n Ubuntu : Journal of Conflict and Social Transformation - Towards deepening conflict transformation and peacebuilding

Abstract

The principle of indigenous empowerment suggests that conflict transformation must actively envision, include, respect, and promote the human and cultural resources from within a given setting. This involves a new set of lenses through which we do not primarily 'see' the setting and the people in it as the 'problem' and the outsider as the 'answer'. Rather, we understand the long-term goal of transformation as validating and building on people and resources within the setting. - John Paul Lederach (1995: 212).