The Genius of the Rondine Method
How citizens--even "enemies"--can exercise popular diplomacy in war-torn places
In March 2018, Sierra Leone was about to hold presidential elections over which the threat of public violence was hanging heavily. A task force of young people, former students of the peacebuilding program of the Association Rondine Cittadella della Pace—or simply the Rondine—based near Arezzo Italy, gathered to mount a campaign with the slogan, “One voice, one vote, no violence.”
The Rondine team was composed of nine Sierra Leoneans (former “enemies” of each other) from the south and the north of that country, as well as from other well-known conflict zones—Lebanon, Kosovo, and Azerbaijan. Drawing on their shared experiences in Rondine’s two-year residential program focused on relational peacebuilding and reconciliation, they mounted a public call encouraging respect for political differences among the country’s eighteen ethnic groups and called on people to vote responsibly—i.e., not merely for candidates who happened to belong to their tribe.
These former enemies crisscrossed the country’s fourteen districts, hosting community meetings, holding roundtables at universities, and deploying social media and social networks. The campaign reached even the most remote areas of the country and included direct discussions with 700 citizens as well as reaching another 2.5 million indirectly. Individualized training was given to over 350 highly respected local community leaders. In the event, international observers found the election, while hotly contested, to be free and fair, with an 84% voter turnout.
The students hoped to show the Sierra Leoneans that it is possible to be a member of one’s community (tribe or group) while also identifying with a larger political entity (the national government) by supporting an inclusive democracy. Researchers are currently studying this successful application of “the Rondine method” across an entire country as a valuable tool for training local and national leaders in any divided country.
Groundwork for this experiment was laid during the 2010s, when nine young people from different districts of Sierra Leone came to a small town in Italy to study peacebuilding in the aftermath of their home country’s earlier decade of civil war (1991 to 2002) which killed at least 50,000 people. The post-war reconstruction period was hampered by an outbreak of the Ebola virus, which claimed another 4,000 victims.
Founded in 1998 in Tuscany, Rondine’s World House residential program—which is actually more of a praxis—is made up of yearly cohorts of 10 to 15 students each year, most of them relatives and friends of war victims in their home countries. They come in pairs, each representing one side of a conflict, studying a mix of conflict resolution, anthropology, psychology, and the Italian language before returning home to collaborate on a social impact project.
Students come from places like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Chechnya, Russia, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Kosovo, India, Pakistan, Georgia, Israel, and Palestine. Currently Rondine is hosting 30 students from 25 countries as together they deconstruct hatred and “the image of the enemy” in order to create relationships of deep trust.
Their experience, each working in pairs with a former “enemy”, equips them with a master’s degree as well as trauma healing, Italian language skills, and training in peacebuilding methods.
The Rondine Method is now the subject of a new book by that name, co-authored by Franco Viccari (founder of Rondine and a practicing psychotherapist), Miguel Diaz (former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican) and Charles “Chip” Hauss (veteran activist, author, and Senior Fellow with the Alliance for Peacebuilding).
The method draws on rich streams of reflection in the work of personalist philosophers like Emmanuel Mounier, Martin Buber, Ivan Illich, and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as the approach of John Paul Lederbach in peacebuilding. (Here’s a good video introduction to Rondine and its method.)
Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, Rondine’s work attempts to set aside “the heroic but often unachievable myth of elite diplomacy” (as one contributor to the book puts it) in order to build “a permanent home for trust” and for popular diplomacy.
And, we might add, to offer some light in the current darkness.
See you next time—peace.
I'd never heard of this center before, Elias--thanks very much for sharing the news!