Ervin Staub Speaks About Forgiveness

"You can think about forgiveness as an individual process. When people forgive, psychologically they are better. If you live together, perpetrators and victims, and you as a survivor forgive-let go-but the other people still hold the same attitude towards you, then you are still one down. Forgiveness, if it happens, and as it happens, has to be incorporated in the process of reconciliation. What is reconciliation? Mutual acceptance. It's a process; it happens at various levels; it changes over time. In Rwanda, a lot of people are open to it. Sometimes what I worry about is that they skip various stages and have move to forgiveness when psychologically they have not developed to a place where they can authentically forgive. Many of the people who work in the community in Rwanda on healing and reconciliation are survivors. They work with Hutus and Tutsi in the community, try to bring them together, do meaningful things with them. That is a kind of forgiveness in action. So there is a process of forgiveness going on amongst survivors."