Section 2 - Understanding Peacemaking
A clear understanding of community peacemaking is necessary for its safe and appropriate development. It enables communities, organisations and agencies to recognise the practice on its own terms and to engage with it without imposing an external model or professional definition.
This section establishes the foundation for understanding what community peacemaking is, how it is practised and what supports its credibility, safety and accountability.
What is Community Peacemaking?
Community peacemaking is a place-based, community-led and culturally grounded practice for responding to fighting, arguments and disagreements. It is shaped by the people, relationships, culture and place connected to the situation.
Community peacemaking creates space for safe and respectful dialogue when relationships have been harmed or are under pressure. Its work has two connected dimensions: immediate peacemaking and relational peacemaking.
Immediate peacemaking responds when fighting or arguments are occurring. Its purpose is to help create calm, reduce the potential for harm and support people to move safely away from escalating behaviour.
Relational peacemaking helps people understand what has occurred and the impact it has had on their relationships. It supports people to rebuild connections, strengthen their responsibilities to one another, their families and their community, and draw on culture as part of restoring belonging.
Both dimensions are important. Addressing the immediate problem may create safety, but peacemaking also considers the relationships that may allow fighting or arguments to continue or resurface over time.
Community peacemaking does not replace police, courts, child protection or other statutory services. It works alongside those services within clear boundaries, while maintaining its distinct community-led purpose.
The Role of the Peacemaker
A peacemaker stays in the middle. This means not taking sides or becoming part of the argument, while remaining engaged with the people and relationships involved.
The peacemaker’s role is to support people through care, respect and trusted relationships. Staying in the middle requires careful listening, fair treatment and the ability to support a way forward without favouring one person, family or group over another.
Respect and trust are essential to the role. People must be able to have confidence in a peacemaker’s conduct, discretion and commitment to protecting relationships and community cohesion.
Peacemakers must hold appropriate knowledge of kinship, community, Country and the relationships that shape local life. This knowledge supports a fuller understanding of the circumstances and assists people to recognise their responsibilities to one another, their families and their community.
A peacemaker does not decide what people must do. Their role is to help people talk, understand the harm that has occurred and consider how relationships may be restored.
Community Ownership
Community peacemaking must grow from the people and place for which it exists. It cannot be imported into a community from the outside.
The practice should operate collaboratively rather than hierarchically. Its development and operation must reflect the relationships, cultural knowledge and responsibilities of the community.
The community must determine its own standards, rules and ways of working. These arrangements should be clear, locally supported and accountable. They may include expectations about who can practise, how concerns are raised and how peacemaking works safely alongside other supports.
Mainstream systems should acknowledge and work alongside community peacemaking without directing local practice or creating barriers to safe operation. External services remain responsible for their statutory roles, while community peacemaking remains directed by the community.
No single person or organisation can speak for an entire community or determine its peacemaking practice alone.
Peacemaking and Mediation
Community peacemaking is a distinct field of practice with its own purpose, knowledge, responsibilities and practice requirements. Its credibility is built through trusted relationships, cultural understanding, community accountability and the confidence of the people it serves.
Preparation and training for community peacemaking must be specific to the role. Training alone does not authorise a person to practise, and a qualification from another professional field does not establish that a person is prepared or accepted to undertake community peacemaking.
Mediation is a separate practice with its own purposes, processes and professional standards. It may be valuable where its process is appropriate to the people and matters involved. Skills such as listening, remaining impartial and supporting respectful dialogue may be useful across both practices.
However, mediation training is not training in community peacemaking. Mediator accreditation does not make a person a community peacemaker, provide the relationships and cultural knowledge required for the role, or establish the community accountability necessary for safe practice.
Community peacemaking must therefore be understood, developed and supported on its own terms.