Border Aid: Conflict Management

Accountability Protocols

These are a work-in-progress.
  1. An Accountability Committee (ACom) shall be constituted with a maximum of 5 members and 3 alternates, in the interest of protecting sensitive information and streamlining the logistics of ACom meetings, but allowing for schedule flexibility and a diversity of opinions.
  2. This committee shall have the following tasks/powers:
    1. Communicate with a third party mediator (TPM) and its representatives
    2. Coordinate process and schedules with the TPM
    3. Collaborate with the TPM and the broader community to implement procedures;
    4. Communicate with parties involved in the conflict
    5. Make decisions to the conduct, implementation, and enforcement of the mediation and resolutions (includes decision to remove or retain parties in the group chat and at aid stations), as long as it does not conflict with the TPM’s decisions/methods, in such instance #3 controls
    6. Provide regular updates to the whole group
  3. The Third Party Mediator’s (TPM) role is to facilitate healthy communication, balanced perspectives, and fair outcomes. The TPM shall advise ACom, but in the end, decisions and implementation of corrective measures must be “owned” by the Border Aid community.
  4. Quorum for ACom to meet and make decisions is 3 members. The ACom shall endeavor to make decisions by consensus. If a consensus is impossible, a simple majority is required to carry a decision.
  5. The members of the ACom shall be selected by the general group. Each community member shall nominate up to 5 persons by the appointed deadline. The top 5 who will accept the nomination and commit will comprise the ACom, and the 6th to 8th will be the alternates.
    1. A trusted community member shall receive and aggregate nominations
    2. A member can nominate him/her/them-self/selves for the ACom
    3. The following parties are disqualified from serving on the ACom:
      1. Parties to the conflict under consideration
      2. Parties with a bias towards or against parties to the conflict
      3. People previously designated as “leads” at any aid sites
    4. Parties to the conflict shall be given the opportunity to express concerns about (or “veto”) ACom nominees, in the interest of forming a committee they feel will be fair.
  6. The Accountability Committee, once formed, shall embark on two rounds of interviews, separated by a period of internal deliberation and conference with the TPM.
    1. The first stage of interviews shall be focused purely on hearing the perspectives of parties to and witnesses of the conflict.
      1. ACom is not a court of law and its goal is not to objectively or forensically ascertain facts. ACom’s priority should be to hear everybody out, and to understand how different people experienced the same events.
    2. The second stage of interviews shall be focused on forming and beginning to apply measures of restorative/transformative justice.
      1. Prior to beginning this phase, ACom shall confer amongst themselves and with the TPM to find some consensus on what happened, what problems exist, who was harmed and how, ideas about possible corrective measures, things to be careful about, etc.
    3. Corrective measures relevant to the wider community shall be announced nearing the end of the second round of interviews.
    4. ACom shall publish a summary of events to the community, in the interest of transparency. ACom reserves the right to redact names of witnesses or victims to protect their privacy, but acknowledges that the choice to withhold information from the community comes with the risk of making community members feel unsafe.
    5. Interviewees shall be identified by private suggestion or volunteering. Interviewee identities must only be known by ACom and the TPM, but interviewees may voluntarily identify themselves to the wider community. The identities of individuals who have engaged in abusive behavior may be released by ACom, if such a measure is deemed appropriate.
    6. Interviewees may arrange accommodating conditions for their interviews, such as a women-only subset of ACom, accompaniment by a sign language interpreter or other support person, or otherwise.
    7. Parties to the conflict may appoint a support person or advocate to assist them in liaising with ACom.
    8. ACom is committed to the principles of transformative and restorative justice, and rejects the violence of carceralism. ACom shall only consider contact with law enforcement as a last resort, only when/if individuals are in serious physical danger, and if/when those endangered individuals wish to initiate contact with law enforcement. Involving law enforcement without the consent of endangered individuals or in emergency situations shall be considered a serious breach of community trust.
  7. Border Aid community members may choose whether or not to engage with ACom as they wish; however, we ask for the honest efforts of those who can muster them, in the interest of healing cracks in a community that serves very vulnerable people. The goal here is to rebuild our relationships, so we can trust each other enough to join together in saving migrants’ lives wherever the violence of borders may threaten them.
  8. There shall be 2 scopes of intervention which the ACom will discuss and finalize with the TPM:
    1. Between parties involved, to immediately address harm
      1. ACom shall not, under any circumstances, force a discussion between any persons who do not want to talk to each other.
    2. For the whole group, addressing the social conditions and structures that perpetuated the problems which led to the conflict.
      1. ACom shall collaborate with local affinity groups to discuss what proposed interventions may be appropriate for them, and to adapt proposed interventions to better suit affinity groups' specific dynamics.
  9. In the event that any meetings are recorded, individuals must obtain the consent of every meeting participant before sharing artifacts of recording. If unanimous consent cannot be obtained, only summaries may be shared. Individuals are also strongly encouraged to obtain consent before sharing collaborative notes, or documents they did not write.
  10. Everyone who wishes to participate in the border aid community shall abide by the rules, community agreement, code of conduct, or any resolutions that result from these undertakings.

Suggested Reading

Special thanks to the Che Cafe for recommending many of the below materials.