AT A GLANCE:
From April to July 2009, Peace Bridges conducted a small case study research project that explored how participating in our long-term training had impacted the ways people experienced and handled family conflict.
The Transforming Family Conflict case study research is part of the larger strategy of Peace Bridges for designing and implementing peace programming relevant to healing violent families and building peaceful families in Cambodia
In the process of providing conflict counseling and mediation training, Peace Bridges heard consistent requests for more resources that help transform family conflict and violence. We also learned that the training Peace Bridges offered had significantly impacted peacebuilder perceptions of family conflict and their ability to engage it, and that some peacebuilders were now teaching these skills to other families in their communities.
These stories and requests combined with Peace Bridges’ own growing awareness of how family violence is a concern in Cambodia and the focus of various studies and programs. We were also concerned with recent studies that showed that, despite an increase in resources, violence in Cambodian families continued at significant rates.
For example, in 1996, two studies documented the experience (Zimmerman, 1996) and prevalence (Nelson and Zimmerman, 1996) of family violence in Cambodia. A decade later, the most comprehensive research on Cambodia's experience of family violence showed that, tragically, little had changed. In 2005, 64% of the population claimed to know a family that used violence by “Throwing something at the other, pushing or shoving or grabbing the other.” Further, 58% claimed to know a family that used violence by “Knocking on the head, slapping or spanking, kicking, biting, shaking, pulling hair, punching.” Even in families without physical violence, 93% of respondents said that it was acceptable for “cursing or insulting” to be used in family conflict and 92% claimed they knew a family that used cursing/insulting. Perhaps most significantly, respondent attitudes about the acceptability of violence, including extreme violence (e.g., threatening with a weapon, burning, choking, throwing acid, shooting, etc.), was consistently reported at disturbingly high levels. For example, when asked, “In your opinion ... is it at any time acceptable for a husband to do this to his wife?,” 28% of respondents answered that it was at least sometimes acceptable to throw acid at or shoot the wife. (Cecil 2005: 26-29)
The authors of this 2005 study also concluded that -
“There has been a wide range of donors, government agencies and NGOs working intensely to reduce domestic violence for the last nine years. ... this study demonstrates that these efforts have not lead [sic] to a significant change in attitude or behaviors, .... At their core, these past approaches were unconnected to Cambodian values and attitudes.” (Cecil 2005: 86)The authors also called for programs with the following characteristics:
1. Engages values and attitudes about power and control, specifically within the context of gender and family rolesThe purpose of our case study research was to begin to investigate the ability of Peace Bridges’ peace education programs to meet these four challenges.
2. Addresses men rather than focusing exclusively on human rights education of women
3. Engages widespread attitudes of acceptance of violence, abuse, and “men's entitlement to greater rights” rather than focusing exclusively on domestic violence as a crime
4. Operates with awareness of the importance of “keeping the family together at all costs” as a common value, including offering a wider range of possibilities that include “ conflict resolution and improved communication within the family, community based help structures, referral systems, counseling or working with violent men.”
(Cecil 2005: 86-87)
