Our Salamti Fellow, Iqra Khan curated a group discussion with the students of Government Degree College for Women, Hazro on peace, violence and countering violent extremism. Considering the incidents of religious extremism and violence in that area, Iqra organized this event to break the civilizational curse of religious extremism among young generation. During the discussion, the students were equipped with the concept of peace, conflict, dehumanization and religious harmony. In order to make them understand, they had dialogues between teams to resolve conflict and they also shared their stories of violence and conflict if they ever experienced. The teachers and administration really appreciated the idea and efforts by Iqra Khan and encouraged her to take different session with other students.
Special Operation
Special Op Report
THEME: Conflict and Conflict Resolution
Assalam o Alaikum,
My name is Iqra Khan and I am going to present the report on the group discussion among close friends on the topic of conflict and conflict resolution.
NATURE AND NO. OF PARTICIPANTS: There were a total of 7 participants who had a healthy discussion on the topic. The participants were teachers and university students. They come from an educational and diverse background and all are very competent and capable.
ACTIVITY: We first started off with our understanding of conflict. We tried to define what is conflict? Everyone gave their opinions. Some said conflict is a clash of views and some said they felt it was the clash of actions. Eventually we stuck to a definite definition of conflict that it is a clash or a disagreement. Conflict can arise from an opposing idea but it isn’t always violent. Conflict influence our actions and decisions in one way or another. I described that Conflict can be positive as well as negative. Positive conflicts brings out different ideas and perspectives of a certain problem. It widens the sphere of thinking and helps us to understand different point of views regarding a certain thing. For example, the Creation of Pakistan was the result of a conflict. Conflict brings out the hidden problems in the society. It enables us to discuss the taboo issues of the world.
Similarly negative conflicts divide the society. Since the emergence of Pakistan, its society has been divided on the basis of class, color, creed, race, language, province etc. All these interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts have divided the nationhood into several different parts, damaging the nationalism in Pakistan.
Now that we identified conflict, our next task was to identify the root cause of conflicts. According to some conflict is due to unfair treatment, bullying and harassing. While some said that it is due to poor communication and misunderstandings. But as we learned from the self-peace development course that conflicts is basically due to three reasons. It’s due to the limited resources, the unmet needs, and the difference in moral values. This basically means that if we are competing on limited resources or if we lack authority we’ll at some point end up in conflict. The unmet needs mean the inability to fulfill a certain basic need and the difference in moral values is the difference in moral sense of the individuals in the society. This overall means that if we have needs that aren’t met or if we believe in different moral values we’ll have conflicts.
Then we came to the third step which was Conflict Resolution, its significance and methods to resolve a conflict. We discussed that conflict resolution is basically the methods and processes that facilitates in peaceful endings of a conflict. It exists because people cannot always get along or agree. Because conflict is a very natural part of our lives. The ability to resolve a conflict is a crucial skill to adapt by everyone. If a conflict is resolved successfully and peacefully, it results in many beneficial things such as accomplishing goals and strengthening relationships.
Hence in order to resolve a conflict we should have a certain set of skills in ourselves. The top six skills we should have are communication, team work, patience, problem solving, emotional agility and stress management. The best way to resolve the conflict is by negotiating and thinking of the situation in a neutral manner. If we keep the three main reasons of the cause of conflict in mind and think about each of them in a relaxed manner we may resolve conflict in a peaceful way.
We identified different real life scenarios for conflict resolution. The participants who were teachers told their conflicts from work, the student participants discussed their conflicts from college life. The causes of those conflicts were then identified and discussed. We thought about the limited resources, the unmet needs and the different moral values to understand the whole scenario and come up with solution.
OUTCOMES OF ACTIVITY: We all learned a lot from this discussion. We learned that conflicts are inevitable. We can’t avoid conflict completely hence we should learn to resolve it. Conflicts arise due to three basic reasons and if we keep those reasons in mind and think through the situation thoroughly, we may resolve the conflict peacefully. We understood from the discussion that in order to resolve conflicts we need patience, tolerance and good communication. This peaceful resolution can bring peace, tolerance and prosperity in the society. Pakistan is in desperate need of positive conflicts and peaceful resolution of conflicts in order to stabilize the society and make it a prosperous country.
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