Barker: Recognise effects of conflicts in society

THE Institute of National Affairs (INA) has urged the Government leaderships at all levels to recognise the destructive and debilitative effects of community conflicts or inter-group conflicts in local communities, says a senior official.
Executive director Paul Barker said these inter-group conflicts manifest out into the open through tribal warfare, or one village conducting random road-blocks to impact others down the road, or a clan mobilising to destroy economic cash crops of the others, or conducting violence against the women or children of another tribe.
These are all examples and manifestations of inter-group or community conflicts.
“They breed community disharmony, severe inter-group social relations, sow hatred and distrust, and destroy lives, property and business activities,” he said.
Barker said community conflicts had a strong negative effect on many fronts.
He said some effects were long lasting and highly detrimental to the social and economic wellbeing of affected communities and provinces.
“Such conflicts are now becoming too frequent, especially in some parts of the country, and require urgent attention and intervention from the highest levels of leadership, and cooperation between government, churches and civil society organisations and the wider community.”
He said governors and provincial administrators, who often witness these conflicts in their provinces can become proactive and take measures to contain and help resolve these conflicts. “They don’t need to sit by and wait for Waigani to provide the lead.”
Barker said many conflicts had complex dimensions and equally complex deep-seated root causes, thus, an ad-hoc quick-fix approach was not advisable.
INA recommends government authorities planning to intervene in this area, or already doing so, to consider the community conflict resolution process as a tool using the Participatory Action Research (PAR) method.
“The PAR methodology is indeed a social engineering framework and the most suitable tool to employ, especially for the rural Melanesian social contexts, and shown to be effective,” Barker said.
He said community conflicts are in themselves a “call for change” to the existing order, context or arrangements.
“The PAR method of conflict resolution will assist us to ‘transform conflicting communities’.
“PAR methodology is indeed a transformative programme.”