Community-based dialogue is methodology that seeks to help manage and resolve conflicts based on ethnicity and race.

CBD involves the following steps:

        1. Telling the story and providing recognition

        2. Building cross relationships in order to be with one another

        3. Acknowledgement

        4. Apology at all levels with the expression of regret

        5. Acceptance of the apology

        6. Compensation

        7. Treaty to establish a new order
 

Two Challenges to the Rigidity of these Steps:

Challenge #1: Compensation Based on Mutual Gain (Step 6) Must be Integral to Building Cross Relations (Step 2): Introducing development as early as possible allows the parties to:

• Understand the more full terms upon which their relationship may evolve (self-reliance, reducing alienation, and promoting flexible markets)
• Know the potential of generating new wealth based on their mutuality
• Have incentive against abandoning the reconciliation process
• Engage in additional dialogue closer to the outset

Challenge #2: Allow Mutual Accommodation to Unfold before a Final Treaty:

A sustainable treaty embodies an "emerging reality." Have before the drafting of a treaty:

• An unfolding of the parties' new course (having new partnerships created)
• Experiences of mutual accommodation and the realizing prosperity-generating opportunities
• The benefits of new alliances widely enjoyed by the people
• Institutions that promote mutual accommodation

• Drafting a treaty before the unfolding of their new relationship could invite its revision, and at worst limit the flexibility of the parties (communities)
• CBD treaties (and institutions) must reflect local determinations. This may require withholding its drafting until those local realities develop