Ashkenazi & Grebe 2009 - Traditional Conflict Resolution PDF

BONN INTERNATIONAL CENTER
FOR
CONVERSION INTERNATIONALES KONVERSIONSZENTRUM BONN
Traditional Conict Resolution in Three Societies
F INAL P ROJECT R EPORT
FINAL REPORT
TRADITIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN THREE SOCIETIES
FUNDED BY THE GERMAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,
FEDERAL MINISTRY FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Authors: Dr. Michael Ashkenazi Jan Grebe BICC, June 2009
INTERNATIONALES KONVERSIONSZENTRUM BONN BONN INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR CONVERSION (BICC) GMBH
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Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Bericht, der auf einer Feldforschung in drei Gemeinden in drei Lndern, Ghana, Uganda und Timor-Leste, beruht, hat drei miteinander verwobene Ziele: eine auf empirische Erkenntnisse beruhende Beurteilung traditionaler Konfliktlsungsmechanismen (TCR Traditional Conflict Resolution); die Erstellung einer theoretisch und empirisch untermauerten Basis auf der die Funktionsweise von TCR bei groen inter-ethnischen und innerstaatlichen Konflikten untersucht werden kann, wie auch die Untersuchung der Wechselwirkung von TCR und Entwicklung auf der Ebene der Gemeinschaft (community). Obwohl alle drei Bestandteile des Begriffs TCR strittig sind, ist das Forschungsteam zum Zweck dieser Untersuchung davon ausgegangen, dass traditional Bereiche betrifft, die sich auerhalb der Systeme der staatlichen Justiz und Konfliktlsung befinden. Konflikt wird als Summe zweier Phnomene betrachtet: einer Streitfrage zwischen zwei oder mehr Akteuren mit verschiedenen Absichten oder Forderungen und der Mischung verschiedener Mittel, die dazu verwendet werden, um diese einzelnen Absichten oder Forderungen durchzusetzen. Lsung ist der Interpretation des Teams nach pragmatisch die Reduzierung der Gewalt innerhalb eines Konfliktes und seine Umwandlung in einen weniger gewaltttigen Konflikt, so dass eine Verbesserung dadurch, dass die Ursachen des Konflikts z.B. durch Entwicklung angesprochen werden stattfinden kann. Um die Ziele dieser Studie zu erreichen, hat das Projektteam ein neues Forschungsinstrument entwickelt, das auf verschiedenen Szenarien basiert. Mit diesem Instrument kann es Daten ber bestimmte Kategorien durch das Gesprch mit Teilnehmergruppen erheben. Gleichzeitig ist es flexibel und offen fr neue, bis dahin nicht bercksichtigte Informationen, die sie im Rahmen von Gruppendiskussionen erhalten. Der TCR Prozess in allen untersuchten Gemeinden ist hoch formalisiert. Mit diesen Prozessen wird versucht sicherzustellen, dass Streitschlichter (consiliators) unparteiisch sind und die Gemeinde in den Prozess und die Entscheidungsfindung eingebunden ist. Die wichtigen Teile von TCR in allen untersuchten Gemeinden bestehen aus: a) ffentliches Schuldeingestndnis der Beteiligten, b) Entschdigung fr Verlust oder Schaden, und c) Ritualisierung der Konfliktbeilegung und dem Ende des Konflikts. Die Harmonie in der Gemeinschaft war das hchste Ziel von TCR. Dieser Ansatz widerspricht der westlichen Auffassung des Vorrangs des Einzelnen vor der Gemeinschaft und des Vorrangs des Staates als ausfhrendes Organ der Strafe. Die Gemeinschaft ist immer im Mittelpunkt der TCR. Das bernatrliche spielt ebenfalls eine wichtige Rolle, sowohl als treibende Kraft fr Konflikt, als Mittel eines Konflikts und als Mittel, um Konfliktlsung zu besiegeln. Kommunikation stellte sich als eine conditio sine qua non fr jede Konfliktlsung heraus. Fehlende Kommunikation wurde von den Befragten als Hauptursache fr Konflikte genannt, aber gleichzeitig ist Kommunikation sowohl horizontal innerhalb der Gemeinde und zwischen den Streitschlichtern wie auch vertikal mit Oberhuptern, ein besonders wichtiger Bestandteil von Konfliktlsung. Unerwartet viele Frauen agierten als Streitschlichter, und es gab eine hohe Teilnamerate von Frauen im TCR Prozess in zwei von drei untersuchten Lndern. Trotz der berraschend hohen Quote von Frauen bleibt unser Eindruck, dass Frauen als Konfliktpartei benachteiligt sind. Obwohl unsere Informanten generell Gewalt als Thema in TCR herunterspielten, ist ein Verstndnis der Einstellungen zu Gewalt und zu Gewalt als Element in TCR wichtig, um zu sehen, ob TCR mit Konflikten auf hheren
Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Organisationsebenen (inter-ethnischen und innerstaatlichen Konflikten) umgehen kann oder nur auf kommunaler Ebene funktioniert. In allen hier untersuchten Gesellschaften gab es Platz fr legitime Gewalt, obwohl alle Informanten generell angaben Gewalt zu meiden. Die Studie zeigt Unterschiede an der Schnittstelle zwischen TCR und dem Staat in den untersuchten Lndern auf: a) wo TCR in einen funktionierenden Staat eingebettet ist, kann sie dazu beitragen, lokale Konflikte zu entschrfen; b) TCR kann kein kompletter Ersatz fr ein staatliches Rechtssystem sein. Hauptziel dieser Studie ist es, Entwicklungshelfer, die sich hufig als Partei in lokalen Konflikten wiederfinden oder die fr eine Verbesserung krzlich entstandener Konflikte sorgen sollen zu untersttzen. Entwicklung und TCR sind daher eine Schlsselkategorie in unserer Studie. Die Datenlage zeigt, dass Entwicklung eine Ursache fr Konflikte sein kann, und dass Entwicklungshelfer leicht von der Gemeinschaft als Konfliktpartei und somit auch als Teil des TCR Prozesses wahrgenommen werden knnen. Die in dieser Studie untersuchten Gemeinschaften waren alle ohne Ausnahme der Auffassung, dass Entwicklungshelfer die gleichen sozialen und gemeinschaftlichen Verantwortungen haben, wie jeder andere, und bestanden gewissermaen darauf, dass diese quasi ein Teil der Gemeinschaft werden sollen.
Executive Summary
This Report, which is based on a field study of communities in three countries, Ghana, Uganda, and Timor-Leste, has three interrelated objectives: To provide an empirically-based assessment of Traditional Conflict Resolution (TCR); to lay theoretical and empirical foundations for examining how TCR functions in cases of major inter-ethnic and intra-state conflicts; and to examine the mutual interaction of TCR and development at the community level. Though all three words that make up the term TCR are contestable, the operative assumptions made by the team are that traditional means those areas that are outside the state justice and conflict resolution system. Conflict is seen as a sum of two phenomena: a contestation between two or more actors with opposed intentions or demands and the mix of different means, which are used to achieve the individual intentions or demands. We view resolution, pragmatically, as a reduction in the level of violence within a conflict and its transformation to a less violent conflict so that ameliorationby addressing the causes of conflict through e.g. developmentcan take place. To achieve the studys goals, the study team developed a new scenario-based research instrument. The instrument allows researchers to gather data on specific categories from groups of participants, but at the same time is flexible and open to any new information presented by the informants. The TCR process in all communities we studied is highly formalized. The processes try to ensure that conciliators are unbiased and that the community is involved in the decision. Outcomes of TCR in all our sites consist of: (a) publicly admitting guilt by the parties involved; (b) compensating for loss or damage; and (c) ritualizing the settlement and end of a conflict. Community harmony was found to be the most important objective in TCR. This approach goes against the Western orientation of the primacy of personal over community benefits, and the primacy of the state as executor of punishment. The community is always at the center of TCR. The supernatural plays a major role in TCR, as a motivator for conflict, a means of conflict, and a way to seal conflict resolution. Communication was found to be a sine qua non for all TCR. Lack of communication was viewed by informants as a primary cause of conflict, and communicative activitieshorizontally within the community and between conciliators and vertically with leaderswere a major feature in conflict resolution. We found, surprisingly, a large number of women conciliators, and a high rate of participation of women in TCR in two of our three study countries. This was unexpected, though we still retain the impression that women are disadvantaged as dispute parties. Though our informants generally downplayed violence as an issue in TCR, the understanding of attitudes towards violence and as an element in TCR is important for whether TCR can deal with conflicts at higher organizational levelsinter-ethnic and inter-state conflictsrather than only at the lower communal level. In all societies studied here, though all informants claimed that they eschew violence, room was left for some legitimate violence. The study reveals differences in all three countries studied on the interface of TCR and the state: (a) where TCR is embedded in a functioning state, it can lead to reducing local conflicts; and (b) TCR cannot be a complete substitute for a state justice system.

A major overall goal of this study is to support development workers who find themselves caught up in local conflicts or having to provide amelioration for recent conflicts. Development and TCR were thus a key category in this study. The data shows that development can be a cause of conflict and the development worker may easily be perceived by the community as a party in the conflict and thus also in the TCR process. The communities included in the study all saw development workers as having the same social and community responsibilities as anyone else and essentially insisted that development workers need to acquire quasi-membership in the community.
Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Zusammenfassung Executive Summary Acknowledgments Introduction TCR The Organization of this Report Methodology The Choice of Methods: Learning from Others Developing the Instrument Use in the field Evaluating the Script Instrument in Practice Potential for further Uses Traditional, Conflict, Resolution Traditional Conflict Resolution Implications for this Report Findings from the Field Study The Field The TCR Process Who are the Conciliators? Conciliator Selection Outcomes Community Harmony and the Ideology of TCR Ritual, the Supernatural, and Conflict Communication Women and Gender Land Violence TCR and the State TCR and Development: "The one who brought the sugarcane also brought the flies." Conclusions: Commonalities from the Field Study Community Harmony above Individual Satisfaction Respect for Community-based Hierarchies The Nature of Evidence The Role of the Supernatural Ritualization Absence of Gender Bias Interfacing with the State TCR and Violence TCR and Development Final Words Appendices Appendix 1: Summary of the Traditional Conflict Resolution Workshop Appendix 2: Ten Ghanaian Case Studies The Anlo Stool Ashiaman Police Violence Case Ga State Traditional Ban on Drumming The Dagbon Inheritance Conflict 2 4 8 10 10 12 13 13 15 16 17 18 19 19 20 23 24 26 26 28 30 31 33 34 36 38 40 42 43 46 47 50 50 50 51 51 51 51 52 53 54 55 57 58 58 58 59 59
Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe The Bawku Conflict The Ga-Mantse Installation KonkombaBimoba Clash The Konkomba-Nanumba Dispute The Nkonya-Alavanyo Dispute The Farmers of Okumaning Appendix 3: Field Scripts SCRIPT 1: Development Project SCRIPT 2: Commercial Oil fruit SCRIPT 3: SALW Case SCRIPT 4: Witchcraft Accusation References 60 61 62 63 65 65 67 67 67 68 69 70
Acknowledgments
We are deeply indebted to many people in many places who made this study possible, and participated actively in the work that formed it. In all three countries we are deeply indebted to all the participants who spent their time sharing their knowledge with us. In Germany we are particularly indebted to our donor, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) who not only funded this project generously, but also helped shape it on the basis of their needs and experience. Notably, Mr. Eckhard Volckman and Mr. Peter Krahl of Referat 210 participated in the workshop and provided much useful direction and suggestions. In Ghana we are obligated to Mr. Baffour Amoa who introduced us to Akropong-Akuapem and served as a go between for us there. His Excellency, the Nana Kwatei Asyemfraokatakyire II at Akropong not only permitted and encouraged his councilors and courtiers to provide us with detailed information, but was a knowledgeable and entertaining informant as well. In Akuapem, His Excellency the Nana Offei Kwasi Agyemang IV led the conversation and provided useful insights as well as a wealth of data. Nicholas Akuffo ably served as interpreter and provided us with much useful advice. In addition we would like to thank Nana Akyempemhene Asanteowusu II, Nana Dabehemaa Mankosa, Nana Mfoahene Amoah Okromansa, Nana Addo Panyin II, Nana Kwadwo Akeampong Akyeamehene, Nana Sanaa Ofori II, Nana Asante KrobeaAbakomahene, Juliana Amene Abdagye, Opanyin Advfu Abrakwa, Marion Martinsion, Darko Agusto, Juliana Akuffomesah, Manesseh Yirenkyi Anim, James Afum Anoma, Opanyin Kwame Appiah, , Rev. Isaac Kwasi Asare, Samuel Kwasi Baah, Opanyin Asiedu Berkoe, Odikro Adv Bosumtwe, Aso Kwahene Gyekye, , Abusuapanyin Kofi Mante, Marion Martinson, Okyeame Kwasi Ofei, Lydia Tay, Confort Boadu, Kwanie Bekoe, Gkyeame Boahene, Gkyeame Asiedu, Gkyeame Yeaboa, Gkyeame Kwadade, Apagyahene Aiiemo Kwabi, Dadehene Aboa Omenako, Oaehye Lokko, Oaehye Dr. Wilson, and Rev. C.M. Otu. In Gulu, Uganda, we are indebted to Doreen Abwola who introduced us to the Acholi people and translated the lively discussion. Bruce, Doreens business partner assisted in various administrative tasks and drove us skillfully over some appalling roads. We are also indebted to Ochora David Armstrong, Olanyaben Ayat, Opiyo Mocikayo British, Akelko Jenity, Gem, lukwiya Jackson, Christine Okech, Ali Oola, Lakot Opio, Oicello Bosco Ulga Okwera a.b., Kilama Alfonso, Obonyo-DL, Aciini Florence, Acyo Hellen, Owing Hillon, Odong Ignatius, Ogwilo Lucira, Adong Lucy Luky, Julian Lukuu, Hellen Mooro, Kasibante S. Moses, Sabina Ojok, Odoch Onen, Oiim Prosfrey Ronald, and lato Vinasio In Timor-Leste we are indebted principally to two people. Michael Page, a longtime friend and colleague of Michaels provided entrance into Timor-Leste, as well as introducing us to numerous people, not the least of whom is Carlito Alvs. We also want to personally thank Michael and his wife Shirley for a wonderful, informative, and relaxing dinner at their house in Dili. Carlito Alvs served as our fixer and interpreter in Timor-Leste. His linguistic skills, local knowledge, and general charm were a critical element in the success of the field work in Timor-Leste. We are also indebted to Franscisco Da Costa Goncalues, Sebastiao Pereira Urendes, Jose Dos Santos Barrets, Bento Correia Da Cousoicao, Salva Da Filca, Selestino Goncalves, Victor De Jesus, Natalino Soares, Agustino Riebeiro, Ernesto Riebeiro Dos Saetes, Joanico Santor, Euzenio Dos Santos, Victor Da Silva, Geraldo Riebeiro Soares, Julio Saldanha, and Opilo Tirkuna.

At BICC we are particularly indebted to Mr. Edward Ceska and Mr. Stijn Ottens. Taking time off from their own research projects, they were co-opted as members of our analytical panel. They not only helped us analyze the material but spent a great deal of time looking for obscure references and, most importantly, discussing the analytical categories with the research team. We are also grateful to our colleagues Dr. Ananda Millard, Dr. Andreas Heinemann-Grueder, and Ms. Heike Webb for reading, commenting on, and editing this report. Particular thanks go to three people whose work, unknown to them, made the work on this project easier, faster and pleasanter. Professor Matthew Weinstein for TAMSAnalyzer which we used to code and analyze the field diaries and data; Jonathan D. Ashwell for Bookends, the bibliographical data manager, which Michael has been using for some years, and which Jan adopted happily; and Keith Blount for Scrivener, a writers project management tool, which worked almost seamlessly with the other two programs, and which came to our attention just in time to write this report. Thank you, and keep it up. To all others, whose name does not appear here for various reasons, we extend our gratitude. Notwithstanding the above, all errors of fact and interpretation are ours alone.
Introduction
The resolution of conflict is a major activity of all societies throughout history. Conflict occurs at different social levels, for varied reasons, and by different means. In this study, for reasons we describe below, we have focused on conflict at the lowest organizational levelthe level of interpersonal conflictbecause we feel that an understanding of conflict resolution at that level is essential for being able to understand conflicts between larger groups and collectives. This study is therefore the first stage in a broader study of traditional conflict resolution at the state and sub-state levels. We expect that the findings here will be inputs into the study of conflict at the higher levels, since the principles identified here are likely to feature mutatis mutandis at higher levels. We also expect that the findings about functioning TCR systems will tell us much about why TCR systems fail under conditions of stress (such as e.g. inter-ethnic conflicts) and how they can be restored to play a positive part in post conflict scenarios.
TCR
Traditional Conflict Resolution (TCR) has often (e.g. Barnes, 1994; Ngwane, 1996; Huyse and Salter, 2008; Zartman, 1999) been touted as an antithesis to modern (i.e. Western) forms of conflict resolution that have emerged in the past few decades as solutions to both international and intra-national conflicts (Burton, 1991; 1987). We accept from the outset that all the terms that make up the acronym TCR traditional conflict and resolution are contested. Nevertheless, we have used the term as convenient shorthand, which we expect will be familiar to our readers and the users of this Report, even if its semantic overlay is questionable. Traditional societies can be categorized in a number of ways, depending on the observer or analysts perspective and purposes. For the purpose of this research we have examined three societies based on differential political systems: kingdoms, chieftainships, and acephalous1 groups. In each of the three societies chosenthe Akan of Ghana, three communities in Timor-Leste, and the Acholi of Ugandatraditional governance is intertwined with state policing and justice. In one form or another, the state has effectively co-opted local governance (and its conflict resolution system) into the state apparatus. Conflict takes place at a number of different levels of human society: between individuals, small groups, large categories, and nations.2 Conflict (and thus conflict resolution) in any given society, often follows certain patterns that reflect specific environmental and social tensions in that society. It follows that all societies are likely to develop countermeasures in the form of conflict resolution processes, and that the process of conflict resolution in a society at any given organizational level is likely to be paradigmatic: it will follow certain wellestablished patterns. We are concerned here with all types of conflict (for a full treatment of the issue, see the following chapter). However, the kinds of conflict that we are particularly interested in are those in which violence is a relevant factor.
1 2
A society without a permanent, formally appointed leader or head. Leaders are temporary, and leadership is attained by achievement or acclamation. M.G. Smith (1974) refers to these as organizational levels of society, of greater complexity (the individual organizational level is far less complex than, for example, the ethnic group) and greater encapsulation (that is, higher organizational levels include numerous, different examples of lower organizational levels).
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Conflictwhether of the personal or group kindis an important factor in the ability of development agencies to perform their function. As our research shows, development may well be the cause of conflict. In some recorded cases (our informants note) development workers have exacerbated local conflicts by interventions that are based on their own (read, Western) understanding of how conflict resolution is brought about. Conflict essentially forces the development worker to work within the conflict, work with it, or work after it.3 Development work is not intended primarily to resolve or change conflict. However, development is related to conflict in two ways: when development work is intended to ameliorate the results of conflict, whether during or after the conflict itself (e.g. Sudan for the past decade); or, when the changes brought about by development engender conflict as local societies and communities react (sometimes violently) to change brought about by development (e.g. the current war in Afghanistan). Conflict resolution is thus of critical interest to development agencies. A large number of countries in which the German development agencies work (>50) are involved one form or another of inter-group conflict. The current study is an attempt to provide comparative empirical data on traditional conflict resolution at the local level. Ultimately, we expect the results of this study to be useful as a means to understand how conflict affects development. Within this general goal, this study has three main objectives: To provide empirically-based descriptions and analyses of traditional modes of conflict resolution at the lowest organizational levels of individuals and small groups. To provide the foundation for understanding how and whether conflict resolution at higher organizational levelsregions, ethnic groups, statesechoes, or is modeled after traditional conflict resolution at the lower level, which has implications for parallel, informal paths of conflict resolution (so-called Track II/III diplomacy). To lay the foundation for an empirically-based understanding of the mutual effects of development and traditional conflict resolution.
To achieve these objectives, this Report will describe and analyze the findings from sample communities in three societies studied in the field and review some of the literature on conflict resolution with particular emphasis on the ways in which non-Western societies that have minimal recourse to state justice/mediation/reconciliation agencies manage to deal with disputes. The report also is intended to lay the foundation for further study of both the study of conflict resolution at higher levels of organization, and the study of the role of development in local and national level conflicts. Neither of these latter phenomena are addressed here in detail, except for where they feature as aspects of local conflict resolution. This is because, in our view, attempts to engage in such Track II/III conflict resolution require an understanding of how the participants view conflict resolution from their own natal perspectives. It is this foundational level that this Report addresses. The Report is based on three sources of information and analysis. A team of BICC personnel engaged in intensive field work in different societies,4 one each in Ghana and Uganda, and three different societies in Timor-Leste. These empirical studies form the basis for the Report. In addition, we surveyed the applicable literature in great depth, looking for relevant issues. Finally, we explored potential new concepts and theoretical orientations during a public workshop with invited professional guests from academia and the development world.
3
4
We are indebted for this succinct proposition to Dr. Klaus Schreiner of the GTZ. For a full description of the research process, refer to the methodology chapter below.
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Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report The Organization of this Report
This Report is comprised of four chapters and the Introduction. A critical feature of the Report is based on our contention that only by understanding how TCR works under normal conditions (that is, within communities that are not suffering from transformative violence) is it possible to account for and understand how TCR functions in more stressful circumstances. This latter study is expected to follow the one reported on here. In the Introduction we have outlined some of the background and the motivations for this Report and the study that it is based on. In Chapter 2 we report on the development of a specialized and innovative study instrument necessary to cope with the combination of requirements that frame the study. The instrument was developed in order to capture both analytical categories that the researchers felt were critical and emergent categories that were to be supplied by the informants. The instrument fulfilled expectations, and, in our view, can be developed for other data-collection activities as well. In Chapter 3 we examine the meanings and implications of the terms traditional, conflict and resolution. We find that the literature is inconsistent and that all three terms are contestable. Here, for the purposes of the study, we defined the three terms hewing as closely as possible to definitions that would allow us to generate measurable empirical observations. This chapter is also a review of some of the relevant literature. Chapter 4 is where we present both detailed and generalized findings from the study. Given the need to compare some very dissimilar societies, the chapter is divided into sections which reflect the categories that emerged from the field, as well as those imposed by the research structure and objectives. The final chapter summarizes the findings. It presents some of our hypotheses for future research on the issue, as we intend to extend it to study TCR under conditions of mass violence. Three Appendixes are provided. The first summarizes the findings of a workshop on TCR held at BICC with a panel of international experts. Appendix 2 is a summary of ten field studies on Ghana TCR that were commissioned by BICC and laid the foundation for this study. Appendix 3 presents the four scripts used during the current study.
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Methodology
Much of the field data for this study was acquired using an innovative instrument that was developed for the purpose. Inasmuch as the nature of investigative tools determines the kinds of data collected and its values, we thought it relevant to include a detailed description of the development and deployment of this instrument. In this chapter we first discuss the rationale for developing such an instrument, then the process of development, and finally its deployment in the field. Undertaking a comparative study including fieldwork requires an instrument that provides a useful comparable data set. This study has three major objectives, which needed to be examined with an appropriate tool. The requirements for such a tool presented us with a dilemma. On the one hand, we needed comparable structured data that would allow us to compare data from quite different field settings. On the other hand, we wanted the analytical concepts to emerge freely from our informants, rather than be imposed by ourselves. In addition, since we were interested in a collective and reasoned public view, the instrument needed to be able to capture argument and disagreement among informants, again, in some way that would allow inter-site comparison. It must be noted that the societies we were to study comparatively present difficulties for any form of research: they have different political systems, have experience of development, and have experience of civil war and conflict. Although we were globally interested in different traditional conflict resolution systems, our specific focus was on mechanism and processes: the steps communities have to take to settle a local conflict. Hence the instrument had to be designed in a way that would enable us to query different types of information on specific mechanisms and procedures. The search for informant-initiated categories was to be bounded by a few central concepts (see below) that we were particularly interested in. The instrument had to keep track of these concepts, but at the same time allow the participants to add information that we either had not targeted, but was important for them, or that we were simply not aware of.
The Choice of Methods: Learning from Others

Approaching a field investigation, the fieldworker is faced with a gradually narrowing choice of instruments for data collection. The actual selection of instrument depends on numerous factors. The general idea in fieldwork is to ensure that one method compensates for the weaknesses of others, and is so compensated in return. Developing a quantitative instrument was considered and rejected since it could not be administered in standardized manner according to predetermined procedures (Golafshani, 2003, p. 598). Moreover, we were doubtful that all of our respondents would be literate (which proved to be the case in practice), or that we would have the time to administer a survey questionnaire. Critically, the need to capture the flexible reactions of the respondents in the field and an open category approach required a qualitative instrument with some inherent structuring feature. Moreover, specific difficulties attended on using any form of standardized questionnaire, however administered. A structured questionnaire schedule would reveal information about our main concepts, but would not be exploratory and uncover informant categories. Moreover, given that we were working in developing countries, the only real option to deliver questionnaires was face-to-face interview, as there is no broad Internet/telephone coverage and literacy rate does not allow self-administered
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questionnaires. Given that face-to-face interviews are very time consuming and expensive this wasnt an option for the study (de Leeuw 2008). Participant observation, a common tool and one used early and with great success by e.g. (Gluckman, 1955; Geertz, 1973) was ruled out: we would be unable to easily draw out the central concepts we were interested in, and both time and language made this method difficult to use. Moreover, all participant observation is time intensive, with large periods of time providing project-irrelevant material. Immersion into local life, virtually a requirement for participant observation (Bernard 2005), was also not practicable. As a consequence, this method too was rejected. The focus group method is an important and widely used instrument in social science and other academic fields. Its main features are to study groups in a more-or-less natural setting; and to include more than one person at the same time, which produces results relatively quickly, and tends to skew these results towards a social norm. This approach seemed fruitful in terms of time and effort, and allows for exploration in depth. Focus groups generally allow the participants to go beyond the typical answer categories A,B,C and therefore provide the researcher with more information than intended (Grudens-Schuck et al., 2004). The procedure of focus groups generally includes a group of 6-12 informants and a moderator asking specific questions on a topic (for a short detailed overview see Smithson, 2008, p. 358). The focus group approach allows participants to develop ideas collectively, bringing forward their own priorities and perspectives (ibid, p. 359) and guarantee the production of data that would be more difficult to assess without the group interaction. One element used in focus groups was inappropriate: the questioning, since the questions we asked would have inherent cultural biases. We therefore decided to utilize a focus group setting which permitted us to observe and gather a large amount of information and discussion on a specific topic among a group in a limited time frame. In order to fit the various constraints imposed on us by our objectives and to overcome the two problems of observer bias and data comparison, we therefore developed (independently) an approach that is similar to the scenario approach used by Soleri and Cleveland (Soleri and Cleveland, 2005). In this approach, the researcher develops a range of scenarios to which informants respond, thus providing insight into a specific research question. Soleri and Cleveland developed the instrument to assess and compare local farmers knowledge and scientific knowledge in a horticultural setting. In their process, actual field phrases were incorporated in the scenario construction process following the general assumption that scenarios create a hypothetical situation to which people can respond (ibid, p. 287). Scenarios have been used in the past for a public discussion of alternative futures (Peterson et al., 2003, p. 359) or for collective risk analysis. The method we used can be seen as a combination of a focus group and a scenario method: the focus group helping us to uncover general patterns and mechanisms rather than individual attitudes to local conflict resolution systems; the scenarios providing culturally denatured structure for the discussion without prejudicing the outcome or the process of reaching it. By means of these scenarios, we were able to elicit informants reactions to events that made sense within their cultural surroundings while, at the same time, helping us to compare responses across several cultures.
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Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe Developing the Instrument

The instrument we conceived was developed in four steps. These involved a great deal of trial and error, and were refined by us in the field. Listing the categories to be explored: Some categories arose directly from the requirements arising from the objectives of the project. Development, SALW, Violence were direct translations of these goals into logical elements. Other categories seemed appropriate based on prior research experience in the field, such as Gender and Land. Through a process of mind-mapping, in which each team member created a map, and a comparison of the categories, the team was able to draw up a list of critical concepts. Translating these concepts into scenarios and scripts: The greatest challenge was to translate the concepts into workable scenarios. These had to be denatured that is, they had to have as few culturally-biased references as possible (for example, names had to be simple, there was to be no locale identified, and adjectives were kept to a minimum to lessen the chance of unanticipated features affecting informants responses. The output of this process were three (later increased to five) stories, or scenarios. These described various processes of conflict, from initiating events to some climax. Protagonists included individuals and groups, males and females. Once the story lines of the scenarios had been agreed on, and we had checked that the central concepts were all covered, we converted each scenario into a script, which included a breakdown into individual scenes, and for some of the scenes, alternative actions. Thus, for example, we had Jones shot at Brown and then two alternative scenes: Brown was injured and Brown was killed. Alternative scripts were also conceived of to allow us to see the types of information conciliators were interested in. The scripts were thus arranged into main scenes (following theatrical convention, these might be called acts) and minor scenes. We would present the informants with the series of acts, and suggest that they could ask for more information, if they felt they needed it, which we would present from the scenes.5 Testing the scripts: Each script was tested several times on our colleagues at BICC (and on home audiences) by going through the procedure as we expected it to be used in the field. The round of testing served as a first step to examine the instruments utility and potential weaknesses. The testing phase proved to be a very necessary step as it revealed some weaknesses, which we were able to correct before use in the field. The test also provided us with some first impressions on how the procedure could work in the field, how much time it would likely take, and how the interactions would be between the two researchers. We discovered that we, unsurprisingly and notwithstanding efforts to overcome the bias, had a very Western approach in designing cases. As a result, we made stringent efforts to denature the scripts even further. The testing phase also gave us impressions on the best way to present the scripts in the field to stimulate discussion among the participants and how to encourage participation by as many people as possible. Supplementing the scenarios: We quickly realized that the scripts would need to be supplemented by outright questions for certain types of data. We thus prepared and tested two questionnaire forms that were to be administered at the end of each session. One form asked participants to note their names, occupations, and some details about their
Usable scripts can be found in Appendix 3.
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experience as conciliators. This was kept as short as possible, since we were doubtful about the ability of all informants to write. A second form collected general data about the community. In addition to community identification, it asked three other sets of questions. One set of three questions was to site the community in an ethnographic matrix, and asked about inheritance practices and land ownership. A second set followed the idea of the reasonable person and asked how such a person would be characterized (using salient words or phrases) in the community concerned. The final series of questions provided data on cases dealt with by TCR in the community: number per year, major issues dealt with, and time to settlement.
Use in the field

Notwithstanding a number of concerns in the run-up to the field research, the first rounds of interviews showed how robust and effective the instrument is. It also gave us a good impression of where the weaknesses lay. The procedure agreed upon from the start, and which proved to be effective, was as follows: After formal introductions in each research location we presented the concept of the scripts, and asked the informants to consider the material they were presented with, then to discuss it as openly as possible, using us as witnesses if they wanted supplementary data. A script was then read out by one of us. We attempted to ensure that the presentation of any script was identical in each location. The presentation of a script lasted five to ten minutes. Each script was translated by the interpreter and was adjusted slightly in this process to local conditions.6 We were asked to provide supplementary information only on a very few occasions. The informants in two of the Ghanaian cases consisted of chiefs and their counselors and courtiers: fluctuating groups of around 15 people. The locations were the official palaces of the chiefs. The palace meetings were formal, opened ritually, and continued with a formal presentation by the chief. Subsequent participation was high, and discussions were lively enough that our interpreter had difficulty keeping up. In addition to our individual note taking, we supplemented the data collection by recording the process. The third set of Ghanaian informants consisted of church leaders who also acted as conciliators. The atmosphere was less formal, most of the participants were women, and the discussion took place in the church hall. As in the chiefs palaces, the scripts aroused intense discussion, and the data yield was excellent. Significantly, the discussions continued even during breaks, where both researchers were quizzed on European methods of conflict resolution.7 Informants also commented on our selection of cases, and noted spontaneously that some of these cases are quite common in their experience (e.g. the quarreling women case, the development case) while others were unlikely. This gave us a very good indication of the specific characteristics we needed
6
For example, our African informants were all familiar with the Shea-nut tree as a source of oil from the wild. The equivalent we had to use in Timor-Leste (where Shea-nut is unknown) was kewra (candlenut) which fulfils a similar botanical and economic role. It should be noted that many of our informants, in Ghana and elsewhere, were horrified that there were no structured ways for Europeans to settle interpersonal and communal conflicts short of either informal discussions, or going to the courts. In their eyes (and, upon reflection, in ours as well) this was a major problem that needed correction.
16

to be aware of. It also indicated that the method was able to provide discrimination between various inputs and outputs, since, as expected, not all features of conflict resolution would appear in all systems concerned. Following the initial field uses, we adjusted some of the storylines and scripts. As result of the data that emerged in Ghana, we added a script intended to assess the importance of witchcraft as a conflict cause, a point that we had not previously considered. In subsequent field trips in Uganda and Timor-Leste we repeated the procedure first tried in Ghana, presenting the new script together with the three others used in Ghana. As in Ghana, we attempted as far as possible to keep the presentation consistent. Our informants in Gulu, Uganda, were local conciliators. Some were members of the local councils, others were selfmade conciliators with fairly broad experiences in that role. Not all had any formal education. As in Ghana they expressed a great deal of enthusiasm during the sessions. We repeated the process once again in Timor-Leste. There we conducted three interviews with individuals (not groups) and had a single group session with about a dozen individuals. The conciliators were all from roughly similar backgrounds. None had more than primary education and a few barely that. All were men ranging in ages from their thirties to their sixties.
Evaluating the Script Instrument in Practice

Generally, the instrument proved to be an overall success, even though we discovered some weaknesses and room for improvement. The instrument performed as hoped for. It confirmed categories we had initially considered. It also uncovered concepts and ideas we had not considered initially. Since it was presented as a request for the application of local TCR practices to real problems, we found that overall, informants were happy, at times even excited, to be able to apply their principles to foreign problems. A number of informants whether sincerely or as a form of flattery, we could not telltold us privately that this had been the first time they had been asked to initiate explanations and the use of their practices, rather than answering questions about them.8 The apparent benefits of the moot case scripts instrument can be summed up as follows: It elicited concepts we were targeting and at the same time encouraged the respondents to enter into a general discussion on local conflict resolution. It was possible to guide the discussion without forcing it, by suggesting that the informants also consider alternative possibilities, e.g. that Jones had killed Brown. The instrument proved to be useful with individuals as well as small groups, and individual positive reactions were, in principle, no different from those of groups. The instrument is inherently flexible. We were able to create a new scenario and test it overnight, refining it subsequently between the Ghanaian and Uganda trip.
The problem of NGO weariness is particularly acute for the Acholi. In Gulu, two different sources, told us that there were representatives of around 1,300 INGOs in the area, some 300 of which dealt with education, and many of which were conducting surveys of one sort or another. Unsurprisingly, local Acholi are somewhat jaded by questionnaires and interviews. It is possible that they found the opportunity to discuss and instruct a pleasant change from being interviewed.
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The instrument proved extremely useful as a tool to uncover unknown concepts and categories, which arose spontaneously from the group discussions. At the same time, these new concepts were within a given interest frame and related clearly to the objects of our inquiry.
Potential for further Uses

Overall, we feel that the moot case script instrument proved its effectiveness in the TCR study. While it was designed specifically with TCR at the local level in mind, we believe that it can also be adapted for other subjects of enquiry. Obviously, the tool has some limitations. First, critically, as it is now, it provides largely normative data. It is what people believe (and what they are prepared to say in public) that is elicited and recorded. This does not affect either reliability or validity, but it highlights the limitation, as any good instrument should. It appears that other subjects, ranging from the effects of development in communities, to relationships between and among communities could benefit from this particular instrument. The fact that it can be easily modified on the fly also means that researchers can use it in unanticipated situations, where categories of research and framing are not known, or at least not well-known, ahead of time.
18
Traditional, Conflict, Resolution

This chapter outlines the conceptual frame of the study. The workshop conducted at BICC9 at the end of the data collection phase clearly indicated that it is essential to carefully delineate what we mean by each of the terms embodied in Traditional Conflict Resolution (TCR). None of these three terms are self-apparent. This delineation goes beyond mere pedantry. It is important to understand the value and limitations of this study. It is even more critical because of the lack of clarity in the overall study of conflict and its amelioration. We thus address each of the three relevant terms separately. This also allows us to embed our own study within the general matrix of conflict analysis, and, more importantly, the applied activity of conflict relief.
Traditional
Hobsbawms seminal work (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) has shown that tradition is less a social fact than a social assumption. This is to say, people claim that thingssocial realities, activities, behaviorsare traditional when they are making statements about these activities, providing them with an aura of inviolability. Much of the literature on TCR makes two generalized assumptions: a) in some fashion, conflict resolution in less-developed societies is necessarily of great antiquity, and b) these practices have some necessary fit with current conditions. Often this fit is seen by outside observers (see Irani, 1999; Ngwane, 1996; Pain, 1997; Zartman, 1999) as in some ways more fitting than other forms of conflict resolution which are often tainted by Western, European, and otherwise inappropriate systems. By implication, these inappropriate Western forms of conflict resolution are imposed upon the traditional, native, or local systems.10 Very clearly, globalizing systems (including, but not limited to Westernization, industrialization, modernization, etc.) have a major effect on local systems that are able to exhibit an aura of antiquity and local provenance. However, as we shall see, many of these systems are intended less to settle conflict than to keep it at levels that the locals (whoever they may be) feel is appropriate. To cite but one example, most pastoralist societies in the Greater Horn of Africa consider cattle-raiding by young men to be not only not a problem, but positively laudatory. The complaint, if any, is that new technologies (in the form of SALW) and social systems (in the form of the modern state) are upsetting a balance in which a certain amount of bloodletting was acceptable (e.g. the Nuer [Evans-Pritchard, 1940] and the Acholi in this report, see below).
The workshop was held on 27 March 2009. Participants included both conflict resolution specialists and people from the development world. A brief review of the workshop is attached. See Appendix 1. For a detailed and convincing counter-argument relevant to TCR, see Allen, 2005, pp. 66ff, and particularly p. 84.
10
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For our purposes, traditional in TCR refers principally to those areas of conflict resolution that are outside of, or perhaps alongside, the state justice and conflict regulation mechanisms.11 TCR systems may occur in one of three situations: where the state deliberately recuses itself from some forms of conflict resolution (e.g in Ghana in our study, and to a degree in Timor-Leste); where the state is too weak to have a presence in regulating conflict (as in TimorLeste, and to a degree in Uganda in our study), and where there are specific local practices that the state feels are an essential part of its own cultural basis.
Most often, of course, it is a mix of these three motivations. In such cases, local needs to settle conflict establish accepted modes of conflict resolution which are often based on recollected or recreated traditional forms, in the sense used by Hobsbawm. That is, while recourse to tradition, history, or past practices is expressed, more often this reference is a recreation (at best) or invention which refers to tradition as a means of providing provenance and social acceptance to the practice. In this, traditional fulfills many of the functions of a ritual, and, as Irani (1999) has pointed out, ritual is a quintessential element of all TCR systems. In development terms, our definition of traditional is critical. Most development efforts at the local level are aimed at precisely those areas where the state is weakest: this is where it cannot supply services that the development process is intended to develop. Included in this weakness is the inability to deliver security. Thus the essential importance of understanding conflict in traditional areas: both underdevelopment and traditional conflict resolution cooccur, and it is the development project or worker who is likely to be first in the line of fire in case of local disputes.
Conflict
Conflict has been an essential element in the social sciences virtually since their inception (cf. Coser, 1964; 1967). Nevertheless, we find that most of the literature dealing with conflict resolution rarely makes explicit reference to what is meant by the term. Generally speaking, there is a rough distinction between international conflict (whether on the global or bilateral stages), ethnic conflict, and local conflict between individuals and small groups. Our experience from the field indicates that a more nuanced differentiation is necessary. An agreed-upon understanding of the concept conflict is a prerequisite for any discussion of conflict resolution. Conflict has often been assumed necessarily to be a violent dispute involving numerous participants and presumably causing numerous victims. Often enough, the terms meaning is assumed and can only be derived from the context within a particular paper. In our view it is not necessary to create separate categories for e.g. interpersonal disputes and state-level disputes. We prefer to see conflict as a field that is the sum of two phenomena. First, conflict consists of a contestation between two or more actors with opposed intentions, demands, or requirements. Individuals, social corporations (e.g. groups),
11
In modern states, state institutions include the police and associated security services (notably gendarmerie and prison services) and the justice system.
20

or categories (e.g. ethnicity) can be actors in a conflict. Second, conflicts are expressed by a mix of different means. This approach also enables us to incorporate relevant terms such as violence and victim within a single analytical scheme.
Conflict actors
Conflict takes place within ranges of different orders of magnitude of human actors.12 For convenience sake, we have reduced the human actors to four analytically useful sets, from simpler and smaller to more complex and larger: Individuals: People, whether male or female acting within their own scope. Face-to-face groups: Associated individuals, all of whom know one another in person. As a rule of thumb, face-to-face groups rarely exceed around one hundred individuals, and more commonly consist of about forty to fifty. Examples include families, small gangs, and groups of friends. These might be corporate (in the sense used by M.G. Smith, 1974 of enduring structured associations) or what Mayer (1977) calls quasi-groups: ephemeral associations of individuals connected by simple ties. Collectives: Extended groups which encapsulate other groups of varied composition. Villages, militias and other organized groups of medium scale. Conceptual groups: Nations, clans, ethnic groups and other entities bound together by some normative shared concept or ideology, and not individual ties, organization, or social exchange. Three principles need to be kept in mind: Higher conceptual levels almost always encompass, or encapsulate smaller ones (obviously so in the case of individuals); The sharp line between different conceptual levels is an artificial one, for convenience sake. In practice, different levels of actors blend into one another; Conflict at higher levels always involves conflict at lower levels, given that the physical actions are carried out by groups and within groups by actual individuals.
In our study, for example, though we focused (deliberately) on the lower levels of organization, these reflected in higher level conflicts: personal conflicts among the Acholi were often related to the LRA conflict, and conflicts in Timor-Leste often referred back to the civil war or the Indonesian periods. Obviously, the analytical schema used here points to the relationship of conflicts between actors at the lower conceptual levels and higher ones. We chose to exclude these higher-level actors from the scope of the current study to ensure focus. Nevertheless, we recognize the need to also address these other levels to present a complete picture.
12
For much of the discussion of groups we rely on several standard sociological texts including Barth, 1969; Bourdieu, 1985; Greer, 1969; M.G. Smith, 1974; Verba, 1961.
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Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Conflict means

Critically, conflict is pursued with different means. Even though conflict means are often a continuum we have differentiated them here for analytical purposes. Conceptual / verbal confrontations, where entities claim and exchange contradictory concepts, sometimes clear, sometimes symbolic. Such confrontations can be ephemeral (they dissipate once the parties attend to other business or disperse) or positions may be codified, symbolized, and effectively conceived of as open-ended and zero-sum: egos victory is alters loss. In our field study, we examined both forms. Physical confrontation, where a dispute involves changing features on the ground, such as occupying an area, destroying an object, purchasing an item.13 Violent confrontation, where the dispute incorporates physical damage to persons, or attempts to inflict such damage. Homicidal confrontation, where death of parties to a dispute is intentionally sought as a means of winning the dispute.
All of these different means were explored in our field study, which allowed us to test our assumptions, and more importantly, to gain a sense of the ways in which TCR approaches a range of conflict issues, means and actors. Critically, TCR deals with conflict that is pursued with all means. However, inasmuch as TCR is embedded within a state conflict resolution system (in practice, the security sector as defined above), the more violent conflict means are in most cases privileged by the national security sector. In theory only state organs can deal with homicide and violent confrontation.14 In practice we often found that TCR operates at that level as well. This was true particularly where the security sector was not conceived of (and often did not act) as a service, but rather as an expression of force. We also established that in Uganda (to a great extend) and Ghana (to a lesser extend) some types of violence are an element of conflict resolution (see below). This position can also clearly be observed in other TCR systems, e.g. Albania (Arsovska and Verduyn, 2008; Ahmeti, 2004; Trnavici, 2008). The movement from verbal confrontation to homicidal confrontation and back again represents the so-called arc of conflict (Brahm, 2003). No less importantly, our conceptualization clearly indicates the connection between different levels of conflict. Verbal confrontations between conceptual groups may well incorporate other forms of confrontation at lower levels of organization. A call for ethnic solidarity, to take one example, may encapsulate a series of interpersonal conflicts. The interrelationship between conflict means and conflict actors, is illustrated in Table 1. General examples are noted in brackets. Very clearly, the permutations are limited in many ways. Individuals do not have homicidal conflicts with the state, only with individuals in the state, yet, when states contend, individuals will have homicidal confrontations with other individuals, which confrontation will also be an element in the individuals confrontation with a face-to-face group (a squad of policemen) and perhaps a collective (the police unit).
13 14
For the purposes of the analysis, livestock and other mobile property would also be included. Here we accept the almost universal definition of the state as the owner of the monopoly on legitimate violence.
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Table 1: Conflict Conceptual Map MEANS [Murder] Homicidal confrontation Violent confrontation Physical confrontation Verbal/ conceptual [Argument] confrontation GROUPS Individual
[Ethnic riot] [Brawl] [Brawl] [Political debate] Face-to-face group Collectives
[War]
Conceptual groups
The arc of conflict is a well-known device for characterizing conflict along time. It however tends to obscure the fact that any conflict may well be created through a series of acts and actions at different levels of organization, using different means (something illustrated in numerous detailed reports of conflict, e.g. Bax, 1992; 1997; 2000; Evens, 1985; Fleischer, 2000; Kirksey, 2007; Knighton, 2003, to cite a small selection). Critically, the labeling of such activities as disputes or conflicts or confrontations is a semantic rather than substantive exercise. Here we have tried to avoid making semantic distinctions in favor of substantive ones. All these intersections of actor and means constitute the broad study domain of conflict. It may be useful at some later stage (or for another analysts purposes) to make a hard and fast distinction between, for example, conflict and dispute. For us, at this stage of the analysis, this distinction is neither necessary nor helpful. One distinction that we do make, in order to lay a foundation for research into TCR at higher levels, is that between ordinary violence and transformative violence. Conflict resolution processes studied in this Report are based on a fundamental assumption that violence (whatever the normative attitude towards it in the society concerned) can occur: this is why there are processesTCRto deal with it. This ordinary violence can be dealt with by the society concerned. There is, however, a different sort of violence, which straddles the divide between intra-societal violence and inter-societal violence. Transformative violence is violence whose results include the radical disorganization of social institutions and cultural practices in the society concerned. To illustrate, examples of mass violence in Ghana (see the Ashimana, Dagbon, and Ga cases in Appendix 2) do not cause major upsets of the social institutions concerned since they are struggles over these institutions. The decades-old terror campaign by Indonesian occupying forces on Timor-Leste, on the other hand, was transformative in that it destroyed, or attempted to destroy, traditional institutions and cultural practices. Thus the former (no matter how many victims it produces) is ordinary by this measure, whereas the latter is transformative. The current report deals exclusively with ordinary violence in disputes. By doing so, we also lay the foundation for research on how transformative violence can be understood and whether or not TCR functions under conflict conditions which include such violence: our major subject for later study.
Resolution
Both the factors which initiate conflict and the processes by which conflict comes to an end are in dispute. Resolution is commonly used in the literature but, as many observers have pointed out, many conflicts are not resolved, they merely change state, sometimes simmering in the background waiting for a triggering event (Brahm, 2003; Irani, 1999).
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Nevertheless, inasmuch as this is the common term, we will continue to use the euphemism conflict resolution recognizing the inherent difficulty of this label. The customary term arises from a (Western) assumption that all conflicts can be solved, and that the ideal situation is one of no conflict. This is intrinsically impossible: at some time in every place, the interests of one individual or group will differ from those of another. Resolution thus must be read as an attempt to reduce the means of conflict, rather than solve the conflict itself. In this Report resolution labels those activities through which, in terms of the analytical table we developed above (Table 1), the conflict has staged down from homicidal/ violent/ physical to verbal/ conceptual confrontation. Kriesberg, (2003), uses the term settlement, which is less widely known, though perhaps more appropriate. Resolution here by no means implies that the conflict has been settled to everyones satisfaction, and that all actors are happy with the outcome, but rather that the means that can be resorted to in a confrontation are non-violent. A second characteristic emerges from our field data that needs to be kept in mind, since it is particularly prominent in traditional societies (as we have defined them above): the community decides when the conflict has been resolved or settled. Both for practical and theoretical reasons (see the section on ritual and formality below), the community marks such events ritually and publicly, and the conflict actors are required to go along. We have earlier referred to conflict amelioration. In practice, we reserve the term in this report for those activities not directly related to conflict which could ease the transition from more violent to less violent conflict. Parenthetically, this constitutes an aspect or element of conflict in which development agencies can play a contributing role, whether encouraging/feeding conflict or reducing it. Conflict amelioration includes those activities which (often in hindsight) could have reduced violence. An example was provided during the workshop (cf. Appendix 1) by J. Abbink (2004, 2009 for full details) where one ethnic group attacked another because of the construction of a water source on the second groups lands. In our terminology, conflict amelioration would imply drilling two boreholes to forestall conflict. While this term features neither prominently in this Report nor in our field studies, it is necessary to establish a basis for this for our subsequent discussion of the role of development agents in conflict resolution.
Implications for this Report

This report deliberately focuses on conflict resolution with individuals (the lower left corner of Table 1). We believe that it is impossible to understand conflict resolution or settlement among higher-order groups (including events involving transformative violence) without understanding the basic modes of conflict resolution (however understood) at the lower order end. Individuals, as members of lower-level groups, are also essential constituents of higher order groups, and they will apply the experiences and practices they are familiar with or that they have learned when they are in higher order groups; the so-called process of cultural modeling (Ashkenazi, 1991). We suggest as a hypothesis that people may apply forms of TCR from lower organizational levels to conflicts at higher organizational levels. We expect this theoretical approach to be one of the major elements of research into TCR at higher organizational levels. This is not to imply that TCR in higher order groups will replicate that in lower order groups. First, the complexity factor inherent in higher order groups implies that conflicts will be different in nature. Also, the conflicts we are interested inthose whose means are violent
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tend to increase complexity in many ways. Nevertheless, we argue, experiences with local level conflict resolution that individuals have, influence their expectations of solutions to conflict at higher organizational levels. The clear delineation of the conceptual elements that make up our study also allows us to look towards necessary future research. First, as emerges from the preceding paragraph, understanding the modalities of conflict resolution at the level of interpersonal conflict points the way towards the issue of settling higher-order organizational conflicts. In our study we also examined the question of what motivates people to resort to violence (or not): what, following Gluckman (1955) and Epstein (1973), we have called the reasonable man: an approximation of what our informants consider to be a proper individual of our society. The reasonable man among the Akan as among the Acholi abhors violence as a general principle, but in both societies, there are instances in which the resort to violence is, if not praiseworthy, then certainly accepted and reasonable. This, we expect, will reflect in studies of higher order conflicts, where reasonable man (or woman) will be interpreted and woven into violent conflict. Second, as the idea of conflict amelioration indicates, we have started establishing the role of development in conflict in traditional societies (see our definition of traditional in this chapter). Here too we have both analytical/theoretical and field evidence. A local saying cited by one of our prominent informants sums this up very nicely: He who brought the sugarcane, also brought the flies. In other words, development poses risks to traditional society. These societies are often quite aware of the risks, and in particular, of the potential of development to cause conflict, as well as good. We examine this aspect of conflict as well as some parameters for conflict amelioration in the chapter on the field study, as well as in the Conclusions.
25
Findings from the Field Study

Societies in three countries were chosen for this study.15 The Akan in Ghana are an ethnic group with a lengthy state tradition. The Acholi of northern Uganda are a farming society which, until the imposition of British rule in the nineteenth century, were essentially acephalous (lacking permanent leadership). Timor-Leste societies16 are essentially heterogeneous, varying in their political orientation between small princedoms and what Sahlins (1977) calls Big Man societies based on leadership by personal achievement. Two of the three countries in which we conducted fieldwork have undergone, and in some ways are still under the threat of major civil conflict. Uganda is still threatened by the depredations of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), though to a lesser extent than in the recent past. In Timor-Leste, internal fractures within society have led to intermittent violent struggles, the most recent in 2005. As our work was concerned largely with local-level and non-systemic conflicts that did not involve 'transformative' violence, the civil wars in Uganda and Timor-Leste, significant as they may be for a country study, do not feature to any great degree in our study. The analysis of data collected from the field yielded a number of principal analytical categories. Some of these were imposed on the data by the structure of the data-collecting instrument. Others, however, arose spontaneously from an analysis of the field data by a panel of four analysts (the two project fieldworkers and two analysts with no previous participation in the project). In order to present a coherent and concise report, the most relevant of the forty-odd categories the panel identified have been compressed in this chapter for presentation. The compressed categories are presented in what seems to us to be a logical order, insofar as disparate categories can be assumed to follow some logic. Three analytical categories discuss the process of TCR. These include a description of the TCR processes, the conciliators and their role, and the outcomes of TCR cases. Two categories of analysis deal with the relationship between TCR and higher levels of organization: TCR and the state, and TCR and development. Four aspects of TCR have emerged from the data: communication, community harmony, ritual, and the use of the supernatural. Violence and land have emerged as categories of critical problems in traditional societies, and the final category is that of female participation in TCR.
The Field
Three societies were studied during the field phase: Akropong-Akuapem, an Akan kingdom in Ghana, some fifty km north of Accra; Acholi communities in the neighborhood of Gulu in northern Uganda; and three distinct societies in Timor-Leste. Ghana: Akropong-Akuapem. Ghana, a state established in 1956, is populated by numerous ethnic groups with varied local political and economic systems. Akan speakers have populated the highland area north of the coastal plain in a series of migrations which
15
The societies were chosen partly from our donors preferences and needs, and partly on the basis of different fundamental political systems: indigenous bureaucratic states, chiefdoms, and acephalous societies. The Timor-Leste population is divided into numerous societies speaking different languages (we encountered informants speaking three different and mutually incomprehensible languages within 20 kilometers of Dili) and having different forms of social and political organization, which are only now being subsumed by a national identity/culture/political commons. See e.g. Nixon and Hohe, 2003.
16
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brought waves of Akan speakers to the highlands. They are organized into several different sub-groups and polities and numerous chiefdoms or kingdoms, including the AkropongAkuapem kingdom where we conducted research. Akan society is characterized by a crosscutting clan system, allegiance to a local paramount chief, and a royal bureaucracy including advisers and functionaries such as e.g. market controllers and talking chiefs (kyeame [Yankah, 1995]). The Akropong were some of the first Ghanaians to be converted to Christianity. Education and learning are highly valued, and several informants pointed out that large numbers of teachers throughout Ghana had their origins among the Akan. The Akropong-Akuapem kingdom is headed by a hereditary king chosen from the ruling clan.17 Other lesser kings, courtiers, and kingdom officials are recruited from families who are traditionally entitled to lay claim to those specific positions. Our informants were all of this class, including the hereditary Grand Marshal, the King of Akropong, and many of their councilors. All were educated, and some had had lengthy professional careers. The local economy is largely characterized by subsistence cultivation of maize, coco yam (taro), yams, and cassava with some livestock, and cash cropping of cacao, shea-nut and sugarcane. Large numbers of people have moved in search of work to other areas of Ghana, often returning upon retirement, and, in most cases, maintaining some local ties. The traditional chiefdoms and kingdoms are acknowledged in law and the right to such a structure is enshrined in the Ghanaian constitution. Accordingly, there is supposed to be a division of labor between state practices of law and conflict regulation and those of the native courts. In practice, there is conflicting evidence as to the relationship between these institutions and the relative satisfaction people enjoy from them (contrast, for instance BaofoArthur, 2003 and Yankah, 1995 with Crook, 2005). Uganda: Acholi. Uganda was established in the 1960s as a nation state, and has had a tumultuous political history until the relative stability of the past decade. It is populated by several large ethnic groups and numerous smaller ones. Some such groups such as the Baganda have a tradition of chiefly state governance. Others, such as the Acholi, had traditionally been acephalous, organized along village or parish lines, and lacking a structured, bureaucratic state apparatus until the emergence of the British colonial system. The Acholi are a Nilotic group inhabiting northwestern Uganda, with presence across the border in South Sudan. Most Acholi raise subsistence crops including cassava, maize, beans, and some livestock. Livelihood has been disrupted by the war with the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), though by the time of this research life had started to return to normal (e.g. no night migrating children, people working their fields). Unemployment is, however, high and services relatively restricted outside Gulu town. The Ugandan political system incorporates some aspects of local conflict resolution. Local government in Uganda is structured, with an LC1 level at the bottom (equivalent to a village section or hamlet headman) to an LC5 (District Commissioner) at the top. The lower levels more-or-less parallel local concepts of village headman, chief, and paramount chief. Our informants were formal and informal leaders at the lower village levels. Some had formal education to primary school level. Others were illiterate.
17
As in many hereditary systems around the world, the future king must come from a given lineage or family, but the specific appointment is made by a conference of electors. For another Ghanaian example, see Appendix 2.
27

Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste constitutes the eastern half of the island of Timor, part of the Indonesian archipelago. Timor-Leste came into being briefly after three centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, in 1977. It promptly fell into civil war and brutal occupation by the Indonesians. In 1999, following a referendum, the Indonesians withdrew. The years that followed were characterized by civil war and social instability which is only now, with the aid of a UN force, beginning to recede. Timor-Leste society is composed of numerous small ethnic groups (total national population is less than one million), each such group occupying a domain that usually consists of one or two river valleys. These groups originate from Papuan, Polynesian, Micronesian and Indonesian backgrounds, which is reflected both in traditional political arrangements and the many languages spoken. Timor-Leste local economy is based on the subsistence production of maize, yams, taro, beans and livestock, on production of palm toddy, fishing, and some stock raising (cattle, chickens, goats and pigs). Coffee is grown in the highlands for export. Rice is grown, both paddy and highland, but the country does not supply its own needs, and has come to near starvation in the recent past. Unemployment, notably of young males is high. Due to severe weaknesses in the local judicial system, local conflict resolution is sustained by a formal system of consiliadorselected officials paid by the state to settle conflicts at the village level. In addition, each village is normally headed by a headman, and sub-villages may have a sub-headman as well. In theory these officials are expected to act to settle conflict within their respective levels. Criminal matters are expected to be sent to the police and courts. These however, are both unreliable and expensive (Hohe, 2003; Nixon and Hohe, 2003). Our informants were elected consiliadors; most had, at best, a primary education, though many did not.
The TCR Process

In all three country studies, conflict resolution was conceived of as a case that concerned the community as a whole. Thus, in all cases, community resources are mobilized to ensure that conflict is settled as early as possible. Conciliatorsin Akan, ritually and formally appointed officials, in Timor-Leste officials appointed by the state, and in Acholi-land a mix of state-supported officials and charismatic personsare the core of settlement in each case. Conflict resolution starts when a formal case is opened by appealing to a conciliator. Cases always require the payment of some kind of fee, presumably as a deterrent to frivolous cases and to defray costs of the conciliators. These fees are small, but not negligible (in Akropong, some 5-10 new Cedi2.50-5.--; a comparable or lesser amount in other places). In all three cases, the preferred locus for conflict resolution was at the family and inter-family level. The heads of the families should get together was repeated often during the research. In the absence of such elders or leaders, cases could go to a higher instance: a sub-chiefs court in Akropong-Akuapem, clan leaders or the LC3 in Acholi-land, or the consiliador in Timor-Leste. In all cases, conflicts can only be settled when there is an explicit social recognition that a conflict exists. This means, in practice, that there must be a complainant. This does have an important implication: conflicts are considered to exist within some accepted and known social framework. In other words, these TCR systems are effectively unable to deal with conflicts that are normatively not conflicts (e.g. spouse abuse) or with conflicts in which
28

there is no conciliation mechanism available (e.g. inter-ethnic conflicts where there is no mediating authority). The actual TCR procedures in the three countries differed quite substantially. In AkropongAkwapem, conflict-related procedures derive from the hierarchical nature of the kingdom. After the conciliators are selected and a court fee paid by the conflicting parties, each party has an opportunity to present its case. Witnesses are summoned and can be compelled to appear. The conciliator(s) consider the case, render a verdict, which may be negotiated with the parties. Finally the decision must be stamped upon by the chief, that is, a legalritual confirmation must be attested to by the higher authority. Critically, it is recognized that until the chief stamps the decision, it is open to negotiation. All parties are thus expected to negotiate and find a compromise. This is enforced pragmatically by the families and clans themselves, since, as corporate entities (which, not unnaturally, have multiple cross-cutting ties with other clans and families, including the opposite party) they have an interest in ensuring their ability to work with other clans and families at a later date, and are thus loathe to press any case too far and cause resentment. Unlike the Akan who have a local state system, the Acholi are (colonial and state interventions aside) essentially acephalous. This means that there is no permanent native justice system to which quarreling parties can appeal. Instead, self-appointed conciliators, usually a male elder or other respected individual, will try to start the mediation process. The critical feature of the Acholi is the public nature of the process, which allows all those present to speak and express their opinions. A skilled conciliator, will, however, make sure to reiterate the positions and main points of a discussion, shading the words in such a way that she or he can take the edge off and reduce tension18. For the Acholi process, as for the other two, the presence of witnesses is critical. This is so important that we were repeatedly told no witnesses, no case. A conciliator may start a process on his/her own initiative, but in the final analysis, the settlement of a case depends on witnesses who come forward and describe events, their opinions, cite precedents, and often explore side features that ay be related to the case tenuously, but are nevertheless an element in a whole. The public-meeting side of the conciliation process is supported by skillful conciliators who may approach both side privately, encouraging them to be reasonable, and/or to find a compromise. Ideally, conflicts end when the parties to the dispute can compromise on a reasonable solution, acceptable to both. This is reinforced by the public nature of the process, where everyone, involved or not, is able to have a say. The conclusion of a case, notably a case involving violence, is the payment of compensation to the aggrieved party, a public acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the perpetrator(s), and finally a ritual expression of the conflicts end. In cases of gross bodily harm or homicide, many Acholi communities carry out a matu oput ritual, in which the perpetrator and victim groups share a meal after sharing a bitter drink made of the oput tree, sometimes mixed with goat gall.19 Significant as the matu oput ritual may be, the principleshared and public acknowledgment of the end of the conflictis more important for Acholi conflict resolution. In order to ensure that expressions of remorse,
18 19
This was repeatedly observed in the field. Our informants engaged in a lengthy discussion as to whether the matu oput ritual was conducted by all Acholi, the consensus being, the elegiac praises of the matu oput ceremony (cf. Pain, 1997) notwithstanding, that this was not the case.
29

compensation, and above all, the restoration of social harmony are publicly visible, and, of course, to ensure that peace is maintained, conflict parties involved in conflict mediation processes are barred from any kind of interaction until a case is settled publicly. This ensures that the ceremonies attendant upon restoration of a harmonious status are publicly observed and thus the settlement made factual. In Timor-Leste, the village or neighborhood conciliator is a salaried government official. As such, he20 would normally be approached by one of the parties to the conflict or by a village headman and asked to officiate in settling a dispute. Unlike the process in the other two countries, Timor-Leste conciliators act as pure mediators. All of our informants (in panel and as individuals) insisted that it was the role of the parties concerned to develop acceptable solutions to the conflict. The conciliator shuttles between the parties briefly to outline the issues, but then withdraws until each party can decide on an acceptable outcome. This of course puts extraordinary pressure on conflict parties within a community, where harmony is valued, to try and guess what would be acceptable to the other party. Once each party announces its desired solution, the conciliator assembles them and they reach an agreement together. If necessary, the conciliator may declare another round, though, we were told, this is unusual. Timor-Leste conciliators have two tools for leverage. On the one hand, the high value placed on community harmony in all Asian societies means that each party, working in privacy, is under pressure to give in a bit more, or to appear to be recalcitrant before the community. A far more substantial stick is that of the threat to turn the case over to the police and the courts. Both are notoriously slow, barely competent, often corrupt, and expensive. For most villagers, our informants say, a quick solution within the community is better than a long wait for the national systems to work. Criminal cases involving bodily harm and homicide are turned over to the police, but even such cases, and particular their resolution and the payment of dawa (blood money) are often returned to be settled within the community. As elsewhere, public notice is given of the end of the affair. The offending party may sacrifice a cow and invite the opposing party to a feast. Compensation may be paid (see below). Above all, however, the conciliator has each party sign a document, and publicly announce that they will henceforth keep the peace. In addition, he quite often offers a brief public exhortation on keeping the peace. In conclusion, TCR is a structured process. It draws upon precedent and a set of cultural rules that are (at times imperfectly) understood by the practitioners and audience alike. TCR processes in all three areas studied appear to be remarkably similar in trying to elicit the facts of a case insofar as possible, in ensuring that conciliators are unbiased, and in involving the community in the decision.
Who are the Conciliators?

To understand the process, the role of the conciliators must also be understood: A conciliators task is to bring about an end, or at least a limitation to the conflict.21 This may include mediation and/or arbitration. Both the terms mediation and arbitration here refer to the following specific definitions (cf. Bailey, 1969). A mediator is an agent who assists two
20 21
We have no first hand evidence of women consiliadors. See the gender issues below. Bearing in mind the problems associated with the term resolution, that have been discussed in Chapter 3.
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parties to come to a common ground (essentially the role advocated by e.g. the Conflict Research Consortium, John Burton, and others) by facilitating their communication and assisting them in reaching an agreement. An arbitrator, in contrast, settles a conflict by fiat, deciding the merits of the case and imposing a settlement. Our informants ranged the gamut from official arbitrators (Akan chiefs and kings) to almost complete mediators (TimorLeste consiliadors).
Conciliator Selection
Individuals are selected to be a conciliator according to a mix of achieved and ascribed roles depending on the community under study.. Most Akropong-Akuapem conciliators have formally been appointed, which itself is an ascribed position: certain offices within the kingdom are reserved for certain clans. And though the struggle for possession of these offices is fierce within the relevant clans of families, attempts to seize such a post by someone from an ineligible clan or family almost inevitably lead to violence (cf. the Anlo, Dagbon, and Ga Mantse cases in Appendix 2). For example, one informant said, I am the descendant of a king, but if I tried to claim certain offices, reserved for the proper family, I would be ejected immediately by popular protest. The others present supported that statement by acclamation. The first line of conciliation, however, is that of the heads of families and clans. These too are ascribed positions, dependent on position within the family lineage. In the Akropong-Akuapem case churches22 also serve as important arenas for conflict resolution, largely on domestic and intra-family issues (a wifes refusal to cook or have sex, or lack of economic support from a husband were the most common causes). A church conciliator has largely achieved his/her position. Such individuals are often retired, active in church affairs, and often well-educated. As there are more women than men who serve in support roles in the church, we also found a preponderance of women conciliators whose interests and orientation are towards domestic and family issues (see below the section on women in conflict resolution). In contrast to the Ghanaian case, the role of an Acholi conciliator is almost always an achieved one. At the family and lineage levels, one or several elders are expected to initiate peacemaking and conciliation in intra- or even inter-family disputes. They may, and often do, request the aid of some respected leader or elder from outside the circle of conflicting parties. Some conciliatorswe met one individual, apparently famous for her skill, and who had a widespread clientele of people requesting her servicesacquire a great deal of expertise and skill in handling conflict resolution and are sought out by conflict parties. The Acholi achieved role is most likely directly tied to the nature of Acholi society and its world view. In this largely acephalous society, religious and political/military leaders arise through a process of achievement and success. This leads to the emergence of diviners (ajwaka) and prophets (nebi) whose functions parallel, and can overlap, that of local conciliators (cf. Ward, 2001; Allen, 2005).23 Chiefs and church leaders may also serve as conciliators in Acholiland, but their right to such positions is contestable (in fact, the chiefdom itself is a contested idea, see Allen, 2005).
22 23
Most residents of the kingdom are church-goers, we were told repeatedly. Parenthetically, it must be added, the orientation on pure achievement in Acholi society, combined with the mystic powers associated with ajwaka and nebi (the one a traditional term, the other for those claiming association with Christian practice) has led to less happy outcomes in the person of Joseph Kony of the LRA.
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The situation in Timor-Leste differs inasmuch as the consiliadors are all elected, statesupported office holders. Presumably they would not be electable without at least some discernible ability as a consiliador. Certainly all the individuals we met and interviewed seemed to be of similar stamp. They were middle-aged and older, men, familiar with their communities and able to articulate issues well. We have no data on the election process and its implications: Does it lead to higher political office (unlikely in many cases due to age and lack of education)? How are elections contested (several informants noted that there were more than one candidate for the post they had won)? And how does the post of consiliador articulate with traditional leaders such as the local liurais (chiefs) that lead the Malay-descended communities of the island?
Conciliator Scope
The activities of all conciliators are restricted in scope. Given that they all operate within a privileged zone within a state system, this is not surprising. Conciliators from all three study countries were expected to refer criminal cases to the state authorities, that is, the police and the courts. However, the ways in which they dealt with this requirement differed considerably, and shed light on important aspects of TCR. The fact that the state insists on settling conflict through judicial processes that are, essentially, a European import, presents, from the perspective of TCR, a serious disadvantage. European law concentrates on the obligation of offenders to the state. This is to say that conflict parties, unless they initiate a civil suit, rarely received any other satisfaction than seeing their opponent penalized. This fails to solve the principle issue that is one of the major pillars of TCR: ensuring the harmonious survival of the community. Accordingly, state justice, whether effectively applied as in Ghana, or ineffectively, as in Uganda and Timor-Leste, does not always satisfy the communitys needs for visible affirmation of local relations.24 This dilemma is dealt with by all three communities in strikingly similar ways. Many of our informants noted that local conflict resolution measures are necessary, often in addition to state-imposed sanctions. In all three cases, a conflict party even if found guilty and sentenced by a state court for crimes such as homicide or gross bodily harm, is highly likely to go through a process of publicly admitting guilt, payment of compensation, and probably a joint feast with the victims, to ensure that at the community level, the conflict is indeed over. To illustrate, in one instance a man was sentenced to jail for rape, but nevertheless was required by the local conciliators to pay compensation, admit guilt, and proceed with a purification ceremony after his release from jail before he was allowed to return to the community. This parallelizing of a court smacks to the European legal system of double-jeopardy: being tried twice for the same violation. However, once we look at the ideological foundations of TCR this makes perfect sense. Critically, it must be understood that the units of conflict resolution in TCR appear not to be individuals, but collectives, specifically families, kin groups, lineages, and so on. The client of TCR, if there is one, is the entire community.
24
We accept as a given that individuals may not be perfectly satisfied with traditional conflict resolution mechanisms, as both Allen (2005) and Crook (2005) note. The point here is, however, that the locus and interest of TCR is in the community and its interests, which supersede those of the individual.
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The scope of conciliators derives directly from this view (see the section on community harmony). Less than individual injury and recompense, conciliators are concerned with ensuring the survival of the community as a whole. This means that, inevitably, some individuals, even those badly injured in conflict, will not get full redress. The scope of conciliator activities must be seen less in the realm of abstract justice, and more in the realm of ensuring space for opposing forces to come together within the community. In conclusion, individuals become conciliators by various means, which illustrate how difficult it is to characterize. A mix of possibilities exists, in which local cultural preferences are modified by exigency and by the influences of external forces such as the state. What these various influences result in, and what their relative weight is, needs further investigation. Clearly, the intervention of the state in TCR can be beneficial (in ensuring the probity of conciliators) but can also be detrimental, particularly where political issues raise their head. Overall, we had the impression that conciliators were thoughtful, experienced individuals who were doing their best to ensure that the interests of the community were maintained, even, if necessary, at the cost of individual satisfaction.
Outcomes
Outcomes of TCR may include formal decisions, as in a court, but almost always include elements such as reconciliation and community concerns that are often lacking in Westernstyle court cases. Given the intellectual or ideological concerns of TCR as a concept and human system, it is not surprising that conciliators and their publics are less concerned about punishment than they are about ending the conflict and, if at all possible, ensuring that is does not erupt again. In virtually all cases we studied, the outcome consisted of two elements (a third, ritualization of the return to normality, is discussed within the framework of ritual, below): admitting an offense, and compensation.
Guilt Admittance
Paradoxically (if we are to take the Oxford Dictionary as standard), conflict parties are expected to admit guilt, not culpability.25 Guilt can be shared by all parties, since it is unlikely that all those involved in a conflict were completely passive. The culpable person or group is far less important: a matter of legalistic interpretation. Obviously in some egregious cases (e.g. bringing a firearm to market and discharging it, as in our Script 3) one party is more guilty than others are. Nevertheless, for communal purposes, ensuring that guilt is admitted publicly is an important element in all TCR.
Compensation
Insofar as deemed possible, conflicts are resolved when the situation is restored to the status quo ante. This is of course not always possible. Nevertheless, we could observe this principle in all cases. An individual cannot be restored to life, and a thief cannot always pay back the chicken he stole, so adjustments must be made. A substitute must be arranged. The concern
25
The Oxford Dictionary uses the following definitions: Guilt: responsible for a specified wrongdoing. Culpable is defined as deserving blame. The New Oxford American Dictionary. 2nd ed., 2005. New York: Oxford University Press.
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here, again, is less the restoration of individual loss, but rather to ensure that the victims grievance is not so overwhelming that a return to conflict is inevitable. Given the idea of guilt, which assumes that all parties are, in effect, guilty to some degree (guilty, we emphasize, not culpable) during the conflict, such compensation must be balanced, one against the other. It is also critical to understand that, because the outlook of TCR processes is communal, individual rights and individual compensation, even where these exist, take a second place to ensuring that the community is made whole again. Unsurprisingly, we rarely found that for individuals, things returned to a true status quo ante (in this, of course, TCR is very similar to Western practices). The outcomes of TCR processes in the cultures studied seem to be roughly the same. The most important objective is to ensure that a degree of harmony and co-existence returns to the community. Community maintenance is thus, for traditional societies, a cardinal virtue even if individuals are not fully compensated. This goes clearly against the Western orientation for the primacy of personal over communal benefits whenever possible. This does have implications for human rights (which, in their current international formulation are fundamentally geared to the individual), but we caution against seeing the process as directly contradictory to human rights. Often, particularly in marginal economies, the survival of the community is essential for the survival of the individual, let alone for exercising individual human rights. The second most important objective for TCR processes is to ensure that the conflict not be repeated. This is ensured by airing all related issues, whether they have a direct bearing or not; ensuring that the relevant publicthe communityare involved in the final settlement; involving the parties kinship network, on the assumption that these have sufficient cross-cutting ties to view a resumption of hostilities as undesirable (see e.g. EvansPritchard 1940; Evens 1985); and making public the parties willingness to pursue the future peacefully (by having them sign a document to the effect, by a joint feast, by a joint ritual such a matu oput, etc.).
At the individual level, in all cases, attempts are made to return to the status quo ante. All conciliators recognize that this is often impossible, and that compensation can, at best, offer some palliative rather than complete restoration. The trick appears to be to create a situation in which, however dissatisfied the victim is, the compensation is such that the victim is unlikely to retaliate.
Community Harmony and the Ideology of TCR

TCR, by its very nature, is an expressly ideological notion. In this section we examine the fundamental concept that forms the logic behind the TCR processes we observed. We argue, along with Hoebel (1954), that the resolution of conflict rests on ideological perceptions that communities and cultures have. What constitutes an infraction is judged based on norms, which in turn are partly based on a world view about equity, how to behave, and what Gluckman (1972) calls the reasonable man.
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All TCR systems are derivatives of societies that are, economically and sometimes politically, on the margins. In practice, this means that they are economically underdeveloped (over 50 percent of the population, sometimes even 90 percent are subsistence farmers/herders who have little access to advanced technology, and are very close to the line where they are unable to cater for all their needs) and politically powerless (their access to state services is very limited, their ability to influence state activities is also limited). In situations such as these, social insurance, the reliance on ones kin group and community are essential. Internal power and ethnic differences aside26 the community is likely to be the only economic and political cushion most individuals have. Therefore, the community (however defined) is at the heart of TCR. This view was often repeated in all of our interviews, albeit as a naturally assumed aside rather than a formal statement. The fundamental underlying assumption of TCR can thus be paraphrased as: The community must be protected against internal conflicts by all means possible. Internal conflicts must be sorted out so as to enable all community members to display, outwardly at least, semblance of community harmony. Indeed, our Akan respondents, with a long recorded and semi-mythical state history were expressive about the need, notwithstanding internal tensions, for the kingdom (in this case read as community) to present a united front in the face of numerous historical enemies. To lesser degree, Acholi informants expressed the same perspective. Timor-Leste informants also indicated, though not overtly, that the ultimate basic stratum in their thinking was to ensure community harmony (in the sense used here).
The Reasonable Person

The concept of community harmony is bolstered, at the individual level, by a concept first expressed by Gluckman (1955, 1972) as a universal constant, which suggests that the activities of plaintiffs in a case are judged on the basis of whether these activities seem reasonable (for that society) in light of the circumstances. We elicited the data both by extrapolation from the responses of our informants to the scripts they were presented with (see the methodology chapter), but also on the basis of direct questioning. All the societies we studied had no difficulty identifying those traits they thought represented a reasonable individual27 in their society. Essentially, reasonable people are expected to have a vision and interests that transcend the personal. They are expected to: participate in the affairs of the kin group (Ghana); be welcoming to others and generous socially (Uganda); be avuncular and socially responsible (Timor-Leste). While other, more individual qualities were important as well, it is striking that the reasonable person is substantially a social person, well embedded in his or her community, and able and willing to assist in preserving that community. From the point of view of TCR in the higher organizational levels, this raises serious problems that need to be examined carefully. TCR systems would seem to have great difficulty in dealing with inter-ethnic conflicts (see for example the Konkumba-Nanumba case in Appendix 2). In inter-ethnic conflicts, therefore, we would predict that a great deal of effort
26
See for instance (Roy, 1994) as an example of how religious and status differences can tear a community apart. Note that in this study, we deliberately did not choose multi-ethnic communities so as not to introduce an additional and confusing variable into the study, something we intend to address in subsequent research. We insured against bias by asking both women and men, and by asking specifically about women and about men.
27
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would need to be invested in settling the rules of the game which would include rules acceptable to both ethnic groups: a long and probably trying procedure, but, we would argue, a necessary one. This drives us to suggest, as a hypothesis, that inter-ethnic conflict resolution requires a forum in which both sides will exchange information about their fundamental assumptions relating to conflict and its resolution so that some common denominators can be understood. Where such activities do not occur, or where such activities do not really clarify fundamental principles of each side, the conflict is unlikely to be terminated for long, let alone resolved. A second issue is the question of what happens when a community changes radically: as a result of modernization, calamity, or war. Given the nature of tradition (see the relevant chapter above) we deem it possible that a reconstituted, post-conflict community would also be able to reconstitute its TCR system. Something of the sort is happening in Acholi-land. It is also, however, possible that TCR will be abandoned completely. We suggest this is likely to occur when two conditions are met: a substitute culture takes over (e.g., when a community adopts principles of modernization and atomization) and community members are the beneficiaries of good governance. In other circumstances, it is likely that attempts will be made to traditionalize some form of local conflict regulation.
Ritual, the Supernatural, and Conflict

The supernatural plays a role in conflict resolution at two distinct levels. It is both an instrument and framer of the resolution process, and, to a lesser degree, a cause of conflict. The supernatural we refer to here consists of cosmological, and, above all, social concepts relating humans to the nature of the cosmos and of moot entities (to use Guthries [1980] neutral phrase) such as gods, ghosts, the ancestors, demons, and so on. It also consists of appeals to such entities, as well as attempts to manipulate the world through non-material means: magic, witchcraft and sorcery to name but a few of the terms in use. All such beliefs and ideas are operationalized by means of rituals: physical acts that are formal, on the record, and performative. In all three cases studied, the most significant entities are the ancestors. As Hohe (2003) notes, the ancestors will is not written down, and thus specialists, or special means, must be used to divine their will. The Akropong-Akuapem, with a sophisticated and well-developed set of political offices and governance processes, have woven the supernatural closely into their TCR process. kyeame staffstopped by carved finials, and with a personality and importance of their own (Yankah, 1995)serve to validate and formalize decisions, as well as to compel witnesses to tell the truth. These staffs, similar to the mace of office in the British parliamentary system, state that an event is formal within a religio-political process. Their presence compels the truth. Where the staff does not do so, other magic is available in the form of a drink that compels compliance on the part of witnesses. The final instance is a ritually maintained and handled elephants tail, which serves as both a subpoena, to compel recalcitrant witnesses or accused, and as a guarantor of truth speaking. All of these uses of the supernatural are part of the warp and weft of the Akan conceptions of the state as a cosmological/religious and political/ethnic entity. The sacredness of the king and chiefs positions is exemplified by e.g. the royal stool, the use of speaking chiefs, and the finality and respect with which the chief or kings stamping of a decision is treated.
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The Acholi use of the supernatural in TCR, though different in expression from that of the Akan, is similar in essence. The ancestors pervade human life, and they, as well as the spirits of the dead and other entities (e.g. maluku, a term borrowed from the Hebrew malakh [angel and messenger] via Arabic, are pervasive and influential entities that cannot be discounted. These can be accessed by powerful people such as ajwaka (traditional doctors) and nebi (traditional doctors claiming Christian association), who reach their positions in the same way community conciliators do, and often function in that role as well. This in turn tends to mean that, in line with many other East African societies (see for example Middleton, 1968), leaders (including clan and kin group elders, heads of families, and chiefs) whose functions almost always include conciliation have supernatural support from the ancestors for their decisions. Our Timor-Leste informants were far more reticent about discussing the supernatural. It is likely that we did not approach the issue properly in this case. Secondary evidence (Hohe, 2003; Mearns, 2002) indicates that the ancestors are major influences in the process of TCR in TimorLeste as well. Aspects of the supernatural can also be the cause of conflict, most notably when people seek relief from unexplained calamities by searching for malevolent supernatural entities, or agents of such entities. The classical East African example can be found in Evans-Pritchards account of the causes and cures for witchcraft among the Azande of northern DRC and Southern Sudan (Evans-Pritchard, 1963, 1969). Curses and attempts to practice sorcery against an individual were viewed as serious causes for conflict in Akropong-Akuapem. In our example script our respondents viewed this activity as an act of violence in and of itself. The Acholi were far more pragmatic. Yes, anyone could place a curse, they argued, but not everyone is successful at doing so. Only real sorcerers, therefore, need to account for placing curses. For the people of Timor-Leste, the evil eye, rather than sorcery is a cause for misfortunate events. The script we presented, where sorcery was seen to be employed was met with derision. As more than one informant said of one of the scripts used The cow died? That proves nothing, even if the man had put a curse on the cow. It is impossible to prove, and thus is not a real case.28 The Akan and the Azande (Evans-Pritchard, 1963) share a similar conception of religiouspolitical governance, so it is perhaps not surprising that they also give similar importance to malevolent supernatural acts. The Acholi, whose political and conciliator ideology is far more achievement oriented carry over the same ideas to the realm of magic: if the would be sorcerer is not successful, he is more likely to be an object of derision, but curses placed by a proven successful sorcerer must be taken seriously. Overall, however, it is necessary to keep in mind the critical importance of the supernatural to conflict resolution.29 How this is expressed will vary widely, and requires specific, rather than generalized answers in each case.
28 29
See Appendix 3: Case 4. It is useful to keep in mind that this is true even in many Western justice systems, where swearing on the Bible, raising one hand in a hieratic gesture, or making other religious gestures are one of the ways of compelling truth from witnesses and of sanctioning the proceedings within a wider cosmological view. It must also be kept in mind that Western courts, for instance, do not rely only on the supernatural to compel the truth, but also on severe penalties for perjury. The same can be said for TCR.
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Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Ritual

Ritual is critical to successful conflict resolution. Ritual puts things on the record (cf. Ashkenazi, 1991; Harris, 1997; Rappaport, 1971). Not only does it make statements, it also does things by affirming that certain states of being exist whereas others do not (cf. Geertz, 1966). Thus by participating in a matu oput ceremony, sharing a feast, or undergoing a purification ceremony, the parties publicly both declare the conflict is over, and, in effect, make it so.30 This end-of-conflict phenomenon is so pervasive in our cases (as well as in all other forms of TCR, cf. e.g. Albania [Bozgo et al., 2002]; Africa [Huyse and Salter, 2008; Irani, 2000]) that we (tentatively) suggest that ritualizing conflict end and ritualizing the return to normality is as important for conflict resolution as the judicial process. Ritual and the supernatural play an important role in TCR. Given the nature of humans, and the difficulty in eliciting the truth this is not surprising. The supernatural is invoked because it is an expression, as TCR is, of local cultural norms, values, and world view. The supernatural is invoked to ensure truth, and it is also used as a coercive instrument in the employ of the conciliator. A Western-acculturated individual might find the appeal to the supernatural to be primitive and superstitious, but it is worthwhile recalling that similar devices are used in the West as well. The difficult feature is in the fact that as an aspect of world view, supernaturalrelated activities within the framework of TCR are difficult to translate for those outside the system, who, as result, might not accept the seriousness the supernatural framing is promoting. The supernatural as a conflict means made its appearance as well. In all three societies threats of supernatural harm were taken seriously. Witchcraft and sorcery are features of most African societies and of many others in some form or another (for our purposes here, witchcraft, sorcery, evil eye, curses, etc.). Because such issues are hard to either prove or disprove, they can constitute difficult elements to deal with in a TCR system, notably when crossing culture lines. Ritual, which is the bridge between supernatural and formal events, allows the participants conflict parties, conciliators, and the public and the spirits/gods/ancestorsto put the events on the record and, as the Akan say, to stamp them into full force. When the ritual states, publicly and formally, that a conflict is over, it is over. This termination is witnessed by all, including the invisible-but-present personages in the supernatural world.
Communication
The ways in which actors communicate about issue at conflict has a significant impact on the nature of conflict resolution. In all three sites studied, communicationbetween parties to a conflict, between then them and the conciliatorwas a prominent feature. Communication is a critical feature of all TCR systems studied here. It includes three different sets of interactions: horizontal between parties to a conflict and members of the community who may otherwise come into conflict; vertical between individuals and community leaders (who, as we have seen, are also the pool from which conciliators are drawn, see conciliation personnel in this chapter), and consultation between conciliators where appropriate.
30
To provide an analogy from European experience, the signing of a document, say a marriage certificate, makes of the participants a couple, whereas they were separate individuals before, no matter their romantic, economic, political, social, or other previous attachment.
38
Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe Horizontal Communication within the Community
The scripts we presented (see methodology chapter and Appendix 2) allowed for varied interpretations of the protagonists actions. One theme that emerged repeatedly was that conflicts are often caused by unilateral action: had the parties conferred, conflict would likely have been avoided. We found near universal agreement on the idea that communicatingabout facts as well as emotionswas a critical way to limit incidents of conflict. Even where conflict had already occurred, communication between the parties was a must. The conciliation process overtly recognized that communication between potential conflict parties and those in actual conflict was different. While the first case required unmediated communication between the parties, the heat of conflict required that communication between conflicting parties was to be undertaken under some form of supervision by conciliators (or mediated by them) and usually under ritually controlled circumstances. Thus for the Acholi, conflicting families or clans were required to ignore one another entirely, not even to make friendly moves (which might be misinterpreted) until the process was complete. The idea that information needs to be spread around relates closely to the idea of community harmony. The more information members of the community have, the less likely it will be that inequalities in access, and consequent envy and its attendant strife will emerge. Certainly individuals who might have cause for complaint, and thus initiate a conflict ought to pre-empt the conflict by informing all those who might be affected of their dissatisfaction. Given that one would find it difficult to identify those who might be affected, the suggested policy seemed to be to inform all members of the community as widely as possible.
Vertical Communication with Leaders

The lines between the role of a leader and of conciliator are rarely sharply drawn. In TimorLeste, the conciliador is a position, which is contrasted to village (or sub-village) chief. Nevertheless, even in Timor-Leste, chiefs can be co-opted to serve on a panel of conciliators. In Acholi, where leadership and conciliation roles are both a result of achievement, there is evidence (cf. Ward, 2001) that one can easily make the switch from one role to the other. In Akropong-Akuapem, the roles are almost coterminous. One can assume that conciliators in all three societies need to be in the know about what is happening in their community. Virtually all our informants noted that many of the cases we presented, most notably the ones relating to individuals from the outside (and see the development and TCR section in this chapter), conflict could have been avoided if the community leaders had been informed of the situation before it was allowed to develop. As in all forms of government, knowledge is the power to rule. Leaders in traditional communities are, in this, no different from presidents and prime ministers in developed states. The demand that leaders be informed may therefore be seen as somewhat self-serving. Nevertheless, it emphasizes the recognition that the ability to conduct a useful TCR process depends to a great degree on the knowledge of events that the leadership/conciliators possess.
39
Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Consultation between Conciliators

Conciliators needed to be able to consult between themselves as well, to ensure that they have a full picture of the case. To a lesser degree, this also served as a repository of case law, in the sense that past histories of conflict parties and of events were often brought as evidence in outstanding cases. Several of our scripts made reference to past events, and our informants noted that communication among the leadership, and communication between the conciliators during a case would have positive benefits. The most outstanding instance of conciliators communicating among themselves came from the church conciliators in Akropong. Virtually the entire population belongs to one or another church. Church elders (women and men) are expected to act as conciliators, dealing mainly with domestic disputes. They have at their disposal the sanction of social excommunication, where the perpetrator is refused access to the church. To ensure that someone thus sanctioned does not simply join another congregation (given the importance of church life in Akropong, this could be very likely), conciliators and leaders in one church would consult with their opposite numbers to ensure that the process of TCR could not be sidestepped. In conclusion, communication is a sine qua non for all TCR. Proper communication between individuals and roles allows TCR to operate as a preventive activity (conciliators, aware of a potential conflict, are able to defuse it), as a resolution activity (witnesses telling what they saw, conciliators consulting among themselves, decisions communicated to the community) and as an insurance against conflict re-ignition (announcing decisions, public announcements of regret and obligations to refrain from conflict in the future). Though few of our informants used the term communication explicitly, the idea that informationabout facts and about emotionsneeded to flow was fundamental to almost all they said. In the practical realm this implies, notably for development workers, that the information flow must be strengthened. They must make their intentions, and the implications of their activities known to the community to the best of their ability, and, in parallel, they must also secure detailed information about the social, community, and cultural arena they are operating in. Otherwise they either risk igniting of falling victim to conflicts.
Women and Gender

The issue of gender or, more properly, of the location of women in TCR systems is particularly important. The critical question is whether women are equivalent to men in TCR. The data we obtained is somewhat inconclusive, and the discussion here is broken down into women as conciliators, and women as dispute parties in TCR.
Women as Conciliators
In two of three research sitesGhana and Ugandawomen conciliators were features of the total system. In Timor-Leste we could find no evidence of women conciliators. The presence of female conciliators in Akropong-Akuapem and in Acholi-land comes about through two distinct and different pathways. Akan religio-political entities (kingdoms and chiefdoms) have specific, senior political positions reserved for females only. This is true of both matrilineal kingdoms such as the Ashanti and patrilineal ones such as the Akropong section of the dual Akropong-Akuapem kingdom.
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The senior political figure is the Queen Mother (mother of the reigning monarch). Other senior political offices have equivalent female roles. These serve to deal with specific ritual and domestic issues having to do with what anthropologists know as production and reproduction: issues relating to economics and to lineages, kinship, and inheritance. Other female roles also exist, such as Market Queens, who are responsible for order and harmony in public spaces. One of our scripts involved conflict in a market place. For our Ghanaian informants, this was the easiest of all to settle, since conciliation would automatically and exofficio, fall on the Market Queen. Acholi female conciliators reach their position by achievement, not as result of appointment to an office. A woman who persistently shows good judgment in settling quarrels among her neighbors is likely to find her circle of clients expanding. We met one woman who had a wide circle of clientele, including people who came to ask her help in settling quarrels from non-Acholi people. She was the daughter of an even more famous conciliator. The role of conciliator is closely entwined with the role of curer/traditional doctor/diviner (ajwaka) which is also an achieved role. It is therefore unsurprising to find that, inasmuch as many ajwaka are female, the parallel (and possibly inseparable) role of conciliator is also common among women. Certainly, our experience of female conciliators in Gulu was that they had strong opinions, were respected and their pronouncements given equal gravity to those of men. We have little comparative evidence from Timor-Leste, since we interviewed no female conciliators (a datum of itself). It is possible that the fact that consiliadors in Timor-Leste are elected officials means that women are effectively barred from the position, since men, as is often the case, are the only ones effectively eligible to play political roles.
Women and Justice in TCR

One of the often repeated concerns about TCR is that given the inherent limitations to participation in public life by women in most traditional societies, they will not be treated equally in TCR. Indeed, a fundamental assumption in virtually all traditional societies is that women and men are not equal, with the corollary that women need men to act for them in public life, court cases included. Since in our view, the ideological basis of the TCR systems we have observed is the community (which is both a physical and a conceptual/ideological unit) it is unsurprising that it reflects a bias against women appearing as juridical personae. The emphasis on the aims of the community over the rights of the community actually reduces to a degree, the juridical inequality of women and men. In any case of conflict, the corporate unitfamily, clan, communityis the principal element within which and between which conflict is resolved. When discussing a script of a conflict caused by women, the responses were different in degree, but not kind, from those in which the conflicting parties were men: the families were responsible for settling the conflict. The difference, if difference there was, was in tone. As one informant put it, their husbands or fathers should have taken them to task long ago for persisting in this quarrel. An Akan informant, a woman, noted, sadly, women often quarrel because they are envious of one another, and that causes major conflicts within the community (our emphasis). Thus even in the best of cases, women are considered somehow of a lesser order in the settling of conflict than are men. Later, another informant, also a woman, summed up the issue as, women have petty conflicts, men have major ones. We found little evidence that women are at a disadvantage in TCR in any of our study sites. However, this statement must be taken with caution as the available data is manifestly normative. It is not the results of cases that we examined, but the reports by the conciliators 41

themselves. Thus it is impossible to see clear evidence of bias. Nevertheless, in all three societies there is clear evidence of a gender-based hierarchy. The literature on TCR in other cultures is far more emphatic on indicating differential justice between women and men. Notably, for example, Albanian women are completely excluded from participating in TCR (Bozgo et al., 2002; Trnavci, 2008) as are Middle Eastern women (Irani, 1999, 2000, 2006; Trotha et al., 2006). We feel it is likely that women are disadvantaged in TCR processes. This is a hypothesis that needs checking by means of other tools than those employed in this study. One of the subjects of our future enquiry is to establish the degree to which (if they are) women are restricted in resolving conflicts in higher social levels. The high level of participation of women as conciliators in two of our sample countries was unexpected. In Ghana and Uganda women played major roles as conciliators. It appears that in some societies, women may be involved as a result of political-sacerdotal roles, or in others because leadership in their society is based on achievement. Insofar as we could see, women conciliators were articulate and listened to attentively by their male counterparts. We do need to ask, however, what happens when these conciliator roles are not open to women. This is the case in Timor-Leste. Do women in these societies also suffer inequality as conflict actors? We expect this to be a particular problem in Middle Eastern and Islamic TCR systems, where women are not political/juridical actors in their own name under any circumstances, though other societies need to address the issue as well. Our findings do imply, however, that the automatic (and stereotypical) assumption that male-dominated societies necessarily exclude women from domains of power over men needs to be reexamined.
Land
In the developed world, land has faded slightly as an issue of primary importance for most individuals. To a degree, the definition of a developed state is one in which the number of farmers drops below 10 percent of the population, or so. However, with our definition of traditional, most participants are likely to be subsistence farmers: a hallmark of underdevelopment. Thus land, as a cause of disputes is particularly prominent. In our three country samples, the attitude to land was markedly different. Perhaps as a consequence, land was a source of conflict in some ways, and not in others. In examining land-related conflict, it is useful to make a clear distinction between ownership and usufruct. Ownership of land implies unlimited rights over land. Thus, when a piece of land is alienated (sold or transferred in some way to anothers ownership) all rights go with the land. The new owner acquires all rights together with the land itself. However, in many landowning systems, land is inalienable: ownership always belongs to some original owner.31 Usufruct (the right to use the land in some specified way[s]) can be transferred from one individual to another, following some rules in the society concerned. Informants in Akropong-Akuapem were puzzled when they heard a script in which events related to wild', that is, un-owned lands. All land in Ghana is owned by someone, and wild open lands simply do not exist. Moreover, even transfers of land are not transfers of ownership, but of usufruct: the land belongs to the commons, represented by the king or chief, and it is inalienable. As example, two informants (independently) noted that the
31
This is a gross simplification of a complex issue. For a detailed examination of the issue see Unruh, ND.
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church and the kingdom were embroiled in a long-running dispute over land. The church had purchased (in its view) a parcel of land for a particular purpose, several decades before. Recently the church decided to change the use of the land and to construct a different building than the one the land had been sold for. The kingdom had made clear that this was not an option: the church had usufruct, and the use was limited. No changes in purpose would be tolerated. In Acholi-land, in contrast, land is alienable, its use dependent on the owners whim. In the past, we were assured, there were such wild areas in Acholi-land: basically, an owned piece of land was a worked piece of land. In recent decades, due partly to overpopulation, partly to changes in the law, partly to economic changes and the increase in cash cropping, land had been marked off and ownership established on every parcel. Thus, in the present circumstances, no wild land was to be found (at least in the area of Gulu where we conducted our research). Moreover, the owner of a piece of land was free to do as he would, provided his activities did not threaten his neighbors. Burning brush was cited as one activity that ran the risk of spreading fires, and thus igniting conflicts. The population of Timor-Leste had no problem with differentiating between un-owned and owned land. Given the topography of the countrynarrow valleys bounded by steep mountainsidesand the relatively low population density (approx. 64/km2), land is (as yet) not completely occupied. The attitudes towards land are reflected in the degree to which land issues are sources of conflict. Our Ghanaian informants were explicit that the defense of kingdom and clan lands were legitimate causes for violence. That is, the reasonable man is justified in resorting to violence in defense of land rights and community ownership. Similarly, among the Acholi (and our informants noted that this was a fairly recent change) the defense of ones property, was a reasonable cause for violence, land included. Timor-Leste respondents, in contrast, made no such explicit claims, even though land issues in Timor-Leste are severe and largely unaddressed (Fitzpatrick, 2000). Understanding the causes of conflict and their salience for the parties involved is critical for conflict resolution at any level. Two important lessons are to be learned from the land issue. First, it is reasonable to expect that a TCR system may well leave scope for what is considered legitimate violence. Such violenceas in defense of issues of overwhelming importance may not be soluble at all by TCR, since it exists outside the realm of what TCR is able to deal with. As informants noted, where land issues are concerned, resolution is extremely difficult to come by. A second important lesson is the difference of salience of even major issues such as land. Where Akan accept violence as a resort in land issues, people in Timor-Leste, who may have as much difficulty with land ownership, may not, even though land is an important issue in both places.
Violence
Our data indicates that violence is not a prominent issue in TCR in the three countries studied. Nevertheless, we included violence as a critical category for two reasons: the exploratory nature of the instrument used, and as an approach to one of the critical questions that inform the study of TCR: How effective is TCR in the face of transformative violence? Violence is also a major link between TCR as a conflict reduction mechanism in communities,
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and the state security services as conflict management agencies: another issue for which this study lays a foundation. Importantly, the issues of violence that were raised during our field study had to do with interpersonal and intra-group violencethe lower left-hand corner of Table 1 (see Chapter 2: Traditional Conflict Resolution in this report). In our view, understanding how violence is treated at this lower and more personal level, lays a foundation for understanding how and whether TCR can address violence at higher levels of organization: between groups and states. This section describes violence in terms of attitudes towards violence, violence means, and how they affect TCR, and finally violence as an element in TCR.
Attitudes towards Violence

All our informants volunteered the idea that violence was not something to be accepted. Nevertheless, this blanket statement hides a number of variations and exception rules that are worth exploring. Normatively, our informants in Ghana, Uganda and Timor-Leste condemned violence as a recourse in ordinary daily life interactions. There shouldnt be a case where people resort to violence. All problems must be solved peacefully, said one Ghanaian informant, which about sums up all respondents attitudes.32 However, beyond this normative statement lie a variety of escape clauses. Our informants in Akropong-Akuapem were also unanimous in the idea that there were cases for legitimate violence: defending land from incursion by others was one. Removing unjustified claimants to royal offices was another. In direct contrast, Timor-Leste respondents, for all the recent history of violence in the country, were far more sanguine about inter-group violence: occasional fighting between clans or different groups was seen to be part of the natural order of life. Intra-group violence, in contrast, was seen negatively, except for cases when the conflict parties were drunk, which again, was seen as the natural order of things: It happens, as one consiliador noted wryly. The Acholi response was far more complex. On the one hand, Violence is not permitted under any circumstances, is a statement all the respondents agreed to. On the other, we were presented with an interesting example: Suppose, said one informant, we are all sitting here under this mango tree. A driver, driving his car at high speed, swerves off the road and runs into us. Several people are killed. In such a case, it is legitimate for us to drag the driver from his car and kill him on the spot. If we do this, there is no case to answer: the case has been settled, no compensation paid by anyone, no matu oput. If the driver manages to escape, and someone allows him into his house and closes the door, this is a legal asylum. Houses are sacred in Acholi understanding, and no one can violate that. In such a case, the perpetrator would have to be handed to the police or a senior chief, and there would be a case. The attitude towards violence thus consists of a normative proscription, followed by what may be termed a set of escape clauses which more closely reflect the reality of life. In practice, violence in all three countries studied is defined legally as a criminal offense. In cases of criminal offense, in the samples from all three countries, conciliators are expected to refer the suspect party to the police. In practice, and when necessary, such legal state requirements can be either subverted or avoided under conditions that the society in
32
This may be a consequence of their desire to show reasonableness to (European) outsiders, but our (admittedly subjective) feeling is that the sentiment was really felt.
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question deems to be relevant: drunkenness and inter-group fighting in Timor-Leste, defense of land or kingdom in Ghana, and immediate mob retribution in Uganda.
Violence in the Conciliators Toolkit

It is important, when considering violence, to also include the role of the state mechanisms for conflict settlement, notably the police and the judiciary. Attitudes towards these state mechanisms vary widely among our sample, from respect-but-avoid in Ghana, through disdain and avoidance in Timor-Leste, to outright mistrust in Uganda. All our informants indicated that they, as well as potential conflict parties, were anxious to avoid the attentions of the police. The Akropong-Akuapem were most likely to accept the role of police in reducing conflict. This is most likely due to the space that has been allocated under the law to TCR and local governance, as well as to the generally high quality of the police and justice services in Ghana: relatively efficient and non-corrupt. In Uganda the situation is radically different. The Acholi have suffered depredations and atrocities at the hands of both security forces and LRA rebels. The courts are notoriously slow and considered corrupt by our informants. The threat of violence by the police is a potent threat to induce conflict parties to come to some agreement before the case needs to be handed over to the police and the courts. A similar situation exists in Timor-Leste. The countrys inhabitants are generally disdainful of the local police, who are inefficient, badly trained, and considered corrupt and violent. Thus threatening conflict parties with referral to the police, and the expected state violence that could accompany such a referral is a potent tool in ensuring that cases are settled as rapidly as possible by compromise.
The Instruments of Violence

All our informants made a clear distinction between the use of firearms in the commission of violence, and other instruments. Firearms of any sort raised the threshold, caused the event to become a criminal one, and as all informants agreed, took the case out of their hands. This suggests that the presence of SALW drastically changes the rules of the game that requires closer investigation. The use of other instruments: cold arms (bush knives, agricultural implements, sticks, stones and even curses) was viewed as unexceptional. This is not to say that the informants approved of their useas said, the normative view is that violence is not permittedbut that the use of cold arms was within the realm in which TCR could function. This threshold differences between firearms and other kinds of violence instruments is extremely important. It indicates, for instance, where the boundaries of TCR are likely to lie in many societies. It also helps us to understand part of the puzzle of transformative violence which would normally occur at the upper right-hand corner of Table 1. It is possible that a higher tolerance for firearm violence in a society would require a different form of TCR than in those societies (such as those in our sample) that does not tolerate them. The claim all the studied communities in our study make that they eschew violence completely seems rather doubtful. In all three societies room was left for legitimate violence. This implies that even though violence is supposed to be state responsibility, this may well be a negotiated area, one where the norms of society and the social reality are at conflict. Certainly our other evidence from Ghana (see Appendix 2) shows that notwithstanding the legal space allocated to TCR (which, in theory, should have limited or
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eliminated intra-community violence) mass violence does occur. In Acholi-land respondents were unanimous both in claiming that violence was forbidden, and viewing mob violence as a legitimate means of conflict resolution. Generally, therefore, claims that violence is eschewed need to be examined very carefully. Violence is a feature, hidden or overt, in most societies, and a careful empirical mapping of legitimate and illegitimate violence needs to be a part of any assessment of TCR.
TCR and the State

An understanding of how TCR articulates with state agencies (the security sector, including the judiciary, police, and prison services)33 is one of the major extended interests for the study of TCR. The specific issue goes beyond the scope of this study, and will be the subject of further work. In this section we have only examined how specific TCR systems articulate with state organs. The critical variable here seems to be the quality of governance. Ghanaians have enjoyed a lengthy (and, for Africa, unusual) period of stability and good governance. This report was written some months after the elections in Ghana and a peaceful transfer of power from one party to another.34 The police and the courts are trusted to a great degree to do their jobs effectively and fairly. Corruption, though present, is not an omnipresent problem. This means that there is a great deal of interchange between the TCR system and the state conflict systems. Conciliators call upon the police to provide them with evidence, and then police may refer a case back to a chiefs court where there is agreement that it is better dealt with under the traditional system. This may, as Crook (2005) argues, be unsatisfactory to individuals, but from the point of view of the community this is a workable system, on the whole. The inclusion of TCR within the legal constitutional framework of the Ghanaian state also serves to ensure that neither side can commit gross excesses at the expense of the other. The relationship of state organs in Uganda to TCR is much different. Certainly in Acholi-land the security services, which includes the army and the police, are not trusted: the army in particular is known for having committed serious atrocities during the fight against the LRA (cf. Allen, 2005). Nevertheless, traditional means of governance and of conflict resolution have been either co-opted by the state or incorporated within the state security/governance system. This tends to create a serious dichotomy. On the one hand, in Acholi tradition, leadership is achieved, usually by force of personality and demonstrations of leadership competence. On the other hand, due to the heavy authoritarian and superficially democracy of the Ugandan state the appointed leadersthe village councils and leaders (LC1-LC3)depend on state support, and thus do not necessarily represent Acholi leadership or conciliators, who may be outside the system (this is true of other areas of Uganda as well, cf. Sanginga et al., 2007). The chiefs and paramount chiefs, as noted are not fully legitimate in Acholi eyes (cf. Allen 2005). Consequently, the relationship between the TCR system and the systems of the state can be rocky.
33
In defining all of these as elements of the security services, we are following the practices set down by OECD-DAC, which considers all three of these agencies to be a part of the security sector. Cf. (OECD, 2007). Many of our informants and colleagues noted, before the elections, how anxious they were about the forthcoming elections and the potential for violent disturbance. The relief of people that the elections had passed off peacefully was palpable during our field trip.
34
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Timor-Leste has just recently come out of a period of crisis, civil insurrection, and previously, anti-colonial war. Its institutions are still untrustworthy and not well established (ICG, 2008; Moxham, 2008; Tanter, 2008). The consiliadors, and in fact the entire local level government system is a mix of residues of traditional local-level government by chiefs and petty kings, Portuguese indifferent and Indonesian rapacious colonial exploitation. Unsurprisingly, the state systems for dealing with TCR are still being worked out. Unsurprisingly as well, the state system is largely seen by the local TCR mechanisms as a stick to beat recalcitrant conflict parties with and attitude of if you dont come to an agreement soon, we shall wash our hands of you and hand you over to the police, with all the delays and corruption that implies. In sum, the relationship between TCR and the state conflict mechanisms can be very varied. How this relationship functions in practice is an important question that requires additional focused research. This study has concentrated on TCR at the community level: the building block, as it were, of TCR. This is not to say that we ignored the relationship of TCR and the state, but rather that we viewed it from the perspective of the lower, communal echelon. It is clear that this needs to be supplemented by examining TCR from the states perspective. That having been said, it is useful to note two elements that arise from the current study. First, where space is allocated within a state system for TCR to function, and where the state exhibits good governance, TCR is a viable frame for reducing conflict at the local level. The precise modalities may vary, as does the framing of the autonomy and scope of TCR activities. Second, TCR cannot be a complete substitute for a state justice system, nor for state responsibility for ensuring conflict reduction. The community-orientation of TCR makes it a restricted zone, one in which individuals may have their rights, if not violated, then certainly curtailed in the interest of the community. And conflict reduction between communities is a difficult aim, one that we feel needs far more study than it has been given. The fact that conciliators from TCR system (A) discuss things with conciliators from system (B) does not guarantee that they will see eye to eye merely because they are both related as TCR system conciliators. We suggest therefore that a more empirically based investigation of this issue will point to ways forward in which TCR might be capable of assisting state agencies in reducing inter-communal conflicts. In the next phase of the TCR research we intend to address the issue of state-TCR relations, examining this relationship as a normative view of the state's organs, and an empirically identified set of practices.
TCR and Development: "The one who brought the sugarcane also brought the flies."35
The major extended interest for this study is the relationship between TCR and development. Towards this, one of the scripts used focused specifically on this issue (see methodology chapter). Here too, the higher levels of developmentthe national and programmatic levelswere not examined. Instead, we focused on eliciting reactions to the issues of development and conflict at the local level. Two scripts are relevant here (see Appendix 3). In one we described a development project, in another, a commercial project, the difference being the self-described motivation of the incoming actor. All of our informants were keenly aware not only of the benefits of development (and outside investment) but also of the kinds of dangers and risks it brought with it. The attitude was aptly summed up by the aphorism we quoted in the title of this section: the money and power that developers bring with them, however well-intentioned these development agencies are,
35
We are indebted for this apt aphorism to His Excellency, Nana Offei Kwasi Agyemang IV.
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constitute a resource for which people will compete. This competition can, and sometimes does, spill over into violence. Thus development is a problem for TCR, and it starts right from the development agencies appearance on the scene. There has been little done to study the attitudes and actual activities of development workers in the field.36 From anecdotal evidence, and observations of development work over some years, one critical feature which must be noted here is the self-felt immunity that nonnative development workers possess. However well-intentioned and hard-working, the nonnative development worker (even the native-but-from-elsewhere, that is urbanized, development worker returning to her or his cultural origin) expresses some form of immunity: as visitors, they do not have to bear the long-term consequences of their action, and they are rarely socially as entangled as the locals are. This is a fact of the modern world. However, for TCR this is a serious problem. We have shown that TCR is essentially a localized phenomenon: it works with, and within, a given social and cultural matrix. Unsurprisingly, our field data shows that during a process of TCR, the conciliators in all three countries, made efforts to incorporate development workers into the local social matrix. One solution proposed was that the development worker could be incorporated into a pseudofamily comprising all those that participated in the development project. Another solution was that the involvement of the development worker, and his responsibility as an ultimate cause of conflict (in the script) would be to appeal to his elder: his superior in his organization. These considerations tend to indicate two things. First, that the assumed neutrality, disinterest, and, ultimately, immunity of the expatriate development worker to local social matrixes is a feeling that is not shared by locals. They want and perhaps need to incorporate the development worker in some way into local processes, for good or ill. Second, from the perspective of TCR as a whole, it hints that TCR is profoundly local in the sense that it functions within a locally agreed-upon cultural and ideational matrix. This bodes ill for the idea of using TCR as an inter-communal bridge, without some proper beforehand preparation. Development workers, almost by definition, represent a resource to underdeveloped economies and polities. As a result, they are and can form the basis for local conflicts that can easily (particularly when other factors such ethnicity are added) deteriorate into transformative violence, as people struggle to control and benefit from an unfamiliar new resource. The general principles of do-no-harm (CDA, 2004) are generally incorporated and observed in planning development projects. Whether these principles are implemented carefully in the field, and whether anyone can actually predict whether their actions will cause conflict, is somewhat more doubtful. This is very clear to the subjects of development: the members of the community. Given that the major objective of TCR is to sustain and maintain the community, the research here indicates that much more thought must be givencertainly at the local level, probably at higher organizational levels as wellto how the development project looks like to those it is supposed to benefit. The issue of development is encumbered by good intentions. Development is an alloyed good: from a community perspective, development is as much a threat as continued famine, or internal conflict. Development aims to change the economic, technical, and often the social and cultural environment. It does so with the best of intentions, but while doing so (and often improving the lives of individuals) it constitutes a threat to communities and cultures which have evolved precisely to deal with the environment as it is.
36
Harris (2008) is one exception.
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Starting from this point of view helps us understand the articulation of TCR at the community level and development projects. On the one hand, community members are aware of the potential benefits (which also means they see development projects, their personnel positions, and the largesse they can offer, as exploitable resources). On the other hand, they are keenly aware that untrammeled development may threaten the fabric of their community. A balance is very hard to achieve. Two elements thus emerge from our study: There will be efforts to engage the development project as a social element in the community, with all the obligations, social, economic, and legal that implies. Domesticating the project is important both defensively (to avoid it doing harm) and offensively (to benefit from it). Given that a project and its membership are incorporated into the local communitys social fabric, they become ipso facto members of the community to some degree, and have social potential in that role. A developments social potentialhow it will affect social balances within a communitymust be assessed as well as the economic benefits and advantages. Resistance (overt or covert, active or passive) to development projects and potential conflicts that arise from it may well be the result of threats that the development seems to pose to the community socially and culturally, rather than economically.37
37
Parenthetically, we believe that a case in point is the rise of the Taliban in South Asia. It is conceivable that the underlying motivation for Taliban resurgence is neither purely Islamic (however much it is depicted that way) nor resistance to development per se. It is rather a rational calculations of members of disparate communities who realize that (a) development can easily threaten community harmony (in the meaning used in this report) which in turn threatens each individual, and that (b) development aid is a finite resource as well as an uncertain one, which must be balanced against the tried and true experience of functioning as a community.
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Conclusions: Commonalities from the Field Study

In this section we summarize some of the findings, which appear to be common to all forms of TCR we observed. The final conclusions more or less parallel the headings used in the findings chapter. Here, however, we have tried to relate commonalities in all three studied societies to broader issues.
Community Harmony above Individual Satisfaction

In all three settings, community harmony was the driving motivation for practicing conflict resolution. If this came at the expense of individual satisfaction or righting individual wrongs, then so be it. Individuals or their families were entitled to redress and compensation for actual losses suffered. But these losses have to be measurable: material damaged, house destroyed, or medical treatment paid for. Mere distress was considered either irrelevant or non-actionable. Critically, all communities were concerned that conflict, notably violent conflict, threatens the tenuous existence many people lead. It must be recalled that both Acholi (recovering from LRA depredations) and the people in Timor-Leste (after multiple civil wars and destruction) are living close to the edge in terms of subsistence. Unsurprisingly, destruction and conflict are viewed with great anxiety. Thus the mediators main efforts are expected to be addressed towards ensuring that conflict will not reoccur, when once it has emerged.
Respect for Community-based Hierarchies

Communities ensure that conflict will not reoccur through a number of mechanisms. Principal among these in all three settings was the effects of intra-community groupings, principally the family. To a degree, it can be said that in all three settings, there was no such thing as an individual perpetrator: in almost all cases, families were viewed as the responsible locus for the genesis of a problem, its solution, and ensuring that it not continue into the future. Supra-family structures are also important. The Akan have strong clan traditions. The Acholi we dealt with somewhat weaker, and in Timor-Leste, apparently, none at all.38 However, where clan structures existed, they were viewed as structures that could ensure peace. In other contexts too (e.g. Albanians [Trnavci, 2006], Lebanese [Irani, 2000] and Sudanese [Deng, 1971]) clans and extended families, while they may pursue blood feuds and conflicts, are also avenues for conflict resolution. Traditional governance structures (for sake of simplicity we use the word chiefs, inaccurate and obscuring as the term is in reality) seem to be critical for guaranteeing that there is some authority to ensure compliance, as well as the ability to appeal. Moreover, there are practical reasons for emphasizing these traditional political structures: all our informants noted that dealing with the state structurespolice and the courtswas expensive, timeconsuming, and was no guarantee that the community was in the focus when resolving problems.
38
We are not convinced that Hohes (2003) use of the term clan in the context of Timor-Leste is completely justified. She seems to make no distinction between named clans (a corporate group of affiliated families sharing descent from an eponymous ancestor), lineage (a group of individuals related by descent) and extended family (a group of ego-centered individuals related affinally and consanguinely).
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Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe The Nature of Evidence

TCR is inherently evidence based. This was brought home to us strongly by the Acholi, for whom the guiding principle was no evidence, no case. All three systems required that eyewitness testimony be provided in a case. Testimony could be extracted by use of supernatural sanctions among the Akan, but could not be compelled in Timor-Leste. Nevertheless, everyone was unified in feeling that in the absence of evidence, no case could proceed. Akan have legal means of compelling witnesses. Acholi and Timor-Lesteese rely more on persuasion, and a certain amount of covert arm-twisting and appeal to a witnesses family to get the evidence they need. All groups are aware of the need to ensure that witnesses are telling the truth. The Acholi view is that unbiased witnesses are most likely to be found among children, and one group of informants insisted that the bestmost observant and unbiased witnesseswere five-year-old children.
The Role of the Supernatural

The supernatural seemed to play a role in the settling of conflicts largely in two realms: ensuring that peace would prevail after conflict, and, indeed, in limiting conflict, on the one hand; and getting evidence on the other. However, with the exception of the Akan, who possess a well-established routine of supernatural sanction, the evidence is somewhat ambiguous. Partly this may be because we did not consider the role of the supernatural before starting the study. Partly it may be that the supernatural is, as is the case in Western courts, somehow downplayed. Nevertheless, we have the distinct feeling that the supernatural almost always plays some part, or at least can be invoked to a degree, by the TCR process.
Ritualization
All TCR system we observed relied heavily on ritualization. In particular, TCR sessions ended with activities that were formal in the sense (Rappaport, 1971; Ashkenazi, 1991) used by ritual analysts: public activities, on the record, which established social facts that could not be abrogated easily. Related to the formality was a reliance on some form of supernatural sanction (apparently so in the case of Timor-Leste). Curses, swearing, and invocation of ancestral supervision were invoked and served to ensure both the process and the result of TCR practices.
Absence of Gender Bias

Surprisingly, and rather counter-intuitively for us, in two of the three cases (Akan and Acholi) women played major roles in conflict resolution. Not only did we witness at first hand the degree to which women were involved in discussions of principle and practice of TCR, but we also collected several second-hand cases indicating the important role that women fulfill as formal mediators and arbitrators within TCR systems. The important role of women in TCR was heavily outlined among the Akan and Acholi, where women were major speakers during the discussions about the cases we brought, and where informants could cite specific cases dealt with by well-known female mediators. The picture is far less clear in Timor-Leste, since the normative claims of respondents that there is no gender bias were contradicted by the fact that we never met a female consiliador, and the general atmosphere of discussion seemed to indicate more of a gender bias.
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Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Interfacing with the State
One of the major emergent questions from this study has to do with the relationship of the local TCR system with the state system. The state, following the standard political science argument, arrogates to itself a monopoly of force. Indeed, in many developing states, force is the single major quality the state manages to display. But conflict resolution rarely relies primarily on force. How then do these two systems manage to coexist, and what parameters make such coexistence successful or not. In all of the cases studied, the state exhibits a demand to control force. That is, of course, one reason that violent acts are deemed criminal by the state and wrested from the hands of local conflict resolution mechanisms. Violence aside, however, we witnessed three rather different approaches to the interrelationship. In the Ghanaian case, the state has come to a successful accommodation with TCR. Crooks (2005) objections (valid as they may be) aside, the system functions and there is an acknowledged and flexible division of labor and responsibilities. Uganda represents a different case, where the state attempts to fully incorporate the TCR system, but because of its own political and managerial weakness, is unable to do so. Unlike Ghana, TCR in Uganda is still creating its space. As Allen (2005) notes, this is still very much a work in progress, and the balance between ritual and the supernatural, the traditional (yet newly reconstituted) chiefs, and the state organs is as yet uncertain and uneasy. Timor-Leste represents still a third case, where the state system is dysfunctional as result of both colonialism and war, and where local people have picked up, insofar as they are able, the need to resolve local conflicts. As Hohe (2003) notes the interface between the two systems is a difficult one that leads to little satisfaction on either side. The actual nature of the state-TCR relationship thus differs quite substantively. The relationship ranged from the Ghanaian, in which the rights and duties of local courts are ensured constitutionally, through the Ugandan case in which the system is partly an element of local government (the LC1 to LC3 levels of local government) and partly resolution by professional third parties. The case of Timor-Leste represents an instance where the state is unable (in this case because of the absence of legislation, lawyers, courts, and funds) to provide a national justice system, and thus must rely by default on what may be an interim system. Critically, in all three cases, one gets the impression that the local users of the system are far happier with their traditional system than with the state system.39 In all three cases (more so in Timor-Leste than elsewhere) we felt that the courts and police were used as a threat by the local conciliators to ensure that people chose to settle conflicts using traditional mechanisms, rather than taking the quarrel further. This seemed to work extremely well in Ghana, where we recorded several independent cases in which the traditional court sent a case to the police, and then either dealt with the case in parallel, resolving it to local satisfaction, or else had the case referred back to them, with the police providing evidence from their investigation to help settle the case. There appear to be two general approaches to the relationship between TCR systems and state conflict resolution/judiciary. The Ghanaian case exemplifies what we would call a bottom-up approach. The Akan possessed a functioning state and conflict resolution mechanism even before the creation of the Ghanaian state (or the start of the British period). With independence, these royal realms found accommodation in the state legal system, anchored by law in the constitution. Given the robust traditional system, it seems that the
39 Though, as noted earlier, this may be a result of the informants roles as conciliators themselves. 52

state supplements local practices by offering police, judicial, and penal systems when required by the traditional system. Timor-Leste seems to represent a top-down approach. The state, absent a functioning judicial system, or the necessary budget and personnel to run one, has created a hybrid systemthe village consiliadorswho take much of the burden of low level conflict resolution off the shoulders of the legal and judicial system. The Acholi system seems to be somewhere in the middle, with the local traditional reconciliation practices separate from the local legal system, not formally acknowledged, but happily tolerated by the official system. The three different systems imply that (a) there are a large number of solutions to the problem of interfacing between a traditional system and a state one. The differences depend on the governance qualities of the state (on the one hand) and on the robustness of the traditional system on the other. Confident states and robust traditional systems are able to reach a reasonable compromise, one that seems to work very well. Poor governance and less robust traditional systems (which may occur, as in both Acholi-land and Timor-Leste as result of an overarching problem such as invasion or civil war) may mean that the traditional system is less able to provide solutions to local problems. (b) TCR can be a reasonably cheap and effective way to provide judicial services, and to relieve causes of conflict for a state, provided the state treats the system with appropriate respect, or at least benign neglect allowing people to get on with it. Where, as in South Sudan, the government sees TCR and the structures that support it as a threat, the ability to resolve local conflict may be severely threatened. Our three very different examples demand that we examine with great care the relationship between the dominant state and the subordinate TCR system. The findings here are little more than an indication that suggests a variety of possible accommodations and interactions between the two systems. The challenge here, one we intend to take up in the future, is to see under what circumstances such an accommodation is possible, what the different modalities are, and where difficulties and dysfunctions arise.
TCR and Violence

The TCR systems we studied represent to us the fundamental building blocks of conflict resolution. In effect, we were looking at TCR under good conditions. For our purposes, this good is embodied in the fact that TCR functioned within an ordered society. True, two of the societies concerned had suffered traumatic violent episodes in the near past. Nevertheless, by and large, they were intact. Particularly important was the fact that the basic social blocksfamilies and kinship organizations, ways of making a living, ritual and belief systemswere still functioning, and provided the substrate from which TCR emerged. In the final analysis, a functional conflict resolution/reduction/amelioration system is only able to function when both the basic assumptions that underlie itour reasonable manand the social matrix are intact. When these are badly disrupted, no form of social intercourse will function, as Turnbull (Turnbull, 1978) showed of the Ik people of Northeastern Uganda. However, many of the societies within which development workers must work are in a state of transformative violence: systems have broken down, families, clans and other social principles are shattered, the fundamental underlying ideology is supported, if at all, patchily. The reasonable man is not. How could TCR function in such a system? This is a critical question, since TCR relies, above all on the presence of tradition which in turn is a product of a society in which the past has pervasive influence on the present (even if it is an invented
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past). Our future research on TCR will be directly concerned with this issue. Critically, we intend to examine to what degree is the resilience or fragility of local social institutions (the family, economic practices, ritual practices, and political practices) after 'transformative' violence related to the ability of TCR practices to re-emerge.
TCR and Development

The question with which we started the research for this report has as yet not been answered fully. We know, as do most sensitive development workers that development, by upsetting accepted patterns in a traditional society, has the potential for much harm. This is inherent in the process: development by its nature is a destructive force that changes peoples ways of living, and in so, destroys the old pattern. Fortunately, we have tradition: a falsification that people tell themselves which allows them to accommodate the new under the guise of a hoary past. Virtually all our respondents noted that development (or commercial) projects that did not take into account local community practices would likely be a source for conflict. So strong was this point, that several respondents effectively indicted the development projects, that is, the head of the development project in one of the scripts used was considered a party to the conflict, and was required to participate in the TCR process. Our research has shown the need for caution by development workers. Ultimately, the development worker is no more than sojourner: when the work is done the development worker departs, leaving the problems behind. The people we studied were fully aware of that, and a stream in their thinking implies that they would like more than that. All three societies were definite in insisting that development workers had a formal, societal obligation in the communities they were working in. To put it differently, they insisted on granting quasimembership to the passing development worker. This means, in practice, that as a member of the community, the development worker is seen, in all societies studied for this report, as having social and community responsibilities like everyone else. This includes most definitely, being subject to local conflict resolution mechanisms and their outcomes. Because TCR is so embedded in the social and community matrix, some creativity was needed by our respondents to ensure this was the case. They assigned a development worker to a pseudofamily composed of his employees, or demanded that the development workers superior appear before the conciliators as an elder of the development workers clan or family; all this indicates that there are a number of significant obligations and statuses assigned to people from outside the society whether they feel comfortable with it or not. Obviously, most development work incorporates a Do-No-Harm ethic. Just as obviously, development workers must be knowledgeable and culturally sensitive about the societies they are working with. However, what many development workers fail to realize, and is obvious from our data, is that they are also social persons, and need to follow certain role rules within the society in which they are working. Whether this holds at higher organizational levels is not clear, but requires more research. Thus, among our future research questions into TCR we would like to know whether development agencies viewed as a form of clan and if so, with what ritual and social obligations? Very clearly, the privileged position most development agencies assume is theirs of right is something that does not hold under all circumstances, and, in our view, it is important to find out what the boundaries for these are.
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Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe Final Words

The current project allowed us to accomplish a number of subsidiary objectives, within the overall goal of understanding the relationship between development and TCR. We secured detailed, empirical, comparable data on TCR in three different societies. The data collected concretized and pointed to the strong (and as yet, not fully investigated) relationships between TCR, development, and state conflict apparatuses. We developed and successfully field tested a unique research tool.
While this study was not conceived of as a pilot, nevertheless, it does represent only a part of a larger goal. It highlights and concretizes our initial feeling that understanding the triangular relationship between traditional conflict resolution, state conflict mechanisms, and development, requires an understanding of the minutiae of TCR at what might be termed its normal or base state, that is, not under conditions of stress, immediate post-conflict periods, or other destabilizing processes, for which we used the term transformative violence. We now, for instance, have a clear idea of critical factors that make up (or break) TCR in its natural setting. We expect to find the major features detailed above from the three country study, in any TCR system. We also believe that we should be able to predict, with fair accuracy, which elements will be present or absent under what circumstances, and how such elements will interact. What is missing, and what we need to fill in, are the answers to three broad questions that arose during the investigation in this report. 1. How does the vertical relationship between TCR and the state function in theory and in practice? This includes subsidiary questions such as an understanding of the range of views states might have on TCR systems, and more empirical, rather than normative data on TCR processes. 2. What is the 'diagonal' relationship between developmentlocal projects as well as central programsand TCR? Particularly we are interested at the local level, in what development workers in the field need to know about TCR and their role in it, if any, and, at the national level, how can TCR processes be woven into project planning as contingency measures. 3. How well does TCR function in conditions of stress? What stresses are critical and fatal to TCR, and which ones are and can be ridden out? Communal violence, intra- and interstate war are likely to have major effects on the use of TCR. We also feel that 'transformative' violence needs to be parsed more clearly so we have a better understanding of precisely which constellation of damaged local institutions is fatal to restoring TCR, and which not.
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Our planned future research is intended to answer those questions. The design of our further research is implicit in the current report: strong reliance on empirical findings; a means of comparing data from different cultural matrixes and states; and a method of exploring and not only confirming data that others have uncovered. The outline of the follow-up study (for which we will be requesting support from the BMZ) will include: 1. Adding to the number of cultures studied (so as to have a broader baseline, and include more cultural forms), 2. Developing research instruments that will yield the necessary data, 3. Directly addressing the three questions above: vertical relations of state and TCR, diagonal ones of TCR and development, and the critical question of the effects of transformative violence.
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Appendix 1: Summary of the Traditional Conflict Resolution Workshop

BICC, 27 March 2009
The Traditional Conflict Resolution Workshop took place at BICC on 27 March 2009. It was intended to support the research project by providing insights from professional colleagues, to contribute to and enrich the findings from the field study, and to encourage debate and discussion on issues relevant to TCR. A number of points were raised, which affected the presentation of our findings. A summary of these points is presented here. Many of these points are addressed in the final report above. Gender: It seemed that the gender balance in the African countries in the more informal local conflict resolution system is not represented on the formal political level. This is puzzling, and requires more investigation. The nature and definition of conflict: A critical question is the need to define conflict. Should the term be reserved for acts involving violence, or could it incorporate mere disagreement? Compensation: The role of compensation is an important feature in TCR. Is it a restoration of the status-quo ante, is it symbolic, or is it intended to punish the perpetrator, or some mix of the three possibilities? Local level versus other levels: The study focuses on conflict at the individual and intracommunity level. More research is needed to elucidate the interface between the community/individual level and the states organs. It should also be kept in mind that TCR may well be exploited by the state as a means to ensure cheap and effective conflict prevention. The Ghanaian case represents a benign state-TCR relationship. In addition, it would be useful to explore other paradigms of the relationship between TCR and state institutions if such paradigms exist. Conflict prevention: How does the TCR study help us understand the issue of preventing conflicts in the wider scale? There is no data on whether the local systems actually prevent potential conflicts. Joining conflicts: How do individuals/groups decide whether to join a conflict or not? Clearly this is a very central question. Power/Legitimacy: Is anyone excluded by lack of power from TCR processes? It seems that, normatively at least, power is not an issue and everyone has access to the system equitably. Whether this is the case in practice needs more research. SALW: How does the presence of SALW affect this benevolent state-TCR relationship? This too requires additional study. Development projects and conflict: Local knowledge of conflicts and conflict parameters is absolutely necessary. It is critical to develop mechanisms for eliciting the views of locals on projects, as well as on potential harm done by projects. It seems also crucial that locals have, if not a veto, than at least a strong vote influencing development projects. Behavioral changes: One method of settling conflicts is installing behavioral changes among participants. The cultural context, in this case, is critical for conflict transformation. By altering actors relations and interests, one can change mindsets.
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Appendix 2: Ten Ghanaian Case Studies

Ten Ghanaian case studies of local level conflict were collected on our behalf by Professor Linda Darkwa of the University of Ghana. The conflicts represented a broad spectrum of conflicts at the local level, where TCR had been, or potentially could have been, employed. In this Appendix we present summaries of these cases. The data from the cases was analyzed and served to generate a series of questions from which emerged the research instrument described in this report (Appendix 3). Critically, these case studies also serve as a link between the lowest level of conflict and its resolution (on which this report focuses) and conflict at higher levels of organization.
The Anlo Stool

Three houses of the Adzovia clan in the Anlo Traditional Area have the right to appoint a Paramount chief in succession. In 2007, The Regent was elected to the stool without the permission of these lineages. Their protests led to violence between young men on each side. The opposing faction filed a suit at the High Court in restraint of the installation ceremony. A restraint was issued, but the violence continued. The Regent was supported by his family, who claimed the right to the stool. The Anlo stool had become vacant after the death of Togbui Adeladza II from the Bate Clan. Some clan heads and chiefs of Anlo tried to install Mr. Agboadathe Regent of Anlo during the interregnumas the next paramount. The Adzovia clan, titular kingmakers, opposed the installation of Mr. Agboada because they thought it subverted their rights. Mr. Agboada and his supporters refused to respect the restraining order of the Fast Track Court. The Minister of Interior imposed a curfew on the Anlo area. The government urged the parties to settle the issue of who is the rightful heir through the regional or national Houses of Chiefs, or the court, rather than by violence. Following the imposition of a curfew, and the court order, Mr. Agboada discontinued his attempt at the Paramountcy (14 January 2008).
Ashiaman Police Violence Case

On 4 June 2008 a clash between taxi drivers and the police occurred as a result of disgruntled drivers trying to obtain the release of a colleague who had earlier been arrested for a traffic offense. There were rumors that a driver was dead in police custody. In attempting to control the crowd, gunshots were fired and this led to the death of two persons. The Ashiaman lorry station is an important service location for travelers and commuters. It is also a hub for petty trading, chop bars (local restaurants), and a major transit point for traders of livestock and other produce from other areas bound for the markets. The Police Administration met with all parties involved in the clash as well as with the families of the victims to console them and to offer their support to the families in the burial of the victims. The police commander responsible was removed from office. Three other inspectors were removed as well. The police accepted that the Police Administration would carry some of the cost for the funeral bills of the two victims: 9.1million (old) cedis for one and 21 million (old) cedis for the other. In addition, each family would receive compensation. The Ashiaman Municipal Assembly donated three crates of non-alcoholic drinks, two cartons of beer, a bottle of schnapps and 500 cedi. 58
Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe Ga State Traditional Ban on Drumming

Accra, the capital of Ghana, is built in the ancestral lands of the Ga people. The Ga impose an annual one-month ban in and around May on drumming and noise-making since Ga traditional gods demand quiet as maize is planted to ensure a bumper harvest. The traditional Gas worship their gods in shrines and those shrines used to be located in family houses, sacred groves and uninhabited places. However, these shrines are now located in areas that have been taken over gradually by public and private buildings including businesses, churches, restaurants, bars etc. In most cases, the owners and operators of these facilities are not indigenous Ga. In May 1998, in a series of incidents, a group of about 100 Ga youth attacked the Gospel Light International Church, the Victory Bible Church and the Christ Apostolic Church, which were located in different suburbs of Accra, who had violated the noise ban. As the traditional landowners, the Ga felt that the strangers occupying their land were not respecting the traditions of the Ga state hence their violent reaction. The musical instruments of these churches were seized and some church members clashed with the youth. None of those involved in the clashes were arrested. While some Ga are completely urbanized (and own and operate bars and other businesses) traditional Ga still engage in fishing and agriculture within their traditional domain (the outskirts and coast of Accra). Although freedom of religion is guaranteed, there is ambiguity in how to mediate when one persons freedom of religion (to express ritual through music and drumming) infringes on anothers religious requirements (the requirement for silence). The Ghana Pentecostal Council declared the ban on drumming a violation of the rights of Christians and was accused by the other side of not respecting Ghanaian culture. In 2000, the various churches and several Muslim organizations met with the Ga Traditional Council, in an attempt to resolve the conflict. The resolution of the meeting was a joint declaration which largely shared the governments recommendation about confined drumming in return for the cessation of attacks. The attacks persisted, albeit with diminished severity and intensity until 2002.
The Dagbon Inheritance Conflict

After the murder of the reigning king of the Dagomba people of northern Ghana in 2002, a major conflict over the vacant stool erupted in Dagbon Traditional State between two eligible Gates or lineages. One aspect of the quarrel had been the claim by the rival Andani Gate that a previous king of the Abudu Gate had not been enthroned properly, and was thus ineligible for royal funerary rites. Exchanges of gunfire between the factions (i.e. the Abudus and the Andanis), continued for three days without the intervention of the security forces, resulting in the deaths of around thirty people including the Ya-Na (King), many more injured, the burning of thirty-six houses and the destruction of the Gbewa Royal Palace. The Andani and Abudu Gates are the traditional royal houses of the Dagbon traditional area. The position of king rotates from one of these Gates to the other upon the death of an incumbent. Most conflicts that have broken out in the region in the past have had to do chiefly with succession to the kingship. This is because the rules for succession have tended to be rather flexible, with only an assumption of agreement between the two gates as to who is qualified to rule. 59

According to the tradition of the Dagombas, the body that selects the Ya Na is composed of four official soothsayers headed by the Kuga Na who is the Vice President of the Dagomba State Council. However, in 1948, an Electoral Committee was set up to among other things, be responsible for the election and appointment of the Ya Na. In the event that a unanimous decision is not reached, it was decided to have a secret ballot so that the majority vote carries the day. However, by Dagbon custom once a Ya-Na is enthroned, he cannot be deposed. The Abudu king at that time, it was claimed, had not been chosen according to Dagbon custom, since he like his predecessor had also come from the Abudu Gate. A government Commission determined that since the Abudu family had occupied the throne twice, the Andani family should also occupy it twice and thereafter return to the alternation. Both families at the time agreed to the new arrangements and the agreement was enacted in statute. However, after the death of Ya Na Abudulai III (the second Abudu family king), the statute was repealed and the dispute raged on until the Supreme Court gave a definitive ruling on the issue, confirming the alternation of succession between the two families. In the postindependence era, several attempts were made to find a permanent solution. The Abudus and Andanis are still at a point where they have not concluded deliberations as to which of the two Gates has the mandate to rule. The funeral of Ya Na Abdullai III has also not been finalized since the venue has not been decided on (which depends on whether he is to be considered a legitimate king or not). Following a government commission of enquiry, which recommended actions be taken against officials, the military, and the police, as well as against those responsible for violence during the disturbances, a Committee of Eminent Chiefs was appointed to oversee the traditional aspects of the conflict within the boundaries of existing legal instruments on the Dagbon skin (throne) affairs. The Committees problem is considerable. As the gate that provides the king has control over the lands during his reign, it is essential for any resolution attempts to be mindful of the linkage between the throne and the land which can be translated into economic power. The performance of the funeral rites of the late Abudulai, and the selection of the next regent are crucial issue which will be scrutinized by both sides. The Commission must therefore not leave any traditional custom out or overlooked. Typically, both sides have raised objections to places, times, and rituals of burial of previous kings.
The Bawku Conflict

Bawku, the capital of the Upper East region of Ghana has been embroiled in a long standing conflict estimated to be about five decades old . The main source of the conflict is the contestation of the skin (which is the symbol of traditional authority in the three northern regions of Ghana, equivalent to throne) and its associated land rights, between two ethnic groups, the Kusasis and the Mamprusis. The Kusasis are understood to be the indigenes of Bawku and are in the majority while the Mamprusis are migrant settlers who are believed to come from Nalerigu, a larger area close to Bawku. The perennial violence often leads to the loss of lives and major property destruction. In the wake of the latest violence, which took place at the close of 2007, it was reported that over 15 shops and 159 houses were burnt. The recent clashes are said to have been triggered by an alleged armed robbery during the SamanPid festival of the Kusasis on 31 December 2007. Eleven people were killed and seven others injured in Buabula, near Sabongare, in the Bawku Municipality.
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The roots of the dispute can be traced back to the periods before Ghana attained independence. The Kusasis, an acephalous group were guided by the tendaana, the earth priest and have had a long-established residency in Bawku. Under colonial rule, they were induced to appoint chiefs. In the absence of a Kusasi chiefly system, the British appointed a chief from among immigrant Mamprusis, who owed allegiance to the traditional Mamprusi chief in the Mamprusi homeland. Thus the chief of the Bawku area became, ipso facto, a vassal of the Mamprusi chief. In post-independence Ghana, the Kusasis largely supported K. Nkrumas CPP, while the Mamprusis in Bawku largely supported the opposition. Perhaps as result, the Nkruma government attempted to appoint a Kusasi as paramount chief, replacing the Mamprusi incumbent. This was reversed after the 1969 elections, when the CPP was defeated. Closely associated with the chieftaincy contestations in Bawku are disputes about land ownership. The custodian of the land is the chief. The Kusasi claim to the land stems from the fact that they were the first to settle on the land. They argue that the land is the property of the tendaana, the earth priest and since there have always been the tendaanas, they are the custodians of the land. The Mamprusi on the other hand argue that the land belongs to the Nayiri, the overlord of the Mamprugus. and that the Kusasi tendaanas had at best been caretakers of the land for the Nayiri, who had always provided protection for Bawku allowing the acephalous Kusasi to cultivate the land in peace. The Mamprusis claim that when they came to Bawku, the Kusasis had no chiefs, so the chieftaincy institution is exclusively their domain. This dispute over land has meant that many contested lands cannot be cultivated. Claims and counter-claims have continually fuelled the conflicts between the two groups.
The Ga-Mantse Installation

According to Ga tradition and custom, the installation of a new Ga Mantse (King) can only take place after the funeral celebration of the previous king. The Ga are the indigenous people of the area of Accra, Ghanas capital. The Ga Mantse is the ruler of the Ga traditional area and the President of the Ga Traditional Council, and paramount chief in the Ga traditional area. He is selected from among four royal we (expanded corporate patrilineal lineages) by rotation: each lineage takes its turn after the death of a ruling king from one of the four houses. After the death of king Boni Nii Amugi II on 10 December, 2004, the dzaase (electors) of the Ga stool (throne), did not have a clear choice of a candidate to be installed as the new Ga Mantse. These contentions erupted into a major crisis which led to a division among the electors and elders of the Ga traditional area. The candidate of the Tsuru we was challenged because, it was alleged, he was only a member by marriage and matrilineal descent. The issue was muddled because the Nai wulomo, one of the high priests of the Ga state assured the Ga people that someone of matrilineal descent with good character could be made king. The candidate of the Abola Piem we (who by the rotational rule had the best chance at the kingship), was not selected by the electors. There was, in addition, a dispute between the wulomo (traditional priests) and the Ga Traditional Council over who had the right to install a new king. The traditional council is a statutory body with the king as the head. It serves as a link between the people and the district assembly. The state cannot affect the selection, but does have the prerogative of gazetting a selected and enstooled chief. The Ga traditional council takes its jurisdiction from the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs, which, among other issues,
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adjudicates on cases of chieftaincy disputes in the Ga traditional area. All Ga Mantse candidates have filed petitions to the judicial council of the Greater Accra Traditional Council. The conflict has cut across we lines, with members of some we joining opposing suits for dismissal of their own candidate. The dispute is, at this time, being settled driven by fait accompli: the Ga Traditional Council claims that, acting within its authority, and in the absence of another candidate presenting himself before them, they have chosen the Tsuru we candidate. The other candidates as well as the priests are appealing this decision to the House of Chiefs.
KonkombaBimoba Clash
On 16 September 2007 a fight between a Konkomba man and a Bimoba at Jimbali market degenerated into a violent confrontation. Word reached the kinsmen on both sides who mobilized themselves and attacked each other at the market place. There were three fatalities at the end of the day after sporadic gunshots were fired. Two ethnic groups, the Konkomba and Bimoba share the Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo District where the market is located. The Bimobas polity is a chieftainship similar to that of their Akan and Mossi neighbors. The Konkombas are an acephalous group, where leadership is achieved by competition in warfare, oratory, accumulating wealth and arranging exchanges, or by the possession of special knowledge or personal qualities. The members of both groups have cross-cutting religious affiliations which include Islam, with a substantial number of the population being Catholics and a few being Protestants. Under colonial pressure, the acephalous Konkombas have been forced to set up a chieftainship. Most issues dealing with land, customary practice and community development-related issues are reported to the chief. Chiefs are aided by a council of elders, assemblymen, and opinion leaders. For the Konkombas, this forms the political as well the traditional judicial basis upon which the community is run on a daily basis. A District Chief Executive who acts as the link between the district and the Northern Regional Minister is responsible for development of the district and communicates the development agenda of the government through the local heads, chiefs and the council of leaders. The chiefs act as mediators in local conflicts through a traditional court where they preside with the advice of a council of elders. In parallel, there is a government district court manned by a magistrate who may also hear cases that are brought before it. There are also regional courts that may hear cases that defendants may feel did not have favorable judgments at the traditional courts. District and regional courts may hear cases that transcend the territorial jurisdiction and power of the chiefs such as intra-ethnic disputes. The source of the current dispute is the ownership of a parcel of farm land. Land disputes have a long history in the area, and almost always lead to clashes. During the dispute in question almost four hundred houses were burned, and two policemen injured. Eight people lost their lives and greater numbers sustained various degrees of gunshot wounds. Following a police intervention, a joint delegation of chiefs and elders representing the two groups assured the Ghanaian President that conflicts between them had now been consigned to history. They pledged their resolve never to allow a recurrence of such an incident to hamper all the effort that the government was initiating to better the lives of the people in the District. Both sides acknowledged that the constant fighting between them had severely impacted local development, and this was a major factor in the mediation. The 62

delegation assessed the cost of the conflicts to lives, property and met with the victims to find out their needs. About two billion cedis (old currency) were pledged for the rehabilitation and reconstruction by the District Assembly of the over three hundred homes destroyed during the conflict. This will include cement and roofing material being provided by the District Assembly. A joint delegation of chiefs and elders representing the two groups assured their community that the conflict between them will now been consigned to history.
The Konkomba-Nanumba Dispute

The Konkombas, an acephalous population in Northern Ghana number some 500,000 people. The polity was based on lineage membership, with several lineages forming a clan. Lineage heads took all important decisions and resolved conflicts between people from different clans. A religious head called the Otindana had spiritual control over the land and people residing in his area. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Mampurugu, Dagbon, Nanun and Gonja immigrated into the area and established traditional kingdoms. With independence, the Konkomba insisted that they be ruled by their own community leaders, rather than by the royals of the chiefly groups. They however had no paramount chief (a requirement for establishing an autonomous region under the Ghanaian constitution) and still owed allegiance to the paramountcies of the chiefly states that surrounded them. The Nanumbas claim land ownership due to chieftaincy rule over the farm lands of the Konkombas. The Konkombas, who claim to be the indigenous people, claim that their farm lands were taken over by the Nanumbas through conquest and the imposition of their political structure (chieftaincy), making them subjects in the process. A main cause of Konkomba discontent was that they were compelled, like everyone else in the area, to put in some days free labour each year on the farms of Nanumba chiefs. Having no paramount chiefs also meant that Konkomba have limited political power and land rights. This is mainly due to the fact that the administration of lands that are not vested in the state, is vested in traditional chiefs, of which the highest is the position of paramount chief. In addition, their lack of a paramount chief implies that, they have no representation in the Northern Region House of Chiefs. This is a major political institution that takes key decisions in development and distribution of government largesse. Konkomba and Nanumba engaged in open warfare in 1980, 1994 and 1995. The 1994 conflict, also known as the Guinea Fowl War was triggered by an argument between a Konkomba man and a Nanumba man over the price of a guinea-fowl. It engulfed nine districts and was the most devastating of the series. One estimate puts the death toll at 15,000 whilst another places it at 2,000. In 1994, the Konkomba Youth Association (KOYA) facilitated the establishment of a yam market in Accra, the capital of Ghana and begun to sell their yams directly to consumers thereby minimizing/eliminating the middlemen and women from the other tribes who had until them, been the conduit between the Konkomba farmers and consumers in the South. This bypass limited further, the interaction between the Konkombas and their Nanumba neighbours. KOYA also advised the Konkomba to stop the payment of tribute to the Nanumba chief and subsequently, to the Gonja chief who also demanded tribute from the Konkombas under his jurisdiction. The Konkombas primary objective in the conflict was to fight for recognition from the other ethnic groups that live in the area. They were also fighting for rights to the land that they occupied. Due to their itinerant (swidden) agricultural practices of the Konkombas, they do not have any large settlement group except in Saboba, which is located within the Dagbon
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traditional area with the Ya Na as the overlord. The Konkomba in their quest for emancipation in 1993 petitioned the Northern Regional house of chiefs for the elevation of Saboba to paramountcy without consulting the Ya Na. This action brought tensions between the Konkombas and the Dagombas. These tensions escalated into violence in 1994 between the Konkomba and Nanumbas. The Dagombas were drawn into the conflict due to the fact that the Konkombas had bypassed the Ya Na who is the overlord of the Dagbon traditional area under whose authority Saboba falls directly, and had gone to the Northern Regional house of chiefs to petition for the elevation of Saboba to paramountcy level. The Guinea Fowl War is said to have been initiated by an argument over the market price of a black guinea fowl (mainly used for ritual purposes) between a Konkomba and Nanumba man at Nakpayili market January 31st, 1994. The quarrel took on an ethnic character with ethnic abuse and threats of war. The quarrel escalated into violence resulting in the severing of a finger of the Konkomba man. The following day, the son of the Konkonba man, in a quest to avenge his father, tracked the Nanumba man to his farm and shot him. Two days after the beginning of the conflict, members of the other majority tribes (the Dagombas, Gonjas, Mamprusis and Chokosis) joined in to fight the Konkomba, attacking their settlements. The fighting quickly spread to seven districts. By the time the situation was eventually bought under control over 1,200 people had lost their lives, 5,000 were injured and over 10,000 people were displaced. Several villages were razed to the ground. In June, a peace agreement was signed by the warring factions, denouncing violence and committing themselves to resolve their differences through peaceful means. A government appointed Permanent Peace Negotiating Team (PPNT) led by Dr Nana Obiri Yeboah attempted to bring about a negotiated settlement to the conflict. However, the chief-led groups demanded that the Konkomba acknowledge that they had perpetrated acts of aggression and render an apology to them. The Konkomba refused to acknowledge aggression, arguing that what occurred was a culmination of years of violations. To them, the demand by the chief-led tribes for acknowledgement and apology was confirmation that they (the Konkombas) were viewed as subordinate to the others. This led to an impasse and eventually, the team begun meeting the different groups individually rather than together. As the war progressed, INGOs, including the IRC, Oxfam, Action AID, the Catholic Relief Service and World Vision decided to co-ordinate their relief efforts and formed the InterNGO consortium. Although their initial focus was the provision of relief for the war affected, they gradually moved towards reconciliatory rehabilitation programmes. As part of the latter, the Inter-NGO Consortium requested the assistance of the Nairobi Peace Initiative (NPI), a conflict resolution NGO, to assist in the search for peace between the Konkombas and Nanumbas. The NPI through a series of workshops and negotiations with leaders and opinion leaders such as chiefs, the leadership of the youth associations etc, from both sides, resulted in the signing of the Kumasi Peace Accord in 1996. Under the agreement the Konkombas agreed that the Ya Na (the Dagbon king) has rights over all the lands of Dagbon. It stated that all parties were citizen of Dagbon. Therefore they were entitled to land without any discrimination. One of the greatest concerns of the Konkomba was the right to be recognized under the paramountcy. The Konkombas have agreed that the chief of Saboba be elevated to the paramountcy to represent them. The assassination of the Ya Na (see the Dagbon case above) may have been precipitated by this agreement. In the Konkomba-Nanumba case, the parties agreed that the Konkombas were settlers on Nanumba land. The Nanumbas accepted the fact that the Konkombas were important segment of the community and they were to be allowed to freely choose 64

their headmen to be blessed by either the Bimbilla Na (paramount chief of the Nanumba Traditional Area) or his accredited representative.
The Nkonya-Alavanyo Dispute

The Nkonya- Alavanyo conflict is a consequence of an 85-year old boundary dispute between the Nkonya, a Guan-speaking group and the Alavanyo, an Ewe-speaking group. Alavanyo is in the Hohoe District while Nkonya is in the Jasikan District. They are neighbors who share a land boundary. However, some accounts of the conflict state that the Alavanyos settled on the Nkonya land with the consent of the Nkonya people years ago. The land in dispute is a prime forest land covering about 10 square miles rich in timber species, bamboo, cola nuts, cocoa, oil palm and food crops. In 2001, two Alavanyo men who were illegally cutting timber with a chain-saw in the NkonyaAlavanyo Forest Reserve (Togo Plateau Forest Reserve) were attacked by gunmen. This resulted in the death of one of the illegal loggers. There was immediate suspicion that Nkonya gunmen were responsible for the death and a report made to the police. The perpetrators were however not found. Both communities subsequently suffered from tit-fortat murders, property destruction, and illegal logging activities. The presence of a large craft arms industry may have exacerbated the conflict. The Volta Regional House of Chiefs is supposed to settle cases regarding territorial conflicts as well as matters regarding chieftaincy issues. Both sides petitioned the House. Petitions were also filed at the various instances of courts of law. The Volta Regional House of Chiefs has asked both sides to exercise restraint. The body has also appointed a three member committee under the Paramount chief of the Buem Traditional Area to institute the process of reconciliation between the two factions. This attempt several previous failed attempts at reconciliation by the regional and district governments, and supplemented by a church mediation committee. It emerged that the conflict parties did not know the precise dimensions and boundaries of the land under dispute (the ostensible cause for the quarrel). It was suggested by one of the traditional chiefs that identifying the Anya trees (traditional boundary markers) would enable a solution. The mediation team with the acquiescence of the two sides agreed to a survey. Representatives of the factions were presented with the maps and asked to present the findings to their respective groups. The paramount chiefs of each group pledged to put the past behind them and rally the youth to accelerate the socio-economic development of their communities. The demarcation has been accepted in practice (though not formally implemented by the district authorities, and no violent incidents have been recorded.
The Farmers of Okumaning

In 1974, through a Legislative Instrument (LI), the Government of Ghana nationalized 12,500 acres in the Okumaning area through the paramount chief of the Akyem Abuakwa traditional area. The paramount chief is the highest traditional leader in that traditional area. In pre-colonial times the paramount chief was the commander in-chief of the armies of the traditional area and the highest adjudicator in all cases of disputes. In the contemporary setting, he is still the ceremonial head of the traditional ceremonial army. Lands are vested in the paramount chief through the specific traditional authorities of the communities. Thus, for
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government or multinational authorities to acquire lands, they are required to apply through the paramount chief to the specific chief under whose immediate jurisdiction that land falls. The government paid compensation on the five thousand acres cultivated under a State Farms scheme. Two different types of compensation were paid to the farmers. One was tree compensation which was calculated on the number of trees on the plot of land. Part of this was paid to the chiefs. The other compensation was crop compensation paid to the farmers based on the type of crops on the farm. In 1985, the State Farms Corporation put up all 12,000 acres of land, which included the five thousand which had been cultivated, for divestiture. The lands were acquired by the Ghana Oil Palm Development Corporation (GOPDC) in 2000. Prior to the arrival of a valuation team that was to set compensation, the town crier was sent to beat the gong and announce the valuation teams presence. Owners of the land were required to be present for the valuation to ensure transparency and integrity. However, most of the farmers on the Okumaning lands are renters, not the owners of the land. The owners are mainly domiciled in surrounding towns and as far afield as Accra. Many of them did not hear the town criers message or did not have enough time to get to their farms for the valuation. Residents received compensation for lost housing and food crops. Land compensation was paid to the land owners and the chiefs. The latter is based on 1% of the GOPDCs profit, which is paid to the chiefs and the district assembly. Problems arose because many farmers in the 7,000 acres that the Ghanaian government had not cultivated, were squatters with no land rights. They alleged that the GOPDC has dispossessed them of their land and trees unfairly. Violent clashes occurred, because many of these newcomers, with no traditional rights, had nowhere else to go. The numbers of injured and dead remain unconfirmed. The Chief of Okumaning, the District Chief Executive and some of the management of the GOPDC, taking into consideration that the corporation and the community would have to co-exist for a long period of time, decided to mediate and settle the matter out of court. A meeting was held between representatives of the farmers and the management of the GOPDC for timelines to be agreed upon for compensation to be paid.
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Appendix 3: Field Scripts

For discussion of the design and uses of the scripts, see the methodology chapter. Scripts are presented in raw form. Some variations of incidents or outcomes were left out. Events and outcomes were adjusted to local conditions during the field studies.
SCRIPT 1: Development Project

David came to a village David is from a place not known to the villagers David started a project hiring white-collar workers David said the project would help the village in the future. Jacob is hired Jacob is educated Tom, Dick, Harry are hired Tom, Dick, Harry are educated. They are related to Jacob. Adam is hired Adam is educated Oliver complains only Jacobs friends were hired Oliver is related to Adam Oliver supported by his family, friends, and some others in village Adam supports Oliver's position Adam says Jacob wants only his family to benefit Oliver's wife accuses Jacob to Jacob's wife Oliver's wife and Jacob's wife have quarrelled before Fight starts between Oliver's group and Jacob's group Some of Jacob's people are injured Some of Oliver's people are injured Property is destroyed
SCRIPT 2:
Commercial Oil fruit
Robert comes to village Oil fruit trees are used for windbreak Oil fruit use unfamiliar Robert is from another tribe which is unknown to the villagers Tom goes to bush to collect fruit Trees are not cultivated People take tree leaves for fodder whenever they are needed Trees are planted by some people as windbreak Trees are not on Sam's land Trees are near Sam's land but far from Toms land
Robert pays Tom for fruit
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Robert must process fruit Oil worth much in town Sam says these are his trees Sam uses these trees leaves more than anyone else No one saw him plant them The trees are closest to Sam's field Sam does have good grazing land Sam demands Robert pay him Robert says he has paid Tom Tom says he did the work, and he must be paid Villagers support either Tom or Sam Zachary says oil is expensive in Europe Zachary says Robert is cheating villagers Robert says cannot pay more for oil fruit Robert must press fruit and transport oil Zachary accuses Robert of lying Zachary & friends attack Robert Robert is injured Robert's goods are destroyed Zachary will not allow Robert to operate Robert wants to continue in village Robert demands compensation
SCRIPT 3:
SALW Case
Brown's family is very large but not well to-do Jones family is small but wealthy Brown and Jones are both young men Brown and Jones come home from bar Brown and Jones quarrel Brown strikes Jones Brown hit Jones several times Brown used his hands and feet Jones tried to defend himself Jones badly hurt Brown & Jones in market Brown insults Jones Brown said in public that Jones was afraid Jones shoots Brown
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Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe SCRIPT 4: Witchcraft Accusation
John and Matthew are neighbours. Both raise sorghum, cassava, vegetables, and have some livestock. They do not get along very well. There have been boundary disputes in the past. Matthews child steals fruit. Matthews child had entered Johns grove and stolen some ripe fruit. John caught the child running away, and went and complained to the childs mother. She said the trees were on the boundary and her child has the right to take some, in any case, he is a child. John curses Matthew John was angry. He said if they do not restrain the child, he will see to it that they (Matthew and his wife) will pay. Because this ended without a fight, Matthews wife did not tell her husband. Cow dies Matthew had bought a new young cow for her milk. One day, for no apparent reason, the cow died. Matthew was very upset and very angry. Matthew attacks John Matthew accuses John of having bewitched his cow. He attacks John
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BONN INTERNATIONAL CENTER

CONVERSION INTERNATIONALES KONVERSIONSZENTRUM BONN

Traditional Conict Resolution in Three Societies

F INAL P ROJECT R EPORT

TRADITIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION IN THREE SOCIETIES

FUNDED BY THE GERMAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,

FEDERAL MINISTRY FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Authors: Dr. Michael Ashkenazi Jan Grebe BICC, June 2009

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

The Choice of Methods: Learning from Others

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe Developing the Instrument

Usable scripts can be found in Appendix 3.

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Use in the field

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Evaluating the Script Instrument in Practice

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Potential for further Uses

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional, Conflict, Resolution

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Conflict means

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

[Ethnic riot] [Brawl] [Brawl] [Political debate] Face-to-face group Collectives

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Implications for this Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Findings from the Field Study

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

The TCR Process

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Who are the Conciliators?

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Community Harmony and the Ideology of TCR

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

The Reasonable Person

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Ritual, the Supernatural, and Conflict

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Ritual

Vertical Communication with Leaders

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report Consultation between Conciliators

Women and Gender

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Women and Justice in TCR

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Michael Ashkenazi and Jan Grebe

Traditional Conflict Resolution in Three SocietiesFinal Report

Ashkenazi & Grebe 2009 - Traditional Conflict Resolution PDF

Ashkenazi & Grebe 2009 - Traditional Conflict Resolution PDF