Baht Latumbo on Conflict Analysis

SULTAN KUDARAT CONFLICT ANALYSIS
Initiated by GTZ in partnership with Local Government of Columbio
July 3-5, 2007 at East Asia Royal Hotel, General Santos City

This seminar-workshop on Conflict Analysis is aimed at inculcating to Columbio residents and officials a deeper understanding of conflicts they are working on by contextualizing it using various tools for conflict analysis. It is also aimed at developing participants the ability to identify strategic interventions and conflict sensitive approaches for their areas of work and responsibilities.

This project is also a component of Poverty Reduction and Conflict Transformation Management-Mindanao Project under Philippine-German Development Cooperation and German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

Totie introduced the main facilitator of the day, Mr. Baht Latumbo. He is a chairperson of Action Global for conflict transformation which works for positive action to transform conflict. He also worked for organizations working in conflict affected areas. He is connected with peace organizations in Africa, UK, USA and in Philippines.

Baht encourage everyone to identify the conflicts in their respective communities and diagnose the root causes of these conflicts. This will be done tomorrow. E.g. Cause of conflict is poverty or variety of ideology. He raised these important points:
• In order to address conflicts, we have to probe the deeper / underlying causes
• Understand deeply the human nature
• Commonalities in understanding conflicts
• Conflicts are caused by visible and invisible factors
• Better understanding of the essence of conflict
• Conflict can also be opportunity for change
• Sincerity is needed in addressing the issues on a conflict
• Conflicts can be resolved by talking it out
• Conflict has its own dynamics / bigyan pansin para hindi lalala
• Conflict has many faces, opportunity to some but also downfall for others
• The conflict itself can be a connector or a divider (in specific contexts)