The Art Of Prevention Of Conflict

Abstract

Only a modest fraction of the Security Council of the United Nations's working time is devoted to actual prevention, while the agenda is dominated by crisis management, conflict resolution, post-conflict operations, peace enforcement and peacekeeping. The European Security Strategy specifies a limited set of key threats, namely terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to which are added regional conflicts, state failure and organised crime . The long-term structural prevention of conflicts depends on a number of factors, including economic stability, inter-ethnic integration, a society based on law and respect for human rights. With the creation in 1992 of the office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) acquired a mechanism that was designed to operate inside states on issues relating to majority-minority relations, with the specific task of preventing the outbreak of violent conflict. Keywords: conflict prevention; European Security Strategy; High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM); inter-ethnic integration; majority-minority relation; Security Council of the United Nations