About

Framing the symposium

Few countries – including New Zealand –have escaped the scourge of internal conflict and today the list of nations embroiled in such conflicts is extensive: ‘[s]ince 1989, an average of twenty intrastate wars have been in progress at any moment.’[1] Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen are notable examples, but there are many others that do not feature regularly in news stories. ‘Civil war has gradually become the most widespread, the most destructive, and the most characteristic form of organized human violence.’[2] Since 1945, intrastate conflicts have resulted in the fighting-related deaths of over 25 million people and have had significant impacts on the lives of many millions of survivors. Historical conflicts within nations often leave a legacy of grievance and hostility between former warring parties.

[1] David Armitage, Civil wars: A history in ideas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 5.
[2] Ibid., 5.

Intrastate conflicts are characterised by a multitude of perspectives, experiences, cultures, histories, and sites. The vision of the Scarred Nations Symposium organising committee is for the event to draw together these diverse facets of internal war into a shared conceptual space. While other international events generally take markedly disciplinary approaches, the Scarred Nations organising partners hope the framing of diverse instances of intrastate war within a multi-perspectival lens will encourage the examination of intrastate conflict in a way that has not been done previously, locally or internationally. Our aspiration is that the symposium will facilitate new perspectives and opportunities for collaboration through the sharing of different worldviews via the media of different disciplines. The symposium aims to bring together leading national and international scholars, thinkers, creative practitioners and those with direct experience. Speakers will represent considerable geographic and ethnic diversity which is appropriate to engage with the complex, global nature of intrastate conflict. They will contribute to defining and framing the many and varied topics as well as presenting models for seeking reconciliation, both historical and contemporary.