implementation of its recommendations by the Salvadorean government, which made it clear that it did not support them, was slow and patchy. A sweeping amnesty for crimes committed prior to 1992 was passed by the Salvadorean legislative assembly a few days after the release of the truth commission's report

<sup>3</sup> Since I use the difficult-to-pin-down term "evil" a brief explanatory note is in order. According to David Parkin, one can distinguish between three different senses of the word "evil" as it is typically employed: "the moral, referring to human culpability; the physical, by which is understood destructive elemental forces of nature, for example earthquakes, storms, or the plague; and the metaphysical, by which disorder in the cosmos or in relations with divinity results from a conflict of principles or wills" (Parkin, cited in Csordas 2013: 526). In relation to historical memory and its (dis)contents, which is the subject of this chapter, it is important not to lose sight of evil as both a moral and material or physical category (I am less knowledgeable about evil's metaphysical qualities). Thus understood, evil designates the "the outer limits of the bad" (Pocock, cited in Csordas 2013: 527) in moral and material or physical terms. But it is not the opposite of "good," as in a Manichean conception of good versus evil, which can commonly be found in antagonistic conceptions of, and approaches to, historical memory (Bull and Hansen 2016).

(Popkin 2000). In hindsight, it seems Salvadorean elites, including the former insurgents, wanted to forget, not remember.

My experience as a young researcher in Central America provided me a first glimpse of the complexities entailed in dealing with violent and traumatic pasts. Since the early post-cold war years, truth commissions have become standard elements of transitional justice efforts and political transitions in many violence-inflected countries around the globe. While such commissions come in different guises, and all have their distinct mandates, they generally are employed to establish an "accurate public record of the past, to give victims some sense of acknowledgement and "closure," to "name and shame" (but not jail or fine) perpetrators, to promote society-wide reflection and reconciliation, and to suggest partial remedies such as reparations for documented victims" (MacCargo 2015: 15). Yet, and not only with respect to El Salvador, there are growing doubts about the effectiveness—and legitimacy—of truth commissions, about their capability to document fully the truth about past atrocities and suffering, about helping violence-ravaged societies to deal with the past, overcome trauma and move towards a state of more peaceful and just coexistence, perhaps even reconciliation (see, for instance, MacCargo 2015; Paulson 2017; Paulson and Bellino 2017).

Against this backdrop, I want to explore an alternative route to truthseeking and historical clarification in violence-inflected countries, namely that of historical memory work. While both standard truth commissions and historical memory initiatives, such as the Colombian one on which I dwell in this chapter, have in common that they are concerned with establishing what happened in the past, they are quite different in the ways they go about their work and what they aim to achieve. Whereas truth commissions are commonly entrusted with establishing who-did-what-to-whom with the goal of contributing to restorative justice, victim reparation and, ultimately, reconciliation, historical memory work is geared more towards generating comprehensive narratives of past violence and injustice based on the memories of those who have suffered it.<sup>4</sup> Put into interplay with

<sup>4</sup> This does not mean, however, that truth commissions and their reports writ large cannot also contribute to promoting what in the South African case has been referred to as "narrative truth." For instance, the work of the truth commissions in Guatemala and Peru served as inputs for initiatives for the recovery and preservation of historical memory among social, indigenous and victim organisations as well as for innovative approaches to history teaching at schools (Laplante 2007; Oglesby 2007).

the extant historical evidence, such memory narratives are then positioned to unfold deeper meaning and healing power. Historical memory work can therefore be more attuned to long-term processes of healing and helping to overcome trauma by facilitating the emergence of plural, agonistic memories over singular, antagonistic ones (Bull and Hansen 2016). Trying to bring to light as much of the truth about past violence and injustice as possible is of importance in this endeavour. But I would argue it is not the only and foremost goal of historical memory work.

That said, historical memory work is no straightforward and tested undertaking. A great deal depends on the context in which it is conducted and the ways in which it is framed and conducted. Addressing the question of this chapter of what the characteristics and challenges of historical memory work are in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict, I start with a brief discussion of the relationship between history and memory. This is followed by a treatment of historical memory as a contested concept and the strengths as well as pitfalls of applied historical memory work. I illustrate my discussion by taking recourse to the impressive, if challenging, state-sanctioned historical memory work that has been conducted in Colombia over the course of the past 15 years.

# 3.1 History and Memory

When approaching the subject of historical memory, it is useful to start by looking at its two constituent parts, history and memory, and how they relate—or do not—to one another. Regarding this relationship, it is assumed that history and memory represent distinct forms of knowing about the past, "each purporting … to connect present consciousness with past reality" (Cubitt 2007: 4). In this vein, memory is typically framed as something "essentially personal and individual," though it is also conceptualised as being "basically connected to social institutions and cultural forms" (Cubitt 2007: 4). From an early age and throughout their lives, human beings remember events and the social and other contexts and constellations in which they unfolded in a past they have known or by different means have come to know of. History, in turn, is conventionally understood as referring to *the past* writ large, which can be known "as the result of disciplined habits of mind" (Cubitt 2007: 5), that is, particularly through the work of professional historians. Hence, in the case of history, understood both in terms of *the past* and the efforts of academically trained minds to penetrate it and make it known, the relationship between the present viewpoint and past events is believed to be less immediate and personal.

History and memory thus exhibit different phenomenological traits. The former is based on the premise that *the past* can be approached as a temporally removed object—of infinite dimensions—and is accessible to being examined and made intelligible in the present through the use of rational and objectifying methods of historical inquiry. The latter, by contrast, is better not understood as an object, as *the past* is in a historical conception, "but (as) a concept, a mental category that we make use of in making sense of complex and elusive aspects of human behaviour and *experience* (author's emphasis)" (Cubitt 2007: 6). Like the history written by scholars, memory too is concerned with the past. But it cannot be claimed that the act of remembering is principally aimed at uncovering "objective" truths about past events. Such a claim would be missing the point about memory and remembrance. Rather, and that is one of memory's defining traits, individuals and groups engage in remembrance because they know or feel that their present condition of living beings bears witness to something that happened in the past and that can or needs to be dealt with through the mental and/or symbolic act of individual and collective acts of remembering.

Memory therefore operates from the present towards a past confined by the boundaries of felt and lived experience. It seeks to make sense of present conditions through remembering past events from *within* individuals or social groups, thereby contributing to the formation of both individual and collective identities (see Cubitt 2007). In the realm of academic history, by contrast, the historian approaches *the past* from her or his particular vantage point as a scholar in the present. Viewing social groups and individuals from the *outside*, the historian strives to uncover the causalities underlying past developments through the application of rational-objective scientific methods (Cubitt 2007).5 Academic history too plays a role in identity formation, but in a more mediated and less immediate fashion by promoting "a sense of transgenerational belonging in which people feel sympathetic connections to other beings from whom they are removed" (Cubitt 2007: 42).

<sup>5</sup> Though at times historical inquiry is also desireful of illuminating—from a historical vantage point—certain aspects of the present and even the future, it faces significant limitations in successfully conducting such an endeavour (see Hobsbawm 1972).

While it cannot be disputed that in recent decades "memory has become … a key term in the lexicon of historical study" (Cubitt 2007: 2), it is also true that students of history and memory are still nowhere close to reaching a consensus regarding the quality and also the hierarchy of the relationship between these two distinct domains of historical knowledge. Amid the flourishing of memory studies (see, for instance, Cubitt 2007; Rieff 2016; Roediger and Wertsch 2008), it has been suggested that memory cannot serve as a substitute for scientific historical research. Rather, gaining an understanding and elaborating cogent historical interpretations of gone by events must always and necessarily part from the premise that the past is indeed "over." That it represents a temporally distinct and "closed" realm that only trained historians with an expert command of the various methods available to historical research can approach and make intelligible in the present, not transforming and re-signifying it in the process.

In this conception, recourse to memory as a source of historical knowledge is deemed to carry the risk of opening the floodgates to the subjective representation of what in principal ought to be truthful, sharable and verifiable accounts of the past (Cubitt 2007). It is ruled out that the memory of the individual person, who some see as the only possible mnemonic subject, can fulfil these criteria.6 While people are capable of reconstructing their individual past through conscious acts of remembrance, in doing so there are no effective checks available that would prevent them from deforming it in the process of remembering (Rieff 2016). If political, social and other collectives were capable of remembering, as is pointed out by scholars who believe that all individual memories are socially conditioned (Bekerman and Zembylas 2012; Cubitt 2007), they could provide such checks on the subjective pitfalls of individual memory and remembrance. However, as long as there is no consensus in the debate about the qualities of individual and the possibility of the existence of collective forms of memory, such as social, historical and cultural memory (Roediger and Wertsch 2008), memory sceptics have it relatively easy to claim that if memory is to be given some room "in investigating occluded truth from the past," then it should also be recognised that "surely it is history that must be the senior partner and memory the junior one" (Rieff 2016: 84).

<sup>6</sup> According to one influential advocate of forgetting, "the world does not have memories, nor do nations. Individuals remember, full stop" (Rieff 2016: 54).

The argument in support of academic history is further buttressed by reference to the dangers that have been associated with notions of collective memory, however elusive they may be. Of particular concern in this regard is the fact that efforts to construct collective memories have frequently amounted to strategies of political, ideological and other manipulation (Rieff 2016; Sánchez 2006). In effect, there is no shortage of historical evidence that can be cited showing that collective memory discourses have been appropriated and nurtured by political regimes, states and all manner of social, political and ethnic groups to promote nationalist, exclusionary, authoritarian, racist and other inhumane, antidemocratic and downright evil goals. Just consider cases as diverse as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Cyprus, Guatemala, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland, Peru and South Africa, where political, military and other elites have gone to great length in the attempt to foster collective memories geared at idealising war and entrenching deep feelings of hatred, vengeance and disrespect vis-à-vis other social and ethnic groups (Bekerman and Zembylas 2012; Hoepken 1999; Rieff 2016; Sánchez 2006, 2019). Invariably, such harmful strategies of memory construction lack—or intentionally ignore—solid historical bases. They reflect the dilemma that "the takeover of history by memory is also the takeover of history by politics" (Rieff 2016: 63).

In other instances, efforts to recover and preserve collective memories may not be tainted in the same way as just described, principally because in these cases it is not the powerful, mighty and disdainful that are driving the memory agenda but the violated and vulnerable who come together in victims' and other types of associations seeking justice, voice and redress for their past suffering. However, even regarding such instances, memory sceptics and/or advocates of forgetting believe that collective memory construction could have harmful side effects. Far from helping to establish the "truth" about past events and enable a society to embark on a positive and constructive forward movement, they are perceived as risks to transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule or from war to peace by insisting too much on the importance of not forgetting past evil and fully holding those responsible to account (Rieff 2016).

The arguments put forward by memory sceptics cannot be dismissed out of hand. As I have shown, such memory discourses are characterised by intellectual, moral and political ambiguities. This notwithstanding, when the critique of memory as a legitimate source of knowledge about past events comes in the guise of a defence of academic history, it risks undermining its own foundations. Principally, this is so because the sources that professional historians rely on are in themselves not representations of "objective" historical facts, and therefore cannot be considered to be superior to "subjective" memories. "Historical sources," writes Geoffrey Cubitt, "are not just evidential objects that passively await the historian's critical scrutiny: often, at least, their production and survival reflect *earlier efforts* either to hold onto elements of a past or present reality that might be in danger of being forgotten, or to *influence the retrospective judgements of posterity* (author's emphasis)" (Cubitt 2007: 29). This echoes Eric Hobsbawm's observation that the historic past, that is, the past that people in the contemporary world know of through their families and teachers or the works of professional historians and TV programmes, is used to legitimise certain choices and developments in the present. In this process, the creation of useful myths—today some would use the unfortunate term "alt-truths"—is always on the cards and even socially encouraged (Hobsbawm 1972, 1993). Academic historians are *ex oficio* not immune to these pitfalls for their "approaches to historical study are influenced by what they themselves remember, and memory operates on numerous levels in the transmission of both the information that ends up being encapsulated in historical source materials and of the ideas that shape the way in which these materials are interpreted" (Cubitt 2007: 29).

In my analysis, the struggle for predominance between academic history and individual and/or collective memory work turns ever more contentious as we change the focus from the academic realm of scientific explanation and interpretation of the past to that of lived historical experience under conditions of duress and violations of fundamental rights, including the right to life. It is precisely this change of focus that I believe is necessary to approach the subject of historical memory when it is understood in the terms of an *entitlement*, not an option or grant, of those who have suffered violence and evil at the hands of others. As I show in the next section, though in itself an ambiguous concept the recovery and preservation of historical memory, such as in Colombia, can in practice contribute to advancing the cause of peace and reconciliation in ways that neither history nor memory on their own would be able to. Yet, if historical memory work is to be effective, much depends on how it is being framed and conducted, and what ultimate ends it is meant to serve.

# 3.2 Historical Memory

Against the background of the above discussion of the contentious relationship between history and memory, the term historical memory risks coming across as a paradox or tautology of questionable analytical utility. How can memory be or become "historical"? Is memory, understood as a mental category that humans employ to make sense of "complex and elusive aspects of human behaviour and [past] experience" (Cubitt 2007: 6), not always in some way "historical"? How does attaching the modifier "historical" to memory make it any less subjective? Does the term historical memory refer to the memories of individuals as well as collectives? Whose historical memory is being recovered and preserved, and by whom and for what purpose?

Questions like these indicate that we will have to accept that historical memory is what W. B. Gallie calls an "essentially contested concept," that is, a concept "the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users" (Gallie 1956: 169). This does not mean, of course, that we should erase the term from our lexicon or that historical memory work cannot be of value. Based on my own experience as a political analyst and outside participant in historical memory processes in Colombia,7 which I examine in more detail below, it is. That said, believing in the virtues of historical memory work must not blind us to its challenges and pitfalls in troubled, violence-inflected societies.

Among the positive attributes of historical memory work is the ability to promote individual and collective healing in the aftermath of experiences of trauma (Corredor et al. 2018; Duckworth 2014; Laplante 2007). Traumatic events, such as becoming the victim of physical, sexual and other forms of violence or suffering deracination and diverse types

<sup>7</sup> Upon CNMH's invitation, between 2015 and 2018 I participated in the role of speaker and discussant in the second international seminar organised between CNMH and the Colombian War College (Escuela Superior de Guerra) in Bogotá in May 2015 and two subsequent smaller meetings between representatives of CNHM, the Colombian armed forces and members of CNMH's international advisory group, also in Bogotá. Based on this engagement and previous academic work I had done on the Colombian armed forces (Schultze-Kraft 2012), I authored two brief notes on the role of the Colombian military and police in the recovery and preservation of historical memory and its relationship to broader questions of security sector reform in the country (Schultze-Kraft 2016, 2017a). of denigration and exclusion, often leave deep traces in the consciousness of persons and communities. Experiences of trauma impact on and transform individual and group identities, potentially up to the point of subduing them or making them disappear altogether. It is against the backdrop of the tremendous effect of traumatic experiences on human identities that historical memory work acquires its significance. "In a deep sense," writes Gonzalo Sánchez, the former CNMH director, "memory is a form of resistance to death, to the disappearance of one's own identity (author's translation)" (Sánchez 2006: 21). Constructing narratives of traumatic events that allow for the conscious acknowledgement and allocation of such events in the realm of memories, which otherwise might remain buried and displaced, enables people and communities to recover a sense of identity and continue with their lives, even achieve positive transformation—forever marked, as they will be, by past trauma. Likewise, listening to the narratives of historical trauma of the "other," who once was the enemy or responsible for the experienced suffering and injustice, is believed to promote social healing and the creation of more peaceful relationships between victims and victimisers. Such relationships are built on the foundations of new identities that make room for the recognition of the "other" as a moral subject and, in the case of the victim, as a subject of rights and autonomous and independent agency (Bekerman and Zembylas 2008, 2012; CNMH 2013; Manojlovic 2018).

Yet the recovery and preservation of historical memory can also have the opposite effects. Ever present in the debate about historical memory is the spectre of the entrenchment of social, ethnic and other antagonisms erected on a "canonical version of history, as well as a Manichean division of the historical characters into good and evil" (Bull and Hansen 2016: 2), risking perpetuating "inherited hatreds" (Sánchez 2006) and "cycles of grief, enmity, and violence" (Duckworth 2014: 171). Regarding Colombia, for instance, Sánchez cautions that in his country,

where the past does not pass because the war does not end, the cult of memory is […] ambiguous […] since it can fulfil a liberating function, but it can also produce paralysing effects on the present. [...] In the name of memory [...] the worst crimes have been perpetrated in our national history. Inherited hatreds, by abusing the functions of memory, served for a long time as a trigger for our wars before it was possible to move from revenge to politics (author's translation). (Sánchez 2006: 16)

Particularly when efforts to recover the memories of past evil and injustice are monopolised by hegemonic social groups and political organisations, and when they are strategically geared towards sustaining the memory of experiences of trauma, especially of trauma that one collective is said to have suffered at the hands of another, they can have profoundly damaging effects. Instead of helping to address trauma and promote healing through critical historical interrogation and the salvaging of victims' memories of resistance and human dignity, such politically and/or ideologically motivated approaches to historical memory work stand to cement societal divisions, promote the intergenerational transmission of trauma and obstruct the formation of new inclusive identities (Duckworth 2014; Zembylas and Bekerman 2008; Manojlovic 2018). Likewise, even when historical memory work is not framed in the way just described but is oriented towards recovering the memories of the victims of violence with the aim of helping them overcome the traumas they have suffered, the result may be that because of the "unknowability and unspeakability associated with traumatic events" victims are inadvertently reduced to a condition in which they are "unable to retell their past and act as agents" (Bull and Hansen 2016).<sup>8</sup>

Here, I want to include a further point that is sometimes overlooked or does not figure prominently in the literature on historical memory and dealing with the past. In settings marked by protracted violence and especially where historical memory work is undertaken amid ongoing violent conflict, such as in Colombia, it ought to be recognised that it will be difficult to establish with any accuracy who has *not* suffered, who *cannot* claim to be entitled to some form of social recognition of past trauma, who *cannot* hope to become dignified in their condition as victim through processes of historical remembering. As a rule, and without wanting in the least to relativise or disown victims' particular condition of vulnerability and victimisers' condition of culpability, it has to be acknowledged that war and violence produce traumatised people all around. This observation supplements the concern expressed by historical memory expert-practitioners that in countries scarred by violent conflict, heinous crimes and massive human rights violations,

<sup>8</sup> Evidently, addressing and seeking to overcome trauma, which I see as a precondition for reconciliation and sustainable peace, does not depend solely on the recovery of historical memories. Other factors, such as political, institutional and other reforms, also play important roles and need to be factored into the equation.

society has been a victim but also a participant in the confrontation: acquiescence, silence, support and indifference should be a cause for collective reflection. However, this extension of responsibilities to society does not imply the dilution of the concrete and differentiated responsibilities in the triggering and development of the conflict into a "we are all guilty" (author's translation). (CNMH 2013: 16)

Both the omnipresence of trauma, including feelings of cowardice and regret of not having opposed evil—even evil in which one did not have any direct role or stake—and the fact that efforts to recover historical memory are at risk of being hijacked by particular, hegemonic interests and homogenising narratives of the past and its victims, constitute challenges that are difficult to navigate. They reflect the double-edged qualities of historical memory work in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict: it can further healing, reconciliation and recovery as much as it can deepen prevailing social, ethnic and other identity-based antagonisms, visceral enmities and historical patterns of exclusion.

# 3.3 Historical Memory Work in Colombia

Preceded by decades of social mobilisation for the defence of human rights and against impunity, during which local historical memory work emerged as a form of resistance to violence exercised by the state and armed non-state groups (Sánchez 2018, 2019), a government-sanctioned initiative to recover and preserve the historical memory of Colombia's protracted armed conflict was launched in 2005. An integral part of Colombia's first-ever transitional justice effort, the creation of the GMH under the umbrella of the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR in Spanish) reflected a policy paradox (Riaño and Uribe 2016).

On the one hand, the administration of President Álvaro Uribe (2002– 2010) was adamant in denying the existence of an armed conflict in Colombia. According to his government, the violence that was ravaging the country was entirely the work of "narco-terrorists" stopping short of nothing to attack Colombia's legitimate political institutions. Peace negotiations were thus not on the cards. On the other hand, however, the Uribe administration initiated a legislative process that in 2005 resulted in the entry into effect of Law 975 (Gobierno de Colombia 2005). This legislation, also known as the Justice and Peace Law, established a framework for the demobilisation and reintegration into civilian life of members of illegal armed groups. It also promoted reconciliation by guaranteeing victims' rights to truth, justice and reparation, including through the recovery and preservation of historical memory, which in the law is stipulated in the terms of an obligation of the state. Consistent with government rhetoric, Law 975 did not explicitly use the term "armed conflict," but it recognised that there were "illegal armed groups" in Colombia, as there were victims who had a right to truth, justice and reparation. The stated overall objective of the legislation was to facilitate peace in Colombia (Gobierno de Colombia 2005).

In practice, Law 975 was applied—with limited effect—to the illegal paramilitary United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC in Spanish) only, not the insurgent FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish).<sup>9</sup> Unlike in other countries with histories of violent conflict

<sup>9</sup> On closer inspection, the policy paradox was not as pronounced as it might appear. Driven by the president's visceral hatred of Colombia's Marxist guerrilla organisations, especially FARC who had killed his landowning father, Uribe certainly saw and depicted the insurgents as "narco-terrorists." It would be difficult to sustain, however, that he applied the same lens to the paramilitaries. Uribe and his people did have an interest in speaking with the AUC, a loose grouping of illegal paramilitary organisations entangled in manifold relationships with political, economic, ecclesiastical and criminal elites as well as elements of the armed forces. In what I have analysed elsewhere as Colombia's hybrid crimilegal order (Schultze-Kraft 2017b, 2018, 2019), there were—and still are close connections between landed elites and armed groups like the paramilitaries or any of the many successor organisations that sprang up quickly after the AUC's demobilisation between 2003 and 2006 (International Crisis Group 2007). The political problem that Uribe faced right at the start of his first term (2002–2006) was that some of the paramilitary warlords, particularly Carlos Castaño, requested the government help them whitewash and offer them a dignified and safe way out of the depths of crime, depredation and unspeakable violence against innocent civilians. I suggest that Uribe acceded to this request, not least because the paramilitaries were part of his electoral constituency. And he did so by designing and putting to work a two-pronged, perfectly Machiavellian strategy: (a) engaging the paramilitaries in talks about their demobilisation and reintegration on the pretence that they did stick to the unilateral ceasefire they had declared in 2002 and (b) initiating a legislative process geared at producing a law that would grant the paramilitaries, as much as possible, impunity for their heinous crimes and the massive human rights violations they had committed over decades in collusion with members of the armed forces and sectors of Colombia's political and economic elites, especially landed ones. As we know now, the strategy only worked partly. For instance, the government's talks with the paramilitary leadership in Santa Fe de Ralito (Córdoba department) turned out to be chaotic and riven by paramilitary infighting, producing only piecemeal demobilisation deals with the government (Villaraga 2013). For its part, Law 975 underwent and mass trauma, such as Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and South Africa, historical memory work in Colombia has had to deal with the additional challenge of taking place amid ongoing violence, not after the achievement of a conflict settlement. The country's first engagement with transitional justice, including the official mandate for GMH to elaborate a public report on the origins and evolution of the country's illegal armed groups, unfolded at the same time as the armed conflict with FARC and ELN was reaching unprecedented heights.

Composed of a group of respected Colombian anthropologists, historians, lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, social workers and photojournalists (Riaño and Uribe 2016) who oversaw the work conducted by numbers of junior researchers helping with the heavy lifting in the regions, GMH commenced its work in 2007. Enjoying significant operational autonomy and investigative independence vis-à-vis the CNRR and the government, the group defined its mission in the terms of "elaborating an inclusive and integrative narrative, in tune with the voices of the victims, on the origin and evolution of the internal armed conflict in Colombia" (author's translation) (GMH cited in Riaño and Uribe 2017: 16). By legal mandate not a truth commission endowed with executive and judicial powers but called upon to safeguard victims' right to truth and comply with the state's duty of preserving historical memory<sup>10</sup> , GMH dedicated careful consideration to the design of its research and working methodology (CNMH 2013; Riaño and Uribe 2016). Based on a collective and participatory process of consultation and brainstorming, the group resolved to focus its energies on researching and documenting emblematic cases of atrocious crimes and human rights violations.

Aiming at historical clarification not only by establishing who-didwhat-to-whom but also by analysing "illegal armed groups as social and political products of the evolution of [Colombia's] historical configuration" (author's translation) (CNMH 2013: 16), victims' testimonies and narratives of the conflict's impact on their communities and territories

significant—positive—changes during the debates in the Colombian Congress and upon a 2006 ruling of the Constitutional Court that strengthened its provisions with respect to the rights of victims to truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition (International Crisis Group 2006).

<sup>10</sup> GMH was established on the basis of Law 975 of 2005. Its successor, CNMH, was created on the basis of Law 1448 of 2011 on victims of the armed conflict and land restitution. Presidential Decree 4803 of 2011 regulates the creation of CNMH as an entity ascribed to the presidency.

were granted crucial importance. Seeking to build a historical narrative about the conflict that did not pretend to be consensual, and which vehemently distanced itself from institutional patronage and official capture, the generated testimonial evidence was cross-referenced and complemented with data gathered in local and national archives as well as reviews of a broad array of judicial documents, scholarly and grey literatures and mass media sources (CNMH 2013; Riaño and Uribe 2016). In this process, the "historical" character of the recovered memories of violence and injustice was thus meant to be established by confronting individual and collective memories with their locus in the subjective domain, on the one hand, with the "discursive rationality" of history understood as the "evolution of the actual [historical] process (author's translation)" on the other (Sánchez 2006: 14).

The memory work conducted by GMH and its successor organisation, the CNMH, has been nothing short of prolific.11 Starting with the 2008 report on the massacre of Trujillo (Valle del Cauca department), by the time the general report *¡Basta Ya! Colombia: memorias de guerra y dignidad* (CNMH 2013) was released in 2013,12 the group had elaborated and published a total of 24 book-length works dealing with emblematic cases of atrocious crimes and human rights violations in different regions of the country and addressing several thematic issues, such as violence against women and forced displacement. Until the change of government in 2018 another 114 reports were released.<sup>13</sup> This vast body of grounded research has been complemented by a series of films, documentaries and other multimedia products, including podcasts, as well as a range of educational and didactic materials. As mandated by Law 1448 (Gobierno de Colombia 2011a) and Presidential Decree 4803 of 2011 (Gobierno de Colombia 2011b), CNMH also initiated the creation of the Colombian Museum of Memory (Museo de Memoria de Colombia).14

<sup>13</sup> Other 21 reports were released between 2019 and 2021. However, most of these works had been conceived and researched prior to 2019, that is, before Gonzalo Sánchez and his team handed over to the new CNMH director Rubén Acevedo Carmona.

<sup>14</sup> The new museum is scheduled to open its doors to the public in 2022.

<sup>11</sup> For all activities and works published by GMH and CNHH, see the official website https://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/. Accessed 12 July 2021.

<sup>12</sup> *¡Basta Ya!* can be translated into English as *Enough is Enough!*

Yet, while impressive in its depth, scope and rigour, the efforts of GMH and CNMH were not spared having to deal with the challenges and pitfalls typically associated with the recovery of historical memory in violence-inflected societies. Despite the early decision not to aim for the elaboration of a consensual and common historical narrative but to work on the premise that there is no single and integrated memory of Colombia's violent conflict (CNMH 2013; Riaño and Uribe 2016), in practice it proved challenging to "account for the heterogeneity of local voices […], or to capture the diverse and differentiated nature of memories of community members" (Riaño and Uribe 2016: 15). Evidently not a homogenous social group, some victims and their representatives took issue with not having been included in the historical memory work or that their voices and memories were underrepresented.<sup>15</sup> Others, such as the influential Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE in Spanish),16 harboured strong reservations about Law 975, which not without reason they saw as an official scheme to whitewash the paramilitaries and downplay or deny the Colombian state's responsibility in the conflict. This led them to question the overall legitimacy of GMH's work. How could historical clarification and truth about atrocious crimes and massive human rights violations ever be achieved and established, respectively, by an entity sanctioned by the very state that refused to acknowledge of having been at least co-responsible for these crimes, or so the gist of the critique ran (Riaño and Uribe 2016; author's conversation with a leading MOVICE representative in Bogotá after the entry into effect of Law 975).17

<sup>15</sup> The feeling among some groups of victims of not figuring (sufficiently) in the historical memory accounts produced by GMH also had to do with the research approaches taken by its members. Whereas some were keen to work in highly participatory fashion with victims, consulting a lot among communities and including local researchers in the process, others pursued their work with more of a traditional historiographical focus geared towards testing hypotheses and building scientifically sound narratives (Riaño and Uribe 2016). These differentiated approaches to conducing historical memory work reflect the tensions between history and memory mentioned above.

<sup>16</sup> MOVICE is an umbrella organisation of several Colombian victims' associations. Formally established in 2005, one of its most visible members has been Senator Iván Cepeda Castro, son of the leftist Unión Patriótica (UP) congressperson Manuel Cepeda Vargas, whom paramilitaries assassinated in Bogotá in 1994.

<sup>17</sup> Here, it is important to note that GMH was acutely aware of the particular discourse and influence of representatives and spokespersons of victims associations who served as mediators in the crucial grassroots work with victims and communities. According to two

For their part, seizing upon the opportunity offered by the historical memory work to enhance their own political, social and moral capital, liberal urbane elites campaigned for the rights of victims to truth, justice and reparation. However well-intentioned these activities may have been, they contributed to depoliticising "the ways in which the people who had lived through the violence had taken up social struggles for truth and justice, and their stories of political and everyday resistance to the war" (Riaño and Uribe 2016: 18). On a darker note, the perpetrators of atrocities themselves, particularly demobilised paramilitary commanders delivering voluntary confessions in the transitional justice trials, went to great lengths framing their confessions as a gesture of repentance to the victims of their terrible crimes. However, demonstrating repentance and asking for forgiveness was less motivated by a desire to show respect for the victims and their suffering than it was by a cost–benefit calculation of complying with the terms of Law 975 in order to obtain judicial benefits, especially reduced prison sentences (Riaño and Uribe 2016).

Things did not get any easier when, in late 2012, the Colombian War College (Escuela Superior de Guerra) approached CNMH expressing an interest in a module on social research, historical memory and transitional justice that could be incorporated into the study programme and delivered by CNMH staff (CNMH 2018). Cognisant of the involved challenges of working with the military, even if in an educational capacity and under the changed conditions of a new government that had just established peace negotiations with FARC, CNMH remained faithful to its motto "memory is an ally of peace" as well as its mandate stipulated in Law 1448 of 2011 of watching over the rights of all victims of the conflict and acceded to the request (Wills 2019). The module was designed and then taught by CNMH staff throughout 2013. Safe some initial disagreements between the enrolled military officers and the lecturers over parts of the study contents, which were only natural given the contentious nature of historical memory, CNMH's relationship with

GMH members, "the GMH questioned the implications of privileging the accounts of these mediators, who generally were also leading memory initiatives, and the risk that their narratives and explanations would dominate workshops and testimonial spaces" (Riaño and Uribe 2016: 15). This notwithstanding, in order to proceed with the victim-focused memory work GMH did not have much of an alternative but to accept the mediation of these leaders.

the armed forces reached a low point when its flagship *¡Basta Ya!* report was officially released in July 2013.

Enraged by President Santos' however diplomatic acknowledgment during the launch ceremony of instances of collusion between state entities and illegal armed groups and of acts of omission on the part of the armed forces, which the *¡Basta Ya!* report details, the tone of the military officers in the classroom turned downright hostile.18 Among the grievances voiced by the soldiers was that CNMH unduly questioned the legitimacy of the Colombian armed forces as a legally established entity of the state that had to be categorically differentiated from the country's illegal—and hence illegitimate—armed groups. Furthermore, the military officers took issue with the sources used by CNMH, which they considered to reflect a leftist ideological bias and therefore could not reveal the truth about the armed conflict. The tense polarisation that had invaded the classroom was exacerbated by a subsequent intervention of the Colombian Ministry of Defence. In an official letter to CNMH, dated 27 December 2013, the ministry reiterated the criticism expressed by the students in uniform, adding to the list of grievances that CNMH had failed to comply with its legal mandate to work for the dignification of *all* victims of the conflict because it had not included the soldiers and police that had become victims of international humanitarian law infractions committed by illegal armed groups (CNMH 2018).

In sum, even though after this clash over the construction of the historical memory of Colombia's armed conflict both CNMH and the War College, or at least some of the latter's more yielding representatives, remained committed to finding alternative approaches to their inter-institutional dialogue and resolved to continue with the teaching activities,19 it was clear that the "battle for memory" had commenced.

<sup>18</sup> Strong criticism of the ¡*Basta Ya!* report was first expressed by civilian advisors of the Ministry of Defence and retired military officers of the hard-line Colombian Association of Retired Officers of the Armed Forces (ACORE in Spanish) (Wills 2019).

<sup>19</sup> In August 2014 and May 2015, CNMH and the War College jointly organised two international seminars on transitional justice and historical memory in Bogotá. Among the participants were Colombian, European, Latin and North American, Asian and African military and police officers and Colombian and international security, human rights and transitional justice experts. In July 2015, the Swiss government facilitated a meeting between representatives of the Colombian armed forces and CNMH in Geneva. Furthermore, taking seriously the grievances voiced by the armed forces about the inclusion of military and police victims of international humanitarian law infractions committed And it would not subside again.20 With the change of government in 2018, which installed President Iván Duque in power,21 Colombia's commendable historical memory work was finally caught up by the hard reality of remembrance being framed not in the terms of breaking through vicious circles of "inherited hatreds" (Sánchez 2006, 2019) but serving as a means to establish, once and for all, the moral superiority of one side and the immoral and criminal nature of the other (Sánchez 2019; Wills 2019). Regardless of the fact that the Colombian armed conflict, just as other contemporary wars, does not fit this Manichean model, the military's hard-line opposition to the *¡Basta Ya!* report and CNMH's work overall gradually intermeshed with other powerful interests in a strategy to kill off any efforts at building integrative and plural historical memories granting centrality to the voices of victims. Warning about the spectre of the enthronement of "toxic memories," Sánchez comments on this development,

it would seem that we are moving from the memory of and for the victims to the memory of and for the perpetrators. [...] The memory of the victims is remaining as a shadow between the saviour's memory of the paramilitaries and the heroic memory of the military (author's translation). (Sánchez 2019: 22)

Yet despite the challenges encountered along the way, the available evidence suggests that rather than drawbacks they reflect GMH's and

<sup>20</sup> For instance, years after the first altercation surrounding the publication of the *¡Basta Ya!* report, in a meeting sponsored by the Swiss embassy in Bogotá in October 2016 security sector representatives reiterated the same grievances that had been expressed in 2013 and even requested CNMH to produce an updated version of the report addressing their concerns. Supported by the Swiss and the International Organisation for Migration (OIM in Spanish), CNMH declined to engage with this request (Wills 2019).

<sup>21</sup> Succeeding President Santos (2010–2018), who negotiated with FARC, achieved the 2016 peace agreement with the insurgents and supported the ongoing historical memory work, President Iván Duque (2018 to present) has shown much less commitment to both the implementation of the provisions in the peace accord and independent and autonomous historical memory work.

by illegal armed groups, such as personnel who sustained life-changing injuries in antipersonnel mine incidents, through the Unit for the Attention and Integral Reparation to the Victims of the Armed Conflict, an entity created in 2012 and ascribed to the presidency, CNMH established a dialogue with regional military units (CNMH 2018; Wills 2019). Among the achievements of this new line of historical memory work is the report *Esa mina llevaba mi nombre*, published in 2016 (CNMH 2016).

CNMH's effectiveness at generating and making widely accessible a novel narrative of the Colombian armed conflict based on hitherto unexplored forms of conducting grounded research that centrally incorporated the voices of victims (Riaño and Uribe 2016). In this respect, it is telling and uplifting that the communities across the country that figure in the historical memory works produced together with GMH and CNMH have shown the most interest in this resilient effort of historical clarification. While this "exemplifies the merits and dilemmas facing historical memory work that seeks to be inclusive of the voices of the victims in the midst of war" (Riaño and Uribe 2016: 18), it is also true that for the first time in Colombian history pivotal state entities, such as the military (Schultze-Kraft 2012), and other powerful organisations and groups in society, including in the private sector and among the well-to-do, could not easily look the other way. The work conducted by GMH and CNMH has compelled them to take note of the viciousness of a violent conflict that for more than half a century has been destroying the lives and denying the fundamental rights of countless of their less fortunate and privileged fellow citizens.

In light of these achievements, it is a rhetorical question to ask whether promoting forgetfulness would have been a better alternative. There are many insights and lessons, both positive and negative, that can be drawn from the Colombian endeavour to recover and preserve the historical memory of the armed conflict under conditions of ongoing violence. Whether in the longer run these efforts, alongside those that have been undertaken in the framework of the peace negotiations between the Santos administration and FARC leading to the 2016 peace accord and endowing the issue of historical memory with significance for broader sectors of Colombian society, will contribute to transforming the country into a less violence-inflected and more equitable and peaceful society and political entity remains to be seen. Much more work than I can offer here is needed to examine the Colombian experience and compare it to other instances of historical clarification of violent conflict through the recovery of historical memory across the globe. This notwithstanding, the time is ripe to re-energise the pursuit of pathways to employing historical memory work in the classroom, both as a means and an end to building and sustaining peace in troubled societies. The next chapter addresses these issues.

### References


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# Historical Memory-Oriented Peace Education and the Sustaining Peace Agenda

**Abstract** The sustaining peace agenda, fielded by the UN in the mid-2010s, offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the ways in which we approach our applied, everyday work on and/or for peace in the classroom and beyond. Regarding the field of peace education, there is merit in adopting the less prescriptive, value-laden and universalising and, at the same time, more indeterminate, normatively restrained and humble elements that set the discourse on sustaining peace apart from that of conventional international peacebuilding as we have known it. In this respect, incorporating a focus on historical memory can enhance the strength and value of education on and/or for peace in a world riven with crises, disunity and violent conflict. Rather than upholding notions of universal values, independent of local culture and historically formed power relationships, and the idea that peace can be achieved by righting the individual mind; or seeking to bring about far-reaching social transformation to alleviate the plight of the oppressed and marginalised by empowering them to resist and fight, such an approach strives to enable learners (and teachers) to work towards healing past trauma and recognising the "other" as a moral agent.

**Keywords** Peace education · Historical memory · Sustaining peace agenda · Sustainable Development Goals · Colombia

© The Author(s) 2022 M. Schultze-Kraft, *Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory*, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9\_4

Against the backdrop of the discussion of peace education and historical memory presented in the previous two chapters it can hardly be considered to be a straightforward undertaking to make the case, as this chapter does, that historical memory should be made a central part of peace education, particularly in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict. Before developing my argument in support of historical memory-oriented peace education a brief recapitulation of the main points made earlier is therefore in order. Recall that both peace education and historical memory are terminological constructs that are each composed of two contested and hard-to-nail-down concepts peace/education and history/memory. Authors who are not convinced by the claim that peace education is inherently and by itself desirable (and effective) point to the need of paying more attention to "the reciprocity of its two fundamental concepts" as well as the "relation between power and violence" and the "fruitful tension between peace and freedom" (Gur-Ze'ev 2010: 172). As I have shown, both the conventional and the critical schools of peace education fall short, each in their own way, of fully living up to this challenge.

With their normative, apolitical, morally appellative and culturally universalist focus on the individual learner, conventional conceptions and practices of peace education do not easily relate to the variable, heterogeneous and context-dependent notions and realities of peace and education that can be found across the globe. They also shy away from taking account of often entrenched asymmetric and unequal power relationships between social, ethnic and other groups that typically characterise violence-inflected societies, thereby circumscribing the possibility to contribute through education to the creation of more inclusive and democratic institutional structures that enable peaceful coexistence beyond the mere absence of direct, structural and cultural forms of violence. Critical approaches to peace education, in turn, forefront the importance of empowering individuals as well as collectives to become agents of social transformation, especially at the local level. In this perspective, education for peace is understood as social action geared towards finding structural solutions to a broad range of direct, cultural and structural manifestations of violence and inequality. Yet, while critical peace education is more attuned to the thorny issues of power and exclusion, and pays more attention to social inequality and other structural drivers of violence, it is faced with the challenge of showing convincingly how the empowerment and emancipation of the marginalised and oppressed through formal and informal education for peace can lead to broader collective and institutional transformation that respects the freedoms and rights of all members of communities ravaged by violence.

With respect to historical memory, I have highlighted that the term risks coming across as a paradox or tautology, principally because of the uneasy and undetermined relationship between history and memory. The term historical memory is thus characterised by ambiguity and ambivalence. Composed of two contested concepts, it lends itself to various different interpretations and uses, including being instrumentalised by hegemonic interests and powers in the pursuit of the creation of "canonical version[s] of history, as well as a Manichean division of the historical characters into good and evil" (Bull and Hansen 2016: 2). Instead of contributing to healing and addressing the traumas of the survivors of violence and atrocious crimes, such antagonistic and/or particularistic historical memory strategies seek to recover and preserve the memories of the (self-proclaimed) victors or victimisers at the expense of those of the victims. Exploiting the subjective and malleable character of memory, both individual and collective, politically and/or ideologically motivated approaches to historical memory, which invariably are weak on history, are exclusionary and one-sided. They cement societal divisions, perpetuate "inherited hatreds" (Sánchez 2006) and strategically promote the intergenerational transmission of victimhood and trauma of merely one side of the violent conflict. They obstruct the formation of new inclusive identities. In short, when historical memory work is hijacked by the powerful it seriously risks not contributing to the goals of fomenting the possibility of peaceful coexistence, perhaps even reconciliation, in violence-inflected societies.

Given the risks and tensions that are associated with both peace education and historical memory, the reader may well wonder what the point is of adding to the prevailing complexity by arguing for the relevance and usefulness of historical memory-oriented peace education. Does such a quixotic endeavour not open the doors to complicating matters even more, rendering the task of educating on and for peace an utterly impossible one? As I strive to explain below, I do not think so. Although historical memory-oriented peace education as I propose it here is not a silver bullet, it nonetheless can help address the mentioned shortcomings of both conventional and critical peace education, offering new perspectives on how to approach the demanding issue of peace in the classroom. The remainder of this chapter substantiates the argument in support of historical memory-oriented peace education and offers some thoughts on how peace education framed in these terms relates to the emerging international agenda on sustaining peace fielded by the UN in the mid-2010s.

### 4.1 Historical Memory-Oriented Peace Education: Why and How

As so often in my academic work, I draw inspiration not only from scholarly debates and professional curiosity but also from my own experience as I have lived and felt it over the years. As briefly narrated in the introduction and subsequent parts of this book, regarding education for peace and historical memory the element of personal experience relates foremost to my work as a lecturer at a Colombian university between 2014 and 2019 and my participation in CNMH's historical memory work with the Colombian armed forces. My previous long-term engagement as a political analyst with the International Crisis Group and as a post-graduate researcher in Latin America too informs the present account.

Based on my classroom experience in Cali, it is worthwhile recalling that when faced with difficult-to-grasp and intricate problems of violence and peace, students would intuitively take recourse to their own experiences, and their memories thereof, in order to imbue abstract notions like conflict, security and peaceful coexistence with concrete meaning and palpable substance. This would typically take the form of brief oral narratives, spontaneous interjections by individual students, if you wish, in the flow of the classroom work, aimed at sharing with the group knowledge about specific past events involving different forms of violence. These short elaborations on traumatic and/or distressing events, which had either affected the student personally or someone in their family or wider social environment, conjured up vivid images of what it feels like to suffer, for instance, abduction at the hands of the insurgents or criminal organisations or intimidation and stigmatisation by local authorities. Although the pedagogical concept of the courses I taught at the time did not explicitly include the elaboration and use of personal narratives as a means to enhancing and deepening students' understanding of violent conflict and peace in Colombia and elsewhere, the dialogic nature of the learning activities developed in the classroom appears to have provided an appropriate space for them to come to the fore autonomously and spontaneously. In my role as the teacher, I would pay attention to these recollections, seeking to explore them in conversation with the students and linking them to the broader topics of violence and peace we were working on in the specific session as well as throughout the course. Sometimes the shared narratives and our conversations about them caused apprehension and disbelief among the listening students, on other occasions they invited controversial debate.

I do not intend here to draw any generalisable conclusions from this brief anecdotal description of my teaching experience in Cali. That would not be appropriate and expedient. However, I believe my observations can serve as a backdrop to the following discussion of the relevance and usefulness of incorporating historical memory into education on and for peace, especially in societies affected by protracted violence, glaring injustice and deep social, political, ethnic and other cleavages. To begin with, recognising both the potential and real pitfalls of historical memory work that I previously analysed in some depth in relation to the case of Colombia, I suggest that approaching peace education through the lens of historical memory has certain distinct advantages vis-à-vis the conventional and critical schools. One such advantage is that historical memory-oriented peace education foments learning along the two axes of "emotion-understanding" as well as "individual-social" (Corredor et al. 2018: 178). Student (and teacher) narratives of traumatic or unsettling past experiences related to violent conflict and their carefully guided discussion in the classroom, even if controversial, make room for the voicing of emotions. This enhances the possibilities of strengthening understanding among students, of finding the underlying cause of intricate and often abstract or unfamiliar concepts like peace. At the same time, applied historical memory work in the classroom challenges learners to witness, through the accounts of their peers, events of the past that owing to their traumatic and painful nature have left traces in learners' (and teachers') present consciousness. Engaging with these accounts in critical classroom discussion is likely to generate controversy, while at the same time it is likely to direct the spotlight away from the individual case to the broader social and institutional structures that enabled or at least framed the past experiences as narrated by students.

None of these processes are automatic and there are several factors that potentially impinge on the feasibility and effectiveness of historical memory-oriented peace education.<sup>1</sup> This notwithstanding, I suggest that facilitating and stimulating learning in this fashion can help transcend the formulaic nature of normative, morally appellative and universalising approaches of conventional peace education. Rather than focussing classroom activities and learning contents on individual attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values and how they can and should be "changed," according to universalist, often abstract conceptions of non-violence, peacefulness, tolerance and democracy, the work to be conducted is instead anchored in the lived and felt experience of learners (and teachers). On the basis of this grounding, which includes an emotional dimension and reflects realities as they are lived by individuals and their families and communities on a daily basis, it then becomes possible to establish, through guided classroom conversations and dialogue and by taking recourse to the relevant academic and testimonial literature, the links between individual experiences of different types of violence and injustice and the broader institutional setting or political and social order in which they pan out. Furthermore, not working on the basis of established, universalist moral premises of "good" versus "bad" or "just" versus "unjust," which seek to differentiate between "us" (the good and virtuous) and "them" (the bad and evil), education on and for peace anchored in students' (and teachers') personal memories of violence and injustice can support the "comprehension of other people's goals and circumstances as moral agents, which [in the classroom] helps to develop moral agency" (Corredor et al. 2018: 176; see also Manojlovic 2018).

<sup>1</sup> For instance, not all countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict are similarly well equipped with regards to the availability and accessibility of historical memory work, including a plurality of narratives of the conflict and testimonial literatures. I would argue that among the contemporary cases Colombia is quite unique in this respect. As mentioned above, the results of the work conducted by GMH and CNMH is extraordinarily impressive in terms of the number of reports that have been elaborated, the depth and thematic breadth of the reports and the ample diffusion of the generated knowledge, including through pedagogical and didactic materials. Other factors that impinge on the feasibility and effectiveness of historical memory-oriented education on and for peace are constraints owing to apprehension or unwillingness among students and their families to discuss and engage with a painful past. As has been reported from Guatemala, the reasons for this can be manifold, ranging from concerns about students' safety and not wanting to expose young learners to the knowledge about past atrocities to the persistence of deep animosities and patterns of polarisation across different social and ethnic groups (Bellino 2014).

Likewise, historical memory-oriented education on and for peace, as I understand it, can help address the limitations and shortfalls of critical approaches. As someone who has spent many years working and teaching in violence-inflected societies, I am of the view that peace educators in such settings do not have much of a choice but to adopt a critical perspective. In this regard, it cannot be over-emphasised that the omnipresence and "naturalisation" of diverse manifestations of direct, structural and cultural violence and injustice are indeed overwhelming.2

<sup>2</sup> Here, I wish to take the liberty to offer a personal reflection on the relevance of critical, historical memory-oriented education not only in countries and societies that are witnessing violent conflict or where such conflict has been occurring for several decades and is still ongoing, such as Colombia, but also in those where unspeakable atrocities and crimes were committed by states and social systems that today appear to be better positioned to look their dark past in the eye, such as Germany. I do not have the space here to go into any great detail. But based on my own experience as a high school student in West Germany from the late 1970s up to the mid-1980s, I would argue that following the end of the Nazi regime in 1945 and the creation of the two German states in the East and West it would have made all the sense there is to see the instalment of critical, historical memory-oriented education at high schools and universities. While in West Germany—and I can only speak of West Germany—history textbooks were rewritten to include "objective" accounts of the atrocities of the past (Galtung 2017), I have no recollection whatsoever of us, the high school and later university students, ever being asked by our teachers what we and our families and people in our social environments knew, remembered or felt about the holocaust and the unspeakable crimes that had been committed by Nazi Germany. Or, for that matter, what we knew, remembered and felt about the suffering that the war had meant for our parents, grandparents and wider families and social circles. This conversation just did not happen in the classroom. The emphasis was on transmitting the historical facts about something terrible that had occurred decades ago. Nazi Germany and its crimes were not considered to be the moral—business of the younger generations in any deeper sense. Buttressed by an official discourse and culture of repenting remembrance in which the West German state and our teachers took pride we were expected to subscribe to a pledge of "never again." Yet that what had happened was not addressed as a concern of the present, of German society as we were experiencing it. The past was the past. All around people were claiming—and still are—that they and their kin and friends had nothing to do with it, regardless of whether that was true or not, that they abhorred the Nazi regime and its crimes, that the Nazis had been someone "other" (see Leo 2021). Teaching the history about it and keeping an official version of memory of it alive was deemed to be imperative—and sufficient. As unsatisfactory as my own high school and university experience was with respect to the one issue that surely must shape the identity of any German citizen of my generation (see Leo 2021) I would argue that the failure of not addressing a horrid national past through historical memory-oriented education was likely even more pronounced among the generation of my parents, who were either born just before the onset of the holocaust and the war or in the midst of it. I do not have any hard scientific evidence, and this is really inappropriate to acknowledge for someone who is in the academic writing business. In Colombia, for instance, even the most "academic" of peace and conflict researchers and pedagogues are unable to remove themselves from this harsh reality. If they are serious about what they are doing they will not be able to look the other way, underestimating or denying the violence and suffering, however subtle, that manifests daily on their doorstep and on the way to university and back home, often early in the morning and late at night.3 Like the actual victims and survivors of violence it touches them directly. Furthermore, it is a known if understudied fact that academics in Colombia and other violence-inflected countries in Latin America and elsewhere who are critical of the status quo or get themselves into public disputes with those wielding power have been attacked and/or killed. Others suffer institutional and social marginalisation and ostracism.4 Hence, it is not surprising that educators and researchers who pursue peace agendas in such settings would intuitively, and as a matter of

But judging by the oral, often emotional histories of both trauma and distancing that I have been hearing throughout my life in my family and wider social environment, I daresay that there cannot have been much processing of the past through critical, historical memory-oriented education among the generation of my parents either. One cannot but wonder, therefore, whether the manifold present-day manifestations of disdain for those who are deemed to be different because of their language, culture, gender and tone of skin colour, in short, the daily manifestations of nationalism, antisemitism and racism that German society is presently witnessing are not related to that lack of dealing with the country's past by systematically working with historical memory approaches in and outside of the classroom—instead of emphasising, decade after decade, the purported strengths of academic historiography and the unassailable virtues of the official discourse and culture of remembrance.

<sup>3</sup> For the sake of proper contextualisation it is worthwhile to note that in countries such as Colombia it is not uncommon that full-time university lecturers, that is, those few academics who are in the privileged position to make a decent living out of their higher education work, often start at 7 a.m. in the morning and finish at 10 p.m. at night. These long working hours, which typically also include teaching on Saturday mornings, have to do with heavy teaching loads and teaching on executive Master programmes, which universities commonly offer on Fridays from 6 to 10 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 or 9 a.m. till noon. Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced educational organisations worldwide to switch to online teaching/learning, full-time faculty at Colombian universities were principally requested to be present in their institutions every working day.

<sup>4</sup> To my knowledge, this is an understudied topic. As important as it is we know more about the plight of journalists, human rights defenders and other civic advocates and activists than about that of critical academics. Critical scholars and educators are often also active human rights defenders, but I think it would be important to look at them specifically as academics who suffer the consequences of going against the grain in their writing and in the classroom.

both moral principle and survival, adopt critical peace education perspectives. Central to their work is putting the victims and survivors of violence and injustice as well as the defence of their fundamental rights up front and centre stage in the attempt to counter-balance and work towards the transformation of political and social orders built on patterned violations of human rights and the employment of violent means to safeguard particularistic, often downright criminal or crimilegal interests (see, for instance, Arias 2016; Corredor et al. 2018; Herrera and Pertuz 2016; Merchán 2016; Schultze-Kraft 2019, 2021).

Yet centring the attention squarely on the victims and survivors of direct, structural and cultural manifestations of violence and injustice, and unequivocally taking sides with them, risks deepening prevailing antagonisms and animosities among students by promoting perspectives and courses of action that may be perceived as one-sided and as too radical or idealistic in their transformational aspirations. I suggest that in violence-inflected settings, such as Colombia, where complex, dynamic and multi-layered constellations of violent conflict have been manifesting simultaneously with variable intensity for more than half a century, it is no straightforward undertaking at all to take sides. Of course, and lest I not be misunderstood, it is of the utmost importance to denounce and condemn the atrocious crimes and human rights violations committed by the state, especially by elements of its military and police, paramilitary organisations, criminal groups and the insurgents. Over decades, this is what Colombian human rights organisations and victim associations have been doing.<sup>5</sup> However, when it comes to education on and for peace the ballgame changes.

Exploring and making use of the above-mentioned healing quality of historical memory work is of particular significance in the classroom. Provided the classroom is endowed with the qualities of a safe and inclusive space, which is not always easy to achieve, working with techniques such as oral histories, personal narratives, remembering and futures visioning have the power to contribute to overcoming the false dichotomy

<sup>5</sup> It should be noted that in a state like Colombia, which in formal terms is democratically constituted but faces many *de facto* challenges regarding the application of the rule of law, political representation and equitable and inclusive development, human rights groups and victim organisations are up against powerful, unyielding and often criminal or crimilegal interests. Yet, this does not mean that—depending on the case, issue and prevailing political constellation—they cannot find ways to enlist the support from relevant state entities, such as the ombudsman's office and the high courts.

between forgetting and remembrance. They can also help bridge the gap between the individual learner and their institutional and social environment because such techniques are instrumental in bringing to the fore that peaceful coexistence and reconciliation do not depend only—or mostly—on students' personal attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values but are also shaped to significant degrees by the prevailing social and political orders, that is, systems of domination (Schultze-Kraft 2019). In this vein, historical memory-oriented education on and for peace promises to address one of the salient pitfalls of critical approaches to peace education in violence-inflected societies by offering a stronger theory of change with respect to promoting broader, pro-peace social transformation. Historical memory-oriented peace education is more cognisant about, and sensitive to, the complex, dynamic and multi-layered characteristics of violent conflict. I therefore suggest it enables learners to envision and take transformative social action beyond the classroom in affirmative, considerate and more persuasive and legitimate ways.

Employing the tools of narrative, oral history, remembering and futures visioning is a recurrent topic in the literature on peace education (see, for instance, Bekerman and Zembylas 2008, 2012; Boulding 2002; Corredor et al. 2018). In what follows, I briefly summarise why I believe these specific learning techniques, which evidently do not cover all of the tools peace education has at its disposition,<sup>6</sup> can be particularly useful when they are combined with, and grounded in, historical memory work.7 To illustrate my arguments, I look again at Colombia, though this South American nation may be a somewhat singular case because unlike other countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict there *is* a vast body of historical memory work that can fruitfully be used in the classroom, both as a source and an illustrative example. The work of GMH and CNMH in the past 15 years has highlighted the centrality of listening to the victims and survivors of past atrocities and injustice, recollecting and documenting their memories and putting them into interplay with historical research on Colombia's violent conflict. Throughout, the

<sup>6</sup> For other techniques and tools see, for instance, Hagar and Mazali (2013), Kelly and Kelly (2013), and Goulah and Urbain (2013).

<sup>7</sup> This does not mean, of course, that conventional and critical approaches to the field ought to be jettisoned altogether. Rather, while incorporating a focus on historical memory is relevant in its own right, it also serves as a backdrop to the enhancement and critical interrogation of the more established modes of peace education.

overarching aim of this monumental endeavour has been to generate "an inclusive and integrative narrative, in tune with the voices of the victims, on the origin and evolution of the internal armed conflict in Colombia" (author's translation) (GMH cited in Riaño and Uribe 2017: 16). Note that the emphasis is on creating an *inclusive* and *integrative* narrative, not a homogenising one.

As discussed earlier, this interpretation of its mandate led CNMH to take the—daring and risky—step to work with the Colombian military and police on historical memory at the War College. The ensuing dialogue turned out to be difficult and fraught with tensions. However, in spite of these problems CNMH and less intransigent elements of the armed forces sought and found ways together to continue their cooperation—in the classroom as well as with respect to the recovery and documentation of soldiers' memories of victimhood.8 I believe that on the whole this has been a valuable experience capable of informing the use of oral history and narratives as pedagogical and didactic tools in education on and for peace. CNMH's commitment and openness to engaging educationally with the state's armed forces reflects a resolve to put into practice what Zvi Bekerman and Michalinos Zembylas call "contested narratives" and "dangerous memories" (Bekerman and Zembylas 2008, 2012). According to the two noted peace education scholars, "teaching contested narratives through critical pedagogies is to disrupt those regimes of feeling and thinking that perpetuate a conflicting ethos with others, and to invent new practices of relating with them" (Bekerman and Zembylas 2012: 41). Working with "contested narratives" in the classroom also means to make room for the articulation of "dangerous memories," that is, memories that "are disruptive to the status quo" embodied in the "hegemonic culture of strengthening and perpetuating existing group-based identities," which are "usually essentialised, static and tribalistic" (Bekerman and Zembylas 2008: 126; see also Manojlovic 2018).

Yet contrary to what might commonly be assumed the Colombian experience with historical memory work reveals that contested narratives and dangerous memories did not only arise from among the victims

<sup>8</sup> At least until the end of the Santos administration in August 2018, when the new government of President Duque took office and Colombia's political context witnessed notable change taking the country once again off the course of pursuing peace (Sánchez 2019).

and survivors of violence and injustice but also from among sectors of the state that felt underrepresented or excluded from the officially sanctioned efforts to recover and preserve the historical memory of more than half a century of violent conflict. This shows that historical memory work is not always the preserve of hegemonic powers and interests, but it can also prompt just these powers and interests to respond and let themselves be taken into participating, even if in the role of those who contest and protest, in the quest for historical clarification. This is a lesson that should not be underestimated when designing historical memoryorientated learning activities in the classroom. Contested narratives and dangerous memories are likely to emerge on all sides of the violent conflict spectrum. They may not always reflect a prevailing "hegemonic culture" (Bekerman and Zembylas 2008: 126). Recognising that in itself this is not a negative but a positive and necessary element of education on and for peace strikes me to be central. Evidently, and that is a caveat that must not be ignored, learners' narratives, both contested or not, and memories, both dangerous or not, ought to be brought to bear and helped to develop their healing power in such a way that they do not add to prevailing patterns of animosity and antagonism among students. While teachers have responsibility in this regard, they also need caring and dedicated institutional support to be able to navigate safely the rapids that are bound to emerge in the classroom—and beyond.9

Working with learners' narratives and oral histories in historical memory-oriented peace education—which, depending on the variable richness and accessibility of academic and testimonial sources in any given setting of violent conflict and/or state crime, ought to be critically acclaimed and/or interrogated against the backdrop of the broader historical context—can be complemented and enhanced by employing the tool of remembering as a function of futures visioning. As Elise Boulding describes based on her own praxis of conducting futures visioning or imaging workshops in the United States, the idea behind this type of exercise is to take people into the future, say, 20 or 30 years from the

<sup>9</sup> Here again I write on the basis of personal experience. At the Colombian university where I taught there was little institutional support for teachers, especially expatriate or international ones, who were working with students on the thorny issues of violence, armed conflict and peace. The onus of keeping things in check and making them work was very much on the teachers, who sometimes were confronted with indifference, distrust or even animosity on the part of the university hierarchy, their peers and students (Schultze-Kraft 2021).

present, and work with them on the "imaginative exploration of 'how things worked' in that future, followed by a remembering, looking back from this future to the present to imagine how all this peaceableness had come about" (Boulding 2002: 51). Futures visioning of a more peaceable world, coupled with an effort of imaginative remembering of what it took to get to such an improved condition and what individuals and collectives contributed to this process, is geared towards building students' (and teachers') skills to explore actively what they could do now, in a present riven with violence and injustice in order to transform individual attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values as well as social and institutional structures. In other words, futures visioning and remembering may help to bridge the prevailing gap in education on and for peace between the individual and the social-institutional realms. I suggest that experience with historical memory-oriented education supports students and teachers to conduct futures visioning and remembering exercises.

## 4.2 The Sustaining Peace Agenda: What Is in a Term

One does not have to subscribe to David Chandler's pointed observation that "peacebuilding is no longer a term on the international agenda" (Chandler 2017: 6) to note that for some time now we have been witnessing shifts in the global policy discourse on violent conflict and peace. Concomitant to the adoption of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate change, among the landmarks of this ongoing process are the report of the Advisory Group of Experts for the 2015 review of the United Nations peacebuilding architecture (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015a) and the attendant UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions of April 2016 (UNGA 2016; UNSC 2016).<sup>10</sup> Initiated under the auspices of outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (2007–2016), the quest for evolving international peacebuilding towards a new paradigm of sustaining peace has since commanded the attention of his successor, António Guterres (2017 to present).

In short, the semantic shift from building to sustaining peace, which is applied in flexible fashion in the relevant official documents, reflects mounting concerns within the UN, its member states and other multilateral bodies, including the World Bank, about the effectiveness, costliness and legitimacy of international peace operations. Framing the issue as one of sustaining rather than building peace seeks to "shift the debate away from liberal top-down problem-solving approaches towards more pluralistic bottom-up, or hybrid, conflict management approaches that do not have the ambition to resolve conflict, but instead invest in the resilience of local social institutions to prevent, cope with and recover from conflict" (de Coning 2016: 167).11 The task of sustaining peace is understood to involve close policy alignment with the SDGs, particularly Goal 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions but also Goal 4 on quality education. It also entails reforms of the New York-based peacebuilding organisations, established in 2005 and comprising the Peacebuilding Commission (PCB), the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) and the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), and more effective coordination and cooperation between the UN's peace and security, human rights and development pillars.

<sup>10</sup> The Advisory Group of Experts was established, in January 2015, by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon at the request of the Presidents of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. It was chaired by Gert Rosenthal (Guatemala) and integrated by Anis Bajwa (Pakistan), Saraswathi Menon (India), Funmi Olonisakin (Nigeria), Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah (Mauritania), Charles Petrie (France) and Edith Grace Ssempala (Uganda). The group's final report was presented on 29 June 2015. The 2015 review was preceded by a first, more limited one in 2010. A third comprehensive review was launched in October 2019. At around the same time as the Advisory Group of Experts the secretarygeneral also convened a High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations to undertake a review of United Nations peace operations. The panel presented its final report on 17 June 2015 (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015b).

<sup>11</sup> "Resilience" is a key term in the lexicon of the sustaining peace agenda, but there is not one single, accepted definition. Philippe Bourbeau refers to resilience as meaning "the process of patterned adjustments adopted by a society or an individual in the face of *endogenous* or *exogeneous* shocks (emphasis added)" (Bourbeau, cited in Chandler 2017: 166). According to Chandler, "resilience increasingly [focuses] on working with and upon the capacities, capabilities, processes, and practices already 'to hand' rather than the external provision of policies or programmes" (Chandler 2017: 166).

Echoing seminal earlier assessments, such as the World Development Report 2011 on conflict, security and development (World Bank 2011) and foreshadowing others, such as the joint UN-World Bank report on pathways for peace (UN and World Bank 2018), the seasoned experts behind the 2015 review of the peacebuilding architecture attested the UN to be operating based on a "generalised misunderstanding of the nature of peacebuilding" (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015a: 3). In an era of increasing violent conflict occurrence ending the cycle of conflict decline that had set in towards the late 1990s, the task of building peace could no longer be left as an "afterthought: under-prioritised, under-resourced and undertaken only after the guns fall silent" (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015a: 3). Ever more complex and intractable intrastate conflicts—increasingly involving violent extremism and organised crime and driven by a mix of institutional fragility, bad security and other governance, corruption, a politics of exclusion, widespread poverty and inequality, environmental degradation and a deadly struggle over access to scarce natural resources—were not amenable anymore to being addressed by outside interventions along the sequential arc of peacemaking–peacekeeping–peacebuilding. According to the group of experts, comprehensive peace accords between "fairly wellidentified enemies" represented an "old model" of ending conflicts, which more recently "has often had to give way to less tidy arrangements" (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015a: 13). In light of these challenges and new realities, the PBC, PBF and PBSO, as well as the wider institutional set-up of the UN's peace and security pillar and its linkages to the human rights and development domains, had to undergo reform and be made fit for purpose (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015a).

As it appears, the experts' findings hit a nerve. With the issuance of the twin UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on the peacebuilding architecture in April 2016 (UNGA 2016; UNSC 2016), the UN's response to the described conundrum began to crystalise around the notion of sustaining peace. For the world's largest inter-state organisation this has meant foremost striving to come to grips with institutional shortcomings and entrenched governance problems of coordination and cooperation, both within the organisation and between it and the member states. Assuming personal leadership in this arduous process, since 2017 Secretary-General Guterres has overseen the restructuring of the UN's peace and security pillar, seeking to reorganise it internally and strengthen linkages or establishing new ones to the development and human rights domains. Details about these efforts are presented regularly in his annual reports on peacebuilding and sustaining peace (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2018, 2019, 2020). These reports are replete with specific information about the measures taken to enhance the UN's operational and policy coherence as well as its leadership, accountability and capacity, guarantee adequate financing for building "peaceful and resilient societies" (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2019: 1), and strengthen partnerships with regional and subregional organisations, the international financial institutions and civil society, including youth and women's groups in conflict-affected countries. References abound to alignment, cross-pillar collaboration, mainstreaming, conflict-sensitive responses, national ownership, wholeof-society and holistic approaches, inclusive and sustainable development, local resilience, and so on.

Beyond the UN and the broader inter-governmental environment, the new focus on sustaining rather than building peace has been met with both interest and critical interrogation. Aiming at cutting through the fog surrounding this major work-in-progress, the UN's sustaining peace agenda has sparked a flurry of activity on the part of academics and analysts of global affairs (see, for instance, Cahill-Ripley and Hendrick 2018; Chandler 2017; de Coning 2016; International Peace Institute 2017a, b, 2018; Kustermans et al. 2021; Metcalfe-Hough et al. 2017; Ponzio 2018; Pugh 2021). If there is one common denominator in this variegated stream of analysis and commentary, it is the tacit consensus that international peacebuilding as a rationally enlightened global governance project rolled out in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union is reaching its limits. In view of the renewed spike in armed, mostly intrastate conflict in the second decade of the present millennium, it is acknowledged that a different approach to promoting peace is needed. Yet whether the UN-led shift towards sustaining peace will be able to fill the void of conventional "liberal" peacebuilding and end its "twenty years' crisis" (Chandler 2017) is subject to dispute.

Throwing their weight behind the sustaining peace agenda, some observers hold that the key challenge lies in finding ways to operationalise it across the UN's three pillars and develop concrete new policy options—to be devised and implemented foremost by national governments in cooperation with civil society and other non-state organisations. In this scenario, the international community's role is limited to offering national governments a helping hand through political and other facilitation or mediation geared towards strengthening local resilience in the face of violent conflict or efforts to prevent it.12 Hence, the new order of the day is *conflict management* and working with national and/or local institutions and structures already in place that are amenable to supporting peaceful change and reconciliation, not externally engineered *conflict resolution* and the pursuit of the mirage of a "liberal" peace (see, for instance, International Peace Institute 2017a, b, 2018; Metcalfe-Hough et al. 2017; Ponzio 2018). Other analysts, however, question this view, contending that the notion of sustaining peace is still not sufficiently elaborate and theoretically substantiated to serve as a compass to re-orient efforts to promote peaceful conflict management in violenceravaged countries (de Coning 2016). For this to be achieved, it would first be paramount to gain a deeper understanding of complexity and of "how social systems collapse, how they regain order, and what can be done to strengthen their resilience, so that they may be able to prevent a recurrence of violent conflict themselves, or at least to cope better with its effects" (de Coning 2016: 167). What is more, the focus on strengthening resilience among state organisations and local communities in violence-inflected societies, which represents anything but a straightforward endeavour, might in fact harbour the seeds of yet more failure. In this vein, Chandler observes that "at least international peacebuilding […] forced a discussion of power and policy accountability on the agenda and thereby a discussion of the allocation of agency and responsibility to either internationals or locals. Pragmatic approaches of resilience remove this possibility of external accountability" (Chandler 2017: 187). Still others question whether peacebuilding as a "liberal" international governance

<sup>12</sup> Alongside complexity, non-linearity, self-organisation and the impossibility of determining in any straightforward manner cause-effect relationships underlying contemporary violent conflict as well as efforts to overcome it through building peace, resilience has become a key notion in the sustaining peace discourse. In Cedric de Coning's words, "if a society is fragile, it means that the social institutions that govern its politics, security, justice and economy lack resilience. Resilience refers here to the capacity of these social institutions 'to absorb and adapt in order to sustain an acceptable level of function, structure and identity under stress. […] From this perspective, sustaining peace should be about stimulating and facilitating the capacity of societies to self-organise, so that they can increase their ability to absorb and adapt to stress, to the degree necessary to sustain peace" (de Coning 1916: 173).

project is effectively ending or whether it stands to persist, even in the face of adversity, owing to the West's powerful interests that have been driving it for decades, making it unlikely that peacebuilding as we have known it will be abandoned anytime soon (Pugh 2021).

Against the backdrop of these debates, which are reproduced here short-hand, it might be a telling fact that the UN secretary-general's annual reports on sustaining peace are at pains not to jettison the term "peacebuilding," which continues to enjoy ample official usage, and consistently replace it with the notion of "sustaining peace." Overcoming the old policy frameworks and institutional mindsets, even if only in semantic terms, thus seems to be more difficult than is commonly acknowledged. At the same time, it is noteworthy that the reforms geared towards providing the sustaining peace agenda an enabling institutional and organisational backbone remain mired in the traditional conception of the indivisibility of peace, human rights and development and their mutually reinforcing qualities.

For sure, no one who has worked to prevent, resolve or transform violent conflict through political, non-violent means would seriously deny that human rights and inclusive development are important in their own right and should serve as enablers for the building of constructive and trusting relationships between both individuals and groups in a society. However, they would also know that in many places human rights and development are contested and subject to historically entrenched power asymmetries that often manifest in, or bear the imprint of, different forms of direct, structural and cultural violence. It therefore appears that holding fast to universalist conceptions of human rights, development, democracy and the rule of law, which have underpinned "liberal" approaches to peacebuilding, and the premise that they reinforce one another under whatever circumstances risks undermining the goals of the emerging sustaining peace agenda.13

<sup>13</sup> Based on my long-time experience as an analyst of violent conflict and political and other crises, I take the liberty to add here that the focus on conflict prevention rather than conflict resolution, which is said to characterise the sustaining peace agenda and differentiate it from previous approaches to peacebuilding, is not entirely new. Having spent the 2000s working on the ground with the International Crisis Group on helping to prevent the outbreak of, or the relapse into, violent conflict in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti and Venezuela, as well as trying to contribute to resolving intractable armed conflict by political means in Colombia, the argument that the focus of sustaining peace is novel because it is oriented towards violent conflict prevention

This notwithstanding, even if contested and still lacking operational precision and internal coherence I suggest there are reasons for continuing to build our competences in the field of sustaining peace. According to my reading, the emerging paradigm signals both the hope and recognition that peace, if it is to be achieved in the face of adversity, can only emerge and persist if individuals and communities anywhere in the world muster the strength to believe in both its desirability and feasibility. Echoing John Paul Lederach's seminal work (Lederach 1997, 2005), this implies that people have access to, and command over, the appropriate tools that enable them to establish cooperative and trusting relationships among themselves and manage and/or transform their unavoidable conflicts without recurring to the use of force and violence. It is thus important to realise that changing the focus from building to sustaining peace not only reflects a "dark mood" (Kustermans et al. 2021) among decision-makers at the UN and in western capitals owing to the limited leverage they have with respect to influencing, let alone bringing about, persisting patterns of cooperation and trust in violence-inflected settings.14

True, the hitherto dominant recipe of building peace through the promotion—or imposition—of political democracy, the rule of law and free market economies modelled on liberal principles and standards has too often fallen short of producing solid, durable outcomes and preventing conflict relapse (see, for instance, Chandler 2017; Pugh 2021;

<sup>14</sup> The point about the "dark mood" has recently been driven home in Afghanistan. Following the badly planned and executed withdrawal of western troops after two decades of US-led allied military, security, political, development and other forms of intervention, which cost many Afghan civilians their lives and western taxpayers billions and billions of dollars while failing to produce even a degree of stability and improve the chances of a better life for common people, the Taliban did not face much trouble when proceeding to retake the country within a matter of weeks in the summer of 2021. Other examples, such as Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iraq, readily illustrate what Jorg Kustermans and colleagues refer to as "peacebuilding's predicament" (Kustermans et al. 2021).

is not convincing. A host of non-governmental and multilateral organisations, including UN agencies, were actively engaged in conflict prevention prior to the emergence of the sustaining peace agenda.

UN General Assembly and Security Council 2015a).<sup>15</sup> Also true, alternative "bottom-up" approaches to building peace characterised by more sensitivity to political, social, cultural and other conditions at the local level not only have found it hard to be incorporated into mainstream peacebuilding programming. In their own way, they too have not been able to provide convincing answers to the tough questions that peace poses and the compromises it demands from individuals and social groups in violence-inflected societies and states (see, for instance, Chandler 2017).

However, I suggest that there is more to the "dark mood" engulfing international peacebuilding. It signals something deeper than a sense of futility, of waging an uphill battle that cannot be won: it challenges us to take a harder look at peace itself. In this respect, it has correctly been pointed out that more is known about conflict and violence than about peace (Coleman 2012, 2013). As I have discussed earlier, peace is typically defined in relation to violence and war, not in its own right. In its negative form, it is understood to represent a state of social relationships in which war and diverse types of direct, structural and cultural violence are absent or contained. In its positive form, peace is conceived as being something more than the absence of violence and war (Galtung 1969, 2012, 2017). But there is no consensus among scholars as well as practitioners and decision-makers on what exactly the intrinsic properties of peace are, and how they shape—or do not—human attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values, both at the individual and the collective levels as well as across cultures and peoples. In other words, to this day

<sup>15</sup> In hindsight, let it be said, international peacebuilding always had a quixotic quality to it, standing little chance of "success." Needless to say, "success" here is a highly relative term dependent on how those who evaluate international peacebuilding outcomes and impacts define it. It should further be noted that national peacebuilding efforts, where the UN and other international or intergovernmental actors do not play a leading role but which nonetheless at their core pursue "liberal" goals, such as Colombia's current experience, too do not necessarily fare any better with respect to implementing peace accords, achieving the goals agreed by the former adversaries and preventing the continuation or relapse into violence. This would indicate that the forces of peacelessness embedded and reproduced in the social formations of societies and states (Galtung 2012) are indeed extremely hard to come by with the forces of peacefulness.

peace, both as a concept and variable set of social and institutional practices, remains elusive, contested and in need of more empirically grounded theorisation.16

### *4.2.1 Historical Memory-Oriented Peace Education and Sustaining Peace: Connecting the Dots*

This book is not the place to engage with the wider phenomenological and ontological debates about peace. Yet I believe that the sustaining peace agenda, as I have briefly described it above, offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the ways in which we approach our applied, everyday work on and for peace in the classroom and beyond. Regarding the field of peace education, I suggest there is merit in adopting the less prescriptive, value-laden and universalising and, at the same time, more indeterminate, normatively restrained and humble elements that set the discourse on sustaining peace apart from that of conventional international peacebuilding. In this respect, it seems to me that incorporating a focus on historical memory can enhance the strength and value of education on and for peace in a world riven with crises, disunity and violent conflict. Rather than upholding notions of universal values, independent of local culture and historically formed power relationships, and the idea that peace can be achieved by righting the individual mind; or seeking to bring about far-reaching social transformation to alleviate the plight of the oppressed and marginalised by empowering them to resist and fight, such an approach strives to enable learners (and teachers)

<sup>16</sup> Here it should be noted that authors like Galtung, Lederach and Coleman, to name but three scholars working in the field of contemporary peace studies, have gone to great lengths to provide the abstract notion of peace with more concrete meaning. For instance, in Galtung's "formula for peace by peaceful means" (Galtung 2017: 3) peace equals equity and harmony (numerator) divided by trauma and conflict (denominator): "the more equity and harmony the better; the more unreconciled trauma and unresolved conflict the worse" (Galtung 2012: 24). The idea of equity and harmony co-existing in a precarious and dynamic balance with trauma and conflict connects with Coleman's insight that peace and conflict should be understood as simultaneous social processes, not opposites (Coleman 2013). It also echoes Lederach's proposition of seeing peace as "not merely a stage in time or a condition [but as] […] a dynamic social construct," where the promotion of non-violent, constructive relationships between the involved parties can be helped by the creation of "an infrastructure for sustaining the dynamic transformation of conflict" (Lederach 1997: 84). However enlightening they may be, these and similar theoretical propositions still need to be put to the test in empirical research.

to work towards healing past trauma and recognising the "other" as a moral agent. Historical memory-oriented peace education thus seeks to promote reconciliation by opening up space for the surfacing and expression of emotions. More cooperative, trusting and harmonious relationships among individuals and collectives are enabled on the basis of new identities shaped by experiences of having witnessed and listened to the suffering of the "other."

Taken together, the sustaining peace agenda and the SDGs constitute a new international framework within which the quest for developing this novel approach to, and praxis of, historical memory-oriented education on and for peace can be developed. In effect, it is *the* framework that is available at present to pursue this goal—if the effort is made to strengthen the connections to, and increase its relevance for, the field of education in general and peace education in particular. Both the SDGs and the sustaining peace agenda do not omit referring to education. Yet it is notable that the topic is not addressed in either of them with the centrality it should be awarded. Under the title "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all," SDG 4, Target 4.7 specifies that "all learners [should be enabled to] acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, *promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence*, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development (emphasis added)" (UN General Assembly 2015: 17). While the UN secretary-general's first two reports (2018, 2019) on the implementation of the sustaining peace agenda—surprisingly—do not include any reference to education, the one of 2020 mentions that in relation to "youth, peace and security" the "core challenges include structural barriers limiting the participation of young people and their capacity to influence decision-making; violations of their human rights; and insufficient investment in facilitating their inclusion, in particular through education. *Prioritising education in approaches to peace, including conflict-sensitive curricula for peace and non-violence, is considered catalytic* (emphasis added)" (UN General Assembly and Security Council 2020: 13).

While I agree with the statement that "prioritising education in approaches to peace, including conflict-sensitive curricula for peace and non-violence" is key, I am less convinced that in this respect it is expedient to put the spotlight in rather single-minded fashion on fostering a "culture of peace and non-violence." As discussed earlier, the UNESCOpromoted cultures of peace movement correctly points to the importance of not overlooking the broader social and cultural contexts in which at any given time and in any given place—education in general and peace education in particular takes place. However, promoting a culture of peace through education has typically been framed as involving the shaping of attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and values of young people according to purportedly universal, enlightened precepts without offering much by way of addressing the structural causes and drivers of violence and war. Recall Wulf's reminder that "education for peace must continue to draw back on key concepts such as 'organised peacelessness,' 'structural violence' and 'social justice'" (Wulf 2018: 9).

To be effective, I have argued, the universalising, morally appellative and normative approach underpinning the wider field of conventional peace education, including that of helping to build a culture of peace, ought to be interrogated. Such interrogation is offered by diverse types of critical approaches to peace education. However, based on my grounded, long-time experience as a political analyst and university teacher in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict I caution that critical peace education with its focus on empowering both individuals and collectives to become agents of structural social transformation geared towards enhancing social equity and justice and fight entrenched power relationships may in practice have antagonising and counterproductive effects. In this regard, it should not be overlooked that engaging in education on and for peace in violence-inflected countries and societies must pay more than lip service to the principle of "do no harm." In short, in settings like Colombia peace education of a critical kind is potentially dangerous for both learners and teachers. It also carries the risk of not reflecting sufficiently the very real and tangible challenges associated with learners' and teachers' everyday experiences of manifold manifestations of violence and injustice, thereby contributing to enhancing feelings of disempowerment or deepening prevailing antagonisms.

The practice of sustaining peace requires a broader, more versatile and reflexive approach to peace education. If we agree that sustaining rather than building peace is about strengthening the resilience of individuals and collectives in social environments characterised by complex and dynamically evolving adversity and risk—including manifold manifestations of direct, structural and cultural violence—that are difficult, perhaps even impossible to influence and transform from the outside; and if we agree that fomenting existing and creating new constructive and trusting relationships among individuals, and within and between collectives, that enable them to resolve and transform unavoidable conflicts by non-violent means in ways that reflect local cultural and other realities, constitutes the essence of the praxis of sustaining peace, then there is a case to be made that historical memory-oriented education on and/or for peace can support these processes. No doubt, working with historical memory in the classroom faces pitfalls. But if the paradoxes of, and tensions inherent in, historical memory are openly addressed it can free emotional and moral energies that neither conventional nor critical peace education can, thus supporting the emergence of new, inclusive identities and strengthening the resilience of individuals and groups vis-à-vis the ever-present spectre of the continuation or transformation of violent conflict.

### References


**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Conclusion

**Abstract** Contemporary education on and for peace can be strengthened by incorporating a focus on historical memory, especially in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict. Peace education conceived in these terms helps to address some of the shortcomings of what I call the conventional and critical schools in the field. Furthermore, historical memory-oriented peace education can contribute to filling voids in and enhancing the new, UN-led sustaining peace agenda, thereby supporting the achievement of the SDGs. At the same time, the narrative highlights that we cannot take anything for granted. Our present knowledge about the relationship between historical memory, peace education for sustaining peace and achieving the SDGs is limited. There clearly is a need for more research on these complex issues.

**Keywords** Peace education · Historical memory · Sustaining peace agenda · SDGs

The narrative presented in this book revolves around the idea that contemporary education on and/or for peace, particularly in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict, can and ought to be strengthened by incorporating a focus on historical memory. This idea has its origins not in detached academic reasoning but in my personal, long-time experience as an observer and analyst of armed conflict and

© The Author(s) 2022 M. Schultze-Kraft, *Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory*, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9\_5

91

university lecturer in conflict/peace studies in violence-inflected countries in the global South, especially in Colombia. Peace education conceived in these terms helps to address some of the shortcomings of what I call the conventional and critical schools in the field. Furthermore, historical memory-oriented peace education can contribute to filling voids in and enhancing the new, UN-led sustaining peace agenda, thereby supporting the achievement of the SDGs. At the same time, the narrative highlights that we cannot take anything for granted. Our present knowledge about the relationship between historical memory, peace education for sustaining peace and achieving the SDGs is still limited. There clearly is a need for more research on the complex issues that have been addressed in the pages of this book. Before outlining future areas of research on education for sustaining peace through historical memory, the main thread of the presented narrative can be summarised as follows.

Both peace and education are "essentially contested," hard-to-naildown concepts. Welding them together in one single term—peace education—without accounting for this basic fact, which has bedevilled research and practice in the fields of peace studies and peace education for more than half a century, raises challenging questions about what it is that is being proposed and done; and how it is done and by whom, and for what purpose. With their normative, apolitical, morally appellative and culturally universalist focus on the individual learner, conventional conceptions and practices of peace education do not easily relate to the variable, heterogeneous and context-dependent notions and realities of peace and education that can be found across the globe. They also shy away from taking account of often entrenched asymmetric and unequal power relationships between social, ethnic and other groups that typically characterise violence-inflected societies, thereby circumscribing the possibility to contribute through education to the creation of more inclusive institutional structures that enable peaceful coexistence, even reconciliation, beyond the mere absence of direct, structural and cultural forms of violence. While not wrong, evoking the importance of building "cultures of peace" falls short of addressing these tough realities.

Critical approaches to peace education, in turn, forefront the importance of empowering individuals as well as collectives to become agents of social transformation, especially at the local level. In this perspective, education for peace is understood as social action geared towards finding solutions to a broad range of direct, cultural and structural manifestations of violence, injustice and inequality. Yet, while critical peace education is more attuned to the thorny issues of power and exclusion, and pays more attention to social and horizontal inequalities and other structural drivers of violence, it is faced with the challenge of showing convincingly how the empowerment and emancipation of the marginalised and oppressed through formal and informal education for peace can lead to broader institutional transformation that respects the freedoms and rights of all members of communities ravaged by violence.

Regarding the memory of individuals and collectives of past violence, atrocious crimes and injustice, efforts to recover and preserve it are today increasingly widespread in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, violent conflict. This reflects the rise of memory studies as a distinct field of inquiry as well as the growing recognition of the importance of centrally including the voices of victims in the elaboration of narratives of past suffering and evil. However, both conceptually and in praxis historical memory work faces challenges that those who conduct it have to navigate. Among the pitfalls historical memory work faces are the tensions between history and memory giving substance to claims that forgetting should trump remembering. Furthermore, because it is anchored in the subjective domain of memory applied historical memory work risks deepening prevailing patterns of hatred, enmity and exclusion in addition to being instrumentalised and manipulated by hegemonic societal groups and interests. This notwithstanding, specific contemporary cases, such as that of Colombia, reveal that under certain conditions historical memory work can yield positive results in terms of giving voice to victims on all sides of the violent conflict spectrum, thereby honouring their entitlement to recover and preserve the memories of past suffering and helping them to address traumatic past experiences.

The sustaining peace agenda, fielded by the UN in the mid-2010s, offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the ways in which we approach our applied, everyday work on and for peace in the classroom and beyond. Regarding the field of peace education, there is merit in adopting the less prescriptive, value-laden and universalising and, at the same time, more indeterminate, normatively restrained and humble elements that set the discourse on sustaining peace apart from that of conventional international peacebuilding. In this respect, incorporating a focus on historical memory and employing didactic tools such as narrative, oral histories, remembering and futures visioning can enhance the strength and value of education on and for peace in a world riven with crises, disunity and violent conflict.

Rather than upholding notions of universal values, independent of local culture and historically formed power relationships, and the idea that peace can be achieved by righting the individual mind; or seeking to bring about far-reaching social transformation to alleviate the plight of the oppressed and marginalised by empowering them to resist and fight for their rights, such an approach strives to enable learners (and teachers) to work towards healing past trauma and recognising the "other" as a moral agent. Historical memory-oriented peace education thus seeks to promote reconciliation by opening up space for the surfacing and expression of emotions. More cooperative, trusting and harmonious relationships among individuals and collectives are enabled on the basis of new identities shaped by experiences of having witnessed and listened to the suffering of the "other." Enhancing such relationships through education on and for peace could be key for strengthening the resilience of individuals and collectives vis-à-vis endogenous and exogeneous shocks associated with different forms of direct, structural and cultural violence and injustice.

Owing to the dialectic nature of peace within and among societies and states, violence and injustice in our world are highly unlikely to ever being overcome in their entirety. Just like the conventional and critical schools, historical memory-oriented peace education cannot change this. But it can provide additional, more effective support to strengthening and sustaining peaceable relationships that are central in the global quest for achieving the SDGs. In this effort, employing in the classroom didactical tools like narrative, oral history and remembering and futures visioning, which are amenable to supporting historical memory-oriented education on and for peace, does not mean that conventional and critical approaches to the field ought to be jettisoned altogether. Rather, while incorporating a focus on historical memory is relevant in its own right, it also serves as a backdrop to the enhancement and critical interrogation of the more established modes of peace education. In this regard, it must not be forgotten that historical memory work itself is grappling with challenges and tensions that should be addressed in the classroom in open and critical dialogue with both conventional and critical perspectives. It is also the case that there are significant differences regarding the depth and richness of historical memory work across violence-inflected societies. Some, such as Colombia, are stronger positioned in this regard than others, such as El Salvador or Guatemala. All of these factors ought to be considered when designing and implementing learning strategies on and for peace in the classroom.

To illustrate these concluding observations and elaborate briefly on an outlook for research and practice in the field of education for sustaining peace through historical memory, let me return again to Colombia—the one case to which I have made ample reference throughout this book. If education, and I am particularly thinking of tertiary education here, is to play a role in sustaining a state in which Colombians of all walks of life can coexist peacefully, find paths towards reconciliation and are enabled to address and transform a multiplicity of conflicts in non-violent ways in an "environment in which human potential can flourish" (Institute for Economics & Peace 2019: 67), it is fundamental to acknowledge in the first place that the country is still nowhere near this desirable condition. Despite the 2016 peace agreement and several years of efforts to implement the accord's key provisions, Colombia remains torn between "legitimacy and violence." Social leaders and representatives of the armed conflict's survivors are among those groups that today are key targets of a plethora of remaining armed groups, including neo-paramilitaries and FARC dissidents, all of which entertain links to drug trafficking milieus and other criminal organisations and/or crimilegal activities. Put differently, peace education in a Colombia of "no war, no peace" is under the obligation to account for the fact that even a negative state of peace remains a far-off aspiration, not a close-by reality.

This type of violence-inflected context, which is reflective of the deep cleavages and inequalities (social, horizontal, territorial, and so on) that figure in the discussed critical approaches, conditions peace education. Promoting such education in Colombia therefore cannot be framed in any straightforward manner on the basis of the old debate about whether to assign priority to the *form* and pedagogy of peace education, on the one hand, or its *contents* on the other. Rather, the challenge is to establish how these two realms, which should not be seen as separate but as influencing one another, can be integrated into one coherent single framework. In this future endeavour, it would be of only limited help to draw *selectively* on the conventional and critical schools. The former, with its individualistic and morally appellative and/or culturally oriented focus, runs the risk of adding to the existing burden of, and frustration with, value-oriented ethics and democratic citizenship education. The latter, with its emphasis on critical reflection and transformative emancipation and empowerment, may contribute to deepening animosities and antagonisms among learners, and between them and their social environments, unwittingly unsettling students without providing the skills to cope with the cognitive, emotional and other challenges they are wrestling with on a daily basis.

A more propitious way of framing peace education therefore would be putting students' (and teachers') experiences with, and memories of, different manifestations of direct, structural and cultural violence and injustice at the centre of learning activities in and outside of the classroom. This reflexive praxis, which can help address the mentioned challenges posed by "reality's normative power," ought to include attention to the ways in which students and their families and communities have learned to cope with, or become more resilient vis-à-vis, the stresses and traumas associated with past and present violence and injustice. In other words, historical memory-oriented peace education would not only look at the painful past but also towards a—hopefully—more bearable, harmonious and peaceful future, one in which non-violent and constructive relationships between individuals and among groups can be sustained. This approach, which echoes Galtung's focus on clearing the past and working towards closure without forfeiting the equally important tasks of equity-, conciliation- and harmony-enhancing conflict resolution (Galtung 2017), can be nourished by recourse to the country's considerable experience with historical memory work. Local approaches to peace education, grounded in a deep understanding of the context (social, political, institutional, economic, and so on) of diverse types of violence and peacelessness, can be further developed in dialogue with international perspectives, both conventional and critical.

Several broad areas of future research and practical engagement stand out. They include determining in what ways ethics and democratic citizenship education can become more sensitive towards issues of peace, violence and historical memory; how historical memory-oriented peace education can help overcome the challenge of linking the micro-level of individual attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and values with the macro-level of institutional and social structures; why and through what mechanisms enhancing non-violent and constructive social relationships through historical memory-oriented education on and for peace strengthens the resilience of individuals and collectives vis-à-vis endogenous and exogeneous shocks associated with different forms of direct, structural and cultural violence and injustice; and, finally, how the impact of peace education on individuals and societies, and its contribution to sustaining peace and advancing towards the achievement of the SDGs can be comprehensively evaluated and measured.

### References

Galtung, Johan. "Peace: A peace practitioner's guide." *Ideas for Peace* 13 (2017): 1–16.

Institute for Economics & Peace. *Global Peace Index 2019: Measuring Peace in a Complex World*. Sydney: Institute for Economics & Peace, 2019.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Bibliography


99

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022

M. Schultze-Kraft, *Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory*, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93654-9

edited by Gavriel Salomon and Ed Cairns, 21–43. New York and Hove: Psychology Press, 2010.


*World*, edited by Gavriel Salomon and Baruch Nevo, 3–14. New York and London: Psychology Press, 2002.


# Index

#### **A**

Accountability, 78, 79 Adversaries, 7, 82 Advisory Group of Experts for the 2015 review of the UN peacebuilding architecture, 75 Afghanistan, 81 Africa Sub-Saharan, 3 Agency, 18, 23, 47, 68, 79 Alignment, 6, 76, 78 Amnesty, 39 Antagonism, 7, 47, 49, 71, 74, 85, 96 ethnic, 47, 49 social, 47, 49 Anthropology, 20 Argentina, 39, 51 Armed Forces, 38, 46, 50, 55, 66, 73 Assimilation, 22 Atrocities, 40, 54, 72 Attitudes, 6, 16–21, 24, 25, 68, 72, 75, 82, 85, 96

### **B**

Bajaj, Monisha, 21–23

Bar-Tal, Daniel, 2, 17, 18 Behaviour, 6, 16–21, 24, 25, 68, 72, 75, 82, 85, 96 human, 42, 46 Bekerman, Zvi, 43, 44, 47, 48, 72–74 Beliefs, 6, 16–21, 24, 25, 68, 72, 75, 82, 85, 96 Bellino, Michelle, 40, 68 Bolivia, 2, 80 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 44 Boulding, Elise, 17–20, 72, 74, 75 Bull, Anna, 7, 39, 41, 47, 48, 65

### **C**

Capital moral, 54 political, 54 social, 54 *Cátedra de la Paz* (Peace Chair), 5, 26–28 Cauca department (Colombia), 2, 52 Central America, 3, 38, 40 Chandler, David, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82 Change

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institutional, 6, 8, 28 social, 18, 28 Chile, 39, 51 Civil society, 4, 26, 39, 78 Clarification, 39, 40, 51, 53, 57, 74 historical, 39, 40, 51, 53, 57, 74 Cleavages, 5, 18, 67, 95 ethnic, 18, 67 social, 5 Clientelism, 4 Coexistence, 25, 65, 66, 72, 92 just, 40 peaceful, 40, 64–66, 72, 92 Coleman, Peter, 14, 82, 83 Collective, 7, 23, 25, 42–46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 65, 82 political, 43, 65 social, 43 Collusion, 55 between state entities and illegal armed groups, 55 Colombia, 2–6, 8, 9, 23, 25–28, 39, 41, 44–51, 53, 55, 56, 66–73, 80, 82, 85, 92–95 Colombian Association of Retired Officers of the Armed Forces (ACORE), 55 Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES), 4 Colombian Museum of Memory, 52 Community, 18, 22, 53, 79 Competences, 4, 5, 8, 25, 81 Complexity, 65, 79 Concept, 8, 9, 16, 19, 20, 22, 41, 42, 45, 46, 64–67, 83, 85, 92 essentially contested, 46, 92 Conflict armed, 2, 3, 5, 9, 19, 26, 29, 38, 39, 49–51, 55–57, 73, 74, 80, 91, 95 spectrum, 74, 93

violent, 3–5, 7–9, 14–16, 19, 29, 39, 41, 48–50, 53, 57, 64–69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86, 91, 93 Conflict management, 7, 76, 79 Conflict prevention, 2, 80, 81 Conflict resolution, 5, 18, 27, 79, 80, 96 Conflict-sensitive responses, 78 Conflict settlement, 51 Consciousness, 41, 47, 67 Constitution, 27, 28 Contradictions, 2 Corona Virus Disease 19 (COVID-19), 70 Corredor, Javier, 7, 28, 29, 46, 67, 68, 71, 72 Corruption, 77 Cote d'Ivoire, 19 Cowardice, 49 Cremin, Hilary, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28 Crime, 3, 26, 39, 47, 50, 53, 54, 69, 71 atrocious, 3, 26, 38, 51–53, 65, 71, 93 heinous, 48, 50 Crimilegality, 4 Cross-pillar collaboration, 78 Cuba, 25 Cubitt, Geoffrey, 41–43, 45, 46 Culture hegemonic, 73, 74 of peace, 9, 19–22, 25, 27, 28, 84, 85, 92 violence and war, 20 Curricula, 21, 22, 27, 28, 84 Cyprus, 44

### **D**

de Coning, Cedric, 76, 78, 79 Demobilisation and reintegration, 50 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 81 Development, 5, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25–27, 42, 45, 49, 56, 76–78, 80, 81, 84 inclusive, 20, 71, 80 Discourse, 5, 7, 20, 22, 23, 28, 44, 53, 69, 70, 75, 79, 83, 93 Disempowerment, 85 Disrespect, 44 Diversity, 27, 84

#### **E**

Economics, 14, 15, 20, 27, 38, 50, 96 Education, 2, 3, 5–10, 14–16, 20–29, 64–76, 83–86, 92–96 in ethics and democratic citizenship, 3, 28, 95, 96 on and/or for peace, 2, 5, 6, 14, 86, 91 Elites, 5, 40, 44, 50, 54 military, 44 political, 44, 50 El Salvador, 38–40, 94 Emancipation, 7, 22, 23, 64, 93, 95 transformative, 95 Emotions, 8, 67, 84, 94 Empathy, 24 Empowerment, 7, 22, 23, 25, 64, 93, 96 Enmity, 47, 93 Entitlement, 45, 93 Environmental degradation, 77 Equality, 28 gender, 84 Equity, 15, 96 social, 15, 24, 85 Evil, 39, 44, 45, 47–49, 65, 68, 93 Exclusion, 7, 18, 47, 64, 93 historical patterns of, 49

Experience, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 18, 40, 42, 45–48, 57, 66–69, 73–75, 80, 82, 84, 85, 91, 93, 94, 96 felt and lived, 42 human, 3, 47 Extremism, 77

### **F**

Facilitation, 79 political, 79 Family, 2, 66, 70 Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), 38 Forgetting, 43, 44, 72, 93 Forgiveness, 54 Freire, Paulo, 15, 22 Frieters-Reermann, Norbert, 14, 16, 17 Futures visioning, 8, 71, 72, 74, 75, 93, 94 advocates of, 44

### **G**

Galtung, Johan, 2, 14, 15, 21, 69, 82, 83, 96 Gender, 22, 70, 84 Global, 2, 14, 15, 21, 75, 78, 84, 92, 94 North, 15 South, 15, 92 Goals anti-democratic, 44 authoritarian, 44 evil, 44 exclusionary, 44 inhumane, 44 nationalist, 44 racist, 44 Governance, 2, 3, 26, 77–79 Grief, 47 Groups

ethnic, 44, 68 illegal armed, 27, 50, 51, 55, 56 political, 44 social, 4, 42, 44, 48, 53, 64, 68, 82, 92 Guatemala, 38–40, 44, 51, 68, 76, 80, 94 Gur-Ze'ev, Ilan, 16, 64 Guterres, António, 76, 77

### **H**

Haiti, 2, 80 Hansen, Hans, 7, 39, 41, 47, 48, 65 Hantzopoulos, Maria, 21–23 Harassment, 27 prevention of, 27 Harris, Ian, 17 Hatreds, 14, 44, 50, 93 inherited, 47, 56, 65 Healing collective, 46 individual, 46 power, 41, 74 Higher education, 3–6, 9, 14, 23, 25, 26, 28, 70 establishments, 5 institutes, 5, 6, 23, 25, 26, 28 Historical clarification, 39, 40, 51, 53, 57, 74 evidence, 41, 44 inquiry, 42 knowledge, 43 memory, 6–10, 27, 29, 39–41, 45–51, 53–57, 64–75, 83, 84, 86, 91–96 work, 7–9, 40, 41, 45–49, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 65–67, 71–74, 93, 94, 96 Historical memory integrative and plural, 56

oriented peace education, 7, 8, 10, 20, 29, 64–68, 72, 74, 83, 84, 92, 94, 96 recovery and preservation, 6, 7, 29, 40, 45–47, 50 Historical Memory Group (GMH), 8, 49, 51–53, 56, 57, 72, 73 History academic, 42, 44, 45 canonical versions of, 47, 65 national, 47 Hobsbawm, Eric, 42, 45 Holocaust, 69 Homogeneity, 22 Human rights, 15, 20, 22–24, 26, 27, 38, 48–53, 55, 70, 71, 76–78, 80, 84 violations, 38, 48, 50–53, 71, 84

### **I**

Identity collective, 8, 42 formation, 42 group-based, 73 individual, 42 new, 8, 47, 65, 84, 94 Ilcan, Susan, 21, 22 Inclusion, 55, 84 social, 28 Incompatibilities, 2 Individual, 5–8, 14, 16–25, 41–43, 45–47, 52, 64–68, 72, 75, 76, 80–86, 92–94, 96, 97 Inequality, 18, 22, 24, 64, 77, 92 Injustice, 8, 23, 40, 41, 47, 48, 52, 67–69, 71, 72, 74, 75, 85, 92–94, 96 Institute for Economics & Peace, 14, 95 Institutional fragility, 77 Institutions, 4, 5, 70, 76, 78, 79 social, 41, 76, 79

International Crisis Group, 2, 50, 51, 66, 80 International Humanitarian Law, 55 infractions, 55 International Organisation for Migration (OIM), 56 International Peace Institute, 78, 79 International Relations, 2, 15 Iraq, 81 Israel-Palestine, 44

### **J**

Jaeger, Uli, 14, 16, 19 Jellinek, Georg, 3 Justice, 15, 24, 27, 44, 50, 51, 54, 76, 79, 85 restorative, 7, 40 social, 5, 20, 85 Justice and Peace Law, 26

#### **K**

Ki-Moon, Ban, 76 Kosovo, 2

#### **L**

Leaders, 54, 95 social and civic, 4 Learners, 3, 4, 6, 8, 18, 21, 22, 25, 29, 64, 67, 68, 72, 74, 83–85, 92, 94, 96 Learning, 14, 15, 19, 23, 25, 27, 66–68, 70, 72, 74, 84, 95, 96 participatory, 21 Lederach, John Paul, 3, 81, 83 Legislative assembly, 39 El Salvador, 39 Legitimacy, 4, 40, 53, 55, 76, 95 Liberties, 3, 5, 69, 80 Life, 3, 18, 19, 27, 50, 56, 70, 81, 95 right to, 45

#### **M**

Mac Ginty, Roger, 4 Maduro, Nicolás, 3 Mainstreaming, 78 Mali, 81 Manichean, 39, 47, 56, 65 Manipulation, 44 ideological, 44 political, 44 Manojlovic, Borislava, 47, 48, 68, 73 Marginalisation, 70 Mediation, 54, 79 Memory agonistic, 41 antagonistic, 41, 65 battle for, 55 collective, 7, 43–45, 52 cult of, 47 cultural, 43 dangerous, 73, 74 historical, 6–10, 27, 29, 39–41, 45–51, 53–57, 64–75, 83, 84, 86, 91–96 individual, 7, 43, 52 narrative, 9, 41, 73, 74 of and for the perpetrators and of and for the victims, 56 sceptics, 43, 44 social, 27, 54 studies, 43, 93 toxic, 56 Military, 38, 44, 46, 54–57, 71, 73, 81 officers, 55 Mission of the United Nations in El Salvador (MINUSAL), 38, 39 Mnemonic subject, 43 Moral agency, 68 dilemmas, 27, 29 imagination, 3 principle, 71

Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), 53

### **N**

Narrative contested, 22, 73, 74 historical, 21, 52, 53 homogenising, 49, 73 of the armed conflict, 39 oral, 8, 66, 73 personal, 66, 71 National Centre for Historical Memory (CNMH), 8, 46, 47, 49, 51–57, 66, 68, 72, 73 ¡Basta Ya! Colombia: memorias de guerra y dignidad, 52 National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR), 49, 51 National Liberation Army (ELN), 50, 51 National ownership, 78 National Vocational Training Service (SENA), 26 Natural resources, 27, 77 Nazi regime, 69 Nigeria, 2, 76 Norms, 4 cultural, 18 Northern Ireland, 44

### **O**

Omission, 55 acts of, 55 Opportunism, 4 Oppressed, 7, 64, 83, 93, 94 Oral histories, 22, 71, 72, 74, 93, 94 Organised crime, 4, 77 Ortega, Pilar, 23, 29 Ostracism, 70

### **P**

Palacios, Marco, 4 Paradox, 46, 65, 86 Paramilitary, 50, 54, 71 Paris Agreement on climate change, 75 Participation, 9, 14, 28, 66, 84 Past, the, 5, 6, 21, 26, 39–43, 45, 47–49, 67, 69, 70, 72, 96 Paulson, Julia, 40 Peace accord, 4, 25, 27, 56, 57, 77, 82 intrinsic properties of, 82 liberal, 78, 79 negative, 2, 14, 95 pedagogy, 18, 95 positive, 8, 14, 74 research, 9, 14, 20, 21 sustainable, 9, 48 Peaceableness, 75 Peacebuilding, 5–7, 26, 75–83, 93 conventional, 7, 78, 83, 93 liberal, 78–80 Peace education, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, 16–29, 64–68, 71–73, 83–86, 92–97 conventional approaches to, schools of, 16 critical approaches to, schools of, 6, 8, 9, 20, 24, 25, 29, 64, 72, 85, 92 Peacelessness, 15, 24, 29, 82, 96 organised, 20, 23, 85 Pedagogy, 21, 24–26 critical, 73 of resistance, 22 Perpetrator, 40, 54 Personality, 17 human, 17 Peru, 19, 39, 40, 44, 51 Phillips, Lynne, 21 Pilar, Ortega, 28

Plurality, 14, 27, 68 Polarisation, 18, 55, 68 Policy paradox, 49, 50 Political institutions, 49 legitimate, 49 Political participation, 27 Political regime, 44 Political science, 5, 20 Political transition, 40 Politics, 22, 44, 47, 77, 79 of exclusion, 77 Popkin, Margaret, 40 Poverty, 77 Power, 7, 16, 22, 51, 56, 64, 65, 70, 71, 74, 79, 80, 85, 93 relationships, 24, 64, 83, 92, 94 Practice, 3, 6, 8, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 28, 45, 50, 53, 64, 73, 76, 83, 85, 92, 95 Present, the, 8, 42, 43, 45, 47, 66, 69, 75, 78 Pugh, Michael, 78, 80, 81

### **R**

Reality's normative power, 3, 96 Reciprocity, 16, 22, 64 Reconciliation, 7, 8, 17, 18, 25, 26, 40, 45, 48–50, 65, 72, 79, 84, 92, 94, 95 theory, 17 Redress, 44 Reflection, 27, 28, 40, 49, 69 critical, 29, 95 Reflexive praxis, 96 Regret, 49 Relationships, 3, 6, 8, 41–43, 46, 47, 50, 54, 65, 79, 82, 84, 85, 92, 94, 96 constructive, 83, 96 trusting, 80, 81, 86 Religion, 22

Remembering, 8, 42, 43, 71, 72, 74, 75, 93, 94 historical, 48 Remembrance, 42, 43, 56, 69, 70, 72 Reparation, 7, 40, 50, 51, 54, 56 Repentance, 54 Representation, 19, 43, 45 subjective, 43 Research, 5, 9, 10, 14, 22, 23, 43, 51–54, 57, 72, 83, 92, 95, 96 Resilience, 8, 76, 78, 79, 85, 86, 94, 96 Responsibility, 3, 53, 74, 79 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 2, 4, 25, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 95 Riaño, Pilar, 49, 51–54, 57, 73 Rieff, David, 43, 44 Rule, 48, 71, 80, 81 authoritarian, 7 democratic, 44

### **S**

Salomon, Gavriel, 14, 16, 18, 23 Sánchez, Gonzalo, 44, 47, 49, 52, 56, 65, 73 San Salvador, 38 Santa Fé de Ralito, 50 Santos, Juan Manuel, 2, 4, 5, 25–28, 55–57, 73 Schools, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22–27, 40, 64, 67, 69, 92, 94, 95 Schultze-Kraft, Markus, 4, 38, 46, 50, 57, 71, 72, 74 Security, 3, 21, 22, 46, 55, 56, 66, 76, 77, 79, 81, 84 Sevilla Manifesto, 19 Socialisation, 17, 18, 25 theory, 17 Social sciences, 3, 20, 21 Sociology, 20

Solidarity, 22 South Africa, 40, 44, 51 Soviet Union, 78 State, 2–4, 7, 14, 19, 22, 27, 38, 40, 41, 44, 49–51, 53, 55, 57, 69, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 82, 94, 95 State crime, 39, 74 Structures, 9, 21–23, 79 institutional, 23, 64, 67, 75, 92 social, 6, 20, 96 Students university, 3, 69 Suffering, 8, 39, 40, 44, 46, 47, 54, 69, 70, 84, 93, 94 Survival, 45, 71 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 6, 19, 28, 75, 76, 84, 92, 94, 97 Sustaining peace, 7–10, 57, 66, 76–81, 83, 85, 86, 92, 93, 95, 97 agenda, 6–8, 10, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 92, 93

### **T**

Tautology, 46, 65 Teachers, 2, 4, 8, 9, 25, 45, 66–69, 74, 75, 83, 85, 94, 96 Theory of change, 24, 25, 72 Transformation, 3, 83 collective, 23 institutional, 7, 23, 65 social, 24, 25, 64, 72, 83, 85, 92, 94 Transitional justice, 40, 49, 51, 54, 55 trials, 54 Trauma historical, 47 intergenerational transmission of, 48, 65 mass, 51

Truth alt, 45 historical, 39, 40 objective, 42 Truth Commission, 7, 38–40, 51 El Salvador, 39

### **U**

United Nations (UN), 6, 38, 75, 76 United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, 39 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 19, 20, 26, 28, 85 culture of peace programme, 19 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), 3, 19, 75–78, 82, 84 United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), 38 United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), 76, 77 United Nations Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), 76, 77 United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), 76, 77 United Nations Security Council (UNSC), 76, 77 United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), 50 United States of America, 39, 74 University, 2–6, 9, 25–28, 66, 69, 70, 74, 85, 92 Uribe, Álvaro, 49–54, 57 Uribe, María Victoria, 51, 73

### **V**

Values, 5–7, 15–21, 24–26, 46, 68, 72, 75, 82, 83, 85, 93, 95, 96 universal, 15, 83, 94 Venezuela, 3, 39, 80 Vengeance, 44

Victims, 26, 40, 51, 53–55, 71 association, 71 narratives, 51, 73, 93 reparation, 7, 40 right to truth, justice and reparation, 50 testimonies, 51 Violence cultural, 4, 14, 22, 23, 69, 80, 82, 86, 94, 96 direct, 14 structural, 14, 20, 22, 85 survivors of, 65, 70, 71, 74 Voice, 39, 44, 51, 53, 55–57, 73, 93 Voluntary confessions, 54

#### **W**

War, 8, 15, 16, 19, 20, 38, 40, 44, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 69, 82, 85

War-to-peace transition, 7, 9 Wealth cultural, 27 natural, 27, 29 Webel, Charles, 15 Western Balkans, 3 West-Germany, 69 Wills, María Emma, 54–56 World Bank, 76, 77 Worldview, 18 Wulf, Christoph, 20, 23, 85

### **Z**

Zembylas, Michalinos, 43, 44, 47, 48, 72–74 Zwick, Elisabeth, 17, 18, 21