Author: Eugenia

Barcelona, 16 September 2021.- On Thursday afternoon, ICIP president and director, Xavier Masllorens and Kristian Herbolzheimer respectively, appeared before the Committee on External Action, Transparency and Cooperation of the Parliament of Catalonia to present the institution’s activity reports for the years 2019 and 2020.

In his speech, the president highlighted ICIP’s distinctive profile, “with a clear and defined identity,” as well as its commitment to internationalization and collaboration with other institutes and organizations, despite the global pandemic situation. “ICIP has reacted very well to the new socialization and has maintained or increased some of its most important actions,” said Masllorens. The celebration of the First International Forum for Peacebuilding in Mexico, the collaboration agreement with the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence and Reconciliation of Colombia and the second survey on coexistence and polarization in Catalonia are among the most noteworthy of these accomplishments.

The independence of ICIP: an indispensable condition

For his part, ICIP director Kristian Herbolzheimer defended the independence of the Institute, “an indispensable condition” to carry out the mandate established by law (which implies the creation of synergies between different actors and movements) and provide answers to a changing world. “The nature of conflicts is changing and from the field of peacebuilding we must reinvent and update our agenda to adapt it to the challenges of the 21^st century,” said Herbolzheimer. In this regard, the ICIP director highlighted the celebration of the World Peace Congress that will take place in Barcelona from 15-17 October and announced the intention to work towards a Catalan Peace Congress, which would allow us to bring the agendas of the different social movements up to date and face future challenges, such as the security model debate.

The ICIP director also highlighted the institution’s work in favor of social cohesion in Catalonia and its commitment to dialogue as the way to transform any conflict. “The art of building peace is to make possible what seems impossible and unimaginable,” he said.

The activity presented by ICIP in the annual reports corresponding to the years 2019 and 2020 received almost unanimous support from the spokespersons of the various parliamentary groups. In their speeches, PSC, ERC, Junts per Catalunya, CUP, En Comú Podem, Ciutadans and the Mixed Group expressed their gratitude for the work carried out by ICIP and highlighted its internationalization efforts and the extensive activity maintained at all times, even in the midst of a pandemic, during which the institution has been able to adapt to a virtual format.

ICIP was created by the Parliament of Catalonia in 2007 with the aim of promoting a culture of peace both in Catalan society and internationally, and to ensure that Catalonia plays an active role as an agent of peace in the world.  ICIP is an autonomous organization with its own legal personality.  It serves public administrations, academia and civil society, and reports to Parliament, the Government and the general public.

The International Peace Bureau and the ICIP are the Second World Peace Congress organisers. The event will be held in Barcelona from 15 to 17 October 2021.

Under the title “(Re) imagine Our World. Action for Peace and Justice”, participants from 40 countries will attend this event with face-to-face activities, conferences and workshops, most of which will take place at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB).

The conference will have a hybrid format, and many of the activities will also be available online. The main goal of the congress is to invigorate international pacifism, be a meeting point for different actors, redefine action for peace, and, as the motto of the congress says, reimagine the world through the prism of a culture of peace.

At the same time, the event seeks to foster synergies between organizations and individuals and between interconnected social movements fighting for global justice: peace and disarmament advocates, feminist and LGBTQIA+ campaigners, ecologists and climate activists, antiracists and indigenous people, human rights defenders and trade unionists.

More than 30 speakers

During the three days of the congress, there will be talks and lectures by more than thirty speakers. Featured names include Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Jody Williams, Martin Chungong, Wada Masako and Beatrice Fihn.

There will also be different workshops on ‘Peace Economics’, ‘Peace Accords to End Wars’, ‘Nonviolent Journalism for Peace’ or ‘Peace, Racism and Migration’.

The main organizer of the congress is the IPB, an entity that has its headquarters in Berlin and has offices in Barcelona and Geneva.

The office in the Catalan capital has been operating for four years, and from there, the Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS) is managed in collaboration with Centre Delàs.

The IPB has a network of 400 members, and the Centre Delàs is part of the board of directors. In Catalonia, in addition to the Centre Delàs, other entities form part of the IPB: Justícia i Pau, Fundipau, Unipau, Escola de Cultura de Pau i Fundació Carta de la Pau dirigida a l’ONU.

The first peace congress in history was held in 1843 in London, then in Paris in 1889 and Rome in 1891 when the IPB was created.

In 2016, these world congresses were restarted with the idea of putting global disarmament on the agenda. This first congress of the new stage was held in Berlin, and the one in Barcelona will be the continuation.

Equality and care are among ICIP’s intrinsic values, and a gender perspective is a cross-cutting tool that guides the institution’s action throughout its various action lines. That is why ICIP has also decided to create its first Gender Equality Plan (available in Catalan), developed in a participatory manner by the fifteen people who make up the staff.

The plan will be valid until 2025 and has been designed with the following objectives:

• To ensure effective equal opportunities for ICIPemployees;
• To promote the integration of the gender perspective into ICIP’s organizational culture and management;
• To promote the values of gender equality, inclusiveness and respect for plurality among the staff and with external companies and individuals with whom ICIP works.

Methodology used

The elaboration of the ICIP Equality Plan has been carried out following the methodology proposed by the Directorate-General of Equality of the Department of Labor, Social Affairs and Families of the Government of Catalonia, and considering current regulations at the state regional level.

The plan has been elaborated based on the diagnosis carried out between October 2020 and February 2021 and considered current regulations regarding equal opportunities between women and men in the workplace and equality plans. It includes a total of 32 measures covering ten thematic areas.

To implement the plan, a negotiating committee has been set up, consisting of a representative of the institution, the employees’ representative and two additional members, with secretarial and coordinating roles, who are experts in inequality issues.

The ICIP Gender Equality Plan applies to anyone who works at ICIP: employees, regardless of their relationship with the organization, the members of the Governing Board, students doing internships at the institution and also third parties that provide services to ICIP, either through a contract awarded to them or through the company that they work for.

Citizen marches, homicides and disappearances, plus political tension, reveal the new dimension of the conflict in Colombia: a conflict about change, where diverse demands and expectations converge and clash with the establishment that resists change.

The 2016 Peace Agreement between the government and the FARC rebel group is a key reference point for this dispute.  Unlike agreements elsewhere in the world, in Havana, no significant concessions were negotiated for the rebels, but rather the conditions to undertake structural reforms that were long delayed in the country, largely under the excuse of war.  In fact, once the FARC handed in their weapons and became involved in political life, the influence of the former guerrilla group became marginal.  Thus, the myths created by those opposed to the agreement about the threat of Castro-Chavismo and the FARC as a Trojan horse that would lead the country to a left-wing authoritarian regime have collapsed.

The current conflict can also be analyzed from a global perspective, where the health, economic and ecological crises strain institutional capacities to offer solutions that benefit the population as a whole.  A citizenry that has lost hope in the progress of society and that suffers and despairs because of the growing gap between privileged minorities and excluded majorities.

Some sectors advocate profound transformations in our way of understanding the world and the role we human beings play in it and, consequently, push for new economic, social and cultural models.  Meanwhile, other sectors, reluctant to change, cling to the idea of a past in which order prevailed in the face of what they perceive as a future of chaos.

In a way, this conflict transcends the historical debates between right and left because there are progressive and conservative sectors in both groups.  And because, faced with the uncertainty of the future and the lack of economic and political references, political dogmas lose strength due to the rigidity of their analysis.

At this global crossroads there are two fundamental issues: the quality of democracy and public security policies.

Democratic culture and institutions are fundamental to channel the social and political conflicts inherent to the human condition.  But they can only perform this function if the public trusts them.  This trust is undermined in many countries because the institutions fail to respond to the needs of the majority and are perceived as instruments for consolidating the privileges of a few minorities.  In some countries, there are even doubts as to whether the state has become an instrument of organized crime.

In this context, the concept of security takes on special relevance: What do we understand by security?  Whose security and against what?  If the state does not allow different political proposals to be settled through democratic channels, the security forces become a protective arm of the status quo, whether in Venezuela, Hong Kong, the United States or Colombia.

Thus, what is happening in Colombia these days is the local expression of a broader phenomenon.  It is an outburst of exasperation by those who fear a darker future or who no longer have anything to lose.  It is also a new case of digital battles for the control of the narrative, where each side wields a video to reinforce their position and delegitimize that of the other, without taking into consideration the overall picture.

Five decades of armed conflict weigh heavily.  A Colombian political culture marked by violence has little tolerance and little experience in dealing with discrepancy and alternation of power.  Now that the war with the FARC is over, there is no reason why the country cannot face a brighter future and bring about an improvement in living conditions for the whole of society.

The country needs a new peace framework.  The 2016 agreement is a starting point that calls for new deliberations, at all levels, to identify and agree on a path towards a better future: one where peace does not germinate in furrows of pain – as the national anthem suggests – but as a result of collective and inclusive effort and commitment.

Kristian Herbolzheimer, director of the ICIP

May 12, 2021

Public security policies are being questioned locally and globally, from different contexts that present a diverse conflictology.  In countries with armed conflict, in countries with chronic violence and also in places where it could be said that there is no context of generalized violence, security is currently a much discussed and debated notion because the strategies deployed in its name are not effectively managing to deal with social conflicts or to prevent violences.  On the contrary, they often limit freedoms and the free exercise of human rights, reinforcing existing vulnerabilities or even generating new violent dynamics.

The classic approaches to security, of a state-centered and military nature, have been challenged by a plurality of schools and academic currents grouped under the name of “critical security studies” (feminist security, human security, green theory, securitization, emancipation, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and decoloniality…). 

In this context we detect two strategic challenges: the need to facilitate dialogue between different approaches to thinking when reflecting on a new security model and, at the same time, that these approaches be connected to specific practical experiences.

With the aim to face these challenges, the ICIP call for proposals for a report on the interaction between alternative approaches, both theoretical and practical, that are developed in response to the traditional security model.

Those interested in participating in the call must submit their proposals via email to smartinez@icip.cat, to the attention of Sandra Martínez, with “Security Report” in the subject line.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 26 May 2021.

ICIP, together with the Catalonia node in support of the Colombian Truth Commission, has initiated actions to recognize the victims of the Colombian conflict exiled in Catalonia on the part of various Catalan institutions and social actors. The process of recognition of the victims is one of the tasks carried out by ICIP as Technical Secretariat of the Colombian Truth Commission in Europe.

The first act of recognition took place on 16 April in Barcelona, in an event featuring the participation of the Commissioner of the Truth Commission, Carlos Martin Beristain. The event began with a dialogue between the Commissioner and victims of the conflict based on the book Una maleta colombiana (A Colombian Suitcase), a compilation of articles by Beristain that describe the experience of Colombian exile from different perspectives: refugees, asylum seekers, victims abroad and of cross-border displacement.

The Commissioner recognized the importance of all the victims who have contributed with their testimony to the task of clarifying the events that took place during the Colombian armed conflict. And he also recognized those who voluntarily support the work being carried out by the Commission in Catalonia.

Afterwards, during the event, several victims of the Colombian conflict living in Catalonia who have contributed their testimony to the Truth Commission shared with the Commissioner written, audiovisual and musical productions that reflect their experiences as victims in exile. This exercise of listening and recognition concluded with the performance of the Colombian singer-songwriter living in Catalonia, Marta Gómez, who sang two songs composed collectively by victims in exile.

The process of recognition

The process of recognition of the victims of the Colombian conflict in exile will include actions throughout Catalonia via institutional statements and resolutions by municipalities and social organizations involving a participatory process. The objectives are as follows:

• To raise awareness throughout Catalonia of the impact of the Colombian armed conflict and the migratory process of exiles

• To contribute to the respect and dignity of the victims who had to flee Colombia due to the armed conflict

• To strengthen the emotional, social and institutional links between exiles and host societies

• To promote the participation of victims in the task of clarification of the truth and non-repetition of the Colombian Truth Commission

More than 500,000 people have been forced to flee Colombia because of the armed conflict and they have settled in different countries. The Truth Commission aims to understand and explain the violence, recognize the victims and promote coexistence. The Commission carries out this task in Europe with ICIP assistance, based on the collaboration agreement between the two institutions, and with additional support from the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation and the Catalonia node in support of the Truth Commission.

The same week of the departure of our friend and mentor, Arcadi Oliveres, another great peacebuilder has left us: Jovan Divjak, the former general who defied the orders of the Serbian army and defended Sarajevo during the Balkan War.

It was precisely for his courage during the war and for his contribution, later on, to peacebuilding in the country, that Divjak was conferred the ICIP Peace in Progress Award 2013, which he received at a ceremony in the Parliament of Catalonia the following year.

The ICIP team and Governing Board regret this loss and express our sincere condolences to his family and friends.

From general to peacebuilder

Jovan Divjak was born in Belgrade in 1937 to parents originally from the Bosanska Krajina region of Bosnia. He studied at the Military Academy in Belgrade, the École d’État Major in Compiègne (France), the Cadet Academy in Belgrade and the School of War and Defense Planning, also in Belgrade. He was Commander of the Yugoslav People’s Army, first in the Mostar sector (1984-1989) and later in Sarajevo (1989-1991).

In the spring of 1992, at the outset of the siege of Sarajevo that would last until 1996, Divjak received orders from Belgrade to leave the city. He refused and left the Yugoslav People’s Army to serve as Commander of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in an act of disobedience and commitment to those who were under attack. From this new position, Divjak supervised and coordinated the defense of Sarajevo – a symbol of multiethnicity – against the attack of the Serbian troops, led by General Radovan Karadzic. Because of this courageous attitude, he was known as “the Serb who defended Sarajevo” (although he defined himself as a Bosnian born in Belgrade) and is considered a national hero in Bosnia.

Protection of the victims

In 1994, after retiring from the military, forced into the reserve by the Bosnian government, Divjak participated in the foundation of OGBH (“Education builds Bosnia and Herzegovina”), of which he was the executive director.  The association works to ensure the education of all children victims of the Bosnian War, regardless of their ethnicity, providing them with scholarships and material support.

Convinced of the importance of preserving coexistence in a multiethnic society, Jovan Divjak wanted to turn problems that, at first sight, seemed to be only ideological and political, into educational issues. That is why he was involved in the drive for a unified, but not uniform, education in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

From then on, Divjak made Sarajevo his home and fought for the reconstruction of the city and to create a future for children, whether Croats, Muslims or Serbs. For his work in the association, he received numerous local and international awards, including the Sixth of April Award of Sarajevo, the French Legion of Honor and the Humanist of the Year Award from the International League of Humanists.

The ICIP team and Governing Board express our most sincere condolences for the loss of our friend Arcadi Oliveres, mentor and undisputed leader for the entire pacifist movement in Catalonia.

Arcadi was with us from the establishment of ICIP in 2009. And even before then, since he was one of the promoters of the creation of the Institute. As a member of the first Governing Board, he was closely involved with ICIP, especially during the first years of our existence, to define the road map for the promotion of a culture of peace, in Catalonia and around the world.

Coherent, radical in ideas and approachable in manner, Arcadi was always a person of peace. He never said no and always defended all the causes he knew led to a greater humanitarianism, to greater social justice: the fight against the arms trade or against the foreign debt of impoverished countries, the conscientious objection to compulsory military service, war tax resistance, the fight against inequalities, injustices and war in general.

A career in peace and justice that ICIP honored in 2017 with the ICIP Peace in Progress Award “for his commitment and tireless dedication to the promotion of peace, social justice, human rights and disarmament, from a universal perspective.”

Arcadi leaves behind an immense legacy, as immense will be his absence.

As the activist and journalist David Fernàndez said in the essay he wrote on the occasion of the ICIP Award, “We are all Arcadi (or at least that’s what we all aspire to).”

Rest in peace, Arcadi.

Related contents:

The jury of the fifth edition of the ICIP Hip Hop for Peace Contest has announced the winners for 2020. This contest aims to promote creativity and draw attention to the commitment of young people in the field of peace.  In this edition, the award-winning entries address gender-based violence, bullying and racism, and include messages of rejection of all forms of discrimination and abuse.

The contest is aimed at youth between the ages of 12 and 25 and has two categories.

In Category 1, aimed at students in secondary school, senior high school, and vocational training school in Catalonia, the winning video clips are:

• First prize: “Això ha de canviar” (This must change), a video clip created by fourth-year secondary school students at Guillem Catà School in Manresa (Bages), winners of the recording and music production of a rap piece in a professional recording studio with artistic support. The video clip denounces the system with a focus on gender-based violence.

• Second prize: “En este infierno” (In this hell), a video clip created by students at Montagut School in Santa Susanna (Maresme), winners of a rap workshop conducted by a hip hop professional. In this case, the piece denounces bullying and a call to raise awareness of abuse.

In Category 2, aimed at young people between the ages of12 and 25 from youth, cultural, civic or socio-educational action centres in Catalonia, the winners are:

• First prize: “No sound bite,” a video clip created by youth at the “Sota Mínims Teatre,” a creative artistic workshop at Brians 2 Penitentiary, winners of the recording and music production of a rap piece in a professional recording studio with artistic support. The piece is a call in favour of personal empowerment and against discrimination.

• Second prize: “El camino de los valientes” (The path of the brave), a video clip created by youth in training at Càritas Diocesana of Girona, winners of a workshop conducted by a hip hop professional. This piece calls for equality, a denunciation of the discrimination experienced by many immigrant youths in Catalonia.

The ICIP Hip Hop for Peace Contest aims to draw attention to the commitment and creativity of young people in peace culture. The contest receives support from the Department of Education, the Directorate-General for Youth and the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation.

Twelve years after it was first established, ICIP has renewed its corporate image and redesigned its website with the aim of giving a new impetus to the institution, reaching new audiences and strengthening its independence and international vocation.

The new brand image has been created to reflect greater proximity and dynamism, based on the premise that peacebuilding – the driving force behind ICIP’s activities – is a process, a state in motion, and not a milestone that is stagnant or that has already been achieved. That is why the new logo, with a sober and bold design, reinforces the ICIP acronym and accompanies it with the institution’s full name, with a special emphasis on the word “peace,” which takes on personality with the integrated italics.  At the same time, the logo incorporates a lower line that evokes dialogue, a cross-cutting element of the institution’s activities.

The change in corporate image has been carried out by the Talking Design Studio and is accompanied by the launch of a new website, developed in this case by Whads. The new website www.icip.cat is multilingual – in the three working languages of the institution – with a responsive design, adapted to different mobile devices and tablets. It allows for clear and agile navigation through the various branches that make up ICIP: the four fields of work, the various channels and supports for the transmission of knowledge and dissemination of the culture of peace, and the Library as a center of reference in its field in Catalonia.

The renewal process has also included the change of domain to @icip.cat in the institution’s corporate emails.

Building peace in a context marked by war basically involves ending armed hostilities, safeguarding people’s security, bringing to justice those responsible for the most serious crimes, making reparations to the victims and rebuilding the social fabric with measures that encourage reconciliation and promote social coexistence without collective amnesia, exclusion or distrust. It also involves creating conditions that allow for the transformation of those structural factors that provoked the conflict and degenerated into violence and armed confrontation.

Although there is no single approach, the peace processes of the last thirty years have provided valuable experiences and knowledge that have been systematized to identify good practices, outstanding challenges, threats, errors and opportunities.

This accumulated knowledge is essentially based on transitions to peace after armed conflict. However, statistics show that for some years now the number of violent deaths in situations “outside the context of war” has globally exceeded the number of deaths in armed conflicts. Latin American cities and territories occupy the most alarming positions in international homicide rankings.

These situations of violence in non-war settings have mostly been dealt with from the logic of security, with a conceptualization of security that is closer to “securitization” than to human security. Faced with this reality, we find ourselves in dire need of visions, instruments, methodologies and a culture of peace that will facilitate truly transformative processes to ensure that people can live dignified lives in cohesive societies.

With the aim of contributing to further reflections on the necessary conditions for peacebuilding in contexts of chronic violence, ICIP has organized a seminar series entitled “Latin America: Tackling violence through peacebuilding.”

The series will begin on Thursday 4 March with an opening lecture by John Paul Lederach, researcher at Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and will feature seven sessions that will address security policies, dialogue, mediation with violent actors, mechanisms of truth, justice and restoration, and nonviolent social and resistance movements in the face of violence.

The debates will count with the participation of experts as Jenny Pearce, Mariano Aguirre, Geoff Thale, Lucía Dammert, Miguel Garza, Gláucia Foley, Marisol Ramírez Sánchez, Raul Calvo Soler, Achim Wennmann, Angélica Durán, Falko Ernst, Guillermo Trejo María Camila Moreno, Esperanza Hernández, Sabine Kurtenbach, Verónica Zubillaga, Luis Jorge Garay and Robert Muggah.

The series will be streamed on the ICIP YouTube channel.  The sessions will take place on 6 -13 March, 13 -27 April, 11 – 25 May, and 7 June, from 6-7:30 PM (CET).

This activity is part of the “Violence in non-war settings” area of work.

ICIP has published on February a new issue of Peace in Progress e-magazine “Redirecting security from Feminism” with the aim of  highlight the contributions of feminism to the definition of a new security model.

This monograph includes seven articles in depth by Nora Miralles, journalist and researcher at Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau; Marissa Conway, cofounder of the Center for Feminist Foreign Policy; Ana Velasco, feminist security analist and member of Women in International Security (WIIS); Swati Parashar, Associate Professor in Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University; Carme Colomina, journalist and researcher at CIDOB; Pinar Bilgin, Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University; and Shamin Meer, feminist activist, researcher and writer. This last articles is collectively written with WoMin.

The magazine also includes an interview with philosopher and feminist activist Judith Butler, who focuses on security, freedom and nonviolence, and on the increasing vulnerability in the pandemic world. Lastly, this monograph includes a series of recommendations of books, papers, projects and references to online seminars that aim to increase knowledge and contribute to the debate on feminist security.

Online discussion

The ICIP has organized an online discussion with five of the authors to present the monograph publically. The session is avaliable in English in the ICIP YouTube channel.

From this webinar the ICIP has published a graphic summary with the main analysis and messages.

These materials and analysis are part of the ICIP field of work “Alternatives of security” which has the goal to build an alternative discourse to the prevailing conception of security by disseminating the strategies and tools that feminism and nonviolence provide to address conflict. In particular, ICIP seeks to rethink security from a human and environmental perspective.