Obstacles to reconciliation and forgiveness among victim groups of unacknowledged past trauma and genocide (original) (raw)
gration2 019, p. 130, available online at , accessed April 26, 2020. 5T he number of refugees and asylum seekers increased by about 13 million between 2010 and 2017 (at an annual average rate of over 8per cent), while other migrants increasedatanannual rate of under 2p er cent between 2010 and 2019. for all these data and stats, see: United Nations, Department of Economicand Social AffairsReport, Population Facts,September 2019 No. 4/2019, p. 2, available online at (accessed may 3, 2020). 6E venIDPs do not havealegal definition, but the United Nations define them as (…) based on two components: 1) that the movement is coercedori nvoluntary (to distinguish from economic and other voluntarymigrants), and 2) that the movement stays withininternationally recognizedstate borders (to distinguish from refugees). While there is broad international agreement about a definition that includes these twocore components, interpretationsofthe definition and practical translationsv aries from state-to-state. (United Nations Eurostats Manuals and Guidelines, TechnicalR eport on Internally Displaced Persons, Current Practices and Recommendations for Improvement,M arch 2018, p. 15, available online at ), accessed May 3, 2020. 76 7%of all UNHCR refugees come from just five countries: Syria (6.7 Million), Afghanistan (2.7 Million), South Sudan (2.3 Million), Myanmar (1.1 Million) and Somalia (900.000). 8h ttps://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/, last accessed February 6, 2020. 9S outh Africa after Apartheid,R wanda after the genocide againstt he Tutsis, and post WWII German-French relationships, just to nameafew. how to define and identifyreconciliation in the "real world" in an evident and, if possible, measurable way. Furthermore, the idea of the refugee, although difficulttocategorize,given the high number of situations that "produced" refugeesand, within these local conditions, the thousands of different cases, is connected to the concept of reconciliation from several different points of view (Fidian-Qasmiyeh, Eet al. 2014,V olkan 2017, Zito -Martin 2016) 10 . In contemporary literature, we can find several different definitions of reconciliation, depending on the researchers and the discipline belongs to: political scientists, religious scholars, theologians, or psychologists and researchers from other disciplines givedifferent definitions. One of the most innovativea nd challenging approaches to the theory of reconciliation is the one embraced by our Jena Center forR econciliationS tudies 11 in Jena, Germany. JCRS' is basedonthe definition that reconciliation is the creation of normal and if possible good relationships in the face of wars, civil wars,g enocides, dictatorships, apartheid, enslavement, colonialism, and graveh uman rights violations. It is conceived as ac omprehensivea pproacht ofind ar econciled peace with good relationships. Those relationships include the ones with the other(s), with your own group, with yourself, with nature and environment, etc. Relationships with transcendence or individual meanings of life are equally important. Reconciliationi salong-term process over several generations that includes many different approaches and practices. All of these practices are rooted in aw orldview and in ac oncept of the reconciliation process which canbeencapsulated by the following elements and basic convictions: 1-An orientation towards the past: the pastm ustb ed ealt with, if reconciliation is to take place. 2-The importanceoftruth: the truth mustbeknown andacknowledged by all, including the perpetrators. 3-The importanceo fc onserving the past: the past must be remembered by building museums, memorials, by books written by historians, by archives and by the conservation of thesites of suffering. 4-The importanceo fg uilt: the individual perpetratorh as done wrong through his free will. He is responsible and must confesshis guilt. 5-The importanceofwords of apology and forgiveness. Forgiveness demands the verbal expression of guilt andanapology from the perpetrator'sside.