Preventing Violence in Future Elections: Moving towards an Early Warning System for Zimbabwe

Abstract

The world more than ever before is aware of the role of peace as sine qua non for national and global development as well as for achieving a better quality of life for citizens. This is a crucial condition for sustained peace and peacebuilding. The Millennium Declaration and the subsequent adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by world leaders was probably the single most important universal agreement and commitment to a better life for all in the qhole history of humankind. The most significant aspect of this declaration was the commitment, first, to a set of goals and associated measurable indicators that aimed to address the most critical aspects of ensuring decent and dignified human life and, second, to achieve these goals within a predetermined time, by 2015. Thus, the content of the goals was defined and the time within which they had to be achieved was set. The eight MDGs and their 48 indicators involve heroic and major presumptions necessary to their achievement. These heroic assunptions are not explicit but are rather implied. First, the goals assume conditions of peace exist and, second, regarding indicators, the assumption is that these goals can be measured because conditions for and instruments of measurement do exist.