The illusion of Western peacemaking

"Led by facilitators from Belgium and the United Kingdom, the workshop began with the story of Little Red Riding Hood, which the participants were asked to reimagine from the perspective of the wolf. In the reimagined version, massive deforestation had left the wolf increasingly isolated, so when he met the girl in the red hood, he had not eaten in weeks. Driven by hunger and fear that he might die, the wolf ate the grandmother and the girl."

"The facilitators explained that the exercise was meant to show that there are many perspectives to every story, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and there could always be different truths. Absurd as it is, more than 20 years later, I found myself in a very similar situation. In October, I attended a workshop organised by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to bring together young women from Kosovo and Serbia and teach them dialogue and peacemaking."

A 12-year-old's perspective frames memories of the 1998–1999 Kosovo war and its aftermath. After the conflict, international organisations rapidly offered reconciliation and peacebuilding workshops for Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo. One workshop reimagined Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf's viewpoint, attributing violence to deforestation, hunger, and fear. Teenage participants found this framing puzzling and morally troubling because it appeared to justify killing and blur responsibility. Later reconciliation efforts, including OSCE workshops, employed foreign facilitators and scripted local assistants while promoting multiperspectival exercises that risk presenting war crimes as competing narratives rather than facts requiring accountability.

Read at www.aljazeera.com