{"id":1822,"date":"2009-01-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2009\/01\/tms-interviews-johan-galtung\/"},"modified":"2016-02-20T11:54:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T11:54:42","slug":"tms-interviews-johan-galtung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2009\/01\/tms-interviews-johan-galtung\/","title":{"rendered":"TMS INTERVIEWS JOHAN GALTUNG"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is an interview with Prof. Johan Galtung, founder of TRANSCEND, about his recent visits to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the UK Department for International Development, in London. TMS also asked him about his talk at the All Parties Peace Committee in the UK House of Commons and the European Parliament in Brussels. <\/em>
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\nTMS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Professor Galtung, last week you were invited as a consultant to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DFID), in London.\u00a0 What was your impression?
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\nJG:<\/strong> In both cases the meeting was with their excellent people working on conflicts in general, and on some particular conflicts like Kosovo.\u00a0 I felt we had a lot in common and deep, fine dialogues
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\nTMS:<\/strong>\u00a0 How does the FCO\u2019s approach of conflict resolution differ from yours?
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\nJG:<\/strong>\u00a0 In basic outlook.\u00a0 To me the key to violence prevention is to solve conflict, and the key to solving conflict is to recognize the validity in some of the truths of all the parties.\u00a0 Equality, equity.\u00a0\u00a0 They did not disagree but gave me the impression that the problem might be with and at the more political level.\u00a0 A Minister of Foreign Affairs may be more interested in showing strength, even winning, than in searching for some way of accommodating all parties.\u00a0 And if he is not, for sure the opposition might make such points!<\/p>\n

TMS:<\/strong>\u00a0 And the DFID?<\/p>\n

JG:<\/strong>\u00a0 Much of the same, the basic outlook.\u00a0 You know, the classical approach to technical assistance was a flow of modern technology, with experts, from a more developed country to a less developed country, meaning governments in both cases, and then down to the villages for implementation.\u00a0 Of course it did not work; that kind of technology is not appropriate for a village \u2013 but the government in the less developed country wants nothing less and the sender has only modernity to offer.\u00a0 NGOs may be good for catastrophe relief work, but they are usually too monochromatic, one profession only, or one approach only.<\/p>\n

So I suggested that DFID could bring together villages, local authorities, from various parts of the Third World to exchange experiences and learn from each other. Local authorities are the major part of civil society, and they are not monochromatic but have a lot of professions and approaches.
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\nTMS:<\/strong>\u00a0 How did they react?
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\nJG:<\/strong>\u00a0 Just the same \u2013 this is so different from the political perspective at the top: \u201cWe are superior, development comes from us\u201d.\u00a0 Village to village would make DFID a medium more than an actor.\u00a0 Again, the Minister would most likely stand for the old approach, and if he does not, for sure his opposition will.
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\nTMS:<\/strong> You also gave a talk in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons for the All Parties Peace Committee?
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\nJG:<\/strong>\u00a0 Exactly, about solutions to current conflicts.\u00a0 Now the 100-150 participants, MPs, civil servants, NGO people, etc. had no difficulty with conflict resolution as the approach to overcoming violence rather than winning a war.\u00a0 But again, the difference in basic outlook between people like those in the room, and the people “out there”.
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\nTMS:<\/strong> Then you went to Brussels as expert in the European Parliament?\u00a0 What was that about?<\/p>\n

JG:<\/strong>\u00a0 The right for professional soldiers to refuse orders – you can read my submission as this week’s TMS editorial.\u00a0 I ended by asking, why is the burden of proof on those who refuse to kill and to be killed, isn’t it rather the would-be killers who would have to prove the validity of their approach?\u00a0 Well, general thinking hasn’t come to that point.\u00a0 Yet.
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\nTMS:<\/strong> And your general conclusion?
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\nJG:<\/strong>\u00a0 That so much of what we are doing is actually at a level deeper than concrete solutions and suggestions.\u00a0 It has to do with the basic outlook, or inlooks if you will, how is the world actually running.\u00a0 Maybe that is where the real struggle is.\u00a0 Maybe we should devote more energy to more philosophical, basic problems — in addition to proposing solutions and having suggestions.\u00a0 Sort of starting by saying, you can look at this problem this way, but also a different way — to make people more aware of their assumptions.\u00a0 More attention to basics, in other words.\u00a0 And people like that approach even if or because they become very emotional.<\/p>\n

TMS:<\/strong> Thank you very much for speaking with us.<\/p>\n

JG:<\/strong> It was my pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an interview with Prof. Johan Galtung, founder of TRANSCEND, about his recent visits to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the UK Department for International Development, in London. TMS also asked him about his talk at the All Parties Peace Committee in the UK House of Commons and the European Parliament […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}