The Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy
WORKING METHODS
IMTD consists of a unique combination of voluntary work combined with professional skills and flexibility. Our projects are ran by Program Officers which consists of graduate students from around the world.
IMTD primarily uses social peacebuilding as a tool to build the human infrastructure imperative to transforming a conflict-habituated system. Social peacebuilding operates to improve relationships between differing groups at a personal level, thus transforming perceptions and building bridges based on deep-seated shared interests and values. IMTD has cooperated with several U.S. based or international institutions that work in the fields of conflict-resolution and conflict-management.
By expanding the more traditional definition of diplomacy to include several tracks outside of the formal realm, IMTD incorporates a people-focused approach in its work, building trust and relationships on the ground with individuals who have been deeply affected by a conflict. Indeed, personal relationship building lies at the core of peacemaking through multi-track diplomacy. Only by interactions at the informal, local level may a conflict-habituated system be transformed into a sustainable peace system.
IMTD actively empowers activists and peacebuilders, creates spaces and opportunities to bring people together and discuss the challenges of resolving a conflict. We encourage individuals to step forward in a peacebuilding process. We strongly believe that person to person interaction is essential for the transformation of deep-rooted conflicts. When people’s hearts are opened and when they are willing to seek peaceful solutions for the conflict they become catalysts for transformation in their societies and became activists for peace.
IMTD enters a conflict by invitation only, and views building trust and credibility with all parties as imperative to success. IMTD operates as a partner and collaborator once in the field, sensitive to the cultural relevancy of its work and careful not to impose a “Western” perspective on conflict transformation practices. Thus, we uphold the notion that a solution cannot enter a conflict system from the outside, but must be nurtured from within local groups. Through our efforts to ensure local ownership of the peace process, we see our work as a mutual learning experience, enabling us to continually strengthen our work.
As a facilitator of conflict transformation, we focus on change at various levels of beliefs, values, perceptions, feelings, behaviors and structures. This holistic systematic approach to peacemaking places individual transformation at the heart of the framework, for it is only through individual experiences that long-term commitments to peace can transpire.
Conflict Transformation
IMTD uses the term conflict transformation to describe its work because of its implication of facilitating deep-level change at the systematic level. Peacebuilding through conflict transformation is differentiated from conflict resolution as it creates the tangible and intangible conditions by which a peaceful system can emerge from a conflict-habituated environment. While conflict resolution implies elimination of the overt violence, conflict transformation refers to a more subtle process of addressing constructive change of a process or a system that leads to a conflict.
Seemingly intractable conflicts appear irresolvable because the conflict itself has become a living part of the social system, with the population absorbing the conflict’s patterns in such a way that a single modification of behavior is not sufficient in creating peace. Thus, social systems entrenched in a conflict at various levels require a concerted effort engaging multiple parts of the system simultaneously. Such a holistic approach to peacemaking means that official negotiations are only one piece of the transformation equation.
Social conflicts that are deep-rooted or intractable get these names because the conflict has created patterns that have become part of the social structure. With the social system as the unit of analysis, the term “resolution” becomes less appropriate. Transforming deep-rooted conflicts is only partly about “resolving” the issues of the conflict – the central issue is systemic change or transformation. Systems cannot be “resolved,” but they can be transformed, thus IMTD prefers to use the term conflict transformation. The twelve basic principles that IMTD adheres to, embrace and at the same time are based on the notion of conflict transformation and systemic change. The Institute’s work is to facilitate this transformation from conflict-habituated to peace systems.