Colombians seeking a peaceful resolution to five decades of civil conflict found inspiration – and a message of hope – from leaders of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle at Colombia's first international conference on restorative justice in February.

Members of the South African delegation painted a powerful and often harrowing portrait of a country torn apart by years of bloodshed, fear and hatred, whose leaders found the courage to turn to dialogue instead of revenge.  

"I say to the people of Colombia...in spite of all the complexities, if peace was possible in South Africa, it can happen in Colombia. It can happen everywhere," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu told an audience of more than 1,000 who converged on Cali's Universidad Javeriana for the four-day event.

Through the experiences shared by South Africans and participants from other countries with a history of violence, the symposium highlighted "a new language for dealing with past conflict: the language of reconciliation," said Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town.

The conference brought together veterans of conflict from across the globe -- from Northern Ireland, the Philippines, Peru, and Guatemala to South Africa, Sierra Leone and East Timor. It demonstrated how "citizens of the world can become alternative voices to lead international responses to countries whose citizens are crying out for peace," said Gobodo-Madikizela.

The event also illustrates how a private philanthropist and her family, assisted by a small team of staff and support from The Synergos Institute, were able to use a new foundation as a launching pad to leverage resources and convene a powerful array of international actors around an issue of critical importance to the future of their country.

A Critical Opening for Peace and Reconciliation in Colombia

The International Symposium on Restorative Justice and Peace comes at a critical moment in the history of Colombia. The country is engaged in an intense national debate about how to end nearly fifty years of violence spawned by left-wing guerilla forces, right-wing paramilitary units and, more recently, narco-terrorism. The conflict is claiming 25,000 lives a year and has created massive disruptions in the social fabric of communities throughout Colombia.

Eager to play a constructive role in this arena by leveraging the resources of her recently established family foundation, Colombian-born philanthropist María Eugenia Garcés brought her ideas on restorative justice to the annual meeting of The Synergos Institute's Global Philanthropists Circle (GPC) in 2003. In the process, she sparked a remarkable chain of events whose ripple effects are already being felt beyond the gathering in Cali.

Restorative justice programs increasingly are being employed around the world in communities divided by violence and other forms of conflict. Such programs bring all stakeholders together to forge solutions based not on retribution, but on forgiveness, repair of harm and reintegration of victims and offenders in society.

At the annual meeting, an offer of help from South African GPC member Tokyo Sexwale convinced Garcés of the value of bringing an international perspective to the peace and reconciliation process in Colombia. Sexwale, formerly a leader in the anti-apartheid movement, is now chairman of Mvelaphanda Holdings, a major mining and energy company in South Africa. He was influential in recruiting the four other South Africans who attended the conference in Colombia in February.

Drawing on their diverse array of expertise, Synergos staff provided Garcés with a variety of strategic assistance to help her achieve her philanthropic vision of an international symposium on restorative justice. This included help in putting together a proposal for a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and introductions to other funders; connections to Archbishop Tutu and other members of the South African delegation; links to international experts on conflict resolution; and technical support on the design of the conference.

"The Restorative Justice initiative found a strong partner in USAID's Global Development Alliance. María Eugenia needed the financial and political support USAID could provide, while the GDA program sought to leverage its contributions by working with private philanthropists," said Andrew Sillen, Synergos' Deputy Director of Development for Special Projects.  Sillen worked closely with Garcés and her team in developing their proposal to AID and, drawing upon his many years of work in South Africa, bringing in expertise from outside Colombia.

In months of tireless advocacy and fundraising, Garcés and her organizing team convinced more than 50 sponsors and collaborators of the importance of this event. The resulting Alliance for Restorative Justice, Co-existence and Peace included Colombian foundations such as the Garcés family's Fundación AlvarAlice, Corporación VallenPaz, Fundación Paz y Bien and Fundación Corona; religious and academic institutions such as Universidad Javeriana Cali; USAID's Global Development Alliance; other international funders and Synergos. Conveners of the symposium included Fundación AlvarAlice, Corporación Excelencia en la Justicia, Universidad Javeriana Cali and Fundación Paz y Bien.

Speaking from the Heart to Heal Divides

Owing to the willingness of participants to speak truthfully and from the heart about their experiences, the symposium offered moments of extraordinary emotional power and spiritual authority. For those seeking to construct a framework for lasting peace and reconciliation in Colombia, the conference's numerous workshops and presentations also provided a wealth of case studies and comparative data from other parts of the world.

The religious roots of restorative justice were underlined in the opening ceremony for the symposium, an interfaith prayer service conducted outdoors at a site overlooking the entire city of Cali. Tutu and Cardinal Pedro Rubiano Sáenz, the Archbishop of Bogotá, joined representatives of 14 world religions and indigenous communities in advocating for peace and social justice in Colombia.

There were few in attendance at the conference who had not been personally touched by violence, from ordinary Colombians in the audience, to guest speakers who had served on the frontlines of liberation struggles around the globe.

In the plenary session on the first full day of the conference, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos put aside his notes and declared that he was speaking from the heart as a victim of the conflict, not as a government official. He called for an end to the violence in his country and offered to meet with the guerillas who harmed his family, if that is what it took to bring peace to Colombia.

Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, recalled the honor of "being the generation that broke the cycles of violence and domination" of apartheid. Gravely injured in an assassination attempt during the anti-apartheid struggle, Sachs described his meeting years later with the security policeman who planted the bomb in his car, and how the man sought his forgiveness after testifying before South Africa's landmark Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).  

Psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, who served as a consultant to South Africa's TRC, underscored the need to give voice to both the victims and perpetrators of violence as an essential prerequisite of forgiveness and pardon. Her encounters in Colombia with the families of kidnapping victims and others caught up in the trauma of conflict suggested that they are hungry for the truth and genuinely open to reconciliation.

Breaking the impasse in Colombia: a Role for South Africa?

The culminating event of the conference was a nationally televised roundtable between Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and a panel of six symposium participants. In a dramatic, unscripted moment, panelist Archbishop Tutu brought audience members -- and President Uribe -- to their feet with an offer to approach President Thabo Mbeki about inviting representatives of Colombia's rebel forces to South Africa to learn about that country's path to peace and reconciliation. Discussions are being held in both countries to follow up on Tutu's breakthrough offer.

In response to concerns expressed by Uribe about authorizing such a trip in the midst of continued bloodshed at home, Tutu called on the leaders of the warring guerilla factions to "come down from the mountains-- come back home and help rebuild your country of Colombia. I appeal to you leaders of the guerilla forces to agree to a ceasefire."

Another panel member from South Africa, Tokyo Sexwale, implored guerillas to free all of the Colombians who had been kidnapped by rebel forces. "Those of us who have fought for freedom of our people...not once ever thought of kidnapping as a strategy for liberation," Sexwale said. Addressing Uribe, Sexwale declared that it was "time for courage. As a citizen of the world, I say rise from being a president -- presidents come and go -- to being a statesman."

Beyond Cali: Carrying the Lessons Forward

South Africans and other international symposium participants came to Cali not just to share their own experiences, but to learn from Colombia's. In Cali's violence-torn Aguablanca district, one organization is advancing a promising model of alternative justice, one that stresses collective community resolution of conflicts and attempts to intervene before youthful offenders and their victims are funneled into the formal criminal justice system.

"We see in restorative justice a possibility for people to learn to reconstruct community," said Sister Alba Stella Barreto, director of Fundación Paz y Bien, which receives support from the Garcés family and was a convener of the symposium. The foundation's pioneering work in restorative justice -- which helped inspire the international conference -- is an outgrowth of its programs for at-risk women and youth. Sister Alba Stella launched Cali's first experiment in restorative justice in 1999, following a visit to Northern Ireland. Archbishop Tutu toured Aguablanca and had many memorable encounters with some of the 600 families served by the programs of Fundación Paz y Bien who have been displaced by Colombia's civil conflict.

President Uribe's call for a special session of the National Congress days after the end of the symposium and the participation of numerous lawmakers and government officials in the Cali conference mean that the extensive learnings gleaned from the event will be carried forth and inform political and legal deliberations on amnesty and reparations.

For her part, Garcés hopes that Cali "will one day be known as a center for reconciliation and peace." Her vision has been validated by responses of conference participants such as Archbishop Tutu, who observed that "what you have done here will be seen in years to come as pivotal to the process towards peace." Garcés said her experience organizing the symposium has strengthened her resolve to make restorative justice a central focus of the work of her family's Fundación AlvarAlice.

Others, like Daniel Van Ness, director of the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, also came away with the conviction that something extraordinary had played out in Cali. "The Colombian participants at the symposium were excited and hopeful about what had happened. It is amazing as an outsider to watch people worn out by conflict, begin to believe that something might happen. It was as though we were standing on holy ground," he concluded.