The Fletcher School

International peace building practitioner and scholar, Hizkias Assefa spoke before a standing room only crowd in the Murrow Room at the Fletcher School, Wednesday October 12. Introduced by Professor Eileen Babbitt of the Fletcher School, Professor Assefa spoke for about an hour and a half about the complex processes of reconciliation and peace building to students studying human rights and conflict resolution.

Citing his personal experience as a crisis negotiator for the ethnic conflicts in Rwanda, Nigeria and Guatemala, the soft-spoken, thoughtful professor, described the complexities of each conflict and the eventual, and often painful process of peace and reconciliation that continue in each country. He emphasized that the peace process is just that, a process that shouldn’t be rushed. “Slow maturation of the process is critical,” he said adding, “As bleak as the world is, fearful and unjust relationships can be transformed. People’s thoughts and actions do change. With sustained effort we can help arrive at mutually beneficial relationships for parties.”

Eritrean by birth, Professor Assefa was deeply troubled by the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Deeply wanting to make a difference, he forever found himself trying to make peace between his friends of both countries. Educated as a lawyer in Ethiopia, he found himself at odds with the “zero-sum,” “win-lose” adversarial relationships traditionally found in the justice system. Thinking there must be another way to solve conflict, he studied economics and international relations before he finding his way to the study of conflict resolution. Eventually he founded the African Peacebuilding and Reconciliation Network in Nairobi, Kenya. He believes that his multiple disciplines have been an advantage and describes his work as “an interface” between those disciplines. Since becoming a practitioner, Professor Assefa has engaged in track two diplomacy in Sierra Leone, Afgahanistan, Colombia and many other regions around the world.

Following his speech, the professor took questions. Inevitably, there were questions about the viability of lasting peace given the realities of intractable conflict. Though he agrees that human rights violations cannot be ignored, Professor Assefa remains optimistic about the core nature of humanity. He also insists that the will of the people to seek peace is overwhelming even in the face of incredible odds. “Belief in the possibility of peace is incredibly powerful,” said Professor Assefa, emphasizing several times how important it is for people in conflict to invest in the idea that reconciliation was a possible outcome.

When asked what is meant by the “reconciliation process,” he responded by saying that in each conflict, the participants must consider two questions: How do we make sense of the past? And how do we define a the future? When all sides in the conflict want to start to look at these questions, conflict negotiators like Professor Assefa are ready to assist.

Professor Assefa’s talk was the first in a series hosted by Fletcher’s Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR. The CHRCR was established at The Fletcher School in 2000 to promote active collaboration and exchange among academics and practitioners working in the fields of human rights and conflict resolution. For more information on activities at the Center, please see: http://www.chrcr.org.

Article by Deborah Jones, MALD '06