Networks

The International Association for Reconciliation Studies (IARS) aims at building bridges and promoting a dialogue across different approached to reconciliation to verify and further develop the understanding of reconciliation, explore the variability and commonality in reconciliation processes, and to endorse varied approaches to reconciliation. It recognizes that reconciliation processes play a major role in building long-lasting peace within and across boundaries, restoring and transforming relationships in the aftermath of conflict, and disrupting cycles of violence.

The members of the IARS share a vision that reconciliation is much more than a cessation of violence and hostilities; it requires the participation of the parties involved in the conflict to come together to redefine their relationship and create an environment where cooperation and peaceful coexistence are the operative norms within society.

The International Association for Reconciliation Studies concentrates on reconciliation in divided societies and between nations accruing on an interpersonal, intergroup, and international levels and promotes complex, theory-based, indigenous, and faith-based approaches that address justice, reparations, mercy, apology, forgiveness, and shared identity. To advance the design and implementation of reconciliation processes, the IARS searches for various social conditions for the imagination and achievement of reconciliation, advancing theory and bridging it with practice.

We also expect that the International Association for Reconciliation Studies will help understand and improve international relations by going beyond the conventionally fundamental factors of politics, power, interest and international law toward underlining the role of human’s memories, emotions, values, and morality in mobilizing people for conflicts or reconciliations, in strengthening civilian networks to sustain human rights, and in contributing to mutual respect between nations in the age of globalization and democratization.

Our hope that our collective approach to reconciliation studies will create a basis for cooperative cultural and educational policy toward a common citizenship in the globe, which would be the next immediate step for a shared approach to such global issues, such as environment, infectious disease, and poverty.

The Academic Alliance for Reconciliation Studies in the Middle East and Northern Africa (AARMENA) is an alliance of universities and other higher educational institutions, scholars, and academics willing to do joint research and to build up teaching programs and curriculums in Reconciliation Studies as Multi-inter-disciplinary Research. Alternatively, to Integrate the new curriculums into their academic programs as in program courses, and development of master degrees, in their educational, academic degrees.

AARMENA  is initiating the means to strengthening the ties between higher education institutions in Europe and the higher education institutions in the Islamic MENA Region and to fostering of academic reconciliation studies programs that will enhance cultural dialogue orientations in teaching programs on reconciliation studies, interactively benefiting scholars, students and young academics from Europe and Partner countries in the Islamic MENA region. 

AARMENA would exploit research and teaching programs on reconciliation studies through exchange scholarly work between academics by stimulating:

1. Strengthening university cooperation by doing an event that corresponds to signing the memorandum of understanding between universities;

2. Doing local and international workshops on reconciliation studies between professors and new academics in the field;

3. Developing a joint symposium, summers school, curriculum on reconciliation studies;

4. Integrating courses in the teaching programs of the program countries;

5. Joint publications and a new perspective to develop joint research.

The programs would influence the integration of those teaching programs to be integrated within the academic programs in the partner higher education insinuations in the partner country.   The academic universities and institutions that are part of the AARMENA that enhance cooperation and dialogue orientation with academic institutions on building reconciliation studies programs and dialogue culture orientations in reconciliation studies within the Higher Education Institutions in the MENA region.

The following universities are members of the AARMENA-2018 project:

• UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies, Innsbruck University (Innsbruck, Austria);
• Assuit University (Assiut, Egypt);
• Fayoum University (Fayoum, Egypt);
• Tanta University (Tanta, Egypt);
• Europa-Universität (Flensburg, Germany);
• Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies JCRS, Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Jena, Germany);
• German Jordanian University (Amman, Jordan);
• Petra University (Amman, Jordan);
• University of Jordan (Amman, Jordan);
• Notre Dame University (Zouk Mosbeh, Lebanon);
• Saint Joseph University (Beirut, Lebanon);
• University of Groningen (Groningen, Netherlands);
• Al Istiqlal University (Jericho, Palestinian Authority);
• An-Najjah University (Nablus, Palestinian Authority);
• Arab American University (Jenin, Palestinian Authority);
• Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (Doha, Qatar);
• Qatar University – Ibn Khaldon Center (Doha, Qatar);
• Ez-Zitouna University (Tunis, Tunisia);
• Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University (Ankara, Turkey);
• Cambridge Muslim College (Cambridge, UK).    

AARMENA Institutes that are also collaborating to develop cultural heritage and social inclusions and dialogue orientation workshop in the Islamic world are as follows:

• King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre For Interreligious And Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) (Vienna, Austria);
• The Libyan Women's Platform for Peace (Lybia);
• Al-Salam Institute (London, UK);
• International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) (New York, USA).

AARMENA is meant to become a sustainable organization to foster sustainable reconciliation in the MENA region and to become a driving force for academic development in interdisciplinary research and endure reconciliation where ever it is needed.

The Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies at Friedrich Schiller University has the following objectives to be achieved from the Project Dialogue with the Islamic world (Project):

- To have academic research on teaching methods on reconciliation studies;

- To develop a curriculum on reconciliation studies, that can be used by AARMENA members of higher educational institutions and to integrate teaching programs in their universities as a course or part of the master program, or a Ph.D. Program;

- To have a joint conference to develop joint publications on reconciliation in the MENA region;

- Dialogue with the Muslim world, to strengthen international cooperation between the members and to present all the scholarly work that has been done in the project;

- Universities and researchers to get more funding and advance in reconciliation studies in the middle of conflicts in the MENA Region;

- To research and develop teaching programs on reconciliation studies as an interdisciplinary approach;

- To integrate reconciliation studies as a topic in a master's program in the MENA region;

- The promotion of cultural dialogue and strengthen international cooperation with the Muslim world through academic work by visiting and signing a memorandum of understanding and developing workshops, summer schools, conferences together;

- Sustainably modernize in technological teaching in the member universities, advancing digital humanities program on teaching reconciliation studies, such as online courses and workshops between members of the AAREMENA with member universities and teaching how to teach and integrate research on common ground on teachings of reconciliation studies;

- Provide targeted support for qualified young academics from the regions while ensuring gender equality;

- Establish Joint research projects and joint program teaching. The development of a vast knowledge-based society on reconciliation studies (AARMENA).

For more information for cooperating in the AARMENA project, please contact the project coordinator Dr. Phil. Iyad AlDajani by email: a.aldajani@uni-jena.de

There is a major discrepancy between the eminent significance of recent post-conflict reconciliation between such countries as Germany, France, Israel, Poland and other European countries on the one side and the scientific identification and validation of best practices of reconciliation (BPR). Our various studies have concluded that reconciliation has a major impact on the development of societal and political relationships between conflicting groups and States. Reconciliation helps to prevent future violent conflicts and fosters trust and cooperation, thus, benefiting the relationship on the individual-psychological and the social, cultural and the economic level. While politicians, NGOs, and other civil society actors are aware of the potential reconciliation has to overcome enmity and improve relations on a sustained basis, thorough and wide-spread research is still needed to validate reconciliation practices and make the research results accessible to the world at large.

The ECRR is a network of excellent international scientists concerned with reconciliation strategies. The aim is to build an internationally spreading and cooperating scientific center for conflict management, reconciliation strategies and remembrance cultures for the Saale-region and for Germany as a whole. Possible options for an ECRR office, besides Jena, are Halle, Berlin, or Brussels, among others. The International Workshop "Conflict Resolution, Remembrance and Justice" with the International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment of the Halle University (Prof. Ralph Buchenhorst; Cultural Anthropology) and JCRS (Prof. Martin Leiner) on the 16.-18.07.2014 has been the first of its kind dealing with inner-German reconciliation. The JCRS states that it has begun work along with George Mason University and Seoul National University to jointly develop a knowledge management data base covering worldwide reconciliation efforts. The center's skills and responsibilities are devided equally between the universities of Halle and Jena with the JCRS.

It is furthermore supported by the following institutions (alphabetical order of the professors, core members):

• Dr. Vladimir Handl, International Relations, Charles-University Prague (Czech Republic);
• Prof. Dr. Corine Defrance, Contemporary History, CNRS, University Paris III Sorbonne (France);
• Prof. Dr. Martin Leinerde, Systematic Theology and Ethics, JCRS, Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Kryzstof Ruchniewicz, History, University of Wroclaw (Poland);
• Prof. Dr. Karina Korostelina, Social Psychology, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Fairfax VA (USA);
• Dr. Lily Gardner-Feldman, Political Science, AICGS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC (USA);
• Werner Hein, Mayer Brown, Washington DC (USA);

Partners:

• UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies, Innsbruck University (Austria);
• Europa Universität Flensburg (Germany);
• Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (CDRSEE), Thessaloniki (Greece);
• Trinity College, University of Dublin (Ireland);
• Martin Springer Center for Conflict Studies, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba (Israel);
• La Sapienza University, Rome (Italy);
• Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions, Doshisha University (Japan);
• Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security, Yangoon (Myanmar);
• Program Politics and Religion, University of Groningen (Netherlands);
• Beyers Naudé Zentrum, University of Stellenbosch (South Africa);
• Ethics Center of Zürich University (Switzerland);
• Peace and Conflict Studies, Coventry University (UK).

The ECRR will be an international consortium that shall be open to researchers and institutions worldwide, assuming they are willing and able to contribute to the research goals in a significant way.
Already now, the Core Group members individually are connected to a number of reconciliation researchers and universities around the World which could be the first candidates for membership in the consortium.

Key issues:

- Which reconciliation practices have worked in which context?

- Which practices have not worked and why not?

- How can reconciliation practices be improved?

- Which practices can be recommended in an actual situation?

While researchers around the world already work together on an ad hoc basis on individual reconciliation methods, the necessary systematic, coordinated, and concentrated examination and validation of reconciliation practices re-quire an organized structure of international cooperation such as that of an international consortium.Such consortium would also help gain acceptance by political leaders of reconciliation methods as a valuable tool for the conduct of international relations, a tool that political elites often ignore or unaware of.

Areas:

- Apologies;

- (Youth) encounter program;

- Common school book projects;

- Common film, medias, arts productions enhancing peace and under-standing;

- Reconciliation through events in sport and culture;

- Commemorations, Memorials;

- Historical commissions;

- Symbolic walks, pilgrimages;

- Truth and Reconciliation commissions;

- Voluntary work, voluntary acts of reparation;

- Help in situations of natural disasters;

- City twinning.

Declaration of intent 

The Netzwerk Versöhnungsforschung im Deutschsprachigen Raum connects scholars from many disciplines working on reconciliation studies in the German-speaking area, and meets once a year. The first meeting took place at JCRS in 2017:

• Prof. Dr. Andrea Bieler, University of Basel (Switzerland);
• Prof. Dr. Laurent Goetschel, University of Basel (Switzerland);
• PD Dr. Christine Schliesser, University of Bern/Zürich (Switzerland);
• Prof. Dr. Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer, University of Bielefeld (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Maria-Sibylla Lotter, University of Bochum (Germany);
• Dr. Maximilian Schell, University of Bochum (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Friedrich Lohmann, University of Bundeswehr, Munich (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Ralf Wüstenberg, University of Flensburg (Germany);
• Prof. em. Dr. Richard Friedli, University of Fribourg (Switzerland);
• Dr. Gerd Hankel, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Basedau, GIGA, University of Hamburg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Fernando Enns, University of Hamburg (Germany);
• Dr. Marie Anne Subklew, University of Hamburg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Marco Hofheinz, University of Hannover (Germany);
• PD Dr. Ines Jacqueline Werkner, Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft, Heidelberg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Christopher Daase, Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Dietrich, UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies, University of Innsbruck (Austria);
• Dr. Francesco Ferrari, JCRS, University of Jena (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Martin Leinerde, JCRS, University of Jena (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Susanne Buckley-Zistel, University of Marburg (Germany);
• Stefanie Menzel, University of Marburg (Germany);
• Dr. Igorʾ Aleksandrowič Ebanoidse, Maksim-Gorkij-Institut für Weltliteratur der Russischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Moskau (Russia);
• Prof. Dr. Josefina Echavarria, KROC Institute, Notre Dame University (USA);
• Prof. Dr. Volker Boehme-Nessler, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Dominik Gautier, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Jaqueline Jüling, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Ulrike Link-Wieczorek, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Bianca Pick, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Reinhard Schulz, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Andrea Struebind, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Dr. Joachim Willems, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Dr. Knut Wormstädt, University of Oldenburg (Germany);
• Dr. Katharina Peetz, University of Saarland (Germany);
• Prof. Dr. Andreas Hasenclever, University of Tübingen (Germany);
• Dr. Markus Weingardt, Stiftung Weltethos, Tübingen (Germany); 
• Prof. Dr. Michael Böhnke, University of Wuppertal (Germany).

The Erasmus+ key objectives are:

Strengthening of National Research Capacity on Policy, Conflict Resolution, and Reconciliation (PEACE)

Developing researchers' skills and capabilities on conflict resolution and Reconciliation;

Strengthening strategic partnerships and networking with leading conflict resolution centers, political strategists, and institutions;

Promoting interdisciplinary research related to conflict resolution and Reconciliation (e.g., political science, international relations, politics, and law, etc.).

1. Stengthening Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation in the Higher Education Institutions in Palestine

Partners are:

• Friedrich Schiller University Jenade (Germany);
• The Arab American University (Palestinian Authority); Coordinator
• Hebron University (Palestinian Authority);
• The Islamic University in Gaza (Palestinian Authority);
• Granada University (Spain).

2. Academic Alliance for Reconciliation in the Field of Higher Education in Peace, Conflict Transformation, and Reconciliation Studies in the Middle East and North Africa AARMENA

Partners are

• Friedrich Schiller University Jenade (Germany);
• Mohamed Lamine Debaghine Satif 2 University (Algeria);
• University of El Oued (Algeria);
• University of Innsbruck (Austria);
• University of Jordan (Jordan);
• University of Petra (Jordan);
• Al-Azhar University (Palestinian Territories);
• Al-Istiqlal University (Palestinian Territories).

The JCRS develops both theoretical approaches and pragmatic strategies, in constant dialogue with academic partners from all over the world:

• Charles Sturt University (Australia);
• Alberto Hurtado University Santiago de Chile (Chile);
• Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia);
• Irish School of Ecumenics in Dublin/Belfast (Ireland);
• Tel Aviv University (Israel);
• Doshisha University Kyoto (Japan);
• University of Jordan (Jordan);
• University of Petra (Amman, Jordan);
• Saint Joseph University (Lebanon);
• Peace Institute of Myanmar (Myanmar);
• An Najah National University, Nablus (Palestine)
• Arab-American University of Palestine (Palestine);
• Doha Institut (Qatar);
• Beyers Naude Center for Public Theologie at Stellenbosch University (South Africa);
• Asia Center for Reconciliation Studies at Seoul Theological University (South Korea);
• American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University (USA);
• Excellence School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Washington (USA);
• Martin-Springer-Institute at Northern Arizona University (USA).

The JCRS develops both theoretical approaches and pragmatic strategies, in constant dialogue with NGOs partners from all over the world:

• King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) (Austria);
• Asociación de víctimas unidas del municipio de Granada (ASOVIDA) (Colombia);
• Fundación para la reconciliación (Colombia);
• The Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers (Finland);
• Community of Sant'Egidio (Italy);
• Wasatia (Palestinian Authority);
• Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (South Africa);
• International for Center Transitional Justice (ICTJ) (USA);
• Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).