Conflcit Resolution

In 1970, in the context of the Cold War, a small country in the southern latitude of South America was living a historical political moment with tremendous future consequences. For the first time since the publication of Karl Marx's Das Kapital in 1867, a democratic elective process determined the constitution of a socialist government in the Western Hemisphere (Ensalaco, 2000, p. 5). The country was Chile known as among the most politically stable in the region, and its elected socialist president, Dr. Salvador Allende. Due to diverse and complex political factors, including the covert, and sometimes more conspicuous, destabilizing activities of the United States administration, the elected socialist government experienced continuous misadventures (Bull, 1984, p. 51). As a result, in the morning of September 11th, 1973, a military coalition lead by the commanders of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the National Police took over the constitutional government. The country "was declared at war, and armed forces and police set out to secure their assigned military objectives" (Ensalaco, 2000, p. 27). During several days the de facto the military government faced various focuses of armed resistance coming from some of Allende's supporters, including political groups, and worker and student organizations. As a consequence, almost 500 men and women died during the first weeks after the coup d’état, between September and December of 1973 (p.146). After extinguishing the opposition and taking control of the country, the military Junta established a self-declared provisional government, lead by the Army General, Augusto Pinochet, who would rule Chile for the next sixteen years. This period is characterized by the extradition and incarceration of various opposition figures, as well as by the infamous Desaparecidos [disappeared persons], whose relatives turned first to the Chilean courts, but without any results. These incidents signaled the beginning of a long and painful period of political violence that would divide the country until the present day.

This chapter explores in more detail the definitions of peace and peace education that were introduced in the previous chapter.  To achieve this purpose, it primarily examines the following four questions: What is peace? What are some of the different ways in which peace has been defined? What is peace education? What is the current state of this field and some of its challenge for the future? 

The chapter addresses these questions with reference to the literature on peace and peace education, from their origins through to the latest developments in theory, research, and practice.  Responses to these questions help provide the conceptual background for the more empirical and practical chapters that follow about measuring and creating peace in Chapters 3 and 4, and peace education in Chapters 4 and 5.

The literature on sacred natural sites has often regarded such landscapes and associated institutions as hotspots of conflict. The way in which different parties have utilized sacred sites as the loci for claiming allegiance and rights of access, thereby engendering conflict, has often surfaced in the literature (Barkan & Barkey, 2014;). While in recent years, studies documenting the relevance and role of indigenous institutions and conflict resolution mechanisms have appeared in the literature, the role that sacred natural sites play in conflict resolution has drawn little attention. The relationship between sacred natural sites and the rel-evance of these as instruments for conflict resolution are also little understood. On the other hand, traditional communities in Africa, across time and space have for millennia used sacred natural sites as important instruments in the process of ensuring public order, peace building and conflict resolution (Ajayi & Buhari, 2014; Bukari, 2013); studies are emerging showing that sacred natural sites among indigenous peoples and local communities serve as the locus of peace building and conflict resolution (Posey, 2000; Sponsel, 2008, 2012, 2013).

This chapter intends to address the issue of the role sacred natural sites play in conflict resolution, aside from their being often regarded as loci of conflictual relationships. The chapter will attempt to address such salient issues as: why and how traditional communities utilize sacred nature as a resource and instrument of conflict resolution; types of issues and conflicts commonly managed within the remit of sacred site institutions’ conflict resolution instrumentality; the foun-dational principles and processes involved in the sacred nature-based conflict resolution; the mechanisms and social organization of such processes; and the resilience and dynamics of conflict resolution instrumentality of sacred sites and factors that challenge their continuity.

This report helps trace the development of conflict situations in three southern regions of Kyrgyzstan.  The report covers the social, economic, cultural, political, ecological, and other aspects of the existing problems that may cause social tension in the region.

Even though many problems are common for the entire region, each province has its peculiarities.  To better present the situation this report consists of three parts that help see the changes based on risk factors in Osh, Jalalabat, and Batken provinces.

We hope that this material will help the government trace the development in the whole region and each province in particular, and identify the threat of social tension and aggravation, and to work more efficiently on its prevention.

Religion and power. The cultural context of mediation in rural Cambodia.

This paper explores the role of religion in the re-establishment of grass roots mediation processes in rural Cambodia. While cultural dimensions of mediation have begun to receive more attention in the design of mediation processes in post-conflict settings, developments in Cambodia provide potentially valuable insights into how secular perspectives on the context of mediation and conflict resolution can miss important dimensions of pre-existing processes. The avowed purpose of the 1990s United Nations (UN) intervention was the rebuilding of Cambodian society, with a specific focus on the development of more democratic mediation and conflict resolution processes. Twenty years after the departure of UN peace-keepers, mediation and conflict resolution processes at the grass roots level are developing steadily, but there has been little growth in the development of a civil society able to withstand global economic forces that have left the rich and powerful much more rich and much more powerful, and the poor as poor and powerless as they ever were. This paper explores the theoretical frameworks behind the mediation and conflict resolution process that have developed. It marshals recent research to illuminate how a lack of awareness of the need to strengthen indigenous cultural structures and perspectives, particularly those enshrined in religious frameworks, has proved to be a major impediment to the development of effective counter-balances to the exploitative forces of those with access to raw power. Recent developments suggest that powerful elites are capturing and distorting those traditional cultural structures which were able to provide at least a bulwark against exploitation. This paper suggests that failure to recognise and significantly develop traditional mediation and conflict resolution structures has aided the development of a new society which offers little protection and little hope for the majority of poor Cambodians in confronting those global forces keen to exploit them.

Collaborative negotiation has been widely used for developing water policy. Nevertheless, a serious lacuna remains in the understanding of the factors that determine whether the negotiators in this bargaining process will be able to reach agreement. This paper argues that the literature has focused on the process that is followed in negotiations, to the virtual exclusion of the substance of the issues that are to be resolved. As a consensus can only be reached concerning a change in policy if each party receives compensation for the concessions that it makes, a precondition for collaborative negotiation is that each party must have control over some asset that it can “trade” with the other parties. When this condition is met, it can be said that the process has “substance.” The authors identify a number of situations in which negotiations over water policy may possess this characteristic. However, they also argue that there is a large set of cases in which positive net gains are available, but in which at least one party lacks control over an asset that can be exchanged. In these cases, a number of government policies are investigated that could provide stakeholders with the necessary tradable goods and, therefore, could impart substance to the process. Many situations still remain, however, in which collaboration will lack substance, and stakeholders can be expected either to seek alternative means for pursuing their goals or to waste their effort in endless bargaining.

This argumentative paper that is developed based of the following problematic themes:
- Why does the UN fail to address the obvious need to include religion when analyzing conflict? Structural and Institutional Lapses in the UN system
- What are the probable ways for breaking the cycle of religiously motivated violence, if its institutional presence is undermined?

The incorporation of the principle and practice of forgiveness into interstate conflict resolution programs is a cross-cultural sticking point between Arab/Muslim and Western discourse and practices. Some Western scholars adamantly reject the principle and practice at the higher levels, while most Arab/Muslim scholars embrace forgiveness at all levels of conflict resolution. Our research contradicts the Western tendency of rejecting the inclusion of forgiveness utilizing a convenience sample of laypersons from the United States and Iraq to demonstrate that the principle and practice is accepted by both samples when resolving conflict between 2 countries. Our findings are
theoretically important as they demonstrate both openness to, and cross-cultural comparability in this context.

This argumentative paper that is developed based of the following problematic themes: - Why does the UN fail to address the obvious need to include religion when analyzing conflict? Structural and Institutional Lapses in the UN system - What are the probable ways for breaking the cycle of religiously motivated violence, if its institutional presence is undermined?

This paper examines the situation and struggles of female ex-combatants of Nepal who fought for civil war but their condition after the 2006 peace agreement is affected by livelihood insecurity, political marginalization, social stigma, etc