August 20 - 26 from 9am to 12am
(Except for Sunday, August 23: 11am to 2pm)

Location: Hauptschule Alpbach
Language: English

Chairpersons:
Florian BIEBER, Lecturer in East European Politics, Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury
Luis PERAL, Research Fellow, European Union Institute for Security Studies, Paris

Speaker:
Natasa KANDIC, Executive Director, The Humanitarian Law Center, Belgrade

Content:

Next to human suffering, the destruction of confidence is one of the key consequences of ethnic conflict and war. At the same time, confidence and renewed solidarity is an essential aspect of post-conflict reconstruction and conflict prevention. The renewal of confidence does not only involve different groups, but the reconstruction of confidence more broadly in society, which is often severely impaired through conflict. The seminar will focus on different forms of confidence-building after civil conflict. While debates often focus on institutions and tools of democracy and governance in post-conflict settings, the underpinning forms of social cohesion, solidarity and confidence are often not well understood.

In the context of confidence building, the discussions during the seminar will center on three aspects: Mediation, reconciliation and consensus building.
These aspects are best understood not just as being group-centered, i.e. as focusing on relations between groups, but rather one needs to look at society more broadly to allow for a reduction of 'groupness' and the emergence of alternate forms of solidarity and societal confidence.