The Third Side

I’d like to believe that at the all-important Russia/Ukraine negotiation table, on the outcome of which our lives and world peace depends, there is also a seat for someone like William Ury, the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, who together with his mentor Roger Fisher, was one of the first to develop the theory and art of negotiation.

His concept of?The Third Side?is today more relevant and inspiring than ever. According to Ury, it takes two sides to fight, but a third to stop. The real meaning behind this concept is best summed up by Ury himself, in his 2009 talk at the Joan. B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of?San Diego.

Fortunately, sub-titles in many languages, Italian included, are available.

I find this passage particularly evocative:?“…I’ve found that the secret of peace is actually very simple. The secret of peace is our oldest human heritage. I’ve spent time with a number of indigenous societies, and they know the secret of peace. Every society in the world has its own form of it. And it’s something that I call the third side. …?What is the third side? The third side is basically us. It’s the community of people, the friends, the allies, the neighbors, the people in conflict themselves, who constitute the whole. They have the ability to circle around …. I watched them as they assembled a circle – all the men and women, and children even – and sat and talked out their issues. They constitute a third side. They’ll talk it out, listen it out, sometimes for two or three days. They ask the heavens for help, any way that they can. They don’t rest until the conflict is not only resolved, but also that there’s some process of forgiveness where the relationship is restored. And if emotions are still too high, someone may have a cooling-off period – go and visit some relatives and come back in a few months. They have a whole system to transform conflict. When emotions start to go up in the society, everyone’s got an ear to it.?Someone goes and hides the poison arrows out in the desert.?I’ve seen that in every indigenous society, and really every society has these ways of convening the community”.?

As J.F. Kennedy reminded us “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate”.

Enjoy a most worthwhile hour with William Ury!