Contributed articles.

Contributed articles.

Contributed articles.

Contributed articles.

Contributed articles.

Countries emerging from civil war or protracted violence often face the daunting challenge of rebuilding their economy while simultaneously creating the political and social conditions for a stable peace. The implicit assumption in the international community that rapid political democratisation along with economic liberalisation holds the key to sustainable peace is belied by the experiences of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Often, the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction revolve around the timing and sequencing of different reform that may have contradictory implications. Drawing on a range of thematic studies and empirical cases, this book examines how post-conflict reconstruction policies can be better sequenced in order to promote sustainable peace. The book provides evidence that many reforms that are often thought to be imperative in post-conflict societies may be better considered as long-term objectives, and that the immediate imperative for such societies should be 'people-centred' policies.

This volume will improve our collective understanding of how to fight humanity’s persistent and tragic problems with conflicts, climate shocks and disasters. The authors of this volume will offer deep insights, from their research, into the nature of evolving challenges to both global and local sustainability.

The mechanism of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) is widely acknowledged to be an essential component of successful peacekeeping, peace-building, postconflict management, and state-building. Security sector reform (SSR) has emerged as a promising though poorly understood tool for consolidating stability and establishing sovereignty after conflict. While DDR enables a state to recover the monopoly (or at least the preponderance) of force, SSR provides the opportunity for the state to establish the legitimacy of that monopoly.The essays in this book reflect the diversity of experience in DDR and SSR in various contexts. Despite the considerable experience acquired by the international community, the critical interrelationship between DDR and SSR and the ability to use these mechanisms with consistent success remain less than optimally developed. DDR and SSR are essential tools of modern statecraft, but their successful use is contingent upon our understanding of both the affinities and the tensions between them. These essays aim to excite further thought on how these two processes-DDR and SSR-can be implemented effectively and complimentarily to better accomplish the shared goals of viable states and enduring peace.

The profession of peacemaking has been practiced by indigenous communities around the world for many centuries; however, the ethnocentric world view of the West, which dominated the world of ideas for the last five centuries, dismissed indigenous forms of peacemaking as irrelevant and backward tribal rituals. Neither did indigenous forms of peacemaking fit the conception of modernization and development of the new ruling elites who inherited the postcolonial state. The new profession of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which emerged in the West as a new profession during the 1970s, neglected the tradition and practice of indigenous forms of peacemaking. The scant literature which has appeared on this critical subject tends to focus on the ritual aspect of the indigenous practices of peacemaking. The goal of this book is to fill this lacuna in scholarship. More specifically, this work focuses on the process of peacemaking, exploring the major steps of process of peacemaking which the peacemakers follow in dislodging antagonists from the stage of hostile confrontation to peaceful resolution of disputes and eventual reconciliation. The book commences with a critique of ADR for neglecting indigenous processes of peacemaking and then utilizes case studies from different communities around the world to focus on the following major themes: the basic structure of peacemaking process; change and continuity in the traditions of peacemaking; the role of indigenous women in peacemaking; the nature of the tools peacemakers deploy; common features found in indigenous processes of peacemaking; and the overarching goals of peacemaking activities in indigenous communities.

“Why haven’t we been successful in finding sustainable solutions?” is a question that this book attempts to address. This book questions the appropriateness of current approaches to international conflict mediation/peacebuilding and whether today’s practitioners have the necessary patience, passion, and training to manage twenty?first?century conflicts. This book also examines whether the current approaches to the mediation of international conflict and peacebuilding, as well as the education in these fields, effectively consider the influence of the post?Cold War environment and whether they address sub?national conflicts caused by the continually increasing social inequality within societies, among parties with different cultural, religious, racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. The narratives of the lived experiences of this book’s contributors are used to illustrate the challenges associated with achieving sustained global peace in the twenty?first century. Using the author’s conversations with the contributors to the book, as well as educators, this book suggests that a universally adopted answer to the book’s underlying question has not yet been established. Therefore, the objective of this book is to start a public conversation about reforming the current education and practices used in the mediation of international conflicts and peacebuilding. The author hopes that these reforms will enable practitioners in integrating the message of the youth uprisings across the globe in finding sustainable resolutions to social inequality–based conflicts within their societies and among countries across the globe. As all of the citizens of the world continue to live in the midst of conflicts erupting across the globe, this book brings to the surface the urgent and acute need for finding better approaches to address this century’s social inequality?based conflicts. This book seeks to bring hope and to energize individuals with different cultural, religious, ethnic, racial and linguistic backgrounds, as well as individuals with different professional and personal lived experiences to collaboratively work together to achieve sustainable global peace. The author hopes that this book will foster among students, educators, and practitioners a better understanding of international conflict mediators’ approaches for accommodating the inter?relationship between culture and the mediation of international conflicts.