Building democracy: implementating restorative circles in brazilian schools as a non-violent conflict resolution strategy

Abstract

When democracy is defined exclusively as majority rule, the interests of minority groups may not be addressed. Their rights may be protected, but their interests may be completely ignored. Restorative justice provides an avenue to redress this power imbalance by bringing more people to the decision-making process. For those whose position has the larger numbers there is little incentive to seek common ground or ways to ensure that the interests of all are served. Restorative justice practitioners believe that in order to have strong, cohesive communities, it is important for all legitimate interests to be understood and addressed in a voluntary, collaborative process rather than through adversarial, legalistic processes. To gain commitment for the hard work of designing and implementing solutions to difficult problems everyone must feel included, respected and served by the process and the solution. Someone whose interests were not addressed in the solution will feel no obligation to make the solution work. In this project, school bullying was identified as a problem that generated opportunities to understand and practice democracy in the schools community in new ways. It has become clear that creating safe communities requires active citizen involvement. It calls for a re-engagement of all citizens in the process of determining shared norms, holding one another accountable to those norms and determining how best to resolve breaches of the norms in a way which does not increase risk in the community.