SiT 2000
           OVERCOMING VIOLENCE:  PERSONS, FAMILIES, SOCIETIES
III  RECONCILIATION AND INTEGRATION
Hotel Bellevue, Dubrovnik, Croatia, May 31-June 4 2000

        This is our third and final year of trying to understand what is involved in overcoming violence.   We opened the topic in Dusseldorf  in 1998, with the range, experience and aftermath of violence for victims and perpetrators. Our discussions drew us to the topic of community. What is essential about a community that helps its members find non violent ways of dealing with frustration and conflict. And when does community fail in this function and even serve to escalate individual, family or group frustrations and conflicts into violence? In 1999 we followed these questions by looking at the links of violence to poverty, and what makes for individual and community resilience. But we were ourselves faced with the unexpected task of dealing with violent conflicts in our midst, as war erupted in Yugoslavia and forced us to change our meeting from Ohrid, Macedonia to Dobogoko, Hungary. Our 1999 discussions both of poverty and war drew us to the topic of responsibility. In the interest of minimizing future violence, what is the responsibility of victims;  of perpetrators; of those identified against their will as perpetrators or victims because of their membership in a given group; of those who find violence taking place in the next door.
        We now turn to the topics of Reconciliation and Integration. When is reconciliation between former participants in violent experience possible? What makes it possible? What examples of successful reconciliations can we learn from? Must the participants have "integrated" the violent experience before reconciliation is possible, or must reconciliation come first? And, with or without reconciliation, what does it mean and what does it take to "integrate" an experience of violence and to live with it in a way that does not lead to a cycle of revenge, or depressive collapse. How does "integration" differ at the level of the person (ourselves), the family or small group, and or the larger communities or societies we live in.  What can we learn from successful and unsuccessful attempts to integrate and move on from violent situations?
 

 Committee:                                   Members:                                        Hosted by:
 Chair: Jadranka Mimica         Goran Gretic                                   Forum Europe
 HR-10000 Zagreb                   Natalija Oštarijaš                         Perkonceva 2
 Fax: 385-1-371 2619          Nada Marasovic                             HR-10000    mobile:+385-91-6184-389        Zdenka Pantic                                Zagreb
Croatia                                                                                           Croatia
email: jmimica@iom.int