Radically New Conflict Resolution Concept Advanced by the Institue for Public Dialogue

On February 4, 2007 the Institute for Public Dialogue (IPD) submitted a proposal on "Public Talks" to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    Public Talks, originated by John Connolly, the founder of the IPD, is a worldwide communication process designed to come into play once all other negotiation options have been exhausted. Such a form of dialogue would level the playing field for worldwide communication between two states during times of crisis.

    The current international negotiation process depends largely on personal trust and secret talks between leaders and various other state officials. In their proposal, the IPD points out that such negotiations often fail to resolve the conflict. Leader to leader communications allow for the future reinterpretation of agreements in order to sell them to their constituencies, which sows the seeds of a future conflict. Moreover, many negotiations including Versailles, Potsdam, and Yalta, led to agreements that participants later reinterpreted in vastly different ways, causing the agreement to be disavowed.  The failure of contemporary secret talks in Madrid, Dayton, and Oslo, illustrates the need for an alternative negotiating model.  

    Ongoing conflicts in Kenya, Chad, Gaza, Darfur, and Iraq are largely political in nature. Yet, while their origins are in the upper echelons of the governing establishment, their impacts are largely felt by the general public. Be it bombs in marketplaces, rioting in the streets, or the taking of  hostages, more often than not the victims are innocent civilians.

    Moving the focus of conflict negotiation to the public arena, therefore, opens up an entirely new array of possibilities for negotiation and resolution.  

    The centerpiece of these Public Talks is a series of small, magazine-size “Challenge Documents” distributed through a handful of influential national and international newspapers and/or magazines and made available online. Through its Challenge Document, each side will feature its interpretation of history.

    This document would contain questions to one’s adversary, negotiating positions, and other content inherent to international conflicts. Successive rounds of Public Talks would call for a defined exchange of views that expand upon these issues. Every one or two weeks, one side would distribute a Challenge Document that will likely reverberate throughout the media.  If accepted, this dialogue would unfold over two or three months and will engage citizens, as never before, in the details of that conflict.

    Given current political realities, the U.S. is expected to have a strong interest in when and how this process will be employed. Moreover, as recent history demonstrates, for Public Talks to truly become a viable conflict negotiation option, American support is essential. IPD is seeking, therefore, to gain such support by inviting the Senate Foreign Relations committee implicitly asks the Senate Committee to hold hearings to discuss the implementation of the Public Talks process.

    IPD will need international support to get such a large scale process in place. For this reason they hope to officially submit a proposal to the UN within the next week. They are calling for the discussion and debate of the adoption of Public Talks as a UN supported conflict negotiation option.

More information about Public Talks can be found at their website: www.ifpdialogue.com