Positive Peace Research Articles

From War Studies to Peace Building and Social Transformation at the University of Zimbabwe in the Post-COVID-19 Era: New Directions

This paper uses a positive peace lens to examine the evolution of the War and Strategic Studies (WSS) degree curriculum, to the degree in Conflict, Peace Building, and Social Transformation (CPST) at the University of Zimbabwe in the year 2021, by considering the global pandemic and seeking new directions in the field. The paper addresses two questions: 1) What changes and factors provoked the change in direction, from the WSS curriculum to CPST, and 2) What are the potential benefits of repackaging the war and strategic studies degree programme? The paper argues that the paradigm shift accommodates pandemics like the COVID-19 which configured social, political, and economic patterns of life, and a new direction emerged, that is, a change of focus from negative to positive peace. Among the reasons for curriculum changes, from WSS to CPST, was the desire to give the programme a human face, and to align the degree so that it promotes the positive peace and sustainable development needed to address trajectories associated with emerging nonviolent threats to humanity – such as a global pandemics. Lastly, we see the new direction of the CPST as a counterhegemonic strategy to address confrontational and militaristic approaches to human conflict. COVID-19 has reminded us that confrontational politics are slowly becoming irrelevant for addressing the ambivalence of life, and in the struggle to contain global pandemics, which pose new threats to peace, security and development.

Peace Education in Post-Conflict Settings

Peace Education is considered to be an important pillar in preventing armed conflict and promoting positive peace. The aim of this article is to understand if education systems help development of peace processes in post-conflict settings and if the idea of implementing Peace Education into the formal curriculum could advance prospects for peace. In the paper three case studies are investigated more deeply – Japan, Germany and the South Caucasus. The article uses secondary sources to present the issue. The literature review includes academic books, articles, and official declarations of international organizations. The paper concludes that examples of integrating Peace Education principles in formal school education curriculums are not numerous, and the lack of a comprehensive data on Peace Education around the world could have been the reason that prevented governments from seeing the importance of implementing Peace Education within their national education systems.

KEHIDUPAN DAMAI DI DESA BENGKAREK KECAMATAN SUNGAI AMBAWANG KABUPATEN KUBU RAYA

AbstractThe community in Bengkarek Village consists of various ethnicities, including those whohave had a history of conflict, namely Dayak and Madurese. As a heterogeneouscommunity group, peace can also be created in this society, although their lifestyle is stillthick with their respective cultural identities, this does not reduce the totality of behavioras a large group that has the same desire for peace. This study uses an ethnographicmethod, examining the phenomenon of peace in the Bengkarek Village community. Theresults of this study are a form of negative and positive peace that moves continuously insociety, prevention and management of conflict and violence is successfully carried outby the community through the role of structural community leaders as well as communityleaders and all residents of Bengkarek Village through a cultural approach (kultutal).These two forms of the peace movement are still in a sustainable phase, especiallypositive peace building in creating a better quality of life from various aspects, suchdevelopment processes still have obstacles so that they are relatively slow.Keywords: Negative and positive peace, Bengkarek Village Community

Assessing experiences with violence and peace in primary schools in Sierra Leone

PurposeThis paper aims to discuss the construction of two composite indices to assess children’s experiences with violence and peace in primary schools in Sierra Leone.Design/methodology/approachThe authors provide a conceptual framework based on the three dimensions of the violence index (direct, structural and cultural violence) and the three dimensions of the positive peace index (inclusion, citizenship and well-being). After that, this work proposes an operationalisation of these concepts based on a survey administered with 2,000 pupils and examine the correlates of the indices.FindingsResults indicate not only a substantial level of violence among the sampled schools but also a considerable level of positive peace. These indices are negatively correlated, suggesting that lower levels of violence are related to higher levels of positive peace. Further analysis also shows that socioeconomic variables and school characteristics such as headteacher experience and teacher qualification are associated with levels of violence and peace. Finally, based on longitudinal evidence, this study also indicates that the prevalence of violence is a significant predictor of reading development among children.Originality/valueThe indicator presented is the first to combine children’s experiences with violence and experiences with positive peace in schools. It is a unique contribution to the measurement of school outcomes that are usually overlooked in the literature.

Teaching Sleeping Dogs New Tricks? Transitional Justice as Identity-Building

Abstract Transitional Justice (TJ) mechanisms have been applied in several post-conflict spaces and commonly hailed by the academy as a – if not the – route to lasting positive peace. Taiwan has seen bouts of at times violent protest, which has given rise to popular and academic claims that renewed TJ efforts are required to achieve true, lasting peace. Against this backdrop, this text identifies sources of grievances and situates Taiwan’s case in the wider TJ literature to then explore Taiwan’s most recent TJ endeavours under Tsai Ying-Wen, focusing on its core mechanism, the Transitional Justice Commission. Engaging other readings of Taiwanese TJ mechanisms, this article argues that Tsai’s TJ mechanisms should be read chiefly as an identity-building project. Located in a wider drive to develop a positive identity for Taiwan, they are an attempt to establish shared historical narratives and ultimately aim to create a more stable Taiwanese identity independent of China as a pivotal Other or benchmark. This process is directed at both domestic and international audiences. This way, Taiwan negotiates, (re-)constructs and reifies a relatively inclusive positive Taiwanese identity not solely through the memories uncovered and remembered through the TJ process, but chiefly through the process itself.

Hybrid Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Participatory Arts and Youth Activism as Vehicles of Social Change

This article provides an analytical case study of a participatory youth-led filmmaking project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using the conceptual framework of hybridity, it critically considers whether and to what extent youth centred, participatory arts projects can facilitate the emergence of a positive hybrid peace. It reflects on three themes—solidarity; creativity as politics; and participation as norm—that speak to the opportunities and challenges encountered during the project. The analysis demonstrates that while participatory arts have the potential to induce a more emancipatory vision of peace, that, and mirroring the warnings from development studies, their effects are not a given and challenges and blockages persist.

ПОЗИТИВНИЙ МИР ДЛЯ АНАЛІЗУ РОСІЙСЬКО- УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ВІЙНИ

Positive peace is an important concept in studying international conflicts. It is urgent to study the viability of positive peace theory to Russia-Ukraine war analysis. The applied method is historical and comparative approach. As a result, it can be concluded that positive peace framework is, overall, applicable for Russia-Ukraine war analysis. In line with the positive peace agenda, it is necessary to develop strong democratic institutions, promote fair business growth, civil liberties, diplomacy and rule of law. Ukraine is further progressing toward this goal, while Russia, on the contrary, demonstrates a trend toward strengthening of authoritaorianism and even outright violation of international law after recognition of «DPR» and «LPR» and the ongoing military aggression against Ukraine. Such different political stances of the two countries’ leadership complicate effective settlement of Russian-Ukrainian war. It can be concluded that much depends on skillfulness and diplomatic experience of primary negotiators, as well as mediators. One should carefully consider use of mediator services and good offices and thereby select mediators who are objective, impartial, trusted by both parties and, besides, who have successful experience of previous mediation cases and establishing dialogue. One of the main international organizations involved in the war settlement since its start have been the UN and the OSCE. However, international organizations, overall, demonstrated partial effectiveness in preventing the Russian-Ukrainian war and achieving de-escalation of violence. One should keep in mind the statement that every peace process is unique, moreover, it is imperative to take into consideration local contexts and strive to achieve positive peace conditions.

Conviviality in Disrupted Socionatural Landscapes: Ecological Peacebuilding around Akagera National Park

Convivial conservation presents itself as a vision of radical cohabitation across the Whole Earth, requiring people at the fringes of protected areas or people everywhere to manage day-to-day coexistence and conflicts with non-human species. This article assesses human-wildlife conflict interventions—an electric fence, compensation for wildlife damages, and traditional ecological knowledge—in a disrupted socionatural landscape, Akagera National Park in Rwanda, from the perspective of a framework of ecological peace. Ecological peace is defined through Galtung's (1969) theory of negative peace (freedom from direct violence) and positive peace (freedom from physical, cultural, and structural violence) as applied to relations between human and non-human species. While barriers and compensation schemes may make sense from the perspective of the conservation community's interests in reducing the negative impacts of wildlife on people, or vice versa, and especially towards improving people's perceptions of wildlife and environmental conservation, these human-wildlife conflict interventions may offer only negative ecological peace. Convivial conservation requires human-wildlife conflict interventions to go beyond negative and liberal peace approaches towards positive ecological peace to transform human and non-human relations for radical cohabitation across the Whole Earth.

BURUNDI: A CONFLICT INTERVENTION DESIGN DURING THE 1990S

Among many various conflict analysis methods, Dennis J. D. Sandole’s three pillar model presents a systematic road-map to identify the main issues, causes, and conditions of conflicts, as well as third-party conflict intervention approach. Three pillar model is also well suited to the analysis of complex conflict in Burundi and its intervention process by the third parties during the 1990s. This paper touches on the issues, causes, and conditions of Burundian conflict as Sandole’s first and second pillars suggest, but primarily focuses on the intervention aspect in line with the third pillar of the model. In this context, the conflict intervention framework in Burundi is examined based on the regionally launched Arusha peace process, which resulted in a peace agreement. Following that, given the multi-level nature of the conflict in Burundi, it is discussed how an effective conflict intervention can be designed in order to resolve conflicts and ensure positive peace in the country. Keywords: Burundi, conflict analysis, Sandole’s Three Pillar Model, conflict intervention.

Meeting the COVID‐19 moment: Peace analysis within the Latin American Council for Peace Research (CLAIP) 1977–2021

AbstractThis article analyzes the foundation of the Latin America Council of Peace Research (CLAIP in Spanish) in 1977 within the complex geopolitical conditions of military coups, lack of democracy, political refugees, Operation Condor, and economic crises. Globally, the geopolitical environment was equally complex with the Vietnam War, Watergate scandal, the School of the America's training militaries in torture, and the rise of the Taliban from the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan. In these adverse conditions, peace research and negotiation of conflicts were crucial. CLAIP developed to meet these needs over a five‐phase process of consolidation: 1. Foundational; 2. Expansion toward whole Latin America; 3. Fragmentation and specialization of peace research; 4. Development of hybrid and amalgam peace theories, and 5. The emergence of different regional approaches focusing also on gender perspective. This convergence has yielded more holistic paradigms that address the multifaceted threats to positive peace posed by the global response to COVID‐19. The article explores the potential for an integrated human, gender, and environmental, an engendered peace paradigm—called the HUGE model—to guarantee even the most marginalized women and girls a peaceful and secure future development in the subcontinent—even in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Pengelolaan Konflik Horizontal di Kampung Harapan Jaya Kabupaten Berau Berbasis Pendekatan Formal dan Informal

This research uses a qualitative methodology by using inductive logic which tries to present new alternative thinking. This research explains a conflict management in Kampung Harapan Jaya, Berau Regency, East Kalimantan. Through discourse analysis, the study seeks to analyze the management of conflicts formed through both formal and informal approaches. The purpose of this research is to contribute to the theoretical realm while making new findings that can be translated into an alternative policy for the government in the context of conflict management in plural areas. The main finding of this research shows that the conflict in Kampung Harapan Jaya is managed through three approaches, namely the figure approach, the region governance approach, and the socio-economic interaction approach among the local community. The region’s governance approach leads to a negative peace situation. Meanwhile, the approach the informal interaction through socio-economic activities based on the local wisdom act has greater potential in creating positive peace situations. This research is important as a contribution to the issue of peace studies based on best practice research

A trans-scalar approach to peacebuilding and transitional justice: Insights from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Peace research has taken a local turn. Yet, conceptual ambiguities, risks of romanticization, and critiques of co-option of the "local" point to the need to look for novel ways to think about the interactions of actors ranging from the global to the local level. Gearoid Millar proposes a trans-scalar approach to peace based on a "consistency of purpose" and a "parity of esteem" for actors across scales. This article analyzes the concept of trans-scalarity in the peace process in Ituri, a province in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Drawing on qualitative data from more than a year of research in the DRC, I argue that while a trans-scalar approach was taken to end violence, it was not applied to transitional justice initiatives. The result was a negative, rather than a positive peace. By showing the high, but still untapped, potential of trans-scalarity, the article makes three contributions. First, it advances the debate on the local turn by adding empirical insights on trans-scalarity and further developing the concept's theoretical foundations. Second, it provides novel empirical insights on the transitional justice process in the DRC. Third, it links scholarship on peacebuilding and transitional justice, which have often remained disconnected.

‘I am the Bridge’: Brokering Health, Development and Peace in Myanmar’s Kayin State

Borderland brokers can play a key role in shaping processes of socio-political change within contexts of ongoing ‘political unsettlement’. Myanmar’s contested ‘transition’ to democracy and peace, which began in 2011, created the space and need for brokers to mediate state–non-state and centre–periphery relations. Ethnographic research focusing on a polio immunisation campaign in Kayin State demonstrates how brokers’ characteristics as network specialists and ‘translators’ allowed them to create a temporary ‘brokerage fix’, facilitating collaboration between actors historically divided by conflict, enabling an internationally funded development intervention, and contributing to local-level peace formation. Yet the ability of brokers to reshape state–non-state and centre–periphery relations in ways more conducive to long-term positive peace and equitable development is constrained by the uncertain and shifting fields of power within which they operate. The 2021 military coup and escalating violence in Myanmar ultimately highlight the more general precariousness and temporality of brokerage networks.

Peace, Protest and Precarity: Making Conceptual Sense of Young People\u2019s Non-violent Dissent in a Period of Intersecting Crises

The current young generation are living through socio-historically situated intersecting crises, including precarity and climate change. In these times of crisis, young people are also bearing witness to a distinctive global wave of youth-led activism involving protest actions. Much of this activism can be deemed dissent because many young activists are calling for systemic change, including the radical disruption, reimagining and rebuilding of the social, economic and political status quo. In this interdisciplinary article, between politics and peace studies, we investigate how the concept of peace plays an important role in some young dissent, and specifically the dissent of young people taking action on climate change. We observed that these young environmental activists often describe their actions in careful terms of positive peace, non-violence, kindness and care, in order to express their dissent as what we interpret as positive civic behaviour. They also use concepts grounded in peace and justice to navigate their economic, political and social precarity. Based on a youth-centred study, drawing on insightful face to face semi-structured interviews in Britain and France with school climate strikers, Friday For Future (FFF) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists, we explore how young environmental activists themselves related their dissent, and especially how they attached importance to it being non-violent and/or peaceful. Stemming from our findings, we discuss how young environmental activists’ vision of violence and non-violence adapted to the structural and personal violence they face at the complex intersections of young marginalization, global inequalities and injustices in the lived impact of climate change and the policing of protest.

North America needs Youth, Peace and Security: young people shifting tides for positive peace

The United Nations' Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda ensures and demands the protection and recognition of young people's roles in peace and security. This article focuses on why domestic YPS implementation is needed with the rise of social justice activism by young people in North America.
 
 The rise of youth activism and youth leadership in social justice movements has given a space for the global political agenda to challenge traditional approaches to "peace and security" frameworks. This includes challenging pre-conceived notions of YPS - and its policy frameworks - as a 'foreign' agenda by North American and other Western countries. We argue that this global shift in youth social justice activism demonstrates the need for critical domestic implementation and policy priorities for the YPS agenda within traditional donor- or Western- States, using Canada and the United States as case studies.

Positive Peace Pillars and Sustainability Dimensions: An Analytical Framework

AbstractDespite broad recognition that peace and sustainability are interrelated, the pathways of their relationship remain ambiguous or nascent at best. We synthesized the literature relevant to the linkages between the two by framing our analysis around the pillars of positive peace and the dimensions of sustainability. Our review reveals that while the existing studies describe the conditions where peace and sustainability considerations interact, empirical evidence of their causal linkages appears limited. Nevertheless, this framing enabled us to consider some of the environmental, social, economic, and institutional conditions that influence the relationship between peace and sustainability. It also shows how our understanding of the peace–sustainability nexus can benefit from integrating environmental sustainability as one of the pillars of positive peace and negative peace as one of the dimensions of sustainability. This review presents opportunities for epistemic communities to navigate the factors and contexts that influence the pursuit of peace and sustainability.

Fragmented Societies and a Fragmenting International System: Implications for Peacemaking

Abstract The cases of peacemaking in Kosovo and Sudan/South Sudan yield insights into the interplay of international politics, relations among political elites, and reconciliation among identity groups. A durable, positive peace requires an approach by peacemakers that encompasses all these dimensions. Complicating matters, the readiness of states to adhere to rules and norms built up over decades has declined in recent years. Absent a concerted effort to (re)build them, the work of peace mediation will become more challenging and the odds of success incalculably longer. This, in turn, will corrode the ability of external powers, competing via proxy, to work together even on unrelated matters in different parts of the globe.

The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Failure of Peacebuilding in Yemen

ABSTRACT Driven by increasing self-confidence and encouraged by Western states, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have gained a prominent role in multilateral efforts to foster peacebuilding in Yemen since the country experienced increased conflict from 2004 onwards. Based on the “negative and positive peace framework” proposed by Johan Galtung, it is possible to argue that the lack of focus of the GCC on fostering “positive peace” and disagreements between the Gulf monarchies heightened by hyper-nationalist tendencies inhibit the ability of this sub-regional organisation to facilitate peacebuilding in Yemen.

An Integrated Approach to Peace and Resource Security

This paper explores the value proposition of using systems tools to model the interlinkages that exist between the security of water, energy, land, and food (WELF) resources and peace. The intersection between these five sectors, referred to as the WELF-Peace nexus, is complex, unfolds in a constrained landscape of specific context and scale, and involves the interaction of multiple systems and their subsystems. Multiple states of combined community peace and resource security are possible. This paper demonstrates the value proposition of using system dynamics to account for the interdependencies that exist between the four sectors of the WELF nexus and the domains of positive peace. Two existing indices, the Positive Peace Index and the Pardee RAND Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Security Index proposed by the Institute for Economy and Peace (IEP) are considered, and their interaction analyzed using system dynamics. The approach can be used to explore different scenarios involving linkages between positive peace and different forms of FEW resource synergy and tradeoff.

The Democratic Peace Theory: Is War a Means to Peace?

In the twenty first century, the idea of democracy has transcended its original conception of domestic governance to actively influence international relations. The nature of state—democratic or nondemocratic—has come to determine hierarchy, alliances, and status in international relations. It tends to bestow a degree of moral superiority to democratic states in dealings of international relations. This moral superiority in its most aggressive form, in the past two decades, has led to wars in the name of democracy. It has been used to justify military intervention in nondemocratic states by democratic nations. The use of force to bring about desired consequences has become the norm in inter-state relations. The focus is not on the action, but on its intent. This article studies the use of force and war by Western democratic countries to establish democracies through military intervention in other parts of the world. The article analyzes the widespread impact of foreign policies of the stronger nation-states and seeks to understand if the desired results are achieved or not. Beginning with the democratic peace theory that is held in high opinion by democracies of today, the article moves toward Immanuel Kant and his idea of perpetual peace. The democratic peace theory finds its base in Kant’s perpetual peace and finds an echo in Western democracies’ foreign policies. The article then sees how this theory is used to justify war, through the case study of Afghanistan, and what is the intention behind the wars. The article concludes that the desired aim of “positive peace” cannot be achieved via violent means. In the process of establishing peaceful and healthy democracy, Kant’s categorical imperatives are crucial.