CAMERON ELLIOT: You’ve been working in the field of
peacebuilding for almost as long as peacebuilding has
existed as a concept. And it’s clear from the longevity
of your career, the impact you’ve had on the field
and the way you write about the subject, that you are
deeply passionate about your work and view it as more
than a livelihood—as a true vocation in the sense of
being “called” to it. What was it about peacebuilding
that called to you? How did you arrive at this vocation?JOHN PAUL LEDERACH: Well it’s something that I
was engaged in from very young and has stayed my
entire professional career. I come from a Mennonite
background, which is one of the traditional peace
churches out of the Protestant reformation. So
historically for centuries we’ve maintained a pacifist
orientation. And typically for my generation and the
ones preceding it in the US, that meant an option
for conscientious objection to military conscription.
During the Vietnam War we had an alternative to
military service that young men could opt for ahead of being drafted. You could opt for
international or domestic alternative service. And I was quite interested in going international.
After my second year of college I had a hiatus for about three or four years where I did
voluntary service under a program that the church offered. It placed me in Brussels working in
a housing project for mostly French-speaking African students coming up from former Belgian
colonies which, as you would know, are Rwanda, Burundi and today Congo. Back then it was
Zaire. So I was in a context of about 30 or 40 mostly young university students coming from
all over the world. Exiles from Colombia and Argentina, Middle East, Northern Africa and the
vast majority were French-speaking African countries. It was like a school [laughs]. A lot of our
discussions were around how you’re going to change the world. And, you know, the late night
chess games over a few beers often got pretty vivacious. The big debates were, if you’re coming
from a country that has a very oppressive system, can it be changed in any way except by some
form of revolutionary violence? Which many of them were advocates for. I of course was an
advocate for non-violent social change. So it was a real testing ground. But I discovered how
passionately I felt about those deeper concerns. And I began to search more actively for how I
might study that formally. Which back in those days would have been the mid-’70s, there were
not many places you could go for a degree in peace studies. Eventually I was able to locate one
that permitted me to combine some of my experience along with that form of study. So from
the early ’70s onward, over four decades now, I’ve been able to pursue a vocation that is truly
vocational, that is, having a true sense of voice and committing to a purpose.Well I think the passion is certainly still there. If there were elements
that have changed it’s mostly that from the 1980s a lot of my work
has placed me in contexts where there has been long-term protracted
violent conflict. Many people from the outside would say it’s like a war zone. So a lot of the
places that I’ve worked in have been contexts where people have had decades, if not half-
centuries, of not only deeply structurally-flawed forms of exclusion and oppressive systems,
but also a lot of open violence. That exposure shifted my engagements in the direction of
trying to better understand not only what makes for a possibility of change but also how it has
to be engaged from early on with points of reference that are about the human condition and
the healing of human suffering. Obviously one of the big elements for me was how to combine
non-violent social change with the dialogue, mediation, conciliation and reconciliation work
necessary to sustain constructive change. Which, you know, is focused on bringing people
who are mortal enemies, if you will, toward some form of redefined relationship. Those are not
always fields that are easy to hold together. The mediation and conciliation work in part was
driven by the understanding that it’s possible for people to transform their relationships even
when they’ve been so deeply harmed. And it was a different set of understandings than one of
say, non-violent social change to some degree and human rights on another side, which can
often be focused on who’s right and who’s wrong and how do you bring justice to a situation?And over that time has the thing that
draws you to the work changed at all?52
JOHN PAUL LEDERACH
DUMBO FEATHER