Language: English

Olivia Helvadjian is the Head of Communications at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT). She is a communications, public relations and advocacy professional with 15+ years of experience in corporate communications, public affairs, advocacy, publishing and social media. 

Before joining IFIT, she ran the external communications of the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai for nearly a decade. Prior to working in China, she held various roles in communications, lobbying and public affairs at ministries, governmental and private institutions, with focus on the European Union and Asia.

She holds a Masters degrees in Law from the University of Vienna and an LL.M. in international Business Law from the the National University of Singapore. She also earned a diploma in Journalism from the Danube University Krems and an MBA from Hult International Business School. 

Working languages: English, German, French.

Conversational skills: Mandarin, Arabic, and Spanish.

Rethinking the Negotiation Paradigm: Introducing “Fast-Track” Negotiation

Negotiation is among the best known and most used tools for advancing peace and political transition. Yet, the dominant model of the last few decades is built on methodological premises which, in aggregate, produce slow negotiation. 

As IFIT founder and executive director Mark Freeman explains in this one-minute video, a “fast track” model is needed to match the more urgent local change needed in the majority of conflict situations.

Fast-track negotiation will have a greater focus on outcomes over process; on pragmatism over perfectionism. Drawing on research that IFIT has begun carrying out, the fast-track negotiation model will expand the existing toolbox of conflict resolution, thus overcoming the risky reliance on a single, slow model.

More will be said about “fast-track negotiation” in the coming months.

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María Eugenia Brizuela de Ávila, Mayu, is a recognised leader with extensive experience in the public, private and social sector in El Salvador and Latin America. She was the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador (1999-2004) and the first female president of an insurance company and Banco Salvadoreno in 2004. She currently sits on the boards of Banco Davivienda in Honduras and El Salvador, as well as the El Salvador Stock Exchange. 

In the social sector, María Eugenia has been a member and director of lawyers’ associations and institutions dedicated to sustainable development such as the Foundation for the Development of Salvadoran Women (FUDEM) and the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUSADES). She was the first woman of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) from Mexico to Panama. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Universidad Dr. José Matías Delgado and has served on the International Board of Plan International. She is a Commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), and a member of the Advisory Council of the Private Sector Regional Centre in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and of the Diplomatic Academy Council of the Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Aspen Ministers Forum.

Throughout her career, she has received multiple awards such as the Distinguished Professional Award from Dr. José Matías Delgado University and the 2007 Golden Palm, the highest award from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of El Salvador. In 2020 she was named one of the 100 most influential women in Central America and the Caribbean by Forbes Magazine. 

María Eugenia holds a degree in legal sciences from the Universidad Dr. José Matías Delgado, an MBA from the Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas (INCAE) and a postgraduate degree in Sustainable Business from the University of Cambridge.

This IFIT publication offers simplified technical guidance directed to any good-faith promoter of formal negotiation with one or more violent criminal groups when the proposed endgame of the negotiation is to reduce or end the criminal violence in question. In doing so, the paper draws on key ideas developed in IFIT’s ground-breaking report, Negotiating with Violent Criminal Groups: Lessons and Guidelines from Global Practice (Freeman & Felbab-Brown, 2021), which covers the most diverse set of negotiations with criminal groups ever examined in one place.

The first part of the paper examines threshold questions a good-faith promoter would be wise to consider before outwardly exploring or proposing any negotiation involving a criminal group; the second part discusses internal and external actions a good-faith promoter ought to contemplate as part of any initial phase of formal engagement or negotiation with members of a criminal group.

The DOI registration ID for this publication is: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10554933

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This narrative case study illustrates the ideas and practices in IFIT’s narrative framework by putting them in a specific country context. In the spring of 2021, Colombia experienced the most widely supported and violent national protests it had seen in decades. The protests were embedded in a national narrative landscape full of stories about how the protests formed, who the main actors were, and which values circumscribed the actions they took. The dominant narratives were rooted in over 50 years of armed conflict in Colombia, which the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the rebel FARC-EP was intended to end. 

The case study demonstrates, among other things, the role key events can play in bringing simplified polarising narratives in the public eye, eclipsing other narratives and incentivising violence. It discusses concrete examples of dialogue processes between opposing actors in the 2021 national protests that enabled them to find shared solutions to their grievances and transform their polarising narratives, but which were not very visible to the public. Based on first-hand interviews, focus group discussions and analyses of traditional and social media content, the study shows how narratives can drive conflict as well as contribute to peaceful engagement.

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This toolkit is designed to help promote constructive dialogue in societies and political systems marked by polarisation. It is meant to be used among persons with opposing views on a given topic, where the conversation has escalated to the use of pejorative language and limited listening. Informed by the work of the IFIT brain trusts in Colombia and Mexico, and by IFIT’s Inclusive Narratives Practice Group, the toolkit does not aim to generate consensus or agreement around a given topic. Instead, it promotes viewpoint plurality – the idea that we can and should talk with those whose views are different to our own.

Based on moderated processes in contexts ranging from the classroom to public debates, the tools in the toolkit enable people with opposing viewpoints to use terms that open up engagement, express concerns without insulting, break down assumptions about each other, acknowledge positive aspects of the other’s position, and understand the internal and external limitations opponents face when taking difficult political decisions.

For more information, see IFIT’s practice brief on the process of developing the toolkit and recommendations based on lessons learnt for how to create and use such a resource to enable narrative transformation and manage conflict.

The DOI registration ID for this publication is: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10809237

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This list of resources – largely open access – provides practitioners, policy makers, donors and others with additional ideas and practices for enriching simplified, divisive narratives to address polarisation and manage conflict. It includes publications, videos and podcasts, as well as supplementary sources such as narrative journals and initiatives, which are useful for grasping and applying concepts and tools at the intersection of narrative and peacebuilding.

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This PDF of the presentation in Features of Narrative: Structure and Dynamics (part 1) serves as a quick reference guide and a training tool for actors working for peace. In the presentation, narrative theory expert and IFIT Inclusive Narratives Practice Group member Sara Cobb explains what narratives are, how narrative dynamics shape our worldview, and how we can transform simplified narratives that polarise societies into complex narratives that help people engage peacefully. 

Using examples of polarising narratives in the United States, Cobb demonstrates how they promote the validity of one group’s grievances and the moral superiority of its intentions and actions, while delegitimising the ‘other’. Soon, two to three narratives begin to dominate the public sphere. They appear as the only way to describe what is occurring in politics and society, creating an ‘us versus them’ environment and eclipsing other, less prominent narratives. 

Noting that people tend to become stuck in their polarising narratives, the document advocates for using narrative strategies and tools to help people move from simple, linear stories to more complex ones by introducing new values (grey, not ‘black and white’), new characters (beyond heroes and villains) and new plot points (that do not fit the simplified story). This approach can give increased legitimacy to both sides, enable a sense of shared responsibility for conflict, build agency to create bridges between poles, and ultimately foster social engagement for peace.

Watch the accompanying video:

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This PDF of the presentation in Narrative Elaboration: Tools for Change (part 2) serves as a quick reference guide and a training tool for actors working for peace. In the presentation, narrative theory expert and Inclusive Narratives Practice Group member Sara Cobb focuses on practice, sharing a set of narrative tools and how to use them to transform polarising narratives as part of peacebuilding efforts. 

Cobb describes a narrative as a tree. The trunk is the visible narrative, which hardens and forms from shared roots and justifies people’s ideas and actions. The roots are facts, events, parables and stories about the collective past, which anchor people’s worldviews. And the branches are actions, policies and other outcomes of the narrative trunk. It is the branches and roots that are most amenable to change, as the trunk tends to be most rigid.

A range of proven narrative tools are then presented. These can be employed in meetings, workshops, public debates and similar spaces for peacebuilding. The first is positive connotation, through which participants describe the opposing side in terms of a positive trait or intention in order to enable humanisation and mutual legitimacy. The second is circular questioning, through which participants make comparisons between their own and others’ stories and thereby introduce new elements that transform their narrative. The third is scaffolding, which helps participants identify exceptions to events in their stories to again introduce new elements and change their narrative. And the fourth is narrative inoculation, where participants identify obstacles to narrative transformation ahead of time so they can strategically address them. 

Watch the accompanying video:

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