July 21, 2022 • 53 mins
In this episode Laura interviews Dr. Juan Diaz-Prinz, senior expert on mediation and dialogue at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Juan is a mediator, trainer, and facilitator who has dedicated his career to bridging the gap between theory and practice in mediation. He started his career in the Office of the International Mediator in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1998-2004) and then co-founded the CSSP: Berlin Center for Integrative Mediation. He served as its director and senior mediator between 2005 and 2013. He later supported the founding of the European Institute of Peace for mediatEUr: the European Forum for International Mediation and Dialogue. Before joining USIP, he was working on developing the Conflict Management Space as an online platform for developing simple innovative training material for practitioners working in the field.
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Episode Transcript
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Laura (00:10):
hello and welcome to the conflict podcast media.com, the
podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Juan Diaz Prince, acting
director for inclusive peace processes andReconciliation at the Institute for Peace.
And I would like to say a friend.
So welcome Huang.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (00:31):
Thank you Laura.
Thank you very much for having me here.
I'm
Laura (00:35):
Very pleased to have you here and so I am gonna let Juan talk a little
bit about himself and his history.
But first I'm gonna say a little bitabout how I know him because Juan was
actually a big inspiration for me inthe mediation and peace process world
cuz he was actually my professor.
And so I went along and learnedabout sort of peace negotiation
(00:55):
and mediation from him.
And it really did change how I saw myselfand the world and our possibilities.
So thank you very much a for that.
I can blame him from my time inthe mediation world and it's gonna
be great to hear from him today.
So let's start off then.
So how did you end up inthe conflict transformation
Juan Diaz-Prinz (01:16):
field?
So when I.
Doing my PhD on inter in Internationalrelations and sanctions regime,
I was working on the conflict onCuba, the United States and the eu.
And at that time, the war in Bosniawas coming to a close and they were it,
(01:38):
implementing the Dayton Peace Accords.
And there was an opening for an internin the office of the International
mediator for Bos in her Cirina.
And I heard about it froma friend of a friend.
Of a friend.
And back then they weren'tthat many positions available
in the world of mediation.
(01:59):
Mediation was a really it was like a baby.
It was a nascent areaof study and activity.
Usually mediation was thepurview of high level diplomat.
, but Okay.
I got this job as an intern andI remember, the first day in
the mediation office I arrivedand there was so much energy.
(02:21):
, people were not talking about the war.
They were talking about how tosolve it and how to implement
and how to motivate people.
And it was such, such a positive energyand I was just so blessed to be to be
an intern in such a, in such an office.
And I went from being an intern to beingan assistant to being a, an advisor.
And slowly I worked my way up.
(02:42):
And I can tell you moreabout it if you'd like.
Laura (02:46):
No, absolutely.
And so how long were you actuallyin the field at that office
of the international media?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (02:53):
So I started in 1998 and I stayed there till 2005.
And by the end of my time there, I wasactually at informally the junior mediator
In many of the sessions I was designing.
, I was co-creating, I was workingwith parties and it was interesting
because the field of mediation.
(03:15):
At that time was a really wild area.
There were no real rules Today.
Today when you look at mediation,it's very normative, right?
There's the do no harm principle.
There's design, mediation, support, andwe have all these structures that all came
out of our time in the nineties where.
(03:37):
People were just doing mediation.
There was no certification program.
There were no, there was no like,Oh, I'm a certified mediator.
All that came later.
Back then, the UN used to send likehigh level diplomats, go out to the
bush and don't come back until youhave an agreement kind of thing.
The white man coming from, Geneva, NewYork, Brussels, wherever, Washington
(04:00):
and I say the white man, becauseto be honest, that's what it was.
There were no real major women mediators.
There were no people of color.
All of that came years and years later.
But the reality was it was a veryexciting time because when something
worked it went from I just did it toour traditional approach, , right?
Yeah.
(04:21):
Once it worked, you replicated itreally quickly everywhere you went
because we were trying to make senseof, mass murder ethnic cleansing.
People don't realize that pre the ninetiesyou had these great power competition
and you had global hegemonic actors.
The mediators were the US and Russia.
, and these were all proxy wars thatyou can't even call those mediation.
(04:44):
And then the nineties came aroundand we moved into interstate
conflict and then all of a suddenthere was space to actually mediate.
And then I am blessed with, the job.
And Laura, I say this tongue incheek, but this was really the truth.
I was the bag carrier of the mediator.
That was my first job.
And I was so happy to carrythe bag and , wherever the
(05:07):
mediator went, the bag had to go.
So it was my ticket into every powerfulmediator mediation meeting in the Balkans.
And I was like, the bag, you, I face thebag and be like, the bag has to go in the
mediator, and I was told, do not speak.
Do not speak.
And if I can just tell a quick storybecause I love the, this story,
(05:31):
I'm carrying the bag, I'm carryingthe bag, I'm going everywhere.
But at the same time as carrying thebag, I was helping the chief of staff.
, prepare these meetings.
And I won't tell you what was in the bag.
Maybe ask me at the end of thepodcast what was in the bag.
I'll tell you.
You'll be surprised.
So one day we're in Bosnia, we're in Sara.
The mediator's having breakfast.
I don't see any staff.
I don't see any high level people.
(05:52):
I find I take my shot, I'm like,This is my one second of fame.
I'm gonna tell the mediator what Ithink, I sit in front of the mediator,
It's 7:00 AM he's having a cereal.
And I'm like, We're going to Albaniaand I need to tell you what I think.
And the mediator, Dr.
(06:12):
Christian Schwa chilling,puts down his spoon.
He looks at me, he says, Go ahead.
And I'm like, Okay.
The conflict in Albania, and I don'teven remember what I said, but it
was like, really important, right?
And he looks at me at the end ofthe, of my spiel here, and he.
Are you done?
(06:33):
May I get back to my cereal now?
. Oh my God.
And was I was totally dejected, right?
Yeah.
But this is the power of whenyou work in mediation, you never
know where that's going to go.
, when you put an idea into theair, you put it in people's minds.
So we went to Bosnia.
(06:54):
From there, we went to Macedonia.
From there we went to Albania.
It was, we were on a twoweek tour of the bas.
. We're sitting in the office of thePrime Minister of Albania, and Dr.
Schwar chilling, turnsaround and says, Mr.
Prime Minister, my assistant hassomething he would like to share with you.
(07:21):
And he looks at me and he says, Mr.
Diaz, you have five minutes.
And I got to say whatI wanted to say, right?
And I said it to the Prime Minister,and then the mediator said, Mr.
Prime Minister, Democracy is abouteverybody being able to participate,
(07:41):
including an assistant with some verygood ideas who may never be able to
say his ideas if we didn't let them.
And so I can only encourage you to bemore inclusive when you're trying to
solve the country's problems because greatideas come from the most unsoundly areas,
(08:03):
unseen areas, and I was just in awe.
I got my two minutes to tell theAlbanian Prime Minister what I thought.
And that has impacted me today.
When I think about inclusion andparticipation, and I'm working in
countries, I work in Venezuela, Iwork on Cameroon, I work on Ukraine,
and I'm constantly thinking howto be more inclusive, how to get
(08:24):
negotiators to realize the richnessof allowing other interest groups
that are not at the table to be ableto get their ideas onto the table.
And so mediation has transformed froma very exclusive power hungry kind
of arm groups and mediators to beingmore inclusive and more participatory.
Laura (08:49):
That was a real emotional rollercoaster hunt.
Like I re that, that whole story.
So thank you for sharing it.
And so when you talk about this needto be more inclusive, and when you're
reflecting on how we can be moreinclusive in these processes, what are
some of the ways in which we can do that?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (09:05):
First of all, and this is, this goes to the
heart of conflict transformation.
And just for the audience most of themediation world thinks of mediation
as a very transactional thing.
Mediation is the support of athird party to conflict parties
to negotiate an agreement.
(09:25):
But what we know now is that theseagreements are not always sustainable,
and that actually after one yearover 50% of agreements just fail.
, so the question for us is whatmakes an agreement sustainable?
And if you boil it down, I'm notgonna give you a, one hour, lesson
(09:46):
on mediation, , if you boil it down,if people believe in the agreement.
They will implement,It's not rocket science.
. And so in order to get people to believein something, usually they believe in
something they've participated in and theyfeel that they were able to contribute to.
(10:09):
And so you need to break that down andsay, when people feel that agreement is
theirs, then they will say, Wow, that'sour agreement, not Juan's agreement.
And they will then protect that agreement.
. So if you wanna be, in order to beinclusive and participatory, you
(10:30):
need to have systems and formatwhereby which people can contribute.
. So for example, the UN might set upa broad civil society consultation.
And gotta be very careful becausewhen people hear civil society,
immediately the skeptics will say,Oh, in every country they're the
usual Stu suspects are all elitist.
(10:52):
Anyways, that's not inclusive.
It is inclusive because in realityin most countries, if you would
allow the power holders to negotiateby themselves, you're talking about
maximum 20 people in the room.
, then you add civil society or youstart to get to a couple of hundred.
And then if you can instill in those civilsociety actors to go out and consult the
(11:15):
public and to go down to the grassrootsand hear what people have to say.
And the UN can be very helpful with that.
Region organizations canbe very helpful with that.
So the real question is where do youfind the balance between not holding
back political negotiations and makingsure that the broad society has the
(11:36):
ability to participate either inthe co-creating of the agreement or
the implementation of the agreement?
They don't have to participate inevery step at all times, but somewhere
they want the right to decide fortheir own fu about their own future.
And I think, and that's the key.
If I think I am now participatingin deciding my future, I will be
(12:00):
much more engaged in that process.
Laura (12:03):
It makes complete sense, right?
If we're part of something,we must think it's genius
, Juan Diaz-Prinz: right?
But the, but to be honest, thereality, this is the dark side of that.
, it's a lot easier to get 15 peoplein a room and knock some heads
and go out before the media andsay, Hey, we got an agreement.
, it is a lot easier, alot more cost efficient.
(12:23):
. And we live in a world of soundbites.
Yeah.
So a lot of people are verygood at talking about inclusion.
It's much more difficultto do in practice.
No, it's definitely true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because power holders don'talways understand why.
, I'm the armed group and I wantindependence, and if I let
(12:47):
somebody in, they might not be.
For independence, and all of a suddenthey have an equal voice that I do.
And that's scary.
That scares people.
And so power holdersdon't wanna be inclusive.
We can they wanna be inclusive likelater after they get what they want.
(13:07):
And this is a challenge that you have.
How can, how do you convince them thatinclusion in the long run pays off?
And that's challenging.
Sidetracking to my own country theUnited States is deeply divided.
. And whenever one side is empowered, theother side feels excluded and demonized.
(13:29):
And the question is, in a worldwith 7 billion people, how do you.
Bring some kind of peace processor conflict resolution process
down to the very basic level ofsociety so that people can directly
(13:52):
engage in their peace process.
And I say this in, in, in relation to theUnited States because I think the United
States needs a form of a peace process.
They really need to have a broad nationaldialogue on how do we wanna live together.
The world has changed massively.
We have conflicts betweenurban and rural areas.
(14:15):
We have conflicts of ideology,we have conflicts of the
envir in the environment area.
We have political conflicts, religiousconflicts social class conflicts, and
it's getting more and more complex.
Sorry, I went off on a little bitof a tangent, but That's okay.
Tangents.
I think I, I think just the last commenthere, I think we in the Trans-Atlantic
(14:36):
area seem to think that our work is alwaysabroad and we don't realize that our
work is actually in our own communities.
If we can't get our own communities inorder, we have no business going abroad
and telling anybody how to do things.
So we need to start workingat home in order to show that
we are like walking the talk.
(14:59):
Absolutely.
And let me pose this to you.
So if you had an unlimited budget,unlimited infrastructure, whatever you
needed, how could you enable a processsuch as that in a country such as the us?
What would this actually look like?
This a solution to thedivisions you've described.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (15:17):
I was having this conversation in a podcast on you,
Craig, recently that I not a podcast,a radio interview, sorry recently,
and I said this to the host, Agreeingto dialogue does not mean yes.
, I agree with you.
It means I'm willing to keeptalking, And we have serious social
(15:40):
problems in most Western democracies.
, We need much more dialogue and we needto fund much more dialogue at the local
level, and we need to help the local levelbe able to connect to the national level.
A person in California feels completelydisconnected from Washington.
(16:00):
, a person from Florida feels completelydisconnected from Washington.
It's extremely far away and there aretens of millions of people between
Miami and Washington, DC 50, 60 yearsago I was saying to the to people
recently, because I'm originally fromFlorida, when I was a kid, they were 3
million people in the state of Florida.
Now they're 20.
(16:22):
So we are bound to have socialconflict because it's okay
that we think differently.
But the question is, instead of tryingto solve things really at the higher
level, we need to start thinking abouthow to solve things at the local level.
And this is opposite to what wewere thinking maybe 20 years ago.
(16:44):
20 years ago, we were havinginterstate conflicts and we
thought we need a national.
Dialogue to solve national problems.
I'm beginning, and this is I think,the point of contact transformation.
, No, it's okay to have multiple speedswithin a country and that people
co-create the communities they wannalive in and to begin to talk about our
(17:10):
differences, whether it is the rightto life or gun's control or corruption
or electoral processes or policing.
Policing in Germany looks verydifferent than policing in France.
It looks very different than policing inKenya or Singapore or the United States.
(17:31):
So if you wanna have a conversationabout policing, you need to go down
to that local level and say, Okay,how do we want to work on policing?
Laura (17:40):
I find this a really interesting point actually, that you're bringing
back to the local level, becauseof course there is, I would say,
an increasing amount of research.
We suggest that, we really lost a lot ofthese local institutions, whether they're
different types of clubs or communities,whether they're, roary or Lions or
the cricket club or whatever it is.
So we don't really have thosegathering plots anymore.
And certainly, I'm sure you canrelate this as well, but in cities
(18:03):
where people are so itiner, especiallycities like Brussels or DC right?
People are cons constantly comingin, going out again, and maybe
it's really hard to form thiscommunities, but even in more regional
areas, are we really supporting.
The local watering hole wherepeople can go and chat and work
through the issues of the day.
And of course if we don't have these,there's also implications for loneliness
as well as just social cohesion andhaving a bit of problem overall.
(18:26):
So it's really interestingthat you raised this.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (18:28):
Yeah.
And also with digitalization.
, we all thought, wow, I havesomething more in common with
somebody all the way in Mauritius.
Than with my neighbor and Wow.
Isn't that great?
And we only saw thebenefits of digitalization.
We never thought about how, throughdigitalization, we've also become
(18:49):
disconnected with our own community andthat we are not aware of what's going on
in our local community, but we are aware.
The something horrible happenedin South Africa recently.
There was a murder, a massmurder in a club or something.
While I think that's absolutelyhorrible, what does it have to do
(19:14):
with me in Virginia that it needsto consume 20 minutes of my news
cycle and the, they're reportingit as if my life will be altered.
By this newscast.
And what it's doing is it's in it'sinflicting fear and it's scary.
(19:35):
And instead of telling me about,Wow, here in Virginia, and I don't
live in Virginia, I live in DCbut I'm just making a example.
, here in Virginia, we've got someproblems with crime and environment.
Let's look at our local conflicts.
. And let's talk about them.
And so when you come backup to it, what would I do?
So I would go back toworking with a population.
(19:58):
I would train a lot of facilitators.
To promote dialogue in communitiesand help people and inspire them to
co-create the communities they want to.
I would also work atengaging religious leaders.
And civic leaders in that conversation.
(20:18):
I work for the United States Instituteof Piece and one of the things that I've
learned while I've been here, and I'venever said this is the first time I've
ever saying this exciting, I learnedthat religious leaders are, can be a
very positive factor in cost management.
confess.
We have a religion team.
Yeah.
And we we are producing guides like mereligion and mediation Islamic mediation
(20:41):
the rule of religious actors in mediation.
And I have learned a lot aboutthe wonderful work and peace
building work religious actorsare doing around the world.
And this gets a little lostbecause of the ideological
conflicts in the United States.
I would actually go to thesecommunities and I would engage
(21:03):
people and say, Let's forget aboutall that national level stuff.
, let's talk about what's going on in mytown in Texas, in my town in Illinois,
in my town in New Hampshire, andlet's draft small kind of commitment
(21:24):
agreements about how we wanna live.
How do we want our police, What do wewant from our police in our community?
Cause policing is a big issue.
In the United States, right?
, of course.
Yeah.
And I'm like, So recently, I don'tknow if you've seen that there's
been a high increase in crime.
It's created anxiety, and so there'sa lot of conflict now over the police.
(21:44):
I'm like, what you, what involvesthem in that community dialogue?
Involve them.
I have been, I have actually talkedto some police officers and I've
heard they're really scared as well.
It's not like they're sittingaround thinking, Oh, we
don't get what's going on.
. So taking it away from the UnitedStates, What I would do in other
countries is I would have a sec.
(22:06):
A local security dialogue.
and I would invite local leaders,religious leaders, police, leaders,
local advocates, and I would engagethem in, okay, what are the challenges
we are facing in our community?
And let's see if we canaddress it right here.
Now the problem that you have, and youput your finger right on it without
(22:28):
even thinking about it, you said, ifyou had all the money in the world first
of all, we don't have all the moneyin the world, and second of all, I get
the impression, I don't know, I get theimpression that the way money is spent
is far removed from the local level.
So you're getting budget decisionsat higher levels that don't
(22:53):
necessarily take into account theactual needs of the local community.
I could be wrong.
I don't know, but I have a feelingthat the complexity of managing urban
areas versus rural areas, we can,we're gonna have to tackle that.
People in rural communities livedifferently than people in urban areas.
(23:16):
All over the world.
. We also need to think about how wehave, we work on the build environment.
How do we live in urban areas?
Our needs are completely different thana small little town in the middle of
middle America or Canada or Australia.
And if we want people to relay, we alsohave to exchange with them and understand.
(23:43):
Why are they afraid of some of the thingsthat we seem to think are for our own good
or for our own protection or what we need?
And so we're gonna need anurban, rural conversation,
not just in the United States.
I think this is across the worldbecause the world is becoming much
more concentrated in urban areas.
(24:04):
And I, I don't know the statistics, andI'm not gonna quote them here, but I heard
that by 2050, a certain percentage, likean overwhelming percentage of people, it's
Laura (24:12):
90 or something really crazy.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (24:13):
Something really crazy.
Yeah.
And so I think we need moremediators, more dialogue facilitators.
We need more investment in reconciliation.
Understanding that people aresometimes traumatized by the
conflicts that they're experiencing.
No doubt.
(24:35):
That people in Aldi, Texasare massively traumatized.
People in South Africa, in Ethiopiawhere they're experiencing massive
violence are traumatized in Ukraine.
Now you say to them, Oh,let's have a dialogue.
Ukrainians cannot even hear Russian.
(24:56):
Without having triggers.
Going, And so before you eventry dialogue, you're gonna have
to think about trauma healing.
Yeah.
Tiptoeing a little bit intothe controversy right now.
Women in America are traumatized.
Of course.
Yeah.
And political leaders onboth sides of the aisle.
(25:18):
I'm not sure that they get the politicalsense the human sensitivity around this.
So before you even engage in a dialogue,you gotta prepare the dialogue.
You have to make sure that peoplefeel that they're gonna enter a space.
And in that space, they're not gonnaautomatically be called right wing,
(25:40):
left wing, won, racist whatever, whitemale, religious, radical, fanatic.
I hear these words in society.
They're like giant, like verbalattacks, from different sides.
Yeah.
And people don't realize thepower of the violence of words.
Absolutely.
Laura (25:58):
And actually this came up in my PhD research as well because I was
speaking with a lot of brexiters andthese people who voted leave really
consistently said, One of the thingsthat entrenched them into voting that
way was being called racist or stupid.
And they said I'll show them.
There was a sort of sense of that,but also the sense of why are these
people hurting me and our relationship?
(26:20):
We've been friends for so long,why are they now wrapping me up
in this like stupid racist label?
And so of course it was very difficultto continue having conversations
between them and people who werevoting remain in their social circles.
So it's, yeah, I think we'rereally underestimate how
violent these words can be.
It's really interesting how we usethis labels to, on the one hand reveal
(26:42):
structural inequalities and the other itrenders it sometimes more difficult to get
people to lower their barriers perhapsand actually have these open dialogues.
So I don't know what the answer is,that you're definitely a much more
of an expert in this than I am.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (26:54):
So here's a really great example and I would encourage
listeners to, to think about it.
So a good friend of mine and formermentor Paula Green, who passed
away unfortunately a few monthsago when Donald Trump won the.
(27:18):
She was shocked because she wasnot in favor of Donald Trump.
And she comes from liberalMassachusetts, one of the most
liberal towns in Massachusetts.
The blues.
The Blues of the Blues.
. And she was in shock.
Long story short, she dedicatedthe next five years of her life to
(27:39):
creating a dialogue with the most,let's say, staunch Trump supporters.
. And she reached out to anorganization in Cole County, Kentucky.
That's what she called it.
Like coal miners and , up in the hills.
(28:01):
And I don't rememberthe name of her project.
There was something like Bridgesacross the hills or something.
She won a human rights awardprize for her initiative.
She reached out to them and she said,I am ultra-liberal and I really want to
understand why you think the way you do.
. And they had email conversations, andthen they decided to have a meeting.
(28:29):
And these people from Kentucky goton a bus and they went to her town in
Massachusetts and you could, She usedto tell the story over and over again.
I, I remember hearing it the first timewhen she won her human rights award prize.
And she said when theyarrived, they were so scared.
(28:50):
They had always heard ofMassachusetts, the liberal bastion,
and they were afraid that they weregoing to be physically attacked.
And what greeted them were a bunchof people with potluck kind of food,
and they all took these people in.
(29:12):
Yep.
And they had this spectacular weekend ofconfidence building and one year later
they did it in the other direction.
, same story.
The Massachusetts thought they weregonna be beat up when they arrived in
Kentucky as well, because the ones whohad visited were nice, but now they
(29:36):
were going deep into Trump country.
And she tells this story andshe says, And then we got there
and they were human beings.
And yes, they thought differently.
And she structured.
They structured the conversations,they protected the people.
They made sure that people.
We're safe.
(29:59):
And the final part of her story is thatat the end of the project, she asked
her counterparts what had changed.
Here comes comfort,transformation, what had changed.
And one colleague said, BeforeI met you, I would've run you
(30:19):
out of town before sunset.
And told you, you are not welcometo make sure to leave by sunset.
If you would move to my communitynow, I would defend your right to live
here and express your point of viewin a democratically and community way.
(30:45):
And that was a huge transformationfor them, that it was okay to live
next door to a liberal Democrat.
For the first time.
And she said she felt shehad made a difference.
She felt she had understood more,and she said she could only encourage
people to set up initiatives.
(31:05):
It doesn't mean to accostsomebody on the street.
Oh, you're the opposite of me.
I want to talk to you.
It's more like to engage in astructured dialogue with people
who think diametrically opposedto you and for the sole purpose.
That's what dialogue is for the solepurpose of understanding how the other
(31:27):
side perceives the world, and so thatwhen you speak, you are making an informed
choice about the words you are using.
Vis-a-vis the other side.
I think that is needed not only theUnited States, but all over the world.
(31:50):
I think it's neededwith Russia, with China.
I think it's needed with Iran, with theVenezuelans, with the Cubans, and to
believe in the power of dialogue as thecentral vehicle by which people begin
to understand each other may open upspace for more comfort transformation.
Laura (32:13):
No I definitely agree with you.
And it's, I was reflecting, as you weretalking that earlier, mentioned that we
didn't have these cultural institutionswhere people meet and talk anymore.
And I did forget that religionexists so that churches exist.
, it's quite funny, but it's, Ihave seen people try to do this
around things such as division andpolarization in the uk, especially
(32:35):
around Brexit, which is obviously lessthan the news nowadays, but at the.
And I guess what really alarmed me aboutone of these dialogues that I attended as
one of the experts, is that everybody thatbrought in agreed with each other already.
It was one sided.
And so you basically had a group ofpeople who all said, Alright, here is a
(32:58):
problem that are shared in our community.
We all agree now how dowe fix the other people?
And I think that is a very,that can be a very big risk.
So it sounds like to have these dialoguesin society where we have very different
people coming to learn and draw from andunderstanding each other, that really
needs to be facilitated and or sponsoredprocess so that it's intentional and
(33:23):
that it's not just this self-serving,Oh yeah, we all agree anyway.
Now what do we do about the others?
It's gonna be, we, Cause we don'tget any further understanding
of other people in that way.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (33:34):
Yes.
And I think that we should move awayfrom the question of, do we all agree?
, I think is do we understand how theother side perceives what I'm saying?
What they're saying?
What kind of lived experienceto are they having in their own
communities, in their own lives?
(33:56):
For example like maybe tiptoebacking in back into the controversy.
I find that even though I believein the right to a woman to
choose , I can wholeheartedlytell my friends who are different
from me, members of my own family.
I say, I think abortion is horrible.
. And I wish to God that nowoman would have an abortion.
(34:19):
Absolutely.
That we can agree on.
I think where we start todiffer is, how do we get there?
, how do we get there?
And I have family members whodisagree with me and we, one time in a
conversation we agreed that the worldwould be better off without abortions.
We just, we disagree on how to get there.
(34:41):
You just
Laura (34:41):
need to prevent the involuntary or unwanted pregnancy part of it.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (34:44):
So when you begin to talk about common areas , because I
come from an extremely conservativeRepublican family , and I am not
the conservative Republican really.
And so I have had to have conversationswith family members and I always think.
(35:05):
How do I want to be treatedwhen I'm having a conversation
and expressing myself?
, and this is the same in any conflictin any world, constant, right?
That we forget that people were notborn with the positions that they hold.
They came through a process ofevolving, intellectual engagement
(35:29):
to the conclusion that the positionsthey take are in their best interests.
So why would they give that up?
Sometimes people say, Expandthe pie, find the win-win.
I'm a little jaded aboutwin-win, all right?
I don't really necessarily think there'ssuch a thing of win-win, especially
not in areas of, where in order forme to get what I want, you have to
(35:53):
give up what you want kind of thing.
That's why I hate Supreme Courtdecisions because they're so
black, white, yes, no, right?
There's no place for a nationaldialogue on certain issues, right?
, sometimes you have to saycan we change the question?
Can we work on thingsthat we can agree on?
And maybe as we work on those things,this other stuff will get less
(36:18):
controversial and become less important.
And When we are doing a dialogue,it's important to think through.
For example, I would never saywe're gonna do a dialogue on Brexit.
I don't think that's helpful.
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
You're against Brexit.
(36:39):
Oh, you're in favor of Brexit.
Okay.
Dialogue over Yeah.
And the question you are.
Yep.
Yeah.
And instead of having a debate aboutwho's right or wrong instead of having
a debate about whether my moralityis higher than your morality , let's
talk about what are some things thatreally are really important to us.
(37:00):
Yeah.
And one of them is, for example, we allwanna live in a world without violence.
, Laura: ideally.
, Juan Diaz-Prinz (37:08):
we all want our kids to go to school in a safe environment.
, we don't want our kids being attacked.
Verbally, physically, ideologically andthis requires us to be a little less
political, and that's really difficult.
(37:30):
And so a lot of times when I amin a mediation, I tell people,
Here's my number one rule.
We can only talk about things that wein this room have the power to change.
We cannot talk about anything thatwe don't have the power to change.
(37:54):
And immediately people, Oh,whatever, can't talk about anything.
Laura (37:59):
I'm like, That's a good rule.
It's a good
Juan Diaz-Prinz (38:00):
rule.
Yeah.
I used to, when I was in Kosovodoing dialogue, they would be like,
We'd like to talk about NATO'smilitary intervention in Serbia.
I was like, We can do that , butwe can't really change that.
Yeah.
It's I wanna talk aboutRussia's invasion of econ.
(38:20):
Okay.
And do you have any influence over Russia?
No.
Do you have any influence over the eChart?
No.
Do you have family in Ukraine?
No.
So then why do you wannatalk about this issue?
What we can talk about, We have arack problem in Georgetown, , and I
have a real problem with restaurantowners, and I'm getting really
(38:43):
irritated every, that we, we,
Laura (38:46):
This example seems very real.
Juan, have you been chased down by rats
Juan Diaz-Prinz (38:49):
recently?
? I, You hear about it inthe newspaper, right?
There's a conflict here in DC we havea lot of homelessness in dc We have a
lot of violence in DC at the moment.
And I find our political leaders are moreworried about the Biden administration
and Republicans in other states.
. And I'm like, can we talk in DCabout what's happening in dc We have
(39:12):
violence, we have homelessness, we haverats, we have transportation issues.
Can we just focus on our localissues and let the rest of the
world figure themselves out?
And if we did that, if we, if everycommunity would work on their own
(39:33):
issues, I believe we would havea much stronger federal system in
America and in other countries.
, it's about connect.
It's about connecting the dots, right?
So we need a vehicle coming backto your question about how do
you create a dialogue in such abig state like the United States.
So you have all these dialogues going on.
(39:54):
You can't just leave them there.
They have to inform other people.
Now, the jaded people listening willsay you have ideologies, the extremes.
Let's call them the extremes.
Okay?
Yeah.
They won't let you.
And they're really aword re radical, extreme.
Oh my God.
(40:14):
They use words . That,that I, On both sides.
On all sides, I'm like, Okay yes, inmy world, they're called spoilers.
And we have those peoplewho gain from conflicts.
You're gonna have those . But there's anAfrican proverb that says, When spiderwebs
(40:36):
unite, they can hold back even a lion.
And the idea is, if you can create.
Hundreds and thousands of dialoguesthat are focused on problem solving
and community and empowerment, and thestrength in diversity and the strength
of participation and inclusion, andall these dialogues are interconnected
(41:01):
somehow, and they're all channeling theresults of their dialogue in it upward.
I think that you would create avery positive impact in any state.
Laura (41:16):
Absolutely.
And I also just love that image of avery confused line being held back by
Spider Web, so it's a fantastic problem.
. Thank you.
Yeah.
Now I have pretty much justthrown out my questions.
We've been on a real journeywith this, but there is one of my
questions that I would like to askyou still, if I may, and that is
just to understand, what is it thatinspires you in this type of work that
Juan Diaz-Prinz (41:40):
you do?
So I grew up in a homewhere we had a boogieman.
, His name was Fidel Castro.
. Ok.
The world, every problem in myfamily always went back to the
dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
. My father was angry at the world.
(42:03):
He was angry.
F Fidel Castro.
. My father.
Never got to go back to his home.
Then he was in exile all his life.
He didn't feel very includedin American society.
. And I found that I had family inCuba who were demonized for staying
(42:25):
because they were communist.
And I went back.
After the fall of the SovietUnion, Cuba changed a bit, and
then there was more travel to Cuba.
And I went and I met my aunt in Cuba.
And she was a regular humanbeing, full of love and emotions.
(42:50):
And I realized that thisconflict was holding my dad back.
. My dad was not free to live thefull potential of his life because
he was consumed by a conflictthat he had no power to influence.
(43:10):
And that's a motivation.
That's a big motivation to me.
I believe that every person is entitled tolive their life to the fullest potential.
And so if conflict is holding us back,I want to free us from those conflicts.
That's for me is really important.
Whenever I meet people and we areengaged in a conversation and all of
(43:37):
a sudden they have a moment of aha.
, they feel so much freer.
They're able to think likeI'll just give you one example.
The concept of the conflict spiral.
. And when people finally get that, youchoose to be in the conflict spiral.
(43:58):
You're not forced to bein a conflict spiral.
And it's a moment when I tell people,Were you ever in a situation where you
were constantly fighting with somebodyand you finally said, regardless of
what happens, I accept all consequences.
But I don't choose to engage anymore.
(44:19):
The feeling of release andsatisfaction that comes, even if
it means divorce or separationor never talking to that person.
You just accept the consequences andthen you move on and rebuild your life.
And the convict spiral when, ifI could have helped my dad to
get out of that comfort spiraland say, focus on your life.
(44:45):
And I get these moments with otherpeople in conflict that they come to
me and they're like, Wow, you get me.
Yeah.
It's a moment of empathy.
It's a moment of community, it's amoment of transformation and I feel,
it feels really great to say tosomebody, I'm gonna hold your hand
through that journey, and if you needsupport, I'm gonna support you on that.
(45:10):
And so for me it's yeah, the top ofthe line to be able to say to somebody,
Wow, they are better off today.
Simply because I was there with some kindof conflict resolution tool to help them
process the magnitude of their conflict.
And so that's what gets me going.
That was
Laura (45:30):
a beautiful story.
One, and I'm laughing to myselfa little bit because before we
started recording today you askedme if I wanted the nice, fluffy,
inspirational stories or the real story.
And everything you're tellingme is very inspirational.
I thought you were gonna give notes.
It's beautiful.
So thank you for sharing.
So for those who are interested inlearning more about you and your
(45:50):
work, where can they find you?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (45:52):
I work for the United States Institute of Peace.
, we work in many countriesaround the world.
. If you are like me, you probablyhave somebody in your family who
comes from a different country.
And maybe those peopleare also in conflict.
And maybe you've also been thinking abouthow to help those people who are relatives
or friends living in other countries.
So we have somethingcalled the global campus.
(46:13):
If you go to U S I P'S website,all of u s i's conflict resolution.
Online courses are for free.
You can register, youcan take those courses.
I have a course if you wannaknow more about my kind of work.
There's one called Peace Mediation.
It's a course that talks to youabout mediation, negotiation,
(46:34):
the role of mediators, therole of comfort transformation.
The role of dialogue.
I encourage you to just go tou s i's website and sign up
for the peace mediation course.
There's a dialogue course,How to create design.
And implement a community dialogue.
There is a peace building course.
There is a gender course, thereis a religion and conflict course.
(46:58):
There is an arts andpeace building course.
I encourage you, it is free.
You don't have to pay for it.
You can go online and you have peopleat U S I P who interact with you.
And we do live sessions.
On August 10th, I will be doing a livesession for U S I P, for those people
who are registered on the global campus.
(47:19):
So if you wanna hear more and talkabout mediation, you can register on
the peace mediation course, and thenyou will be invited to the live course
in August that I'll be talking about.
So not many institutes givetheir courses away for free, so I
encourage you to take advantage.
Fabulous.
Laura (47:36):
And I will attest to the quality of your teaching.
Obviously . Otherwise I wouldn'tbe talking to you today.
Thank you so much.
Of course.
Now very last question cause youtold me to ask this last, You
were talking about being the bagcarrier in mediation early on.
What was in the bag?
What was in the bag?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (47:53):
So that was hilarious.
, they, everybody would ask me and I madethis running joke that it was top secret.
And I, and the, and I'm not joking,the bag had to be in every meeting.
The mediator would, if I got leftbehind, he would say, Make space for Mr.
Diaz.
He's carrying my bag,
(48:16):
And so the bag was a yellow bag?
Yeah, it was made out of cloth.
It was from the German postal servicebecause my, the mediator was the
last minister of telecommunicationand post in Germany before it
was privatized and in the back.
Was a newspaper of the day, Thedaily newspaper, the Frankfurter
(48:38):
Alga cuz he was German.
The list of every restaurant in the townwe were going to and a, the equivalent of
a granola bar in case he got hungry . Andthese were the three things in that back.
And people asked me what was and Itell, I would tell them top secret.
(49:03):
But then, in a moment, he's meetinglike the governor of some obscure place.
Yep.
And he would take out his little list.
I'd say, Oh, let's meet here.
And he was able to tell people,where his favorite restaurant
was or where we could meet.
Yeah.
And he, and the newspaper was cuz he hadto stay up to date on what was going on.
(49:25):
And we had to make sure thatthe bag was updated every day.
It had to have the list for the day,had to have the newspaper for the day.
And we had to have definitelythe equivalent of a granola bar.
Sometimes two or three.
And sometimes, because people may belaughing as they hear this, we would
be in a meeting for like eight hours.
(49:46):
Yeah.
And in the middle of the meeting,while people were talking and yelling
about refugee return, all of a suddenthe mediator would turn to his side.
Everybody's listening intently.
, he would delve into the back.
He would pull out the little granola barand he'd pass it under the table and he'd
(50:13):
say to me, It's gonna be a long meeting.
And then he would say, I know you laughabout me and these little bars and , and
so it was a running joke in the mediationteam that if we were hungry, we knew
exactly where we could raid to get food.
And they had marmalade or a jam.
(50:33):
They were really thin.
They're very famous inGermany where he comes from.
. And he'd 20 of them.
And on a couple occasion he wouldlook at me and said, Starving today.
Cause he was angry that wewould make fun of the bars.
But it was my ticket into a world.
I met presidents, prime ministers,special envoy, all because
(50:54):
I had this bag in my hand.
Great story.
And my last comment to the audiencelistening, mediation and the
magic around mediation is created.
It's an artificial world.
When you are in these conflicts, you'rethinking about, The parties themselves,
(51:18):
and as long as they have the need to talk,it's our job to make sure they're talking.
So get away from the mentality of, wegot another meeting, we got another
meeting, we got another meeting.
Engage in the process and be presenta hundred percent of your time.
And if that means creating anenvironment for my boss, it was
(51:42):
really important that if he neededto have a private conversation, he
knew where to take these people.
He didn't wanna get strandedwithout a logistical environment.
If there was something in Germanygoing on that might disrupt his
mediation, he needed to know about it.
If we were hungry, we couldn't focus.
(52:03):
So he made sure that we had food.
It wasn't for him.
, it was for us, that was the joke.
That's what we, the staff didn't get.
He wanted to make sure that the partieshad the best environment to talk.
The environment is 80%of successful dialogue.
If people are an environment conduciveto talking, they're gonna open
(52:27):
themselves up and they're gonna talk.
And so that's our job in, in designinga dialogue or a peace process, is
to make sharp Sure that we createthe necessary environment by which
people say, Wow, I feel like Ineed to get something off my chest.
. And so I encourage people to spendmore time on logistics and realize
(52:50):
that logistics are the mediationand they are the dialogue because
they're the enablers of those.
Laura (52:59):
Excellent.
Juan, thank you so muchfor joining us here today.
It's been wonderful.
Even if we went in a whole tangentand I wasn't expecting, it was
fabulous and everyone else.
Until next time, thisis May with a podcast.
See you next time.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (53:15):
Thank you very much for having me.
hello and welcome to the conflict podcast media.com, the
podcast that explores socialconflict and what we can do about it.
I'm your host, Laura May, and today Ihave with me Juan Diaz Prince, acting
director for inclusive peace processes andReconciliation at the Institute for Peace.
And I would like to say a friend.
So welcome Huang.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (00:31):
Thank you Laura.
Thank you very much for having me here.
I'm
Laura (00:35):
Very pleased to have you here and so I am gonna let Juan talk a little
bit about himself and his history.
But first I'm gonna say a little bitabout how I know him because Juan was
actually a big inspiration for me inthe mediation and peace process world
cuz he was actually my professor.
And so I went along and learnedabout sort of peace negotiation
(00:55):
and mediation from him.
And it really did change how I saw myselfand the world and our possibilities.
So thank you very much a for that.
I can blame him from my time inthe mediation world and it's gonna
be great to hear from him today.
So let's start off then.
So how did you end up inthe conflict transformation
Juan Diaz-Prinz (01:16):
field?
So when I.
Doing my PhD on inter in Internationalrelations and sanctions regime,
I was working on the conflict onCuba, the United States and the eu.
And at that time, the war in Bosniawas coming to a close and they were it,
(01:38):
implementing the Dayton Peace Accords.
And there was an opening for an internin the office of the International
mediator for Bos in her Cirina.
And I heard about it froma friend of a friend.
Of a friend.
And back then they weren'tthat many positions available
in the world of mediation.
(01:59):
Mediation was a really it was like a baby.
It was a nascent areaof study and activity.
Usually mediation was thepurview of high level diplomat.
, but Okay.
I got this job as an intern andI remember, the first day in
the mediation office I arrivedand there was so much energy.
(02:21):
, people were not talking about the war.
They were talking about how tosolve it and how to implement
and how to motivate people.
And it was such, such a positive energyand I was just so blessed to be to be
an intern in such a, in such an office.
And I went from being an intern to beingan assistant to being a, an advisor.
And slowly I worked my way up.
(02:42):
And I can tell you moreabout it if you'd like.
Laura (02:46):
No, absolutely.
And so how long were you actuallyin the field at that office
of the international media?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (02:53):
So I started in 1998 and I stayed there till 2005.
And by the end of my time there, I wasactually at informally the junior mediator
In many of the sessions I was designing.
, I was co-creating, I was workingwith parties and it was interesting
because the field of mediation.
(03:15):
At that time was a really wild area.
There were no real rules Today.
Today when you look at mediation,it's very normative, right?
There's the do no harm principle.
There's design, mediation, support, andwe have all these structures that all came
out of our time in the nineties where.
(03:37):
People were just doing mediation.
There was no certification program.
There were no, there was no like,Oh, I'm a certified mediator.
All that came later.
Back then, the UN used to send likehigh level diplomats, go out to the
bush and don't come back until youhave an agreement kind of thing.
The white man coming from, Geneva, NewYork, Brussels, wherever, Washington
(04:00):
and I say the white man, becauseto be honest, that's what it was.
There were no real major women mediators.
There were no people of color.
All of that came years and years later.
But the reality was it was a veryexciting time because when something
worked it went from I just did it toour traditional approach, , right?
Yeah.
(04:21):
Once it worked, you replicated itreally quickly everywhere you went
because we were trying to make senseof, mass murder ethnic cleansing.
People don't realize that pre the ninetiesyou had these great power competition
and you had global hegemonic actors.
The mediators were the US and Russia.
, and these were all proxy wars thatyou can't even call those mediation.
(04:44):
And then the nineties came aroundand we moved into interstate
conflict and then all of a suddenthere was space to actually mediate.
And then I am blessed with, the job.
And Laura, I say this tongue incheek, but this was really the truth.
I was the bag carrier of the mediator.
That was my first job.
And I was so happy to carrythe bag and , wherever the
(05:07):
mediator went, the bag had to go.
So it was my ticket into every powerfulmediator mediation meeting in the Balkans.
And I was like, the bag, you, I face thebag and be like, the bag has to go in the
mediator, and I was told, do not speak.
Do not speak.
And if I can just tell a quick storybecause I love the, this story,
(05:31):
I'm carrying the bag, I'm carryingthe bag, I'm going everywhere.
But at the same time as carrying thebag, I was helping the chief of staff.
, prepare these meetings.
And I won't tell you what was in the bag.
Maybe ask me at the end of thepodcast what was in the bag.
I'll tell you.
You'll be surprised.
So one day we're in Bosnia, we're in Sara.
The mediator's having breakfast.
I don't see any staff.
I don't see any high level people.
(05:52):
I find I take my shot, I'm like,This is my one second of fame.
I'm gonna tell the mediator what Ithink, I sit in front of the mediator,
It's 7:00 AM he's having a cereal.
And I'm like, We're going to Albaniaand I need to tell you what I think.
And the mediator, Dr.
(06:12):
Christian Schwa chilling,puts down his spoon.
He looks at me, he says, Go ahead.
And I'm like, Okay.
The conflict in Albania, and I don'teven remember what I said, but it
was like, really important, right?
And he looks at me at the end ofthe, of my spiel here, and he.
Are you done?
(06:33):
May I get back to my cereal now?
. Oh my God.
And was I was totally dejected, right?
Yeah.
But this is the power of whenyou work in mediation, you never
know where that's going to go.
, when you put an idea into theair, you put it in people's minds.
So we went to Bosnia.
(06:54):
From there, we went to Macedonia.
From there we went to Albania.
It was, we were on a twoweek tour of the bas.
. We're sitting in the office of thePrime Minister of Albania, and Dr.
Schwar chilling, turnsaround and says, Mr.
Prime Minister, my assistant hassomething he would like to share with you.
(07:21):
And he looks at me and he says, Mr.
Diaz, you have five minutes.
And I got to say whatI wanted to say, right?
And I said it to the Prime Minister,and then the mediator said, Mr.
Prime Minister, Democracy is abouteverybody being able to participate,
(07:41):
including an assistant with some verygood ideas who may never be able to
say his ideas if we didn't let them.
And so I can only encourage you to bemore inclusive when you're trying to
solve the country's problems because greatideas come from the most unsoundly areas,
(08:03):
unseen areas, and I was just in awe.
I got my two minutes to tell theAlbanian Prime Minister what I thought.
And that has impacted me today.
When I think about inclusion andparticipation, and I'm working in
countries, I work in Venezuela, Iwork on Cameroon, I work on Ukraine,
and I'm constantly thinking howto be more inclusive, how to get
(08:24):
negotiators to realize the richnessof allowing other interest groups
that are not at the table to be ableto get their ideas onto the table.
And so mediation has transformed froma very exclusive power hungry kind
of arm groups and mediators to beingmore inclusive and more participatory.
Laura (08:49):
That was a real emotional rollercoaster hunt.
Like I re that, that whole story.
So thank you for sharing it.
And so when you talk about this needto be more inclusive, and when you're
reflecting on how we can be moreinclusive in these processes, what are
some of the ways in which we can do that?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (09:05):
First of all, and this is, this goes to the
heart of conflict transformation.
And just for the audience most of themediation world thinks of mediation
as a very transactional thing.
Mediation is the support of athird party to conflict parties
to negotiate an agreement.
(09:25):
But what we know now is that theseagreements are not always sustainable,
and that actually after one yearover 50% of agreements just fail.
, so the question for us is whatmakes an agreement sustainable?
And if you boil it down, I'm notgonna give you a, one hour, lesson
(09:46):
on mediation, , if you boil it down,if people believe in the agreement.
They will implement,It's not rocket science.
. And so in order to get people to believein something, usually they believe in
something they've participated in and theyfeel that they were able to contribute to.
(10:09):
And so you need to break that down andsay, when people feel that agreement is
theirs, then they will say, Wow, that'sour agreement, not Juan's agreement.
And they will then protect that agreement.
. So if you wanna be, in order to beinclusive and participatory, you
(10:30):
need to have systems and formatwhereby which people can contribute.
. So for example, the UN might set upa broad civil society consultation.
And gotta be very careful becausewhen people hear civil society,
immediately the skeptics will say,Oh, in every country they're the
usual Stu suspects are all elitist.
(10:52):
Anyways, that's not inclusive.
It is inclusive because in realityin most countries, if you would
allow the power holders to negotiateby themselves, you're talking about
maximum 20 people in the room.
, then you add civil society or youstart to get to a couple of hundred.
And then if you can instill in those civilsociety actors to go out and consult the
(11:15):
public and to go down to the grassrootsand hear what people have to say.
And the UN can be very helpful with that.
Region organizations canbe very helpful with that.
So the real question is where do youfind the balance between not holding
back political negotiations and makingsure that the broad society has the
(11:36):
ability to participate either inthe co-creating of the agreement or
the implementation of the agreement?
They don't have to participate inevery step at all times, but somewhere
they want the right to decide fortheir own fu about their own future.
And I think, and that's the key.
If I think I am now participatingin deciding my future, I will be
(12:00):
much more engaged in that process.
Laura (12:03):
It makes complete sense, right?
If we're part of something,we must think it's genius
, Juan Diaz-Prinz: right?
But the, but to be honest, thereality, this is the dark side of that.
, it's a lot easier to get 15 peoplein a room and knock some heads
and go out before the media andsay, Hey, we got an agreement.
, it is a lot easier, alot more cost efficient.
(12:23):
. And we live in a world of soundbites.
Yeah.
So a lot of people are verygood at talking about inclusion.
It's much more difficultto do in practice.
No, it's definitely true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because power holders don'talways understand why.
, I'm the armed group and I wantindependence, and if I let
(12:47):
somebody in, they might not be.
For independence, and all of a suddenthey have an equal voice that I do.
And that's scary.
That scares people.
And so power holdersdon't wanna be inclusive.
We can they wanna be inclusive likelater after they get what they want.
(13:07):
And this is a challenge that you have.
How can, how do you convince them thatinclusion in the long run pays off?
And that's challenging.
Sidetracking to my own country theUnited States is deeply divided.
. And whenever one side is empowered, theother side feels excluded and demonized.
(13:29):
And the question is, in a worldwith 7 billion people, how do you.
Bring some kind of peace processor conflict resolution process
down to the very basic level ofsociety so that people can directly
(13:52):
engage in their peace process.
And I say this in, in, in relation to theUnited States because I think the United
States needs a form of a peace process.
They really need to have a broad nationaldialogue on how do we wanna live together.
The world has changed massively.
We have conflicts betweenurban and rural areas.
(14:15):
We have conflicts of ideology,we have conflicts of the
envir in the environment area.
We have political conflicts, religiousconflicts social class conflicts, and
it's getting more and more complex.
Sorry, I went off on a little bitof a tangent, but That's okay.
Tangents.
I think I, I think just the last commenthere, I think we in the Trans-Atlantic
(14:36):
area seem to think that our work is alwaysabroad and we don't realize that our
work is actually in our own communities.
If we can't get our own communities inorder, we have no business going abroad
and telling anybody how to do things.
So we need to start workingat home in order to show that
we are like walking the talk.
(14:59):
Absolutely.
And let me pose this to you.
So if you had an unlimited budget,unlimited infrastructure, whatever you
needed, how could you enable a processsuch as that in a country such as the us?
What would this actually look like?
This a solution to thedivisions you've described.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (15:17):
I was having this conversation in a podcast on you,
Craig, recently that I not a podcast,a radio interview, sorry recently,
and I said this to the host, Agreeingto dialogue does not mean yes.
, I agree with you.
It means I'm willing to keeptalking, And we have serious social
(15:40):
problems in most Western democracies.
, We need much more dialogue and we needto fund much more dialogue at the local
level, and we need to help the local levelbe able to connect to the national level.
A person in California feels completelydisconnected from Washington.
(16:00):
, a person from Florida feels completelydisconnected from Washington.
It's extremely far away and there aretens of millions of people between
Miami and Washington, DC 50, 60 yearsago I was saying to the to people
recently, because I'm originally fromFlorida, when I was a kid, they were 3
million people in the state of Florida.
Now they're 20.
(16:22):
So we are bound to have socialconflict because it's okay
that we think differently.
But the question is, instead of tryingto solve things really at the higher
level, we need to start thinking abouthow to solve things at the local level.
And this is opposite to what wewere thinking maybe 20 years ago.
(16:44):
20 years ago, we were havinginterstate conflicts and we
thought we need a national.
Dialogue to solve national problems.
I'm beginning, and this is I think,the point of contact transformation.
, No, it's okay to have multiple speedswithin a country and that people
co-create the communities they wannalive in and to begin to talk about our
(17:10):
differences, whether it is the rightto life or gun's control or corruption
or electoral processes or policing.
Policing in Germany looks verydifferent than policing in France.
It looks very different than policing inKenya or Singapore or the United States.
(17:31):
So if you wanna have a conversationabout policing, you need to go down
to that local level and say, Okay,how do we want to work on policing?
Laura (17:40):
I find this a really interesting point actually, that you're bringing
back to the local level, becauseof course there is, I would say,
an increasing amount of research.
We suggest that, we really lost a lot ofthese local institutions, whether they're
different types of clubs or communities,whether they're, roary or Lions or
the cricket club or whatever it is.
So we don't really have thosegathering plots anymore.
And certainly, I'm sure you canrelate this as well, but in cities
(18:03):
where people are so itiner, especiallycities like Brussels or DC right?
People are cons constantly comingin, going out again, and maybe
it's really hard to form thiscommunities, but even in more regional
areas, are we really supporting.
The local watering hole wherepeople can go and chat and work
through the issues of the day.
And of course if we don't have these,there's also implications for loneliness
as well as just social cohesion andhaving a bit of problem overall.
(18:26):
So it's really interestingthat you raised this.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (18:28):
Yeah.
And also with digitalization.
, we all thought, wow, I havesomething more in common with
somebody all the way in Mauritius.
Than with my neighbor and Wow.
Isn't that great?
And we only saw thebenefits of digitalization.
We never thought about how, throughdigitalization, we've also become
(18:49):
disconnected with our own community andthat we are not aware of what's going on
in our local community, but we are aware.
The something horrible happenedin South Africa recently.
There was a murder, a massmurder in a club or something.
While I think that's absolutelyhorrible, what does it have to do
(19:14):
with me in Virginia that it needsto consume 20 minutes of my news
cycle and the, they're reportingit as if my life will be altered.
By this newscast.
And what it's doing is it's in it'sinflicting fear and it's scary.
(19:35):
And instead of telling me about,Wow, here in Virginia, and I don't
live in Virginia, I live in DCbut I'm just making a example.
, here in Virginia, we've got someproblems with crime and environment.
Let's look at our local conflicts.
. And let's talk about them.
And so when you come backup to it, what would I do?
So I would go back toworking with a population.
(19:58):
I would train a lot of facilitators.
To promote dialogue in communitiesand help people and inspire them to
co-create the communities they want to.
I would also work atengaging religious leaders.
And civic leaders in that conversation.
(20:18):
I work for the United States Instituteof Piece and one of the things that I've
learned while I've been here, and I'venever said this is the first time I've
ever saying this exciting, I learnedthat religious leaders are, can be a
very positive factor in cost management.
confess.
We have a religion team.
Yeah.
And we we are producing guides like mereligion and mediation Islamic mediation
(20:41):
the rule of religious actors in mediation.
And I have learned a lot aboutthe wonderful work and peace
building work religious actorsare doing around the world.
And this gets a little lostbecause of the ideological
conflicts in the United States.
I would actually go to thesecommunities and I would engage
(21:03):
people and say, Let's forget aboutall that national level stuff.
, let's talk about what's going on in mytown in Texas, in my town in Illinois,
in my town in New Hampshire, andlet's draft small kind of commitment
(21:24):
agreements about how we wanna live.
How do we want our police, What do wewant from our police in our community?
Cause policing is a big issue.
In the United States, right?
, of course.
Yeah.
And I'm like, So recently, I don'tknow if you've seen that there's
been a high increase in crime.
It's created anxiety, and so there'sa lot of conflict now over the police.
(21:44):
I'm like, what you, what involvesthem in that community dialogue?
Involve them.
I have been, I have actually talkedto some police officers and I've
heard they're really scared as well.
It's not like they're sittingaround thinking, Oh, we
don't get what's going on.
. So taking it away from the UnitedStates, What I would do in other
countries is I would have a sec.
(22:06):
A local security dialogue.
and I would invite local leaders,religious leaders, police, leaders,
local advocates, and I would engagethem in, okay, what are the challenges
we are facing in our community?
And let's see if we canaddress it right here.
Now the problem that you have, and youput your finger right on it without
(22:28):
even thinking about it, you said, ifyou had all the money in the world first
of all, we don't have all the moneyin the world, and second of all, I get
the impression, I don't know, I get theimpression that the way money is spent
is far removed from the local level.
So you're getting budget decisionsat higher levels that don't
(22:53):
necessarily take into account theactual needs of the local community.
I could be wrong.
I don't know, but I have a feelingthat the complexity of managing urban
areas versus rural areas, we can,we're gonna have to tackle that.
People in rural communities livedifferently than people in urban areas.
(23:16):
All over the world.
. We also need to think about how wehave, we work on the build environment.
How do we live in urban areas?
Our needs are completely different thana small little town in the middle of
middle America or Canada or Australia.
And if we want people to relay, we alsohave to exchange with them and understand.
(23:43):
Why are they afraid of some of the thingsthat we seem to think are for our own good
or for our own protection or what we need?
And so we're gonna need anurban, rural conversation,
not just in the United States.
I think this is across the worldbecause the world is becoming much
more concentrated in urban areas.
(24:04):
And I, I don't know the statistics, andI'm not gonna quote them here, but I heard
that by 2050, a certain percentage, likean overwhelming percentage of people, it's
Laura (24:12):
90 or something really crazy.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (24:13):
Something really crazy.
Yeah.
And so I think we need moremediators, more dialogue facilitators.
We need more investment in reconciliation.
Understanding that people aresometimes traumatized by the
conflicts that they're experiencing.
No doubt.
(24:35):
That people in Aldi, Texasare massively traumatized.
People in South Africa, in Ethiopiawhere they're experiencing massive
violence are traumatized in Ukraine.
Now you say to them, Oh,let's have a dialogue.
Ukrainians cannot even hear Russian.
(24:56):
Without having triggers.
Going, And so before you eventry dialogue, you're gonna have
to think about trauma healing.
Yeah.
Tiptoeing a little bit intothe controversy right now.
Women in America are traumatized.
Of course.
Yeah.
And political leaders onboth sides of the aisle.
(25:18):
I'm not sure that they get the politicalsense the human sensitivity around this.
So before you even engage in a dialogue,you gotta prepare the dialogue.
You have to make sure that peoplefeel that they're gonna enter a space.
And in that space, they're not gonnaautomatically be called right wing,
(25:40):
left wing, won, racist whatever, whitemale, religious, radical, fanatic.
I hear these words in society.
They're like giant, like verbalattacks, from different sides.
Yeah.
And people don't realize thepower of the violence of words.
Absolutely.
Laura (25:58):
And actually this came up in my PhD research as well because I was
speaking with a lot of brexiters andthese people who voted leave really
consistently said, One of the thingsthat entrenched them into voting that
way was being called racist or stupid.
And they said I'll show them.
There was a sort of sense of that,but also the sense of why are these
people hurting me and our relationship?
(26:20):
We've been friends for so long,why are they now wrapping me up
in this like stupid racist label?
And so of course it was very difficultto continue having conversations
between them and people who werevoting remain in their social circles.
So it's, yeah, I think we'rereally underestimate how
violent these words can be.
It's really interesting how we usethis labels to, on the one hand reveal
(26:42):
structural inequalities and the other itrenders it sometimes more difficult to get
people to lower their barriers perhapsand actually have these open dialogues.
So I don't know what the answer is,that you're definitely a much more
of an expert in this than I am.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (26:54):
So here's a really great example and I would encourage
listeners to, to think about it.
So a good friend of mine and formermentor Paula Green, who passed
away unfortunately a few monthsago when Donald Trump won the.
(27:18):
She was shocked because she wasnot in favor of Donald Trump.
And she comes from liberalMassachusetts, one of the most
liberal towns in Massachusetts.
The blues.
The Blues of the Blues.
. And she was in shock.
Long story short, she dedicatedthe next five years of her life to
(27:39):
creating a dialogue with the most,let's say, staunch Trump supporters.
. And she reached out to anorganization in Cole County, Kentucky.
That's what she called it.
Like coal miners and , up in the hills.
(28:01):
And I don't rememberthe name of her project.
There was something like Bridgesacross the hills or something.
She won a human rights awardprize for her initiative.
She reached out to them and she said,I am ultra-liberal and I really want to
understand why you think the way you do.
. And they had email conversations, andthen they decided to have a meeting.
(28:29):
And these people from Kentucky goton a bus and they went to her town in
Massachusetts and you could, She usedto tell the story over and over again.
I, I remember hearing it the first timewhen she won her human rights award prize.
And she said when theyarrived, they were so scared.
(28:50):
They had always heard ofMassachusetts, the liberal bastion,
and they were afraid that they weregoing to be physically attacked.
And what greeted them were a bunchof people with potluck kind of food,
and they all took these people in.
(29:12):
Yep.
And they had this spectacular weekend ofconfidence building and one year later
they did it in the other direction.
, same story.
The Massachusetts thought they weregonna be beat up when they arrived in
Kentucky as well, because the ones whohad visited were nice, but now they
(29:36):
were going deep into Trump country.
And she tells this story andshe says, And then we got there
and they were human beings.
And yes, they thought differently.
And she structured.
They structured the conversations,they protected the people.
They made sure that people.
We're safe.
(29:59):
And the final part of her story is thatat the end of the project, she asked
her counterparts what had changed.
Here comes comfort,transformation, what had changed.
And one colleague said, BeforeI met you, I would've run you
(30:19):
out of town before sunset.
And told you, you are not welcometo make sure to leave by sunset.
If you would move to my communitynow, I would defend your right to live
here and express your point of viewin a democratically and community way.
(30:45):
And that was a huge transformationfor them, that it was okay to live
next door to a liberal Democrat.
For the first time.
And she said she felt shehad made a difference.
She felt she had understood more,and she said she could only encourage
people to set up initiatives.
(31:05):
It doesn't mean to accostsomebody on the street.
Oh, you're the opposite of me.
I want to talk to you.
It's more like to engage in astructured dialogue with people
who think diametrically opposedto you and for the sole purpose.
That's what dialogue is for the solepurpose of understanding how the other
(31:27):
side perceives the world, and so thatwhen you speak, you are making an informed
choice about the words you are using.
Vis-a-vis the other side.
I think that is needed not only theUnited States, but all over the world.
(31:50):
I think it's neededwith Russia, with China.
I think it's needed with Iran, with theVenezuelans, with the Cubans, and to
believe in the power of dialogue as thecentral vehicle by which people begin
to understand each other may open upspace for more comfort transformation.
Laura (32:13):
No I definitely agree with you.
And it's, I was reflecting, as you weretalking that earlier, mentioned that we
didn't have these cultural institutionswhere people meet and talk anymore.
And I did forget that religionexists so that churches exist.
, it's quite funny, but it's, Ihave seen people try to do this
around things such as division andpolarization in the uk, especially
(32:35):
around Brexit, which is obviously lessthan the news nowadays, but at the.
And I guess what really alarmed me aboutone of these dialogues that I attended as
one of the experts, is that everybody thatbrought in agreed with each other already.
It was one sided.
And so you basically had a group ofpeople who all said, Alright, here is a
(32:58):
problem that are shared in our community.
We all agree now how dowe fix the other people?
And I think that is a very,that can be a very big risk.
So it sounds like to have these dialoguesin society where we have very different
people coming to learn and draw from andunderstanding each other, that really
needs to be facilitated and or sponsoredprocess so that it's intentional and
(33:23):
that it's not just this self-serving,Oh yeah, we all agree anyway.
Now what do we do about the others?
It's gonna be, we, Cause we don'tget any further understanding
of other people in that way.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (33:34):
Yes.
And I think that we should move awayfrom the question of, do we all agree?
, I think is do we understand how theother side perceives what I'm saying?
What they're saying?
What kind of lived experienceto are they having in their own
communities, in their own lives?
(33:56):
For example like maybe tiptoebacking in back into the controversy.
I find that even though I believein the right to a woman to
choose , I can wholeheartedlytell my friends who are different
from me, members of my own family.
I say, I think abortion is horrible.
. And I wish to God that nowoman would have an abortion.
(34:19):
Absolutely.
That we can agree on.
I think where we start todiffer is, how do we get there?
, how do we get there?
And I have family members whodisagree with me and we, one time in a
conversation we agreed that the worldwould be better off without abortions.
We just, we disagree on how to get there.
(34:41):
You just
Laura (34:41):
need to prevent the involuntary or unwanted pregnancy part of it.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (34:44):
So when you begin to talk about common areas , because I
come from an extremely conservativeRepublican family , and I am not
the conservative Republican really.
And so I have had to have conversationswith family members and I always think.
(35:05):
How do I want to be treatedwhen I'm having a conversation
and expressing myself?
, and this is the same in any conflictin any world, constant, right?
That we forget that people were notborn with the positions that they hold.
They came through a process ofevolving, intellectual engagement
(35:29):
to the conclusion that the positionsthey take are in their best interests.
So why would they give that up?
Sometimes people say, Expandthe pie, find the win-win.
I'm a little jaded aboutwin-win, all right?
I don't really necessarily think there'ssuch a thing of win-win, especially
not in areas of, where in order forme to get what I want, you have to
(35:53):
give up what you want kind of thing.
That's why I hate Supreme Courtdecisions because they're so
black, white, yes, no, right?
There's no place for a nationaldialogue on certain issues, right?
, sometimes you have to saycan we change the question?
Can we work on thingsthat we can agree on?
And maybe as we work on those things,this other stuff will get less
(36:18):
controversial and become less important.
And When we are doing a dialogue,it's important to think through.
For example, I would never saywe're gonna do a dialogue on Brexit.
I don't think that's helpful.
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
You're against Brexit.
(36:39):
Oh, you're in favor of Brexit.
Okay.
Dialogue over Yeah.
And the question you are.
Yep.
Yeah.
And instead of having a debate aboutwho's right or wrong instead of having
a debate about whether my moralityis higher than your morality , let's
talk about what are some things thatreally are really important to us.
(37:00):
Yeah.
And one of them is, for example, we allwanna live in a world without violence.
, Laura: ideally.
, Juan Diaz-Prinz (37:08):
we all want our kids to go to school in a safe environment.
, we don't want our kids being attacked.
Verbally, physically, ideologically andthis requires us to be a little less
political, and that's really difficult.
(37:30):
And so a lot of times when I amin a mediation, I tell people,
Here's my number one rule.
We can only talk about things that wein this room have the power to change.
We cannot talk about anything thatwe don't have the power to change.
(37:54):
And immediately people, Oh,whatever, can't talk about anything.
Laura (37:59):
I'm like, That's a good rule.
It's a good
Juan Diaz-Prinz (38:00):
rule.
Yeah.
I used to, when I was in Kosovodoing dialogue, they would be like,
We'd like to talk about NATO'smilitary intervention in Serbia.
I was like, We can do that , butwe can't really change that.
Yeah.
It's I wanna talk aboutRussia's invasion of econ.
(38:20):
Okay.
And do you have any influence over Russia?
No.
Do you have any influence over the eChart?
No.
Do you have family in Ukraine?
No.
So then why do you wannatalk about this issue?
What we can talk about, We have arack problem in Georgetown, , and I
have a real problem with restaurantowners, and I'm getting really
(38:43):
irritated every, that we, we,
Laura (38:46):
This example seems very real.
Juan, have you been chased down by rats
Juan Diaz-Prinz (38:49):
recently?
? I, You hear about it inthe newspaper, right?
There's a conflict here in DC we havea lot of homelessness in dc We have a
lot of violence in DC at the moment.
And I find our political leaders are moreworried about the Biden administration
and Republicans in other states.
. And I'm like, can we talk in DCabout what's happening in dc We have
(39:12):
violence, we have homelessness, we haverats, we have transportation issues.
Can we just focus on our localissues and let the rest of the
world figure themselves out?
And if we did that, if we, if everycommunity would work on their own
(39:33):
issues, I believe we would havea much stronger federal system in
America and in other countries.
, it's about connect.
It's about connecting the dots, right?
So we need a vehicle coming backto your question about how do
you create a dialogue in such abig state like the United States.
So you have all these dialogues going on.
(39:54):
You can't just leave them there.
They have to inform other people.
Now, the jaded people listening willsay you have ideologies, the extremes.
Let's call them the extremes.
Okay?
Yeah.
They won't let you.
And they're really aword re radical, extreme.
Oh my God.
(40:14):
They use words . That,that I, On both sides.
On all sides, I'm like, Okay yes, inmy world, they're called spoilers.
And we have those peoplewho gain from conflicts.
You're gonna have those . But there's anAfrican proverb that says, When spiderwebs
(40:36):
unite, they can hold back even a lion.
And the idea is, if you can create.
Hundreds and thousands of dialoguesthat are focused on problem solving
and community and empowerment, and thestrength in diversity and the strength
of participation and inclusion, andall these dialogues are interconnected
(41:01):
somehow, and they're all channeling theresults of their dialogue in it upward.
I think that you would create avery positive impact in any state.
Laura (41:16):
Absolutely.
And I also just love that image of avery confused line being held back by
Spider Web, so it's a fantastic problem.
. Thank you.
Yeah.
Now I have pretty much justthrown out my questions.
We've been on a real journeywith this, but there is one of my
questions that I would like to askyou still, if I may, and that is
just to understand, what is it thatinspires you in this type of work that
Juan Diaz-Prinz (41:40):
you do?
So I grew up in a homewhere we had a boogieman.
, His name was Fidel Castro.
. Ok.
The world, every problem in myfamily always went back to the
dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
. My father was angry at the world.
(42:03):
He was angry.
F Fidel Castro.
. My father.
Never got to go back to his home.
Then he was in exile all his life.
He didn't feel very includedin American society.
. And I found that I had family inCuba who were demonized for staying
(42:25):
because they were communist.
And I went back.
After the fall of the SovietUnion, Cuba changed a bit, and
then there was more travel to Cuba.
And I went and I met my aunt in Cuba.
And she was a regular humanbeing, full of love and emotions.
(42:50):
And I realized that thisconflict was holding my dad back.
. My dad was not free to live thefull potential of his life because
he was consumed by a conflictthat he had no power to influence.
(43:10):
And that's a motivation.
That's a big motivation to me.
I believe that every person is entitled tolive their life to the fullest potential.
And so if conflict is holding us back,I want to free us from those conflicts.
That's for me is really important.
Whenever I meet people and we areengaged in a conversation and all of
(43:37):
a sudden they have a moment of aha.
, they feel so much freer.
They're able to think likeI'll just give you one example.
The concept of the conflict spiral.
. And when people finally get that, youchoose to be in the conflict spiral.
(43:58):
You're not forced to bein a conflict spiral.
And it's a moment when I tell people,Were you ever in a situation where you
were constantly fighting with somebodyand you finally said, regardless of
what happens, I accept all consequences.
But I don't choose to engage anymore.
(44:19):
The feeling of release andsatisfaction that comes, even if
it means divorce or separationor never talking to that person.
You just accept the consequences andthen you move on and rebuild your life.
And the convict spiral when, ifI could have helped my dad to
get out of that comfort spiraland say, focus on your life.
(44:45):
And I get these moments with otherpeople in conflict that they come to
me and they're like, Wow, you get me.
Yeah.
It's a moment of empathy.
It's a moment of community, it's amoment of transformation and I feel,
it feels really great to say tosomebody, I'm gonna hold your hand
through that journey, and if you needsupport, I'm gonna support you on that.
(45:10):
And so for me it's yeah, the top ofthe line to be able to say to somebody,
Wow, they are better off today.
Simply because I was there with some kindof conflict resolution tool to help them
process the magnitude of their conflict.
And so that's what gets me going.
That was
Laura (45:30):
a beautiful story.
One, and I'm laughing to myselfa little bit because before we
started recording today you askedme if I wanted the nice, fluffy,
inspirational stories or the real story.
And everything you're tellingme is very inspirational.
I thought you were gonna give notes.
It's beautiful.
So thank you for sharing.
So for those who are interested inlearning more about you and your
(45:50):
work, where can they find you?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (45:52):
I work for the United States Institute of Peace.
, we work in many countriesaround the world.
. If you are like me, you probablyhave somebody in your family who
comes from a different country.
And maybe those peopleare also in conflict.
And maybe you've also been thinking abouthow to help those people who are relatives
or friends living in other countries.
So we have somethingcalled the global campus.
(46:13):
If you go to U S I P'S website,all of u s i's conflict resolution.
Online courses are for free.
You can register, youcan take those courses.
I have a course if you wannaknow more about my kind of work.
There's one called Peace Mediation.
It's a course that talks to youabout mediation, negotiation,
(46:34):
the role of mediators, therole of comfort transformation.
The role of dialogue.
I encourage you to just go tou s i's website and sign up
for the peace mediation course.
There's a dialogue course,How to create design.
And implement a community dialogue.
There is a peace building course.
There is a gender course, thereis a religion and conflict course.
(46:58):
There is an arts andpeace building course.
I encourage you, it is free.
You don't have to pay for it.
You can go online and you have peopleat U S I P who interact with you.
And we do live sessions.
On August 10th, I will be doing a livesession for U S I P, for those people
who are registered on the global campus.
(47:19):
So if you wanna hear more and talkabout mediation, you can register on
the peace mediation course, and thenyou will be invited to the live course
in August that I'll be talking about.
So not many institutes givetheir courses away for free, so I
encourage you to take advantage.
Fabulous.
Laura (47:36):
And I will attest to the quality of your teaching.
Obviously . Otherwise I wouldn'tbe talking to you today.
Thank you so much.
Of course.
Now very last question cause youtold me to ask this last, You
were talking about being the bagcarrier in mediation early on.
What was in the bag?
What was in the bag?
Juan Diaz-Prinz (47:53):
So that was hilarious.
, they, everybody would ask me and I madethis running joke that it was top secret.
And I, and the, and I'm not joking,the bag had to be in every meeting.
The mediator would, if I got leftbehind, he would say, Make space for Mr.
Diaz.
He's carrying my bag,
(48:16):
And so the bag was a yellow bag?
Yeah, it was made out of cloth.
It was from the German postal servicebecause my, the mediator was the
last minister of telecommunicationand post in Germany before it
was privatized and in the back.
Was a newspaper of the day, Thedaily newspaper, the Frankfurter
(48:38):
Alga cuz he was German.
The list of every restaurant in the townwe were going to and a, the equivalent of
a granola bar in case he got hungry . Andthese were the three things in that back.
And people asked me what was and Itell, I would tell them top secret.
(49:03):
But then, in a moment, he's meetinglike the governor of some obscure place.
Yep.
And he would take out his little list.
I'd say, Oh, let's meet here.
And he was able to tell people,where his favorite restaurant
was or where we could meet.
Yeah.
And he, and the newspaper was cuz he hadto stay up to date on what was going on.
(49:25):
And we had to make sure thatthe bag was updated every day.
It had to have the list for the day,had to have the newspaper for the day.
And we had to have definitelythe equivalent of a granola bar.
Sometimes two or three.
And sometimes, because people may belaughing as they hear this, we would
be in a meeting for like eight hours.
(49:46):
Yeah.
And in the middle of the meeting,while people were talking and yelling
about refugee return, all of a suddenthe mediator would turn to his side.
Everybody's listening intently.
, he would delve into the back.
He would pull out the little granola barand he'd pass it under the table and he'd
(50:13):
say to me, It's gonna be a long meeting.
And then he would say, I know you laughabout me and these little bars and , and
so it was a running joke in the mediationteam that if we were hungry, we knew
exactly where we could raid to get food.
And they had marmalade or a jam.
(50:33):
They were really thin.
They're very famous inGermany where he comes from.
. And he'd 20 of them.
And on a couple occasion he wouldlook at me and said, Starving today.
Cause he was angry that wewould make fun of the bars.
But it was my ticket into a world.
I met presidents, prime ministers,special envoy, all because
(50:54):
I had this bag in my hand.
Great story.
And my last comment to the audiencelistening, mediation and the
magic around mediation is created.
It's an artificial world.
When you are in these conflicts, you'rethinking about, The parties themselves,
(51:18):
and as long as they have the need to talk,it's our job to make sure they're talking.
So get away from the mentality of, wegot another meeting, we got another
meeting, we got another meeting.
Engage in the process and be presenta hundred percent of your time.
And if that means creating anenvironment for my boss, it was
(51:42):
really important that if he neededto have a private conversation, he
knew where to take these people.
He didn't wanna get strandedwithout a logistical environment.
If there was something in Germanygoing on that might disrupt his
mediation, he needed to know about it.
If we were hungry, we couldn't focus.
(52:03):
So he made sure that we had food.
It wasn't for him.
, it was for us, that was the joke.
That's what we, the staff didn't get.
He wanted to make sure that the partieshad the best environment to talk.
The environment is 80%of successful dialogue.
If people are an environment conduciveto talking, they're gonna open
(52:27):
themselves up and they're gonna talk.
And so that's our job in, in designinga dialogue or a peace process, is
to make sharp Sure that we createthe necessary environment by which
people say, Wow, I feel like Ineed to get something off my chest.
. And so I encourage people to spendmore time on logistics and realize
(52:50):
that logistics are the mediationand they are the dialogue because
they're the enablers of those.
Laura (52:59):
Excellent.
Juan, thank you so muchfor joining us here today.
It's been wonderful.
Even if we went in a whole tangentand I wasn't expecting, it was
fabulous and everyone else.
Until next time, thisis May with a podcast.
See you next time.
Juan Diaz-Prinz (53:15):
Thank you very much for having me.
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