Reconciliation Efforts Research Articles

Reconciling Semantic Heterogeneity in Web Services Composition

Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is a popular computing paradigm for the development of distributed Web applications. Service composition, a key element of SOC, is severely hampered by various types of semantic heterogeneity among the services. In this paper, we address the various semantic differences from the context perspective and use a lightweight ontology to describe the concepts and their specializations. Atomic conversions between the contexts are implemented using XPath functions and external services. The correspondences between the syntactic service descriptions and the semantic concepts are established using a flexible, standard-compliant mechanism. Given the naive BPEL composition ignoring semantic differences, our reconciliation approach can automatically determine and reconcile the semantic differences. The mediated BPEL composition incorporates necessary conversions to convert the data exchanged between different services. Our solution has the desirable properties (e.g., adaptability, extensibility and scalability) and can significantly alleviate the reconciliation efforts for Web services composition.

CONFRONTING THE PAST IN CONTEMPORARY INDONESIA

The collapse of authoritarian regimes and the emergence of new democratic spaces hold the promise of an opportunity to redress instances of past violence. Confronting violent pasts is never an easy task, however, especially when different interest groups stand to lose from such a process. This article explores the role of Indonesia's largest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in the 1965 killings and shifting views about this past within the NU today. It examines the dramatic move in 2000 of young members of the NU to confront this past and to try to improve relations between members of the NU and former leftists. The article focuses on the reasons for the emergence of Syarikat (Masyarakat Santri untuk Advokasi Rakyat, Muslim Community for Social Advocacy), the nongovernmental organization behind this reconciliation effort, and on responses to its work. As Syarikat's experience shows, combining the dual goals of societal peace and historical revision has not been an easy task. In its efforts to reinterpret the past, Syarikat is trying to accomplish two somewhat antagonistic objectives: (1) rebutting dominant versions of history and raising awareness about the suffering of former political prisoners, and (2) producing a version of the past that senior members of the NU can live with. Its decision to confront one of the most delicate topics in the history of the NU has had a mixed reception and these responses help us measure the extent of the NU's commitment to reform and tolerance.

The Presidents Drs Carolyn Britton, MD, MS, of the NMA and Nancy Nielsen, MD, PhD, of the AMA: An Interview

In this edition, we are privileged to have interviewed the current presidents of the National Medical Association (NMA), founded in 1895, and the American Medical Association (AMA), founded in 1847. Drs. Carolyn Britton of the NMA and Nancy Nielsen of the AMA are the 109th and 163rd presidents of their respective organizations. As part of the reconciliation efforts begun by the issuance of a formal apology by the AMA to the nations' African American physicians and the NMA, as they relate to our collective American racial history, we felt it important to include in this process the views of both organizations' presidents. And it just so happens that in this time both presidents happen to be women. The NMA elected its first female president (Edith Erby-Jones, MD) in 1985 and, as of today, they have selected 9 female presidents. The AMA selected its first female president (Nancy Dickey, MD) in 1998, with Dr. Nielsen serving as the second female president ever in AMA history.

Youthful Voices in Post-War Lebanon

For more than three years, Lebanon has been beset by a succession of political assassinations and disquieting public protests. Little is known about the views of the youth, roughly half the country's population, who have witnessed the enthusiasm and sense of national consciousness sparked by the Cedar Revolution of 2005. This article focuses on the narrative texts of returnee students at the American University of Beirut, exploring their hopes and disappointments. Such trenchant voices should be incorporated into the shaping of the public discourse and reconciliation currently underway. I left Beirut in 1984 with my husband and two young children, George and Ramzi, for what we thought would be a year's research leave. Having survived a grueling decade of escalating violence and atrocities only strengthened our resolve to distance ourselves from the brutality and savagery of warring factions. Over the next 11 years, I visited Lebanon many times in my memory and imagination, never able to dispel the possibility of returning to what had once been a vibrant, thriving country. Although I was born in Baltimore to an American mother and Lebanese father and had lived in a number of countries because of my father's work, I had always considered Lebanon my home. Upon my return in February 1995, I realized that the Lebanon I had invented while in exile had perhaps never really existed. My desire to return had been deep but I now seemed unable to find meaning or draw strength from reentry. My dream had been to launch creative writing at the American University of Beirut (AUB) where I had taught for ten years before leaving for Princeton and New York. A few years after returning, I suddenly saw a window of opportunity because of its immediate relevance to the lives of numerous students, particularly returnees and hybrids like myself. In addition to developing and refining creative potential, it would address the need for significant literary production and a discourse around it. My idea was not immediately embraced. After all, it was marginal to a traditional English department and some colleagues doubted whether students would be interested. Finally, after much deliberation, I introduced the first creative writing workshop. The response was overwhelming and immediate. Eager students flocked to my office, and contrary to all expectations, they came from diverse disciplines. Many were already avid writers and it became clear, as the semester progressed, that the vast majority were returnees, seasoned travelers, multicultural, hybrid border crossers, whose lives had been spent dipping in and out of Lebanon due to the civil war and continuing political unrest. Almost instantly, their concerns began to echo similar themes, and when drafts and manuscripts were presented, my academic world took on new meaning. Our workshops instigated an ongoing conversation that transformed class encounters into charged happenings due to reciprocal phases or periods of reflexivity and collective reflection that explore experiences common to us both. Since that time, creative writing courses have mushroomed into a successful program at the university. Although the Lebanese Civil War came to a close in 1992, little has been done in the post-war years to explore the views of youth, particularly the role they might play in shaping the public discourse and reconciliation efforts through non-confrontational venues. Now, in the wake of the Cedar Revolution catalyzed by the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 and which has successfully toppled the government, leading to the end of Syria's 30-year hegemony over Lebanon, their voices carry an added sense of urgency. In large part, the uprising and subsequent demonstrations that have followed continue to be initiated and sustained by youthful groups, especially multicultural and transnational students who remain visibly active. My intention is not to offer a comprehensive view of what Lebanese youth think and experience, but rather to present a focused study on a selective group of returnee students at the American University of Beirut. …

Reconciliation: some lessons learned in the restorative justice context

Reconciliation is a complex process requiring the confluence of a number of critical factors. The fact that reconciliation is by definition a personal experience makes large-scale public reconciliation projects highly challenging. Since the early 1970s in the field of restorative justice, the possibility of reconciliation between victim and offender, even in the case of the most serious crimes, has been studied, and some effective criteria and guidelines have been developed to increase the potential for reconciliation. This article identifies the elements which have promoted reconciliation in restorative justice, and suggests that these may also be effectively applied to large-scale public reconciliation efforts.

Community Revitalization in Post-Katrina New Orleans: A Critical Analysis of Social Capital in an African American Neighborhood

ABSTRACT This research explored the role of social capital, particularly civic engagement and social trust, in community revitalization efforts in a primarily African American post-Katrina neighborhood (n = 153). Findings reveal high levels of participation in neighborhood and political activities but low levels of social trust. Eighty-four percent of this primarily African American sample reported that they do not trust people of other races as compared to 23 to 32% of African American respondents in the national study. Drawing from critical theoretical perspectives, we offer a critique of the limits of social capital theory as well as a discussion of the importance of building social and racial trust as central components of community development practice. Implications include emphasizing organizational capacity-building activities, community organizing training, and racial reconciliation efforts in post-disaster environments.

Analyzing reconciliation: A structured method for measuring national reconciliation initiatives.

Reconciliation efforts have become an almost routine element of postconflict peacebuilding. From a scientific point of view, we need tools to enable systematic studies of reconciliation. In this ar ...

No Justice, No Peace? National Reconciliation and Local Conflict Resolution in Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal is expected by many in the international community to bring a sense of reconciliation to a nation still grappling with the aftermath of more than thirty years of civil war. Yet the gap between national and local reconciliation initiatives tests post-conflict reconstruction efforts to meet the needs of Cambodian citizens who feel unconnected to the tribunal. This article inquires into the interrelationship between national reconciliation processes and grassroots peacebuilding in the form of conflict resolution trainings. Noting that retributive justice processes cannot take the place of restorative justice, genuine reconciliation in Cambodia will need to incorporate culturally-based ritual derived from Buddhism in order to be relevant to local people. The Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID), a Cambodian NGO, serves as a case study for the successes and obstacles to local peacebuilding initiatives. Key words: conflict resolution, Cambodia, NGO programs, human rights - East Asia Introduction Cambodia today stands at a historic crossroad. The Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), commonly referred to as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT), opened in 2007 after many years of accumulated expectations. While the KRT is poised to deliver retributive justice at the national level, it may leave the majority of Cambodians bereft of an experience of restorative justice, namely reconciliation in their local communities. This article explores the gap between national and local healing by asking the question: What is the relationship between national reconciliation and local, grassroots-level peacebuilding efforts in the form of conflict resolution trainings? Through a case study of the Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I examine nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are providing civil society with conflict-focused capacity building to complement the elite, retributive justice mechanism of the KRT. I describe my quest to identify tools and techniques to culturally integrate democratic practice and conflict resolution techniques that honor indigenous knowledge and stress the possibility that these trainings could enhance reconciliation efforts nationally. I address the question by first unpacking the dynamic between former victims, perpetrators, and alienated community members in a brief historical review of the Cambodian conflict. I then present barriers to reconciliation in the post-conflict political environment. The example of KID is next drawn upon to highlight the role of NGOs in civil society capacity building, with specific attention to the potential for conflict resolution training to facilitate reconciliation. I present Buddhism and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as tools to move local communities toward their own healing processes and thereby contribute to genuine national reconciliation. The article concludes with a positive assessment of the ability for localized capacity building to contribute to national reconciliation. Fostering local cultures of peace with increased awareness and utilization of the power of communication may be the path to Cambodia's psychosocial rehabilitation. Contextualizing Violence: The Legacy of the Khmer Rouge Cambodia does not have a gentle past. In the last half century its people have experienced violence from the U.S. bombings during the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1973, followed by two epochs of civil war, most notably from 1975 to 1979, when more than a million Cambodians, at least one of every eight citizens, died from starvation, overwork, or execution under the Khmer Rouge regime.1 The idealistic teenagers and former schoolteachers who fueled the Khmer Rouge movement saw forced revolution as the only antidote to U.S. imperialism. Yet their agenda of gender and age-divided collective living and hard labor impacted the country long after their overthrow in 1979 and beyond the subsequent decade of Vietnamese occupation. …

Platforms of Reconciliation? Issues in the Management of Battlefield Heritage in the Republic of Ireland

Although the battlefields of the Boyne (1690) and Aughrim (1691) are situated in the Republic of Ireland they are revered iconic landscapes embodying the religious and cultural identity of the Orange Order and Unionists in Northern Ireland. This paper looks at how these battlefields have been appropriated by some, or actively ignored by others, to reflect a cultural and religious identity and, how they have come to be ever more relevant in a modern political environment with the efforts of reconciliation between the north and south of Ireland.

Rethinking intergroup encounters: rescuing praxis from theory, activity from education, and peace/co‐existence from identity and culture

Focusing on the Palestinian–Israeli case, this article critically reviews some central issues which burden the field of intergroup encounters. More specifically it considers some of their foundational historical and educational roots. I point to the reified concepts of self and identity, the history of schooling and its practices, and the coming into being of the political organization of nation‐state which, though hidden from present theorizing, has a profound influence on the educational paradigms and strategies that guide intergroup encounters and their possible outcomes. Last, while considering post‐national and post‐positivist realist perspectives, I offer alternative educational options to strengthen the potential of intergroup encounters to support co‐existence and reconciliation efforts given the critiques and paradigmatic dilemmas discussed.

Editorial Introduction

AbstractThe articles in this issue of Inner Asia are predominantly concerned with nationalism and ethnicity, ranging from inventions of national symbols and historical memory, to efforts for reconciliation. There are exciting articles that connect Mongolia and the Mongols with China, Japan, Russia and Tibet, thus demonstrating Inner Asia as an interlinked field of dynamics.

Building Logos Via Communication Media

Developing the means for reconciliation is a necessary context within which peace may be facilitated in post-traumatic societies. This development becomes even more critical among peoples who need to reconcile difference following the affliction of, and the suffering from, great pain and loss. Walking the paths toward peace requires, among other things, that interested parties, assisted by communication facilitators, create and utilise development of participatory communications media journalistic practices and pedagogy of intercultural reconciliation in which all actors believe that they have meaningful voices and interests. The more we communicate with one another through respectful dialogue, the more we can discover the universality of our own desires; we are, in essence, one in this Spirit. Communication projects in support of reconciliation efforts must go in two directions in order to be most effective: without and within. Reconciliation between individuals and groups (without) can only succeed the degree to which individuals and groups also embrace reconciliation among themselves (within).

Self-Correcting Maps of Molecular Pathways

Reliable and comprehensive maps of molecular pathways are indispensable for guiding complex biomedical experiments. Such maps are typically assembled from myriads of disparate research reports and are replete with inconsistencies due to variations in experimental conditions and/or errors. It is often an intractable task to manually verify internal consistency over a large collection of experimental statements. To automate large-scale reconciliation efforts, we propose a random-arcs-and-nodes model where both nodes (tissue-specific states of biological molecules) and arcs (interactions between them) are represented with random variables. We show how to obtain a non-contradictory model of a molecular network by computing the joint distribution for arc and node variables, and then apply our methodology to a realistic network, generating a set of experimentally testable hypotheses. This network, derived from an automated analysis of over 3,000 full-text research articles, includes genes that have been hypothetically linked to four neurological disorders: Alzheimer's disease, autism, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. We estimated that approximately 10% of the published molecular interactions are logically incompatible. Our approach can be directly applied to an array of diverse problems including those encountered in molecular biology, ecology, economics, politics, and sociology.

Design and Implementation of an Application and Associated Services to Support Interdisciplinary Medication Reconciliation Efforts at an Integrated Healthcare Delivery Network

Confusion about patients’ medication regimens during the hospital admission and discharge process accounts for many preventable and serious medication errors. Many organizations have begun to redesign their clinical processes to address this patient safety concern. Partners HealthCare, an integrated delivery network in Boston, Massachusetts, has answered this interdisciplinary challenge by leveraging its multiple outpatient electronic medical records (EMR) and inpatient computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems to facilitate the process of medication reconciliation. This manuscript describes the design of a novel application and the associated services that aggregate medication data from EMR and CPOE systems so that clinicians can efficiently generate an accurate pre-admission medication list. Information collected with the use of this application subsequently supports the writing of admission and discharge orders by physicians, performance of admission assessment by nurses, and reconciliation of inpatient orders by pharmacists. Results from early pilot testing suggest that this new medication reconciliation process is well accepted by clinicians and has significant potential to prevent medication errors during transitions of care.

"To Forget and Forgive": Reconstructing the Nation in the Post-Civil War Classroom

In John Bonner's A Child's History of the United States, published in 1866, schoolchildren read about the brave actions freedmen took on behalf of the Union cause. They read, for instance, about a "black man, Tillman, a steward on board a [Union] vessel seized by a rebel privateer, and left on board of her with the prize crew, [who] rose one dark night, . . . and killed the prize captain and mate with an axe, and brought the vessel safely to the port of New York." Students were also introduced to a freedwoman washing the floors at a Union hospital who saved the life of a wounded and sick Union soldier whom doctors insisted was going to die. After days and weeks of caring for him "carefully and tenderly," feeding him with a spoon "as though he had been a baby," and sleeping on the floor while the sick soldier occupied her bed, the woman "had the pleasure of seeing her soldier completely restored to health." These and other events, Bonner explained, "dispel[led] the prejudice" against freedmen and opened the door for freedmen to serve as soldiers. Stories of brave freedmen and women convinced wartime Americans, and presumably Bonner's young readers, that "there was something manly in the negroes after all."1 [End Page 282] Written in the heady days after Appomattox, Bonner's classroom history was similar to many texts written in the North before and immediately after the American Civil War. In the midst of heated political battles about the Mexican War and slavery's expansion, slavery played a central role in classroom histories of the nation. Texts sought to establish an emancipationist legacy for the nation, and Bonner's history celebrated the realization of this legacy in the wartime enlistment of black soldiers. Samuel Goodrich had similar intentions in his Pictorial History of the United States. A picture portraying the arrival of the first slaves to Virginia in 1619 is included in the 1846 edition (fig. 1). The accompanying text describes the slave trade and the emancipationist energy that followed the Revolutionary war and suggests that resistance to slavery grew in proportion to the extension of the trade. Recognizing slavery's central role in the narrative of American history, Goodrich wanted young schoolchildren to remember their ancestors who worked to end slavery and to block colonization schemes to send freedmen back to Africa.2 But whereas the images and stories of individual slaves—and Northern abolitionists—grace the pages of antebellum Northern texts and texts written in the first decade after the war, slaves and slavery are conspicuously absent from later classroom histories. Indeed, the image of the first slaves arriving in the colonies was unceremoniously removed from the 1877 edition of Goodrich's Pictorial. Later editions of the text eliminated slavery altogether, an editorial decision that gave Goodrich the space to add glowing predictions for the nation's future rather than burdening his history text with the weight of the nation's slave past. In the 1877 edition of Pictorial, all images of slaves and slavery were gone, and Goodrich applauded national reconciliation efforts, because "the time had come to bury the past [for] both North and South were ready to forget and forgive."3 In the thirty-one years between editions of Goodrich's popular school history, Americans on the battlefield and on the home front argued about the end of slavery and the meaning of American nationalism. Wartime government policies such as emancipation and freedmen's civil rights, the wartime draft, and the income tax extended the scope and the powers of the federal government, permanently redefining the relationship between the individual citizen and the nation. The postwar nation that emerged held great possibilities for freedmen. Congress considered legislation requiring [End Page 283] Click for larger view Figure 1 [End Page 284] federal monitoring of elections and a generous aid to education bill...

Survive, Help, Learn: Experience of a Medical Journal in War and Post-War Times

Medical journals and their editors have a unique responsibility in armed conflicts. The experience of the Croatian Medical Journal during and after the 1991-1995 war in Croatia shows how a medical journal can survive, help others and learn in times of war. The first duty of a medical journal in such circumstances is to publish scientific articles on various aspects of war medicine, and to document cases of human rights abuses. In small scientific communities, editors can offer their expertise and assist authors in writing and publishing war-related research and reports. In post-conflict period, medical journals have a responsibility to participate in peace-building and reconciliation efforts. They can do so by publishing good scientific articles regardless of their place or country of origin, re-establishing contacts with colleagues from the opposing sides, striving for the multiethnic or multinational Editorial and Advisory Boards, and engaging in collaborative research and regional initiatives.

Nach der Verfolgung: Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in Deutschland? (review)

Reviewed by: Nach der Verfolgung: Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in Deutschland? Alan E. Steinweis Nach der Verfolgung: Wiedergutmachung nationalsozialistischen Unrechts in Deutschland? edited by Hans-Günter Hockerts and Christiane Kuller. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003. 285 pp. €20.00. This important anthology offers a brief yet wide-ranging examination of German compensation (Wiedergutmachung) to the survivors of Nazi persecution. Since 1945, debates over Wiedergutmachung have played an important role in German politics and diplomacy, and have figured significantly in the development of national identity and historical consciousness. Nonetheless, the body of scholarship devoted to this subject remains limited. Only the 1952 agreement between West Germany and Israel has been subjected to thorough analysis. Fortunately, a good deal of intensive research is now underway in Germany to address this lacuna. The volume under review summarizes the findings of established and young historians who are working in the area. Its 12 essays originated as contributions to a conference held at Dachau in October 2002, under the auspices of the Dachau Symposia on Contemporary History. The published essays deal overwhelmingly with West Germany and the post-1990 unified Federal Republic. East Germany, whose efforts with regard to compensation were minimal, are examined in one comparative essay. The essays cover a wide range of themes, ranging from the restitution of Aryanized property in the early post-war period, while (West) Germany was still under Allied control, to transcultural reconciliation efforts sponsored by [End Page 186] the Catholic and Protestant churches, to the recently established corporate fund to compensate victims of Nazi forced labor programs. Although Jews are not the only victims and survivors discussed in the book, they are at the heart of many of the essays. The introductory essay by Hans Gunter Hockerts provides a highly useful overview of the subject, summarizing the origins and evolution of various forms of compensation, and reviewing the most important laws, policies, and controversies that arise in the subsequent essays. Hockerts defends the use of the term "Wiedergutmachung," which, according to some critics, has fostered the illusion that things could be actually be "made good again." Hockerts argues that the concept, as employed by the West Germans, had never really carried apologetic connotations, but had rather been intended as a sincere acknowledgment of German guilt and as a gesture of good will toward the victims. Hockerts explains that Wiedergutmachung encompassed several processes. Within Germany it included restitution (Rückerstattung) of stolen or damaged property; indemnification (Entschädigung) for deprivation of freedom and damage to health; pensions; and the legal rehabilitation of persons unjustly condemned by the Nazi legal system. Outside of Germany, Wiedergutmachung involved a complex set of bilateral treaties between Germany and a host of other countries. In many instances, financial compensation was at the heart of the matter, a fact that has led some critics to complain about the so-called "monetization of memory." Hockerts argues, however, that Wiedergutmachung contained a symbolic significance as well, influencing the developing culture of memory in Germany and elsewhere. This point is driven home in several of the essays, including the fine contributions by Christian Staffa and Dietmar Süss about Protestant and Catholic organizations devoted to German reconciliation with Jews and other groups persecuted by the Nazis. Two of the volume's essays will be of particular value to those with an interest in Jewish history. Jürgen Lillteicher's contribution, which covers restitution within Germany, makes depressing reading. Lillteicher underscores the legal and administrative chicanery employed by West German officials to block or complicate restitution of property to German Jews. These methods included an attempt at retroactive taxation on restituted Jewish property that had been aryanized during the Nazi period; Jews, for example, who in 1951 received back former property that had been aryanized in 1938, were expected to pay 13 years worth of back taxes. Ultimately the Allies intervened to block this shameless policy. Lillteicher characterizes the episode as symptomatic of the broader inability of West Germans to come to terms with the immorality of what had been perpetrated before 1945. During the 1950s and 1960s, West German society was not able honestly to confront the participation by [End Page 187] large number of ordinary Germans...

Critical, multicultural education for remembering and reconciliation: A discussion of an interdisciplinary social science course for international students in Finland

In the autumn of 2004, an interdisciplinary social science course entitled Remembering, Forgetting and Forgiveness: Justice and Reconciliation from the National to the International was offered to undergraduate students at the University of Tampere, Finland. The course had 49 students from 10 different countries on three continents. A large portion of the students were on international exchange through the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS) programme. The objective of the course was to explore the role of social memory and justice in the process of reconciliation on many different levels. Learning activities aimed to initiate discussions on cross‐cultural understandings of how to overcome violations and forgive or forget. Among the cases explored were child abuse, the massacres in Kosovo, the South African truth commissions and the Finnish civil war. A variety of teaching methods were utilised in the course. Cooperative learning methods were emphasised. Students engaged in group work activities and discussions and listened to a wide range of guest lecturers from diverse disciplines. The evaluation of students was based on individual learning portfolios constructed by students. This paper focuses on how a multicultural education was constructed through the pedagogy of the course, along with discussions with students who assessed their own learning process and perspectives. The theme of the course was judged by students to be very interesting and important, but the role of creative learning methods was viewed as equally significant. Exchange students, in particular, appeared willing to take greater risks in learning during their year abroad. The development of new approaches to learning could thus be an important element of internationalising efforts by universities. Finally, sensitive issues, such as contested collective social memory and complex reconciliation efforts, are best approached through cooperative learning methods that emphasise dialogue.

Psychiatric and Cognitive Effects of War in Former Yugoslavia

Although impunity for those responsible for trauma is widely thought to be associated with psychological problems in survivors of political violence, no study has yet investigated this issue. To examine the mental health and cognitive effects of war trauma and how appraisal of redress for trauma and beliefs about justice, safety, other people, war cause, and religion relate to posttraumatic stress responses in war survivors. A cross-sectional survey conducted between March 2000 and July 2002 with a population-based sample of 1358 war survivors who had experienced at least 1 war-related stressor (combat, torture, internal displacement, refugee experience, siege, and/or aerial bombardment) from 4 sites in former Yugoslavia, accessed through linkage sampling. Control groups at 2 study sites were matched with survivors on sex, age, and education. Semi-structured Interview for Survivors of War, Redress for Trauma Survivors Questionnaire, Emotions and Beliefs After War questionnaire, Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). The mean (SD) age was 39 (12) years, 806 (59%) were men, and 339 (25%) had high school or higher level of education. Participants reported experiencing a mean of 12.6 war-related events, with 292 (22%) and 451 (33%) having current and lifetime posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), respectively, and 129 (10%) with current major depression. A total of 1074 (79%) of the survivors reported a sense of injustice in relation to perceived lack of redress for trauma. Perceived impunity for those held responsible for trauma was only one of the factors associated with sense of injustice. Relative to controls, survivors had stronger emotional responses to impunity, greater fear and loss of control over life, less belief in benevolence of people, greater loss of meaning in war cause, stronger faith in God, and higher rates of PTSD and depression. Fear and loss of control over life were associated with PTSD and depression (odds ratio [OR], 2.91; 95% CI, 2.27-3.74 and OR, 2.30; 95% CI, 1.75-3.03, respectively), and emotional responses to impunity showed a relatively weaker association with PTSD (OR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.16-2.02) and depression (OR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.02-1.91). Appraisal of redress for trauma was not associated with PTSD or depression. PTSD and depression in war survivors appear to be independent of sense of injustice arising from perceived lack of redress for trauma. Fear of threat to safety and loss of control over life appeared to be the most important mediating factors in PTSD and depression. These findings may have important implications for reconciliation efforts in postwar countries and effective interventions for traumatized war survivors.

Transforming conflict into community: post-war reconciliation in Croatia

How can we support reconciliation and community building after violent conflict? This article describes a 5-year project that brought together Serbs, Croats, and Muslims after the war in Croatia. Using the ideas and methods of Process Work (developed by Arnold Mindell), the authors facilitated large group processes that focused deeply on issues that continued to divide the country. Work with mistrust and symmetrical blaming led to connection. Work with trauma allowed people to go into and beyond the wounds of war. Work with issues of personal and collective accountability helped participants to transform their notions of responsibility, and therefore take fuller leadership in their communities. This project can be seen as a possible model for post-conflict reconciliation efforts. Copyright © 2005 Whurr Publishers Ltd.