Peace Conference 2024

10. Dezember 2023, von Doris Franzbach

We would like to ask for your kind attention for the following event:

Peace Conference 2024

Shaping a language of Life: Living with fragile identities. How do we build common life in wounded society?

While we recognize that wounds received shape each country differently,  countless people around the world have experienced and been affected by wars, violence, and genocide. Europe is the place where the end of  totalitarian regimes since 1989 not only brought freedom many had hoped/worked for but also resulted in further growth of nationalism, ethnic prejudice, bureaucratic tyranny, and other crises for many. Prolonged totalitarian regimes fragmented societies, communities, and personhood. While not homogenous, historical differences between countries are important in the ways conflict is dealt with.  Forced displacements, and manipulated historical memories can trigger a sense of helplessness and a feeling that there is no escape from repeating the fate of previous generations.

Today’s travellers in  Europe will easily notice the tendency of nations to emphasise “their” histories and “their” own historical traumas. The political and social construction of identity can also be used as a powerful tool, including justification of acts of violence. The construction of the identity of victimhood involves mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion creating binaries of “we-them” perspective where the victim is given a status embodying moral integrity to represent the truth. However, victims are capable of violence themselves.

A recent traumatising history of Central and Eastern European societies generates questions that are relevant for other wounded societies elsewhere as well. Namely, how to overcome our historical legacy, remember truthfully, and find hopefulness for our future? What is the path toward healing after the acts of violence? In what ways can we move from violence to blessing as victims and harm-doers?

Moreover, how do we cross the gap of “we-them”, of victims and perpetrators, of those we perceive as friends, and those we perceive (often unjustly) as enemies? How do we learn to live well together? What might be needed to pave the way and what is missing? And if we use language to create public enemies, is there a way of nonviolent communication in the public sphere to bring reconciliation and peace in the public?

To address these questions we wish to invite you to come together in Klaipėda, Lithuania to discuss the matters of head, heart, and body that impact our common good. Conference sessions will focus on the experiences of various Central and Eastern European countries to address the conditions of victimhood, violence, and attempts to break up the patterns of hopelessness. We will pay attention to how our usage of language can be acts of violence, but also of reconciliation; and what resources for peace and healing are to be found in religious (Christian) sources. Conference workshops are designed to offer opportunities for engaging with the themes and skills such as  nonviolent communication,  a theology of peace, trauma-healing, and others to foster peace individually and collectively.  Evening theatre invites us to examine our ways of living and being in a fractured world.

This  conference, hosted on February 29 – March 3, 2024,  by LCC International University, will allow us to address the legacy of the totalitarian past that continues to manifest itself in the present conflicts among individuals, communities, and societies in Central and Eastern Europe, and to seek for ways to build common good for a hopeful future.

This collaborative peace conference is planned by  European peace contributors:

For further information please contact the Director of the Center for Dialogue and Conflict Transformation at LCC International Uni, Naomi Enns at nenns@lcc.lt

Kretingos g. 36                                                                                                                                                                                     

Klaipėda LT-92307    Lithuania                                                                                                                                                                                         

  +370 46 310 745                                                                                                                                                                                       

 www.lcc.lt                                                                                                        

https://lcc.lt/research-at-lcc/dialogue-and-conflict-transformation