The New Agenda For Peace Research

First published in 1999, this volume analyses the conditions related not only to physical violence, but also to domination sustained by cultural norms, development practice and environmental policies. Peace research can be established as an integrative project by developing a conceptually coherent map which helps to reveal the locations and sources of violence, examine strategies to deal with them and illuminate structural transitions to a non-hierarchical world order. The themes in various chapters of this book can be submerged under the disciplinary goal of peace research which links the management and prevention of violent conflicts to non-violent structural transformations.

On the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, the world has faced its biggest shared test since the Second World War in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Yet while our welfare, and indeed the permanence of human life, depend on us working together, international cooperation has never been harder to achieve. This report answers a call from UN Member States to provide recommendations to advance our common agenda and to respond to current and future challenges. Its proposals are grounded in a renewal of the social contract, adapted to the challenges of this century, taking into account younger and future generations, complemented by a new global deal to better protect the global commons and deliver global public goods. Through a deepening of solidarity—at the national level, between generations, and in the multilateral system—Our Common Agenda provides a path forward to a greener, safer and better future.

Highly topical analysis of world politics and the role of the UN.

This book concerns the United Nations’ peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2021. Succinctly discussed are historic and contemporary peace, security, and economic engagements within 18 countries spanning eight African regions: the Great Lakes; the Economic Community of Central African States; East Africa; the Horn of Africa; North Africa; the Sahel Region; West Africa; and Southern Africa. The book develops a neo-realist and imperialist critique that discusses how resource-rich, conflict-ridden states have become easy targets for capitalists, terrorists, and transnational crime, aligned to geostrategic parochial interests. Critically argued is that endogenous economic growth factors, if applied effectively, can achieve both peace and security, and meet the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Such efforts require constructive engagement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the book contends that the cornerstone of multilateral engagement involves Africa’s 55 states and the African Union’s three major pillars: the Peace and Security Council, the African Governance Architecture, and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Development Centre, which have the ability to move resource-rich, conflict-ridden states out of transnational crime and poverty. This book offers wide-ranging analyses of contemporary African diplomacy and a compelling critique of UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, which resonates to scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and African politics.

Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.

This book explores the prospects and limits of international intervention in building peace and creating a new state in an ethnically divided society and fragmented international order. The book offers a critical account of the international missions in Kosovo and traces the effectiveness of fluid forms of interventionism. It also explores the co-optation of peace by ethno-nationalist groups and explores how their contradictory perception of peace produced an ungovernable peace, which has been manifested with intractable ethnic antagonisms, state capture, and ignorance of the root causes, drivers, and consequences of the conflict. Under these conditions, prospects for emancipatory peace have not come from external actors, ethno-nationalist elite, and critical resistance movements, but from local and everyday acts of peace formation and agnostic forms for reconciliation. The book proposes an emancipatory agenda for peace in Kosovo embedded on post-ethnic politics and joint commitments to peace, a comprehensive agenda for reconciliation, people-centred security, and peace-enabling external assistance.

Passed in 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent seven Resolutions make up the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. This agenda is a significant international normative and policy framework addressing the gender-specific impacts of conflict on women and girls, including protection against sexual and gender-based violence, promotion of women's participation in peace and security processes, and support for women's roles as peace builders in the prevention of conflict and rebuilding of societies after conflict. Implementation within and across states and international organizations - and within peace and security operations - has been slow despite significant transnational advocacy in support of the WPS agenda. The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security brings together scholars, advocates, and policymakers to provide an overview of what we know concerning what works to promote women's participation in peace and security, what works to protect women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence and other human rights violations, and what works to prevent conflict drawing on women's experiences and knowledge of building peace from local to global levels. Just as importantly, it addresses the gaps in knowledge on and the future direction of scholarship on WPS. The handbook particularly aims to build on the findings from the 2015 Global Study of Resolution 1325, commissioned by the UN-Secretary General. Over the course of six sections, the handbook addresses the concepts and early history behind WPS; the theory and practice of WPS; international institutions involved with the WPS agenda; the implementation of WPS in conflict prevention, peace operations, peace building, arms control, human-rights protection, and protection of civilians; connections between WPS and other UN resolutions and agendas; and the ongoing and future challenges of WPS.

This book analyses the UN’s Agenda 2030 and reveals that progress is lagging on all five interlocking and interdependent themes that are discussed: conflict prevention, development, peace, justice and human rights. Many voices have already been raised, including that of the UN Secretary-General that the Sustainable Development Goals will not be met by 2030 unless there is a re-doubling of efforts. Still, on development as such, there is much striving. The book puts the concept of preventive diplomacy into all of the issues of modern international relations, from the US/China confrontation to the various conflicts bedeviling Africa. It bridges the two worlds of the international relations specialist on the one hand and that of the academic interested in UN affairs on the other hand. There is normally little contact between those two specializations. The authors have taken several current issues to show how the millennium debates and the SDG targets are relevant to "realist school" conflicts, and that there is work under way to operationalize ideas and theories in this respect. This is the first ever discussion of the conflict prevention dimension in the UN’s Agenda 2030 which seeks to advance sustainable development with a view to reinforcing peace and justice on the foundations of respect for universal human rights.