Abstract
This chapter explores the nature and aims of short-term international peacemaking delegations, defined as group trips of one to two weeks in length, which bring visitors from other countries or regions into a situation of violent conflict, with the intent of supporting the local peacemakers, human rights activists, and civilian populations enduring and resisting the conflict. After framing such delegations within the context of third-party nonviolent intervention, particularly as embodied by practitioners of faith, the chapter examines how these delegations fit within the rubric of tourism, as well as how they may exceed that rubric, becoming expressions of peacemaking solidarity. What most distinguish delegations from other forms of tourism, giving them their peacemaking potential, are the vulnerability and accountability delegations are intended to foster among participants, through an emphasis on hospitality, action, and being part of a larger movement for social change.
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Notes
- 1.
I have changed her name in this story to protect her identity.
- 2.
For example, CPT’s initial interventionary actions, in 1990, were to send a delegation to Iraq, to try to help prevent the Gulf War, and a delegation to the Oka Indian reservation in Quebec, to intervene in a standoff between the Mohawks and provincial police. Only a few years later did the organization begin to hold regular trainings to develop its full-time and reserve corps to staff more ongoing violence reduction projects. See Kern (2000), pp. 183–200.
- 3.
Rigby (1995), p. 453.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 460.
- 5.
Burrowes (2000), pp. 45–69.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 50.
- 7.
Ibid., p. 58.
- 8.
Mahoney and Eguren (1997), p. 2.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 84.
- 10.
Ibid., p. 93.
- 11.
Griffin-Nolan (1991), pp. 24–28.
- 12.
Weber (2006), p. 111.
- 13.
Kern (2000),p. 192.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 199.
- 15.
Sandra Milena Rincón, “The Challenge Continues,” trans. Carol Rose (address to Mennonite World Conference, Paraguay, July 2009). This address is available on the CPT website, © 2010, accessed May 2015, http://www.cpt.org/resources/writings/rincon-challenge-continues.
- 16.
“Delegations,” Interfaith Peace-Builders, accessed May 2015, http://www.ifpb.org/delegations/default.html.
- 17.
“Transforming People, Transforming Policy: the Power and Potential of Witness for Peace Delegations” produced by Joshua Dautoff, Witness for Peace Productions. This video is available on the Witness for Peace website, © 2015, accessed May 2015, http://witnessforpeace.org/article.php?id=990.
- 18.
D’Amore (1988), pp. 35–40.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 35.
- 20.
- 21.
Litvin (1998), pp. 63–66.
- 22.
Lennon and Foley (2000), p. 3.
- 23.
Robb (2009), p. 58.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 56.
- 25.
Mahrouse (2014), p. 157.
- 26.
Mahrouse (2011), p. 373.
- 27.
Mahrouse (2014), p. 158.
- 28.
Mahrouse (2011), pp. 378–379, 386–387.
- 29.
Mahrouse (2014), p. 161.
- 30.
“What is a Reality Tour?” Global Exchange, © 2011, accessed May 2015, http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/faq.
- 31.
Ibid. (emphasis mine).
- 32.
Pohl (1999), pp. 71–72.
- 33.
Sweet (2012), p. 121.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 117, 119.
- 35.
Not only does the tourism industry itself attempt this, but often individual tourists do as well. In his psychoanalytic study The Ethics of Sightseeing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), Dean MacCannell discusses how tourism is characterized by travel from one (morally) normative order to another, travel that threatens the tourist’s ego boundaries. MacCannell delineates five touristic moral stances, each one presented as a strategy to “protect [the ego’s] boundaries in this situation of vulnerability” (221). While MacCannell might discern (at least some of) these stances present among delegation participants as well, I was nonetheless struck, in his discussion, by how tourism appears structured to minimize or neutralize the paradigm-shifting effects of close encounters with moral and cultural difference. In contrast, peacemaking delegations are intended (whether or not they fully succeed) to have the opposite effect.
- 36.
“Frequently Asked Questions about Delegations,” Christian Peacemaker Teams, accessed May 2015, http://www.cpt.org/participate/delegation/faq.
- 37.
“Delegations,” Interfaith Peace-Builders.
- 38.
“About Us,” Interfaith Peace-Builders, accessed May 2015, http://www.ifpb.org/about/default.html.
- 39.
“Why Do a Delegation?” Christian Peacemaker Teams, accessed May 2015, http://www.cpt.org/participate/delegation/why.
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MacDonald, S.E. (2016). From Tourist to Friend: Vulnerability and Accountability in Short-Term International Peacemaking Delegations. In: Irvin-Erickson, D., Phan, P. (eds) Violence, Religion, Peacemaking. Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56851-9_4
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