Learning conflict resolution

For three days, young persons from areas of tension will be seeking ways of settling conflicts peacefully.

Should we be afraid of conflict? Since Monday, this somewhat provocative question has been at the heart of discussions between thirty or so young people from conflict zones, around the theme "youth and conflict resolution - new ideas for promoting peace". The seminar is being held at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg, on the Secretary General's initiative, with the aim of giving fresh impetus to the settlement process and encouraging more original thinking.

It will end on Wednesday with a round table chaired by Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer and attended by the President of the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, Peter Schieder.

Following introductory training in negotiation techniques, the participants will focus on three conflicts in or around Europe. Five young Israelis and four Palestinians will tackle the Cypriot problem, under the leadership of Dr Ron Fisher, Professor of International Relations in Washington. Five Azeris and five Armenians will look at the Middle East conflict with Marianne Heiberg of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo. Finally, David Loyd Stern, the Financial Times Caucasus and Central Asia correspondent, will consider the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan with nine young Cypriots, four from the north of the island and five from the south. This mixing of participants and cross-fertilisation of ideas should help to overcome mutual antagonism and spawn new approaches to conflict resolution.

The tone was set at the first session on Monday in a discussion on the very notion of conflict. In his welcoming comments, Mario Martins, the Director of the Youth Centre, argued that conflicts should not just be seen in terms of antagonism, frustration and unspoken opposition. Conflicts were also the precondition for the search for solutions. The negative perception of conflicts was first and foremost linked to our inability to manage them peacefully. Do we see conflicts in negative terms, he asked, because in the absence of proper training we don't know how to manage them?

The participants have 72 hours before them to come up with new peaceful approaches. On their return, these discussions may help them to see their own regions' conflicts in a new light. The hope is that they will leave Strasbourg not with the solution to the conflicts they have been asked to consider but with a new vision that bears the imprint of the Council of Europe's values and ideals.

On Monday the young representatives from Azerbaijan called for a minute of silence in memory of "the victims of genocide". The Armenian participants refused to join in. Will each side maintain the same attitude on Wednesday when the seminar draws to a close? The question is symbolic but is one yardstick by which the seminar will be judged.