Linking healing and reconciliation for a lasting peace in Bosnia- Herzegovina

This article explores the notions of "healing" and "reconciliation" as they are referred to in the literature on peacebuilding. It argues that these notions are used vaguely and that they are terms deployed to discriminate between "bottom-up" and "top-down" approaches to peacebuilding. As such, they help obscure complex connections between the psychosocial processes associated with healing and the political processes associated with reconciliation. Numerous peacebuilding programs and processes are conceived upon the distinction between healing and reconciliation. This article examines the effects of this distinction and argues that where healing and reconciliation are disconnected, peacebuilding produces experiences of secondary victimisation that undermine peace. The case of Bosnia-Herzegovina is used to support this argument.