Conflict Management Training

Let’s Be In Action with Mediation!

Wisma PGK Shanti Dharma Yogyakarta, August 10 - 12, 2012

Indonesia is a country with a large variety of culture, religion, and ethnic. This variety often brings the society into conflicts, either cultural or religion conflict. Therefore, people who are moved to be peace ambassador in their daily life are very needed. Being a peace ambassador is the longing of Conflict Management Training participants, Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta.

Located on Wisma PGK Shanti Dharma Yogyakarta, this training was held on August 10-12, 2012. The training participants were Christian students from various regions who are finishing their study in Yogyakarta. The variety of ethnics and cultures among the participants increased the shine and spirit of every training session. By the theme “Let’s be in Action with Mediation!” Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta was supplying the participants to be peace agents and to make a Peace Building Community. It is the expectation of Stube-HEMAT Yogyakarta in the arrangement of the training that the participants can be smart mediators when they involve in a conflict solution and can analyze the potential of conflict which might happen.

Endah Setyowati from Pusat Studi Pengembangan Perdamaian (PSPP), an institution concerns on peace development, Duta Wacana Christian University, started that training by explaining how the occurrence process of conflict is. She opened the participants’ insight by saying that conflict brings not only negative but also positive impact in our life. In this session, the participants were also invited to do a test to know about someone’s inclination when a conflict happens, whether she or he is inclined to escape, to face, to give up, or to solve it.

The participants’ curiosity about how to solve a conflict was answered by the attendance of Dra. Krisni Noor Pratianti, M.Hum from PSSP UKDW. A conflict can be solved with coercion, mediation, arbitration, and negotiation. Coercion is a process of solving conflict when there are two sides in conflict but one side decides the solution. When two sides in conflict and there is the third side who facilitates the process of that conflict solution, it is called mediation. Arbitration is a process of solving conflict when two sides who are in conflict have the same strength so they seek the third side. This third side is the side who makes and decides the solution because both first and second side have handed the solution over this third side. Meanwhile, when two sides in conflict have the same position are discussing the same problem to find the choices of the solution, it is called negotiation.

She also explained some examples of conflict solution cases, such as the case in Ambon after conflict in 2001. “UKDW (Duta Wacana Christian Univerity) was invited by UNICEF to help mediating that conflict. The education curriculum is one of the causes of the conflict. The curriculum is made based on the compartmentalizing of religion”, explained Dra. Krisni Noor Patrianti, M.Hum, answered the question of a training participant.

The climax of Conflict Management Training series event is on the last session, Spirituality of Peace. In that session, Pdt. Mathieda Yeanne Tadu, S.Si (a priest), invited the participants to go into a silent moment to reflect what they had gotten from that training and what will they do in their life as a peace agent. From that session, the participants realized that being a peace ambassador is not an easy thing, being a peace agent is not a secondary duty but a life’s work.