Roman Koval,
trainer, mediator,
Chair of the Board, NGO "Institute for Peace and Understanding"
What could be common between security and dialogue? In fact, there is a direct link between them, but for many people it is far from obvious. This is regrettable, because both citizens and local authorities often, due to the lack of this understanding, lose the most effective and least costly tool for building security in the community.
To understand this, one needs to examine more closely the concepts of 'security' and 'dialogue'.
At first glance, 'security' is simply the absence of 'danger'. That's how we most often think about security, and that's true, but the problem is that we don't quite correctly understand the meaning of the word 'danger'. As a rule, the first thing that comes to mind is that danger means a high level of crime and a threat of violence. Unfortunately, representatives of the authorities also tend to think that security issues are exclusively the responsibility of law enforcement agencies.
At the same time, if you study this issue more deeply, it turns out that danger — it's much more.
For example, an unlit park may be entirely safe and pose no threats to a person, but returning home late in the evening, a lone woman may still feel extremely unsafe in it, since she doesn't know, that she has nothing to fear. Similarly, a sick person will feel unsafe if they isn't sure, when exactly the ambulance will arrive and whether the doctor will be sufficiently qualified to provide the necessary care. Community members who don't know, how environmentally friendly the new facility being built on their land will be, will also feel at risk. A young person finishing vocational school and isn't sure, whether they will be able to find work in their hometown will also feel at risk, since they don't know how they will live or feed their family. Similarly, parents will feel at risk if their child has to walk to school on a road without sidewalks or pedestrian crossings, where the road surface is so poor that drivers must steer around potholes on the shoulder, and no one can say how long this state will last or when the road will finally be repaired.
There is much in common among these examples — it turns out we feel unsafe when we lack sufficient or necessary information and don't understand what is happening and why. Psychologists know this well — we fear what we don't understand or don't know. This is the source of our fears, and fear breeds a sense of danger. Only communication gives us the opportunity to obtain important information from one another and clarify our concerns, mistaken beliefs, or prejudices. This is true both within families and in the relationships between local authorities and community residents.
You may already have guessed what dialogue has to do with this, but I'll add a little more.
Many people think that dialogue — unlike a monologue, is a conversation between two or more people. But originally the word meant not just a conversation, but a process of knowing through understanding (Διά – “for”; λογος – “mind”, “meaning”, “understanding”). Today the importance of dialogue in civilized countries is confirmed by the fact that the need for dialogue in the community is enshrined in law, and dialogue skills are taught not only to philosophers and diplomats but also to managers, politicians, teachers, doctors, waiters — in short, professionals of any field who work with people. How well you manage to reach an understanding with a client, colleague, partner, subordinate, voters, or a potential investor will determine whether they perceive you and your relationship with you as reliable and, accordingly, whether you can be trusted and how safe it is to deal with you.
Dialogue in the community — is not simply the mayor or village head talking with community residents, although that can be a dialogue if both sides hear one another. Rather, it is a prepared and structured process that involves everyone connected to the topic or issues that need to be discussed and understood by the community. Such a dialogue typically has a neutral, independent facilitator (often called a facilitator, from Latin faciliae — “to make easier”) who manages the discussion so that everyone hears and understands each other and follows an agenda to achieve the meeting’s shared goal. For this reason these processes are often called “facilitated dialogue.” The aim of the dialogue can be to reach a joint decision or resolve a conflict, as well as to improve understanding and/or relationships among participants.
When one well-known facilitation master, Michael Wilkinson, was asked, “Why involve many people if a qualified specialist can find a better solution than a group of people who are not experts in this matter?” he replied: “First, for complex problems and tasks you can never find a single expert who possesses all the necessary knowledge. So the first task of the facilitator is to extract and integrate the necessary knowledge from different heads. Second, plans and decisions are most often not implemented or carried out not because they are bad, but because the people responsible for their implementation were not properly involved in developing those decisions. Therefore, properly involving people in the decision-making process is the facilitator’s second task!”
Additionally, a professional facilitator leading a dialogue can accomplish many other useful—and sometimes even surprising—things. Besides analyzing the situation that needs resolving or the conflict itself, they will always speak with the key people who should be involved in the dialogue to clarify their perspectives and needs related to the agenda and to prepare them to participate in the joint meeting. Sometimes a single such meeting is enough to shift the emotional level of tense, “heated” disputes into a measured, constructive discussion. Representatives of the Pokrovsk City Executive Committee told us about exactly such changes after the dialogue on inclusive education in their city.
When community residents are involved in dialogue and decision‑making on issues that affect their safety, the very fact of participation alleviates much anxiety and worry, because people become informed about what is being done in the community and feel ownership of important safety decisions. This also makes it easier to implement those decisions later, especially if they require residents’ support and cooperation. Dialogue is an ideal tool for mobilizing local human potential for initiatives that strengthen community safety.
Certainly, successful dialogue requires more than speaking with participants individually. After studying the situation, an experienced facilitator develops a plan for the dialogue, which may be limited to a single meeting or, depending on the complexity of the issues, several sessions. They draw up the agenda to help participants understand the essence of the problem they will try to solve, or the causes of the conflict that divided the community, and to engage everyone so all can express their views and listen to and understand one another.
That last part is actually not so simple. If you recall any dispute, attempts by the parties to prove they are right usually end with some participants not hearing the others and remembering the next day only that they were right and the others were wrong. Sometimes two people argue hoarsely while both are saying the same thing in different ways. This happens naturally, and our physiology is to blame: once we decide we are “in conflict” with someone, our hormonal system kicks in and blocks our perception so we do not hear or understand our opponent’s arguments.
When there is a facilitator, they repeat what participants say, and the participants finally begin to hear each other’s arguments because a neutral person who understands each participant articulates them and helps foster mutual understanding.
In IMiP’s experience there are many examples where engaging a facilitator to run a dialogue helped resolve problems that sometimes lasted for years and poisoned the community’s psychological climate. These included issues like roof repairs, public order, and reaching understanding on decommunization and historical monuments. Dialogue also proved crucial for addressing complex issues affecting internally displaced persons and the reintegration of former servicemen returning home after demobilization from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, often with psychological trauma and sometimes with physical injuries.
The only time dialogue is definitely not appropriate is when a decision has already been made and the Head wants to hold a “dialogue” to convince others that this decision is correct. In such a situation a real dialogue is unlikely—and few specialists would agree to lead such a process. Attempts to use dialogue to manipulate public opinion usually endanger the organizers. Dialogue is voluntary—you cannot force people to take part, you can only interest them. From our experience, security issues are ones almost everyone cares about and wants to help address in their community. That opportunity creates a sense of involvement in building not only a safer environment but also stronger relationships among dialogue participants. People who become like-minded and work together on a good cause always feel calm and confident in their hometown.
Summing up what has been said, it can be noted that without the practice of dialogue it is very difficult to hope for real security and trust in the community. You can learn more about dialogue from the following sources:
“Standards of Dialogue: Definitions and Principles”, IMiP
Page “Resources of the Institute of Peace and Understanding”
Vaidotas Verba, Ambassador, OSCE project coordinator in Ukraine, publication “Why Professional Help Is Needed to Build a Productive Dialogue”
Olena Kopina, Olha Miroshnyk, Oleksii Serdyuk, “Police–Community Dialogue as a Social Technology for Implementing Community Policing Principles in a Local Community”
Online educational course How to effectively plan and conduct a dialogue