Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace

Category: psychosocial-healing

Is the provision of psychological and social resources to a person and/or a society where social relationships promote health and well-being and help to overcome trauma brought about by disaster, war, catastrophe or violence and/or to foster resilience of communities and individuals. It aims at easing resumption of normal life, facilitating affected people’s participation to their convalescence and preventing pathological consequences of potentially traumatic situations.

  • Hijas de la Paz Project in Amanecer, Colombia

    Hijas de la Paz Project in Amanecer, Colombia

    Daughters of Peace in Colombia or the Hijas de la Paz Project that has provided psychosocial processes of healing, training in vocational skills, peace circles, and human-centred education. The nurturing has enabled vulnerable young women to experience their intrinsic value as persons. From a place of deep quiet, they learned to become future leaders and peacemakers.

    On Sunday the 15th August, the Project Hijas de la Paz was inaugurated in Amanecer, Colombia, with a ceremony that included the local Mayor and other local dignitaries and the chairperson of Subud Colombia.

    HIjaz de la Paz

    45 young women took part in a four-month residential programme, most of who are from indigenous and Afro-communities who are living in terrible conditions of poverty and violence. 11 children who came with the young women joined Amanecer Kindergarten and received International Child Development Project (ICDP) support.

    The entire community was involved and provided 900 hours of training and formation. There were 16 tutors on the Programme (academic, personal, entrepreneurial, cooking, gardening), and 10 of them are residents of Amanecer. Subud members acted as ‘helpers’ to the participants, supporting them in processing and addressing the deep traumas.

    The Hijas de la Paz Project has enabled these vulnerable young women to feel their intrinsic value as persons, and from a place of deep quiet, they learned and worked harmoniously with a community of mentors. This is how they can be nurtured into future leaders and peacemakers.

    HIjaz de la Paz
  • Addressing the legacy of Trans-Atlantic Slavery. Approaches and Practices.

    Addressing the legacy of Trans-Atlantic Slavery. Approaches and Practices.

    Presentation launch and webinar on the legacy of slavery, trans-generational trauma and collective healing, May 2021

    At this exciting international event, the UNESCO Slave Route Project and the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace Research Institute (GHFP) will bring together high-profile speakers and artists to launch “Healing the Wounds of Trans-Atlantic Slavery: Approaches and Practices: A Desk Review.”

    This timely Report draws together the perspectives of researchers and practitioners, to map major approaches and practices to addressing the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery. It is the fruit of collaboration between an international team of researchers and practitioners, under the guidance of the UNESCO Slave Route Project and the GHFP Research Institute. The Report highlights the imperative to embark on a collective journey towards healing transgenerational trauma and the importance of systemic transformation.

    Formally launching and disseminating this Report is an active response to UNESCO’s Global Call against racism. It will inspire the world to learn from the histories of slavery, acknowledge the harms of structural injustice and institutional racism, and promote inclusion, pluralism and intercultural dialogue.

    unesco with ghfp launch collective-healing 2021

    Ms Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, and Mr Sharif Istvan Horthy, Chairman of the GHFP Research Institute, will take advantage of this presentation to announce a broader collaborative project entitled “Educational Transformation and Collective Healing: Addressing the Traumas and Legacy of Slavery”. This ambitious initiative will nurture youth leadership capacities so that young people can implement a racial healing programme for building just communities and initiate policy changes to address structural dehumanisation.

    panel for unesco launch of collective-healing initiative on the 26th may 2021

    Following the official presentation, an international panel of historians of slavery, scholars in race studies, and experts in racial healing — Paul Lovejoy, Myriam Cottias, Achille Mbembe, Walter Mignolo and Joy DeGruy — will discuss the key insights of the Report, including the psycho-social legacy of slave trade and slavery. They will also explore practical steps along the pathways that the UNESCO Slave Route Project and the GHFP partnership can take to empower and engage global communities and public institutions in collective healing.

    unesco launch of collective-healing marcus-miller ray-lema 26th-May-2021

    The launch will conclude with an inspiring dialogue between two living legends — Marcus Miller, UNESCO Slave Route Project Spokesperson and African-American musician and composer, and Ray Lema, the Congolese musician and composer — about the power of music for healing and cultural transformation.

    Report
    ↗ Healing the Wounds of Slavery — UNESCO/GHFP Report (PDF)
    UNESCO context
    UNESCO Slave Route Project UNESCO Global Call against racism
    Initiative
    Educational Transformation & Collective Healing
    Panel — historians, scholars & practitioners
    Paul Lovejoy Myriam Cottias Achille Mbembe Walter Mignolo Joy DeGruy
    Musicians
    Marcus Miller Ray Lema
  • Trustbuilding and Collective-Healing

    Trustbuilding and Collective-Healing

    International Seminar on trust-building and Collective Healing, 30th October 2019, London

    Hosted by Initiatives of Change trust-building Programme in partnership with the GHFP Research Institute, this international seminar offered a unique opportunity to meet, share and discuss the process of building trust.

    At a time of increasing fragmentation, trust is diminishing around the world. Communities face racial, ethnic and religious divides, intergenerational conflict, and the rise of extremist attitudes, as well as social divisions and the legacy of war. The Seminar poses a critical question: “How can we address these challenges?”

    Among the discussants was Letlapa Mphahlele, commander of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army during apartheid times. His anger was such that he ordered retaliatory massacres of white civilians. After a radical transformation he now sees the whole of humanity as ‘my people’. Letlapa, who, until 2013, was President of the Pan Africanist Congress and a Member of the South African Parliament, is a protagonist in the award-winning film, Beyond Forgiving, which depicts a profound story of tragedy, forgiveness and hope.

    IofC Trustbuilding Program —>

  • 5-step-peace-process

    5-step-peace-process

    The following 5-step towards peace process has been developed by Alexandra Asseily.

    Step One: Taking Responsibility
    The first step is to take responsibility for one’s own part in any conflict, imbalance, tension, grievance or problem with courage, honesty, and humility, even if one does not feel personally involved in conflict.

    Step Two: Asking and Reflecting
    The second step is to ask a number of questions, examples are given in ‘my responsibility for peace’.

    Step Three: Releasing, surrendering and forgiving
    The third step is to understand the power of forgiveness and compassion. By understanding and allowing for forgiveness of oneself and others, including our ancestors and our collective past, we can let go of guilt, shame and fear. We then no longer need to uphold the same grievances from one generation to another. As we forgive others, we forgive ourselves and vice-versa.

    Step Four: To understand our authentic selves
    The fourth step is to understand the changes we can make in order and speak with our ‘inner’ cohesive authority and thereby helping us to promote harmony and peace in the world.

    Step Five: Sharing
    The fifth step is to go out and share this healing process with others.

    This process in practice can transform ourselves, others and our communities.

  • Hungarian Life Histories Research

    Hungarian Life Histories Research

    Recognising the urgency of the fact that that unless historical traumas are processed and healed by one generation, they are passed on to the next, and realising that 20th century ideologies in Hungary have shaped individuals’ life paths and that political conflicts have prepared the ground for continuing violence by representing the ‘other’ as less than human, the GHFP has embarked on a research project that aims to get behind the ideological masks of people and restore their human faces.

    Overseen by the Sharif Istvan Horthy, the research seeks to construct a space for telling and listening to life stories of ordinary Hungarian people who come from different backgrounds and generations. This life history and narrative process is intended to help unfold how Hungarians see themselves and their recent collective past, and what being Hungarian means to them in the 21st Century.

    This life history project is itself an action research. It aims to reflect on the narrative processes and the participants’ experiences of change in their perception of self-identity, their stories and the ways they see others and the socio-economic and political situations in Hungary. In this way, the research methodology, especially through non-judgmental and open listening, seems to have enabled the participants to discover the underlying causes of current (social and political) attitudes. Whilst encouraging the participants to narrate their own lives and listen and attend to the stories of others, this action research is offering an opportunity for the community to re-vision Hungary’s social future. Those individuals who took part in the research project have acknowledged being able to see a close connection between retelling and sharing personal experiences and perspectives, and reconciling these with past traumas and the ways in which they can move forward in life and work.

  • Peacebuilding Group Identity Conflict, Seminar 2014

    Peacebuilding Group Identity Conflict, Seminar 2014

    The aim of this seminar entitled ‘Memory, Trauma and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding’ was to explore the healing of traumatic memories in post-conflict recovery, reconstruction and peacebuilding.

    Our invited key speaker, Professor Vamik Volkan, drew on his nearly 40 years’ experiences in the field of international relations and peace-related diplomacy and investigate the inextricable links between large group identity, conflict and dehumanisation of the other. Vamik analysed the formation large group identities, the shared traumas of mass violence and the societal/political consequences of such atrocities. He also examined the need to interrupt the trans-generational transmissions of trauma by healing past memories, as well as the imperative to develop psychoanalytically informed diplomatic strategies for dealing with associated peacebuilding challenges.

    For discussion, we critically engaged with these topics, and examined how to remove the ‘sting’ in individuals’ memories of trauma so that they no longer serve as an impetus for continued violence.

    Here are some of the questions that the seminar set out to explore:

    • What are the effective approaches to enable individuals and groups to break away from the hold of traumatic memories?
    • What kind of structural processes must be in place in order to engage in healing of memories?
    • How can individuals have healthier conceptions of their group identities that do not involve making potential enemies of the other?

    Professor Vamik Volkan is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine; an emeritus training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; and the Senior Erik Erikson Scholar at the Erikson Institute for Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Amongst his many posts, Vamik also headed an interdisciplinary team and conducted years-long unofficial diplomatic dialogues between Arabs and Israelis, Americans and Soviets, Russians and Estonians, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, Georgians and South Ossetians, Turks and Greeks and studied post-revolution or post-war societies such as Albania after the dictator Enver Hodxa was gone and Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion was over. After September 11, 2001 he was a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association’s (IPA’s) Terror and Terrorism Study Group.

    The Seminar’s discussant was Professor Nigel Young who has been active in transnational peace activity for at least a half century. He is presently Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Oxford International Encyclopaedia of World Peace’ (a four-volume reference work). He is active in the Balkans Peace Park Project, UK (B3P). He has authored numerous publications including six books (two co-authored), and edited or co-edited others. A co-founder of the first Peace Studies department in Britain (Bradford, 1973/4), he was also the first endowed Peace Studies Chair-holder in the USA. As Professor of Peace Studies he was director of one of the earliest university Peace Studies Programs in North America (Colgate University, New York 1984-2004) where he retains the title of Research Professor. Professor Young has held academic positions in sociology, politics and peace studies, at over a dozen universities and colleges worldwide, and was a Senior Peace Research fellow in Oslo, Norway (1981-84). He is currently working on books on Historical Memory as related to peace, and the community basis of resistance. In 20l2 he received the Dayton Peace Prize for outstanding scholarly achievement.

    Seminar attendee Biographies

    Prof Volkan is Founder of the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI) which aims to facilitate dialogue between representatives from various large groups, states and cultures for the purpose of learning about differences in perspective and finding peaceful solutions to inter-group relationship problems.

    International Seminar on Memory, Trauma and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding
     4th April 2014
    Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace,
    Brighton. UK.

  • Healing, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Seminar 2013

    Healing, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, Seminar 2013

    25th October 2013.
    Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace,

    Healing, Forgiveness, Reconciliation. These concepts are often used interchangeably in discussions, for example about post-conflict peacebuilding. The distinctions between the terms is not clear by nuance, how they relate to each-other, and how such relationships are played out in the dynamic of interventions towards peace. It is therefore necessary to develop an appropriate clarity of understanding of these terms to help shape our work in fostering harmonious relationships and in analysing the task of rebuilding communities in divided societies.

    Furthermore, for peace-building processes aimed at healing, forgiveness and reconciliation, there may be a whole range of contiguous analytical factors to identify and understand.  For instance, in looking at the nature and roots of conflict, it is necessary to acquire a workable comprehension of the local cultural norms, power relationships, historical narratives and memories, politics, social policy, and religious and spiritual practices. All these invariably affect the individual and large group identities, which could further determine people’s perceptions of and attitudes towards the other, and the ways they related to each other in post-conflict societies.

    Additionally, the dimensions of moral and ethical principles must also be considered in framing any emergent culture of peace, and in working towards underpinning relation-formation within the society, including the perennial tension between justice, forgiveness and reconciliation. So, showing with clarity how all these factors are interrelated can help us to determine actions and interventions aimed at healing, forgiveness and reconciliation.

    There is, moreover, a wide diversity of perspectives and disciplines from which and through which a professional practitioner on the ground could approach post-conflict situations. These can be simultaneously psychological, therapeutic, socio-political, educational, communal, theological, spiritual, legalistic, or rights-based. These all require deliberation, contextual understanding and professionalism.

    While such terminological and analytical complexity may fascinate us, it can also serve to obscure our ideas in theory and our practice. The complexity challenges us to reach for more profound insights into post-conflict peace processes and to work on developing deeper understanding to guide our practice.

    For over a decade, the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace (GHFP) has been exploring some key concepts in peacebuilding, including those mentioned above. Throughout, for example, our ‘Garden of Forgiveness’ project, the ‘Healing the Wounds of History’ programmes, as well as the narrative strands in our work, we have been concerned with seeking new understanding and clarification. We would like, at this time, to explore these notions through discussion with distinguished colleagues.

    So the two-fold aim of the seminar was:

    • To develop a shared understanding and observation of these concepts.
    • To explore how this understanding can be translated into practices and actions on the ground, and what challenges and opportunities are involved.

    Questions explored:

    • Why are these three concepts important in post-conflict peace-building? Does one need to come first before the others can follow?
    • What kind of intervention work well and what doesn’t with a focus on healing, forgiveness and reconciliation help transform conflict and develop trusting relationships amongst individuals and communities?
    • Are there ways in which the same transformation could take place in a conflict situation before violence breaks out?
    • What shared understanding do we have of the three concepts for post-conflict reconstruction, and peacebuilding in general?

    It is very unusual for a national government to initiate a nationwide campaign aimed at reconciliation, so the nearly twenty years of accumulated experience of the Rwanda National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) is unique and has a global importance. This is why we have invited Dr Jean Baptiste Habyalimana to give the opening presentation. At the same time, we hope that Jean Baptiste’s reflection on the Rwandan journeys could also provide a nudge to help us expand our thinking and to initiate a conversation around the key questions.

    Seminar Notes —>
  • Rwanda HWH Conference 2012

    Rwanda HWH Conference 2012

    International Workshops on ‘HEALING THE WOUNDS OF HISTORY: ADDRESSING THE ROOTS OF VIOLENCE’ were proposed jointly by the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission and the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, in collaboration with the Mizero Foundation and the Rwandan Professional Dreamers, and with support from the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide and the National University of Rwanda.

    It was held at Hotel Rwanda in Kigali on June 13-14 2012. The event was opened by Bishop Dr John Rucyahana, the President of Rwanda National Unity & Reconciliation Commission.

    The main aim of the event was to explore the psychological roots of violence in recent Rwanda, and to identify new modalities of healing, reconciliation and forgiveness, between both individuals and groups.

    To learn more about the conference, please visit the official Healing the Wounds of History RWANDA page.

    Healing the Wounds of History RWANDA

  • Lebanon HWH Conference 2011

    Lebanon HWH Conference 2011

    Healing the Wounds of History conference 2011 was the major launch event for an initiative exploring innovative psycho-social approaches to addressing the deeper roots of violence. The goal was to establish constructive relations between the people and communities in present-day Lebanon.

    Review

    Official Website Facebook — @hwharv Concept Paper (PDF) Keynote Address Summary (PDF) Keynote Presentation (PDF)

    HWH Website, HWHARV Facebook page. Concept Paper and Summary of the Keynote Address also the Power Point Presentation given by Professor Vamik Volkan.

    The Conference

    Under the High Patronage of His Excellency, the President of the Council of Ministers, Mr Najib Mikati, the Centre for Lebanese Studies and the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace, in partnership with the Institute of Diplomacy and Conflict Transformation, organised the International Conference on ‘Healing the Wounds of History: Addressing the Roots of Violence’. The Conference was hosted by the Lebanese American University on 11th to 13th November 2011 at its’ campus situated in the beautiful ancient city of Byblos, Lebanon.

    focus
    to raise awareness about the need to resolve historical grievances as a step towards social harmony in Lebanon and beyond

    resource
    to help people learn more about the diverse approaches to addressing the roots of conflict and cycles of violence in our society

    vision
    to catalyze a process that will implement the key insights and methods from the Conference through a series of nationwide projects that touch all communities