Conflict Management And Peacebuilding

Business, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding examines the actions currently being taken by businesses in areas of violent conflict around the world, and explores how they can make a significant contribution to the resolution of violent conflicts through business-based peacebuilding. This book combines two approaches to provide a comprehensive look at the current state and future of business- based peacebuilding. It marries a detailed study of documented peacebuilding activities with a map of the possibilities for future business-related conflict work and pragmatic suggestions for business leaders, conflict resolution practitioners, and peacebuilding organizations. The use of the label ‘business-based peacebuilding’ is new and signifies actions business can take beyond simple legal compliance or making changes to avoid creating a conflict. Although business-based peacebuilding is new, examples are included from around the world to illustrate that, working together, businesses have a strong contribution to make to the creation of peaceful societies. The book advocates pragmatic peacebuilding, which is not overly concerned with cause-driven models of conflict. Instead, pragmatic peacebuilding encourages an examination of what is needed in the conflict and what can be provided. This approach is free of some of the ideological baggage of traditional peacebuilding and allows for a much wider range of participants in the peacebuilding project. This book will be of much interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, international security and business studies, as well as to practitioners and business leaders. Derek Sweetman is Dispute Resolution Director for Better Business Bureau in Washington, DC and Instructor at New Century College, George Mason University, USA.

This book aims to understand the processes and outcomes that arise from frictional encounters in peacebuilding, when global and local forces meet. Building a sustainable peace after violent conflict is a process that entails competing ideas, political contestation and transformation of power relations. This volume develops the concept of ‘friction’ to better analyse the interplay between global ideas, actors, and practices, and their local counterparts. The chapters examine efforts undertaken to promote sustainable peace in a variety of locations, such as Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone. These case analyses provide a nuanced understanding not simply of local processes, or of the hybrid or mixed agencies, ideas, and processes that are generated, but of the complex interactions that unfold between all of these elements in the context of peacebuilding intervention. The analyses demonstrate how the ambivalent relationship between global and local actors leads to unintended and sometimes counterproductive results of peacebuilding interventions. The approach of this book, with its focus on friction as a conceptual tool, advances the peacebuilding research agenda and adds to two ongoing debates in the peacebuilding field; the debate on hybridity, and the debate on local agency and local ownership. In analysing frictional encounters this volume prepares the ground for a better understanding of the mixed impact peace initiatives have on post-conflict societies. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, conflict resolution, security studies, and international relations in general.

As a basic human need, the provision of safe water is among the highest priorities of government and humanitarian interventions during post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding. In the aftermath of war, water, sanitation, and infrastructure play a critical role in the recovery of livelihoods and economic development. Moreover, shared waters have great potential for interstate cooperation, assisting to rebuild trust following conflict and to prevent a return to conflict. This volume draws on studies from around the world to create a framework for understanding how water resources decisions and activities can facilitate or undermine peacebuilding in a post-conflict setting.

The authors examine the utility of the U.S. Government's whole-of-government (WoG) approach for responding to the challenging security demands of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They specifically discuss the strategic objectives of interagency cooperation particularly in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict management. Discussions range from the conceptual to the practical, with a focus on the challenges and desirability of interagency cooperation in international interventions. The book shares experiences and expertise on the need for and the future of an American grand strategy in an era characterized by increasingly complex security challenges and shrinking budgets. All authors agree that taking the status quo for granted is a major obstacle to developing a successful grand strategy and that government, military, international and nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector are all called upon to contribute their best talents and efforts to joint global peace and security activities. Included are viewpoints from academia, the military, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and industry. Despite the broad range of viewpoints, a number of overarching themes and tentative agreements emerged.

Conflict Resolution in Asia: Mediation and Other Cultural Models is an exploration of human interaction, conflict, and conflict resolution in the incredibly diverse region that consists of South, East, and Southeast Asia. It examines how traditional, indigenous, and culturally based conflict resolution processes interact with more formal legal systems to build infrastructures that address conflicts at the interpersonal to international levels in ways that maintain social harmony. This book provides insight into situations where unique cultures come together to create a larger cultural identity, and how constructive and appropriate conflict resolution systems can work every day to establish positive relationships and overall peace in these complex communities. It demonstrates the importance of culture in addressing conflict and conflict resolution, and validates the significance of culturally appropriate processes in building and sustaining peace. From Southeast Asia, a survey of Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam highlights their rich cultures and conflict resolution processes. From East Asia, Mainland China and Hong Kong show the history of traditional models and the incorporation of mediation within a more formal legal system. Finally, a section on South Asia examines customary methods of dispute resolution working alongside a judiciary structure in India. These nine countries represent very different cultural groups with complex national histories, and varying degrees of influence from Western powers. Using select Asian nations as case studies of conflict resolution systems, this edited book examines the power of mediation and other cultural conflict resolution models as a tool for addressing conflicts and social justice.

When the guns are silenced, those who have survived armed conflict need food, water, shelter, the means to earn a living, and the promise of safety and a return to civil order. Meeting these needs while sustaining peace requires more than simply having governmental structures in place; it requires good governance. Natural resources are essential to sustaining people and peace in post-conflict countries, but governance failures often jeopardize such efforts. This book examines the theory, practice, and often surprising realities of post-conflict governance, natural resource management, and peacebuilding in fifty conflict-affected countries and territories. It includes thirty-nine chapters written by more than seventy researchers, diplomats, military personnel, and practitioners from governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations. The book highlights the mutually reinforcing relationship between natural resource management and good governance. Natural resource management is crucial to rebuilding governance and the rule of law, combating corruption, improving transparency and accountability, engaging disenfranchised populations, and building confidence after conflict. At the same time, good governance is essential for ensuring that natural resource management can meet immediate needs for post-conflict stability and development, while simultaneously laying the foundation for a sustainable peace. Drawing on analyses of the close relationship between governance and natural resource management, the book explores lessons from past conflicts and ongoing reconstruction efforts; illustrates how those lessons may be applied to the formulation and implementation of more effective governance initiatives; and presents an emerging theoretical and practical framework for policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and students. Governance, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding is part of a global initiative to identify and analyze lessons in post-conflict peacebuilding and natural resource management. The project has generated six books of case studies and analyses, with contributions from practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Other books in this series address high-value resources, land, water, livelihoods, and assessing and restoring natural resources.

This clearly articulated statement offers a hopeful and workable approach to conflict—that eternally beleaguering human situation. John Paul Lederach is internationally recognized for his breakthrough thinking and action related to conflict on all levels—person-to-person, factions within communities, warring nations. He explores why "conflict transformation" is more appropriate than "conflict resolution" or "management." But he refuses to be drawn into impractical idealism. Conflict Transformation is an idea with a deep reach. Its practice, says Lederach, requires "both solutions and social change." It asks not simply "How do we end something not desired?", but "How do we end something destructive and build something desired?" How do we deal with the immediate crisis, as well as the long-term situation? What disciplines make such thinking and practices possible? A title in The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series.

This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This book fills a gap in our understanding of the forces that lead to moderation and constructive engagement in the context of violent, intrastate conflicts.

So we'd all like a more peaceful world—no wars, no poverty, no more racism, no community disputes, no office tensions, no marital skirmishes. Lisa Schirch sets forth paths to such realities. In fact, she points a way to more than the absence of conflict. She foresees justpeace—a sustainable state of affairs because it is a peace which insists on justice. Schirch singles out four critical actions that must be undertaken if peace is to take root at any level) — 1.) waging conflict nonviolently; 2.) reducing direct violence; 3.) transforming relationships; and 4.) building capacity. From Schirch's 15 years of experience as a peacebuilding consultant in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A title in The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series.