The Third Side: What Do Witnesses Do?

What Do Witnesses Do?

They Watch for Early Warning Signals

Latent conflict is a state of unstable peace that exists among individuals, groups, or nations who have grievances that have not yet resulted in overt violence. Such grievances are often rooted in longstanding economic inequality, differential power and resources, and differing interests or values. Any of these issues may emerge as a violent conflict after a triggering event.

In order for third parties and the international community to better predict and prevent violent conflict, we have to know the warning signs that precede it. Early warning indicators or signs appear most clearly to those of us immediately around the disputants. On both a small and large scale, destructive conflict is often predictable. For example, police forces have developed "threat assessment" techniques to identify potential perpetrators and discover who is at risk of resorting to violence.

On the scale of nations, researchers are developing sets of indices that can help spot emerging ethnic conflict before it breaks out into violence. Click here for a checklist of factors that may suggest that conflict escalation and/or violence is likely or imminent.

They Go on Patrol

In addition to watching for warning signals, witnesses can go on patrol in schools, neighborhoods, and communities. This involves a commitment to preventing violence, staying on the lookout for dangerous activity and reporting any incidents that occur. In many cases, the very act of "bearing witness" is enough to diffuse violent conflict. The following essays describe some of the strategies that witnesses may find useful.

  • Limiting Escalation/ De-escalation: One way to avoid the dangers associated with escalation is to limit the extent to which a conflict becomes more intense and severe. This essay outlines various methods that might be used to prevent conflict from escalating out of control.
  • Preventive Diplomacy and International Violence Prevention: There are a wide range of policies and initiatives that third parties can use to help prevent violence in the international sphere. These include monitoring tense situations, establishing mechanisms to detect early-warning signs, initiating efforts to address the root causes of a dispute, and institutionalizing the idea of violence prevention at the local, regional, and international levels.
  • Domestic and Community Violence Prevention: Many attempts at violence prevention turn out to be community-based approaches with a complex division of labor among many different actors. Such actors include ministers, police, probation officers, businesses, schools, and parents. All of these parties have a different role to play in reducing latent tensions, addressing people's needs, and preventing violent conflict within their community.
  • Rumor Control: A proliferation of negative rumors increases the chances that conflict will escalate in potentially dangerous ways. Effective rumor control consists in mechanisms for determining which rumors are circulating, assessing which ones are true, correcting inaccurate rumors, and replacing them with reliable information.
  • Election Monitoring: For states that are not fully stable, opting to hold elections is a risky endeavor. Where contentious elections present fears of vote tampering and other irregularities, the presence of election monitors can help to support a peaceful transition to democracy.
  • Monitoring of Agreements: Witnesses can play an important role in helping to monitor and verify compliance with peace agreements. If agreements are not properly enforced, this can lead to renewed escalation and violence.
  • Human Rights Protection: To protect human rights is to ensure that people receive some degree of decent, humane treatment. Some maintain that only the vigilant eye of the international community can ensure proper observance of human rights standards across the world.
  • Protective Accompaniment: To the extent that human rights crimes go unreported and unchallenged within some societies, the perpetrators face comparatively fewer social, political, or legal costs for their transgressions. By sending in observers who report and challenge human rights abuses, the costs of these actions increases, and therefore, their prevalence may decrease. These observer missions are often organized by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
  • Peacekeeping: The chief purpose of peacekeeping forces is to reduce tensions between parties in conflict once a ceasefire has been negotiated in order to ensure that violent conflict does not resurface.

They Speak Out and Get Help Fast

  • Witnesses can also speak up and persuade the parties to stop fighting. This includes inducing warring parties to withdraw to agreed-upon lines, respect ceasefires and peace agreements, and adopt a nonviolent stance. In many cases, speaking out is also a matter of sounding the alarm to alert the proper authorities, other third siders, and interveners so that appropriate action may be taken.
  • The media play a key role in sounding the alarm. Their reporting alerts educators, bridge-builders, providers, and public officials around the world. For this reason, media professionals are often thought of as the eyes and ears of the Third Side.
  • Once witnesses have gotten the attention of peacemakers, peacekeepers, mediators, and negotiators, these intermediaries can help to contain conflict and help parties to come to a solution.

For More Information

Much of the material on this user guide is drawn from www.thirdside.org. Thanks to William Ury and Joshua Weiss for giving us permission to republish their material here.