In her keynote address this morning, Ambassador Samantha Power spoke about the importance of conflict prevention in promoting development, and I saw this demonstrated at an afternoon workshop convened by Lawyers Without Borders.
One key idea that I took away from this workshop is that conflicts, no matter their scale or their cause, hinder development activities. Whether the conflict is a quarrel over access to resources in a rural village, or a dispute between North and South Vietnam over the shape of the table at the 1968 Paris peace talks, creative solutions are required if the goals of sustainable development and poverty eradication are to be realized. Lawyers Without Borders teaches conflict resolution strategies to promote access to justice on the grassroots level, which is beneficial for any kind of social progress.
While student representatives led an interactive conflict resolution game, I had the pleasure of speaking with Christina Storm, founder and Executive Director of Lawyers Without Borders. “Access to justice is critical to economic development and alleviation of poverty,” she explained.
“At the village and rural level, where they don’t have the kind of access to courts and lawyers that they might have in the more highly populated areas, [conflict prevention] might be the only kind of justice they’re going to be able to get," Storm said. "In the more sophisticated societies, conflict resolution is used – the exact same principles – in very sophisticated negotiations, but certainly vis-à-vis the MDGs and the development agenda. This is one thing that can be used in the rural areas, has a very low economic impact, and can empower people and give them the kind of access to justice that’s very real and meaningful to them.”
Although the word “development” was not actually used in the first hour of the workshop, the session ended with the following quote from Desmond Tutu, which tied everything together: “Wherever we live, however we look, regardless of ethnicity, gender, geographic location or class – strengthening the rule of law is an essential ingredient to enhance justice, peace, and economic and social progress.”
