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Opportunities for Synergy: Conflict Transformation and the Corporate Agenda

This divide between the conflict transformation community and the corporate community is remarkable as there is significant overlap between business interests to establish a stable and peaceful working environment and the peace and conflict transformation agenda. So why is it that, generally speaking, companies and conflict transformation advocates have difficulties hearing each other within this debate? Exploring the answers to this question is the starting point of this article. From there, it is necessary to gain an understanding of how companies view conflict transformation, what leverage companies have in relation to their project cycle, what types of conflict transformation activities companies are currently engaged in, and what will be expected from them in the future. Once this is done, it is then possible to discuss some options that are available to both companies and conflict transformation advocates to increase their engagement and become more strategic in working together in areas of mutual interests and joint concern.

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Reshaping the Expeditionary Army to Win Decisively: The Case for Greater Stabilization Capacity in the Modular Force

Today, the U.S. Army is decisively engaged in both fighting an unfamiliar type of war and transforming itself to meet the challenges of future warfare. But what are those challenges? What capabilities does U.S. strategy demand of its military instrument? Where are the major capability gaps and how should they inform Army Transformation to ensure the future expeditionary Army has the right campaign qualities? The author argues that the major capability gap in today’s force–and vital for future campaigns–is the ability to conduct stabilization. He explores the changes in U.S. strategy that are the impetus behind the need for greater capacity to conduct post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction. Then he analyzes the emerging role of the Army in post-conflict operations in the context of modern combat to more fully understand the specific requirements of stabilization. He then develops an operational concept–progressive stabilization–that complements the Army’s concept of rapid decisive operations, while improving its ability to contribute to long-term conflict resolution. He outlines three key force attributes an expeditionary force structure must have to provide the requisite mix of combat and stabilization capabilities. Finally, he builds on those attributes to suggest three areas where Army leaders must make near-term adjustments in the Modular Force to ensure the nation has a truly expeditionary force with the campaign capacity for both rapid decisive operations and stabilization.

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Supporting Justice, Co-existence and Reconciliation after Armed Conflict: Strategies for Dealing with the Past

Civil wars and state repression have left many societies traumatised and shattered. Unsolved atrocities and injustices can easily provoke new cycles of violence. Impunity may undermine trust in the legal system, increasing the risk that vigilante justice will be resorted to and encourage further atrocities. Mistrust and hatred between former adversaries inhibits reconstruction, decision making and economic development. An amnesty deal may be required to end violence and enable a peace treaty. The call for compromise and national reconciliation may be necessary to ensure an end to hostilities, but past injustices that are never addressed can easily become a source of renewed violent conflict. Often victims can only make peace with their perpetrators if they know their own suffering and that of their loved ones is officially acknowledged. Furthermore, for the reintegration of perpetrators and victims into society they must be commonly accepted. The first section of this chapter reviews various instruments and institutions that have been established to support peaceful coexistence and the restoration of law. It addresses the following questions: Under which conditions can criminal tribunals, truth commissions or amnesty laws be helpful in dealing with past atrocities? How can property issues be solved through mediation or in community courts? The chapter then outlines some general considerations as to the principles and strategies that should be followed by third parties who seek to support such institutions and instruments. Arguing for a long-term approach, the final section summarises some issues for further debate, pointing to some problematic assumptions and developments that have so far gone hand in hand with the current enthusiasm for international criminal law and truth commissions.

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Promoting Group Justice: Fiscal Policies in Post-Conflict Countries

In the aftermath of violent conflict, governments have an opportunity to address fundamental inequalities between internal groups. As taxation and expenditure policies are developed to rebuild a functional domestic economy and infrastructure, policies can be designed to lessen divisions and promote equity. The authors assert that good data about the status quo on inequality in a country is the first step to addressing it through policy. They then discuss some options for formulating a tax code that addresses distributional issues and increases progressivity. Expenditure planning can also be designed to help create equity in income and non-income resources, such as public services, employment, health and education. The role of aid donors is discussed, particularly as a source of successful strategies gleaned from other post-conflict countries.

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Trends and Causes of Armed Conflict

From the start of 1990 to the end of 1999 there were 118 armed conflicts world wide, involving 80 states and two para-state regions and resulting in the death of approximately six million people. If we seek to prevent conflict from escalating into armed warfare, or, failing that, to at least achieve an end to fighting as soon as possible, and if we want to maximise the opportunity for avoiding the return of the war after apparent settlement, we must first be sure that we properly understand armed conflicts and their causes. This chapter attempts to provide a brief overview of what is known and understood about the causes of armed conflict. The theoretical basis of that knowledge is both limited and important. It is limited, in that it does not offer much by way of general explanation of the phenomenon of armed conflict; this is, perhaps, hardly surprising, given its complexity and diversity. It is also important because it provides valuable guidance as to where to look when analysing individual conflicts for signs of potential escalation and when seeking opportunities for preventing violent escalation. The chapter begins by discussing the incidence and nature of armed conflicts during the 1990s. It then reviews the current state of theoretical knowledge with the aim of providing not only an overview but also a source of further reference, before proceeding to methodology. The article then identifies the paired concepts of justice and mobilisation as the best way to link different types and levels of causes, to connect the short-term with the long-term and to relate the socio-economic background with the political foreground. It illustrates this by looking more closely at the category referred to as ethnic conflict.

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The Civilisation of Conflict: Constructive Pacifism as a Guiding Notion for Conflict Transformation

How, and by what means, is peace constituted? In the first two decades of the twentieth century, a leading pacifist, Alfred H. Fried, set this fundamental question at the heart of the pacifist programme. Causal pacifism was the key term. The doctrine of causal or cause/effect pacifism is therefore rooted in an attempt to think systematically about the prerequisites and conditions for peace. Irrespective of whether or not this specific term was used by individual authors, causal pacifism was a key academic and practical issue in the classical pacifism debate. It is one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century that this concept declined in popularity among pacifist movements and finally became a non-issue. In a twentieth century marked by violence, war, genocide and mutual threats of destruction within the framework of deterrence, antimilitarism – for quite understandable reasons – came to dominate the pacifist agenda and shape its thinking and action. In short, causal pacifism and comparable approaches could therefore also be described as ‘constructive pacifism’ – a pacifism that is geared to the construction and architecture of peace.

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Conflict Resoultion and Reconciliation in the Arab World: The Work of Civil Society Organizations in Lebanon and Morocco

A tense relationship has marked decades of interaction between Arab regimes and their civil societies in the areas of human rights, democracy, governance reform, justice and reconciliation. While the role of civil society in development, humanitarian and environmental issues has generally been tolerated more easily by Arab governments, the same cannot be said for the areas just mentioned. In recent years there has been greater awareness of the increasing importance of civil society in assisting governments to push forward the wheel of development. There exists, though, no clear assessment of the role of civil society in reform movements or the degree and seriousness of their involvement to date. This article aims to contribute to closing this gap by exploring crucial civil society functions – strengthening civic engagement and community-empowerment – in the specific context of the Arab world, and by introducing the work of a number of organisations in this region. The next section briefly discusses the role of Arab civil society organisations (CSOs) and NGOs and explains some of their functions. Section three reflects on traditional conflict resolution and reconciliation methods and their relation to the “Western field” of conflict resolution. Section four presents cases from Lebanon and Morocco, looking at concrete projects, objectives and achievements of organisations, while section five discusses common challenges. The final section identifies possible next steps in light of the current political developments in the region.

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From Resolution to Transformation: The Role of Dialogue Projects

Dialogues can be viewed as one means – if not the classical one – of dealing constructively with conflicts. In the following, I propose to examine some of the core features of dialogue projects, looking at their variations and implications in greater detail. First I will give an overview of several different ‘ideal types’ of dialogues, as well as identifying the basic elements of most dialogue processes. Second, I will distinguish between four concepts of dialogue work, a taxonomy which serves primarily to illustrate the practical nature of such projects. Third, dialogue projects will be set in the context of various approaches to handling conflict, in order to better establish criteria for measuring success. Fourth, I will present a number of lessons learned in the course of recent evaluation studies. The questions raised above will be discussed at the end, on the basis of the underlying empirical experience on which this chapter is based.

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Employing the Environment as a Peacebuilding Tool: Environmental Peacemaking in the Context of Post-conflict Peacebuilding in Liberia and Mozambique

This paper aims at contributing to this branch of research by providing first attempts for a theoretical discussion of the role of environmental cooperation in post-conflict peacebuilding, followed by an illustration of two concrete peacebuilding cases: Liberia and Mozambique. The major underlying question is how a closer link between research on environmental peacemaking and post-conflict peacebuilding can be achieved. The paper argues that both branches of research have historically been rather detached from one another. Work on the link between environmental aspects and security has often been dominated by environmentalists, e.g. water engineers or conservationists, while research on post-conflict peacebuilding has often been done by those specialized in the fields of international relations or conflict resolution. A systematic study of potential spill-over effects between research and environmental peacemaking and other branches of research might therefore reveal interesting findings about the potential role of environmental peacemaking in the context of post-conflict countries. Chapter 2 provides a start into this discussion by reviewing some of the core literature on the link between natural resources and violent conflicts, the theoretical background of the environmental peacemaking theory, and some of the literature on post-conflict peacebuilding. Chapter 3 uses the insights gained from this theoretical discussion in order to systematically look for interconnections and spill-over effects. As a result of this discussion, concrete hypotheses about the role of environmental peacemaking in post-conflict countries will be derived. Chapters 4 and 5 contain a discussion of the peacebuilding challenges in Mozambique and Liberia, followed by an analysis of the potential role for environmental peacemaking to support their peacebuilding processes. Chapter 6 contains the conclusions of this discussion, followed by a range of concrete policy recommendations, addressed primarily to the international community.

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Assessing the State-of-the-Art in Conflict Transformation

The following analysis aims to provide some direction through the jungle of conceptual and definitional imprecision that is prevalent in the overall field of conflict management and conflict transformation. The guiding question in this analysis is how to map out conceptually and theoretically the fields of conflict management and conflict transformation. This question will be discussed in the context of the conflict management field with reference to three possible approaches: conflict settlement, conflict resolution and conflict transformation. To give the following analysis a useful framework, I will first focus on the research agenda and research questions, and then move forward to review the role of theory and research methods.

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“Frameworkers” and “Circlers” – Exploring Assumptions in Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment

[carouselgallery number=”-1″ category=””]This article was borne out of a need to bring together two contending constituencies and their arguments about why and how to identify impact in peacebuilding initiatives in practice. The two constituencies, which I call “frameworkers” and “circlers” in this article, involve sets of people who blend across the lines of development and conflict transformation work and possess very different arguments about how to conceptualise and operationalise issues of impact and change in programme design, monitoring and evaluation. In this article, I begin by outlining the two basic constituencies. I then briefly review the current status of peacebuilding monitoring and evaluation, and reflect on which constituency dominates at present. This is followed by an analysis of a series of topics that are debated between the two groups; some of these topics are debated openly and addressed by other works that examine peacebuilding monitoring and evaluation, and some lie below the surface or are not articulated as debates. Finally, I present some concrete examples of ways that peacebuilding or other social change oriented programmes have adpoted to bridge the positions in practice and identify practices that can strengthen particular areas that are currently under-developed and can benefit programmes.

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Civil-Military Cooperation in Peace Operations: The Case of Kosovo

The humanitarian intervention in Kosovo provides an excellent case study of civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) in peace operations. The intervention required 40,000 heavily armed combat troops from NATO and Partnership for Peace countries to provide security and coordinate relief efforts with the UN, the OSCE, and over 500 humanitarian organizations. CIMIC provided the mechanism for such cooperation and support. Like any concept employed in coalition warfare, CIMIC varied widely in the quality of its application. This study examines the effectiveness of CIMIC within each brigade area and throughout the province as a whole. It identifies best practices and common mistakes to derive lessons that might inform the conduct of future missions, such as those currently underway in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Right-Financing Security Sector Reform

Security sector reform (SSR) in post-conflict environments encompasses a broad range of efforts to improve capacity, governance, performance, and sustainability. The fiscal implications of SSR decisions often are neglected, however. The negative consequences of this neglect include unsustainable reforms, the squeezing out of other vital sectors, and ultimately under-provision of security itself. This paper argues for a “right-financing” approach to SSR that strikes an appropriate balance between current needs and the goal of building a fiscally sustainable security sector. The paper offers four policy proposals: first, build fiscal dimensions of the security sector into peace agreements, post-conflict needs assessments, development strategies, and expenditure planning; second, align short-run policies with long-term budgetary realities; third, move to a “service-delivery” model based on provision of law-and-order and justice services to the citizens; and finally, strengthen international capacities to support these right-financing policies.

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Using the Media for Conflict Transformation: The Common Ground Experience

Founded in 1982, CG is a non-governmental organization (NGO) funded by donations from a range of foundations, governments, businesses, multilateral organizations and individuals. Striving for winwin solutions in cross-cultural integration, CG engages in a long-term process of transformation primarily through media-related projects. This comprises a wide spectrum of very different media work formats, even peace songs, street theatre, posters or comics . Using one of these types or a combination of activities, CG strives to strengthen local capacities to deal with conflict. CG has been working in Angola, Burundi, Greece and Turkey, Iran and the United States, Liberia, Macedonia, the Middle East, Sierra Leone, the Ukraine, Indonesia, and the Balkans. The work of CG is illustrated here to outline the potential of media in conflict transformation.

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Transforming Cultural Conflict in an Age of Complexity

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the cultural dimensions of conflict. Books, studies, and courses have offered perspectives on the nature of culture and its complex relationship to the transformation of conflict. Yet, ethnic and cultural fault-lines in multiple destructive conflicts continue to bring high-profile reminders of the frailty of our approaches when faced with generational hatred and enemy identities. What has brought culture onto centre stage as a feature of conflict? Among other factors, the role of world militaries continues to shift from cold war strategies of deterrence to hot peace missions of peace keeping and peace building. These deployments typically involve multinational forces in countries divided by intense ethnic conflicts, necessitate extended interaction with local cultures, and frequently include efforts to strengthen civil societies that are deeply rooted in diverse cultural and historical traditions. Thus, these teams themselves experience cultural miscommunications and conflicts as they are dealing with the same in the populations they have come to serve. In this article, I will focus on ways culture operates both as a resource and a barrier. The next section will present three metaphorical perspectives: first, culture as a lens, secondly, culture as a medium for sustaining life, and, lastly, culture as a symbolic, interactive system, both shaping and reflecting identity and meaning. Each of these perspectives informs the contextual approach to transforming intercultural conflict that I will present in the final section.

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Resources for Peace? Managing Revenues from Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict Environments

Revenues from extractive sectors such as oil and gas, minerals, and logging play an important role in many post-conflict environments, often providing more than 30% of state fiscal receipts. When managed well, these revenues can help to finance postwar reconstruction and other vital peace-related needs. When mismanaged, however, resource revenues can undermine both economic performance and the quality of governance, thereby heightening the risk of renewed violence. This paper offers a number of proposals for managing revenues from extractive industries to better support peacebuilding.

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Prevention of Ethnic Conflict: Lessons from Romania

The general aim of the paper is to examine conclusions stemming from empirical research and contribute to the studies on the possibility of ethnic conflict prevention. The analysis has the following goals: a) Exploration of case study related to the situation of the Hungarian minority in Romania since the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu and the 1990 confrontation to the results of 2000 elections and their aftermath. b) Discussion on practical lessons for ethnic conflict prevention that could be drawn from the case after ten years of developments. c) Formulation of initial conclusions concerning the relevance of the Romanian experience for a model of ethnic conflict dynamics.

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Participatory Action-Research in Post-Conflict Situations: The Example of the War-Torn Societies Project

This report provides an overview of the War-torn Societies Project (WSP). The WSP began in 1994 as an experimental project. It facilitates the active involvement of local, national and international actors in ongoing collective research and dialogue that allows societies emerging from conflict to better understand and respond to the challenges of social, economic and political reconstruction. Headquartered in Geneva and supported by almost thirty donor governments and aid agencies, WSP has been engaged in experimental field-based activities in Eritrea, Guatemala, Mozambique and Somalia over the past six years. WSP contributes to the recovery and strengthening of societies emerging from conflict by bringing together indigenous actors (including former adversaries and victims) to set priorities, build consensus and formulate responses, aided by participatory action-research, and with the help of regular consultation with external aid providers. WSP’s carefully defined methodology embodies principles of local capacity and responsibility; wide-ranging participation; better understanding of differing interests and objectives; proper use of relevant data and analysis in integrative decision-making; practical policy impact; and a catalytic rather than a dominating role by international actors. In mid-2000, the experimental pilot phase of the project evolved into the establishment of a successor body. Under the name ‘WSP International’, the project’s work will be further tested in new country projects with new variables in order to draw further lessons.

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Architects of the State: International Organizations and the Reconstruction of States in the Global South

Since the G-7 called for a new international financial architecture, international financial institutions have been designing templates for markets and the laws that govern them. Corporate bankruptcy regimes have been among the bundle of reform packages urged upon developing and transitional countries. While widely enacted and formally instituted, however, many bankruptcy reforms have failed to meet expectations. Among the reasons for failure is a fundamental threat with which international organizations confront states, namely, the restructuring of the state itself. Corporate reorganization regimes reformed in compliance with global norms conventionally demand state reorganization. This paper demonstrates how global designs of bankruptcy regimes fared in three Asian countries variously affected by the Asian Financial Crisis: China, Indonesia and Korea. It examines four aspects of state restructuring: shifting the boundary between the market and state; shifting power among government agencies; vesting powers in the state; and adapting state structure to political society. The paper argues that the efficacy of transnational pressures for state restructuring turns on the recursive interplay of (a) the situation in which global designs come to be placed on national policy agendas, (b) the clarity of the global norms, (c) the power of the international organizations, (d) the weakness of nation-states, (e) the magnitude of the shift in power required by a state to conform to global designs, (f) the continuity of exogenously encouraged reforms with domestic trajectories for change, and (g) the extent of local demand and mobilization.

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Dealing with the Past in the Context of Ethnonationalism. The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia

This text is based on a thesis that was presented at the Department of Peace Studies at Coventry University. The thesis presents a range of efforts being undertaken by civil society groups in the region, highlighting the absence of initiatives on the part of the government(s) and the wider public sphere(s). It concludes with an appeal to form broader alliances, and to also seek partners beyond those groups already working in this field. This implies, however, that two frequently observed tendencies among NGOs – both the mutual suspicion with which they regard each other, and the widespread prejudice that all politicians are incurable ethnonationalists – must first be overcome.

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Methods of Third-Party Intervention

This article will focus first on the method of mediation, acknowledging its role as one of the most commonly applied and studied forms of intervention in conflicts. This will set the larger stage for a consideration of the various forms and functions of third-party intervention, some of which draw their appeal from their supplementary nature to mediation and negotiation. A rudimentary model for matching types of interventions to the stage of conflict escalation will be presented as an initial heuristic for realizing the potential complementarity of different forms of intervention. Finally, a number of issues will be identified that can affect the overall current and future usefulness of third-party intervention in addressing the multitude of destructive conflicts that regularly beset humankind.

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Recovering From Violent Conflict: Regeneration and (Re-)Integration as Elements of Peacebuilding

In the last decade of the 20th century 43 countries have been considered as countries emerging from violent conflicts. Most of them were affected by intra-state wars and civil wars, and most of these belong to the category of the poorest (“less developed countries” according to criteria of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). An extraordinary high percentage was located in the African continent. The international community pledged more than one hundred billion dollars in aid to war-torn societies. These were designed to build up infrastructure, to persuade formerly warring parties to resolve conflict in a non-violent way and to contribute to economic development and participatory governance. Experts and political actors have stated that international agencies often used too narrowminded a concept in the past, reducing their activities to technical reconstruction after the end of violent conflict. A broader conceptualisation is needed to support the difficult long-term process of transformation from war to peace. This chapter gives an overview of the variety of tasks required to make post-conflict recovery successful in the sense of preventing further conflict and some tensions and dilemmas are identified and discussed.

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This report was written with the intention of providing information and enhancing the debate around accountability processes, and in particular further prosecutions in South Africa. The report begins with an overview of the international obligations around holding perpetrators accountable within post-conflict societies. This overview also includes a description of attempts in Argentina and Chile to pursue prosecutions in conjunction with (or following upon) a truth commission. The next section of the report focuses specifically on South Africa, and consolidates the information on indemnities, amnesties and prosecutions from the 1990s to present. A legal analysis of the amended prosecution guidelines, passed in 2005 is then provided. This analysis is provided in that it is deemed as a policy which has, and will continue to, affect prosecutions for “conflicts of the past.” The report then continues with a case study of the Highgate Massacre of 1993, which explores the opportunities and challenges for further investigations and prosecutions. Finally, some concluding remarks are made which highlights some of the key points outlined through the report.

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Nonviolent Resistance and Conflict Transformation in Power Asymmetries

This article argues that nonviolent resistance should instead be seen as an integral part of conflict transformation, offering one possible approach to achieving peace and justice, alongside other methods of conflict intervention focusing on dialogue, problem-solving and the restoration of cooperative relationships (e.g. mediation, negotiation, restorative justice, etc.). It is especially relevant for the early transitional stage of latent asymmetric conflicts, as a strategy for empowering grievance groups (oppressed minorities or disempowered majorities) looking for constructive and efficient ways to attain justice, human rights and democracy without recourse to violence. While nonviolent techniques have been widely used by single-interest groups such as trade unions and anti-nuclear, indigenous or environmentalist movements, this article refers primarily to nation-wide campaigns by identity or national groups who are challenging internal oppression or external aggression and occupation, and seeking either self-determination or civil rights in a truly democratic and multicultural state. Although nonviolent action has also been advocated as a national strategy of civilian-based defence and dissuasion against external aggression, this article focuses more specifically on ways it has been applied by non-state actors such as social movements and grassroots organisations.

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Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario

In October 2002, the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, in coordination with the Office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff/G-3, initiated a study to analyze how American and coalition forces can best address the requirements that will necessarily follow operational victory in a war with Iraq. The objectives of the project were to determine and analyze probable missions for military forces in a post-Saddam Iraq; examine associated challenges; and formulate strategic recommendations for transferring responsibilities to coalition partners or civilian organizations, mitigating local animosity, and facilitating overall mission accomplishment in the war against terrorism. The study has much to offer planners and executors of operations to occupy and reconstruct Iraq, but also has many insights that will apply to achieving strategic objectives in any conflict after hostilities are concluded. The current war against terrorism has highlighted the danger posed by failed and struggling states. If this nation and its coalition partners decide to undertake the mission to remove Saddam Hussein, they will also have to be prepared to dedicate considerable time, manpower, and money to the effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fighting is over. Otherwise, the success of military operations will be ephemeral, and the problems they were designed to eliminate could return or be replaced by new and more virulent difficulties.

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State Building and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Lessons From Bosnia

This paper examines the record of the international community in constructing a State of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It finds that, among the many goals of the peace mission, creating a self-sustaining constitutional order has not always been the highest priority. Only recently has the international community begun to focus explicitly on creating the domestic institutions necessary for Bosnia to become a sustainable entity. The paper identifies three principal obstacles to the state-building mission. First, the Dayton Agreement created a highly dispersed constitutional structure, with weak central authority. Second, wartime conditions in Bosnia gave rise to local power structures with a vested interest in preserving the weak state. Third, weak governance capacity in the Bosnian state is itself a threat to the peace process, fostering conditions of economic and social insecurity. Examining the record of the mission to date, the paper finds that here have been three phases to the international mission in Bosnia. The first focused on military stabilisation and reconstruction, and was characterised by the willingness of the international community to work directly with local power structures, often at the expense of the constitutional order. The second phase saw a dramatic evolution in the powers of the High Representative, allowing some important breakthroughs. However, the quasi-protectorate has tended to inhibit the development of domestic political processes, particularly where the international community has tried to influence electoral outcomes. The third phase, which is just getting underway, consists of a more systematic approach to state building.

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This paper examines the experience of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), specifically, its Post-Conflict Assessment Unit (PCAU), as an instrument of post-conflict environmental peacemaking. The ecological challenges facing war-torn societies can be as daunting as the social ones, as people struggle to provide themselves with clean water, sanitation, food and energy supplies in settings marked by toxification, the destruction of infrastructure, the loss of livelihoods, and the disruption of local institutions. Over time, these immediate environmental difficulties evolve into more diffuse but equally important challenges: establishing systems of environmental governance, creating the requisite administrative and institutional capacity, and finding sustainable trajectories for economic reconstruction and development. If handled effectively, environmental challenges may create a solid foundation for peace and sustainable development; if handled poorly, they risk undercutting the already tenuous peace that typically marks such situations. The paper identifies common patterns across several recent cases in which UNEP/PCAU has been active. Particular attention is paid to UNEP’s impact, or lack thereof, with regard to four core themes: (1) the problem of reconstituting government; (2) monitoring and assessment challenges in militarized environments; (3) linking environmental assistance and humanitarian aid; and (4) moving from environmental clean-up to planning and administration.

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Commercial Security in Humanitarian and Post-Conflict Settings: An Exploratory Study

Commercial security is increasingly present in humanitarian and post-conflict settings. The UN has even considered using commercial security to solve peacekeeping shortfalls. Yet using commercial security in these settings raises difficult ethical, operational and strategic questions. This exploratory study begins to describe the decentralized, ad hoc use of commercial security in these settings, in an attempt to provoke the further research and discussion needed before these questions can be adequately answered. The study involved forty-four interviews with senior officials, describing their organizations’ relations with commercial security providers. It deals with a wide variety of users and providers, while highlighting common themes and previously obscured fault lines.

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Towards Conflict Transformation and a Just Peace

This chapter is an attempt to do two things: first, to make sense of some of the economic, political and social origins and dynamics of organised violence; second, determine how conflict analysis and conflict resolution processes might enable diverse actors concerned with violent conflict at the official and unofficial levels to change the attitudes, behaviours and institutions which generate structural (indirect) and direct violence. It will begin with an acknowledgement of the centrality of structural transformation for stable peace and an analysis of some of the underlying political and economic dynamics that form the backdrop to modern conflict. It will then examine how and why conflict resolution practitioners should focus more attention on the political economy of conflict in the analysis, design and implementation of conflict intervention processes.

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Options for Revenue Generation in Post-Conflict Environments

In the wake of violent conflict, a key element of building a durable peace is building a state with the ability to collect and manage public resources. To implement peace accords and to provide public services, the government must be able to collect revenue, allocate resources, and manage expenditure in a manner that is regarded by its citizens as effective and equitable. In this new PERI Working Paper, Michael Carnahan of the Australian National University grapples with the impact of conflict on policy, administrative systems, and overall activity, as well as the impact of pressures from the international community. The author makes five specific recommendations, including a link between revenue collections and donor aid, a reassessment of U.N. policies, changes in tax policies for foreign workers and donors’ contractors, and establishing urban land taxation systems.

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Winning the Peace: Principles for Post-Conflict Operations

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has relearned painful lessons on how to win the peace. Institutionalizing these lessons requires establishing a common national strategic concept for post-conflict operations. Post-conflict operations are among the most difficult to plan and execute, even under the best of circumstances. Expectations that post-conflict activities will be smooth, uncomplicated, frictionless, and nonviolent are unrealistic, as is the assumption that grievous policy errors or strategic misjudgments cause all difficulties. The Administration and Congress must adopt policies that ensure effective interagency operations and unity of effort. Successful post-conflict operations cannot be planned effectively in Foggy Bottom or the Pentagon. Planning and implementation must be done in theater, in concert with the military combatant commands.

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Building States to Build Peace

There is increasing consensus among scholars and policy analysts that successful peacebuilding can occur only in the context of capable state institutions. But how can legitimate and sustainable states best be established in the aftermath of civil wars? And what role should international actors play in supporting the vital process? Addressing these questions, this state-of-the-art volume explores the core challenges involved in institutionalizing postconflict states. The combination of thematic chapters and in-depth case studies covers the full range of the most vexing and diverse problems confronting domestic and international actors seeking to build states while building peace. Case studies include: Somalia, Palestine, Bosnia, East Timor / Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Liberia

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Neither Loyalty, Nor Fear: Some Thoughts on Building Greater Respect for Justice and Law in South Africa

In the midst of the current crisis of crime and violence, it seems almost trite to state that there is a need for greater respect for justice and the law in South Africa. As reflected in some recent studies on organised crime, attitudes of ambivalence towards the law on the part of many South Africans contribute to an environment in which organised, and other crime, flourishes. Known criminals are widely tolerated, or even admired – notably if they are perceived as preying on people from other communities. This forms part of a culture which also condones other illegal practices, spanning everything from the buying of stolen goods and illegal reconnections, to corruption and white-collar crime. The fact that there is also a significant problem of vigilantism is also obviously a manifestation of a lack of respect for the law. Vigilantism is, in part, motivated by the sense that people have that they need to take the law into their own hands as they cannot rely on the criminal justice system to enforce the law. This belief in the ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system in turn provides vigilantes with the confidence that, in punishing the alleged perpetrators of the original crime, they themselves can violate the law with impunity.

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The Role of Development Aid in Conflict Transformation: Facilitating Empowerment Processes and Community Building

This chapter will focus on the practical experience of traditional relief and development projects working on complex emergencies in the field of community development. As the authors explore the nexus between conflict transformation on the one hand and participatory and empowerment approaches on the other, they will critically assess the potential of common empowerment approaches within community building not only to avoid doing harm but also to make a substantive contribution to conflict transformation at the local level. The empirical base of the chapter lies within participatory research and in the experiences of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation in the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka. Sections II and III will explore recent aspects of the conflict transformation discourse, paying particular attention to conclusions that might be drawn concerning the role of development aid in complex emergencies. Sections IV and V introduce some common participatory and empowerment approaches within the field of community development, delineating their theoretical objectives as well as their practical implementation. Section VI critically discusses possible spaces of action, as well as constraints, dilemmas and ambivalences for the facilitation of empowerment processes through development aid within complex emergencies. The authors conclude with future prospects on the potentials, constraints and ambivalence of empowerment approaches and recommend a more political role for development aid in complex emergencies as it engages in more inclusive community building through processes of empowerment and recognition.

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Afghan Women and the Democratic Reconstruction of Afghanistan. Findings and Interviews from a Journalist’s Field Trip

Since the end of the Taliban regime the question has arisen how Afghan women, after years of exclusion from political life, can be helped to get involved in the democratic reconstruction of their country.This report attempts to make suggestions and to point out obstacles to this by dealing with various areas of social life in Afghanistan relevant to women. It is based on a field trip to Afghanistan and the Pakistani border town of Peshawar in February and March 2002 as well as numerous conversations with exiled Afghan women, mainly in Germany. Around 80 Afghan women were interviewed in all.

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Restoring Dignity: Current Psychosocial Interventions with Ex-Combatants in South Africa: A Review, Discussion and Policy Dialogue Project.

Countries that have been through transition find themselves faced with the task of (re)building political, economic and social stability. One of the main areas of concern for countries that have experienced some form of conflict on the path towards democracy (like South Africa) is the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants. DDR programmes have been developed and implemented across the continent. According to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone (Harsch, 2005), long-term stability depends on the existence of a comprehensive DDR programme. In reality, however, these programmes tend to fall short of being comprehensive. In countries where aspects of the DDR process were poorly managed, such as South Africa, the effects are still being felt today. According to Everatt & Jennings (2006), the demobilisation process in South Africa was riddled with difficulties. Many ex-combatants were not included and the process was characterised by several administrative problems. They go on to describe the process as “a complete mess” (2006, p.21) and suggest that due to this it is not surprising that many ex-combatants continue to strugglle. The project aims to empower ex-combatants to engage in policy dialogue with key stakeholders on addressing their psychosocial needs. This will be achieved through facilitating their engagement in evaluating and identifying gaps in the psychosocial services available to them.

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Early Warning and the Field: A Cargo Cult Science?

Early warning is a large field with many different methodologies operating on different levels and with a wide range of issues. There are a broad variety of actors involved in these systems from grassroots projects to academics working on computer simulations. Few people would disagree with the concept of early warning: to obtain knowledge and, what is more, to use that knowledge to assist in the mitigation of conflict. In this sense, early warning is an irrefutable necessity. There is a need to actively engage in crisis prevention where the first step is the prognosis of when, why and where conflict will erupt. This is the same process as any troubleshooting: what is the problem and cause, how imminent and what can we do about it? The options that can be taken are necessarily tied to the understanding of the cause. It is, in this sense, that crisis prevention is coupled to early warning. Although related, it is different to ask whether early warning systems are essential or whether they can be successful. They are related to each other because the concepts of early warning behind their importance are in turn the criteria of success. This chapter will critically review whether early warning systems can effectively: (a) identify the causes of conflict, (b) predict the outbreak of conflict, and, what is more, (c) mitigate that conflict.