ID: 1550
Presenting Author: Somia Sadiq
Session: 613 - "War on Projects": The Diffusion of Misinformation, Conflict, and Trauma
Status: pending
Misinformation is often inherited pain, not ignorance. When practitioners approach conflict with trauma awareness, empathy, and narrative humility, they rebuild trust, transforming resistance into rel
Misinformation doesn’t always stem from ignorance; often, it’s a symptom of memory. Communities “at war” with projects are frequently reliving older wars: displacement, betrayal, the quiet violence of being consulted but never heard. When practitioners frame this resistance as irrational or misinformed, they risk deepening those wounds. What’s really being resisted is erasure.
A trauma-informed approach to impact assessment asks us to see misinformation as an expression of pain, a community’s way of saying, we do not feel safe in your story. In such contexts, the role of the professional is not to correct, but to listen. To recognize that truth cannot thrive where trust has decayed.
Building trust in traumatized landscapes requires courage: the courage to slow down, to acknowledge harm, and to share narrative authority. It calls for emotional literacy and for tools that strengthen our own conflict capacity, the ability to stay present when conversations become charged. Because how we show up, not just what we say, determines whether truth feels safe enough to return.
The “war on projects” is, in many places, a war of memories. By grounding our practice in compassion, story, and relational repair, we can transform misinformation into meaning, and conflict into a doorway toward collective healing.
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Somia Sadiq, founder of Narratives, Kahanee, and Ravayat, is a planner, peacebuilder, and writer. Her novel Gajarah and her practice explore memory, resilience, and storytelling as tool