Minute of
the Conference
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IPRA
2014,
25th
General Conference on the Occasion of the 50th
Anniversary,
Istanbul,
August 10th
- 15th
; 2014.
Monday,
August 11th,
2014
Plenary
Session
Johan
Galtung (Professor of Peace Studies and
founder of the contemporary peace-research, rector of the Transcend
Peace University - TPU - author of over 150 books on peace and
related issues) remembers ten great peace lovers’ and non-violent
promoters’ names: Elise Boulding, Kenneth Boulding, John Burton,
Adam Curle, Danilo Dolci, Otto Klineberg, Hanna Newcombe, Anatol
Rapoport, Bert Röling, Carl Freidrich von Weizsäcker. All those ten
have devoted a great contribution to the peace research and the peace
building. All those names have in common to have lived in the 20th
century and to have driven initiatives and commitments to bring
people together. This is also the chance of 25th
IPRA Conference: Istanbul is located among three continents and at
cross-road between two different Empires, the British one and the
Ottoman one. This is a symbolic issue: we are moving from the
North-West corner of the world to the rest of the world and we need
to improve our glance to all the “rests” of the world. Now, peace
research must include theory and practice: knowledge with value and
value with knowledge; practicalities just in order to be practical
concrete and effective in the work for peace and in contemporary
attempts to change the world.
Johan
Galtung continues his address to the conference noticing sustainable
peace building means cooperation for equal benefit, empathy for
harmony as a major challenge to present how the parties in a conflict
appear to the public opinion. If you have a deal based on those two
issues, equality and empathy, then you can balance forces and
counter-forces, so the relationship will be positive, constructive
and effective. On the other side, conflict means incompatible goals
and incompatibility in goals can create illusions, disillusions and
frustrations; a trauma, as a consequence of a conflict, can also
become a new source for conflicts or a new path for prolonging a war,
as issued below:
Where
conciliation is over trauma to overcome it and solution is over
conflict to transcend it.
Luc
Reychler (Professor of International
Relations, University of Leuven; Director of the Centre of Peace
Research and Strategic Studies - CSIS) speaks about the role of time
in conflict. Matter of peace is mostly about time and building a
sustainable peace is more needed now than ever. It's time to raise
our voices and our actions, not only to prevent violence but also to
make peace building effective. The opposite of sustainable peace
is what Benjamin Netanyahu, on the occasion
of military campaign Protective Edge,
called “sustainable quietness”. Failing foreign policy is based
on coercive diplomacy, diplomatic isolation and regime change. Such a
“forced democratization” is pretty an approach for “democratic
fascism”. Foreign policy is the less democratic function of the
States in the West. The role of time is essential in conflict, peace
building and peace processes, and you need also to be aware about the
manipulation of time (the manipulation of the past, present and
future of a given scenario). Creating a sense of “urgency of
intervening” can be used in positive (preventing violent
escalation) and in negative (preventive war): this is a meaning of
time for peace.
Linda
Groff (Director of the Global Options
and Evolutionary Futures Consulting, California State University)
intervenes about building cultures of peace, conceiving: a) negative
peace as absence of war/violence; b) formal peace as the creation of
balancing institutions; c) positive peace as the removal of the
causes of war/violence; d) holistic peace as harmony, unity and
inter-dependence. Peace of the heart is the equivalence and the
harmony between human beings and all other species; peace is a
dynamic, complex and multi-factor concept; and one of the main topics
for positive peace is either removing
causes and fighting
injustice and building as
well culture and initiatives for
peace. Non-violence has to be used as a way to build sustainable
peace and for social and political change. Non-violence seeks to keep
the conflict on a human level and can be used as a temporary tool to
achieve a determinate goal and to promote a progressive change in
social structures and cultures.
Conflict
Resolution and Peace Building Commission
In the
first day Conflict Resolution and Peace Building Commission, a number
of speeches and studies have been collected. Al
Fuertes (George Mason University,
Virginia) does precise story-telling remains a very strong tool, also
for peace building, not just for “telling stories” but as a way
for building peace and conflict resolution, especially in contexts of
strong oral traditions. When a massive trauma destroys the texture of
a community, story-telling opens spaces for sharing ideas,
commonalities and views about peace and conflict and restores links
inside a community to fight against the displacement. Narrative is a
common thread that undergirds these types (social and cultural)
of peace-building and encompasses the entire spectrum of
peace-building and peace process: a)
humanitarian service, b) economical and political stability, c)
psychological trauma, d) education, empowerment and capacity
building, e) lobbying and advocacy. In such a way, story-telling is
also a form of community building and can host tools,
approaches and applications to empower
community.
Christopher
Barbey (APRED, Coordinator of the Swiss
Pool of Experts on Peace at Swiss Dept. of Foreign Affairs) has
conducted a research about the “Non-violence of the States”. We
need a sort of equivalence between States and people, because people
are the community and peace-building is also a community-building.
Peace is a human right, as stated also in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (1948). Who can live in this world without peace? For
this reason, peace, as human right, is also pro-active in terms of
peaceful conflict management and inherent the very human nature.
Human rights are empowering people and consensus brings decisions
right to all, but also participation and unity. The first step for
the States is non-militarization (countries without armies, like Cook
Isl., Kiribati, Marshall Isl., Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa,
Solomon Isl., Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Costa Rica, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti,
Panama, St-Kitts and Nevis, St-Lucia, St-Vincent, Andorra, Iceland,
Liechtenstein, Monaco, S. Marino, Vatican, Mauritius) through legal
dispositions, no war exercises and no military missions. This means
one out of eight countries in the world are without armies.
We also need peace
narrative and lessons about
non-militarization and non-violence.
Zahid
Shahab (Ass. Professor at Pakistan
National University of Sciences & Technology and Honorary
Executive Director at South Asia Centre for Peace) speaks about PCIA
forms (Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment). The four main
elements/steps for PCIA are: a) conflict analysis and peace building
needs, b) relevance assessment, c) risk assessment, d) peace and
conflict impact monitoring. In other terms, PCIA should be: a) better
prepared, b) transparent about the political agenda, c) adapt for
conflict avoidance, d) clear about social intentions in local
conflict contexts. PCIA requires necessities like: a) networking
among different agencies involved, b) more burden for local NGO
staffs, c) not changing continuously strategic objectives, d)
branding and strategic approach to PCIA. Appropriate networking
between different agencies for peace-building and conflict resolution
is important to create connections and avoiding overlapping and
redundancy.
Tina
Ottman (Kwansei
Gakuin University, Japan) refers about
trauma and peace-building. Trauma is a free floating signifier and
has a very broad taxonomy. It can be seen as a socio-political and
psycho-social consequence of a violence, since tragic and painful
events can have effects and consequences in the mind of a person, a
people or a community. It's not the existence but the axiology of a
trauma to be on the core. The polarization of a trauma-based or
trauma-affected discourse is a very decisive point, while traumas
become collective when they are recognized as a wound to social
identity and collective identity. A cultural trauma can mark
indelibly the social consciousness of a people and a community and
can change the collective perceptions of the past and the future.
Are individual or collective
processes comparable? We need a
multitasking approach.
Tuesday,
August 12th,
2014
Conflict
Resolution and Peace Building Commission
In the
second day Conflict Resolution and Peace Building Commission, Herbert
Rosana (Bicol University, Department of
Peace Studies, Philippines) presents a frame about “Schools of
Peace” as a “Model for Education”. The School of Peace
Education and Development is based in Bicol University, Philippines,
as a learning institution through four phases of transformation,
supporting the peace initiatives by the national government. Its
conceptual frame is based on the following: a) theory of change (as
community based intervention), b) realities, experiences and lessons
to be achieved through principles, approaches and practice. Teachers
and students are the most important part of the School and the
learning process goes from people to school, from school to community
and the entire environment made by school and community is towards
officials and stakeholders. The four phases of the implementation of
the School of Peace Education as learning institution are: 1)
awareness appreciation, 2) strengthening capacities, 3) application,
adaptation, implementation, 4) institutionalization and verification.
Peace Education needs a total-of-school approach and is also a matter
for re-orienting the curriculum because peace-education is a basic
and major cross-cutting.
Jennifer
Lynne (director of contactproject
and visiting scholar at Amherst College, Massachusetts) intervenes
about the issue of “Engaged Identity” in theory and practice. The
basic human capacities are listening, patience and respect. Listening
is essential for intuition and understanding. Patience is like a form
of continuity in listening and understanding. Respect is also a
crucial skill to recognize “the other” and to be open to variety
and differences through any custom and culture in the world. As you
know, all human beings are “practitioners” in listening, patience
and respect. Understanding identity complexity and contemplation are
a tool for conflict prevention and conflict transformation. Identity
is dynamic and not static; complexity is issued by factors, events,
actions, ideals, influences and any kind of social process or social
agglomerate is complex. Understanding and being aware about cultures,
identities and complexity is a key capacity for conflict
transformation and peace building. Such a conflict transformation
path is also a way of gathering people together and opening rooms for
participation, commitment and awareness about the topics related to
conflict and peace.
Karen
Bhangoo Randhawa (University of
California, Berkeley) and Ami Carpenter
(University of San Diego, California) present a join paper about
resilience and prevention with special regard to the cases of India
and Iraq. Resilience is an emerging paradigm shifting from
environmental issue to conflict management and can be seen as a
metaphor of the capacities, the abilities and the strategies of
people when confronted with “catastrophes” in a very broad sense.
In other words, resilience is conceived as a capacity to absorb
effects or to come up from the effects of a destructive event and to
recover abilities. Resilience is also matter of cultural awareness,
political leadership and readiness to change, but it's not directly
observable and its indicators are about physical, social and
procedural enablers. The study cases presented are especially related
to sectarianism in Baghdad (Iraq) and rapes in Delhi (India). It's
important in all those cases considering the different kinds of
enablers: for instance, procedural enablers are third party
intervention, limited access to weapons, formation of civil,
not-armed and non-violent groups; social enablers are actors capable
to believe to achieve positive results and to link and associate with
the prevention and the reduction of the violence.
They also
focus about some indicators and recommendations. In the field of
security protection, three important issues are: a) citizen
participation (voices against violence), b) institutional change (new
laws and procedures), c) gendered identities (mindsets change and
procedure change). The recommendations for the future can be listed
as follows: 1) need for more practitioners in the field of conflict
transformation and violence prevention, 2) increase funding, support
and capacities of local NGOs, 3) monitor of interventions in all the
different phases of the implementation, 4) back-log of cases,
practices and experiences and 5) institutional, civic and social
approach. What is important here is to recognize the role of
grass-root actors and stakeholders, both popular and social
organizations and people and citizens, civil society and NGOs,
opening opportunities for change.
Nurana
Rajabova (International Fellowship of
Reconciliation and Technical Assistant in US Peace Corps Azerbaijan)
intervenes about the case study of Nagorno-Karabakh war. It's a clear
example of so-called intractable conflict, since Nagorno-Karabakh is
an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan territory, so it's territorially
part of Azerbaijan but it has been under Armenian control and
Armenian local troops since the end of a six-year war in 1994. Both
sides frequently report shootings and incursions along the cease-fire
line, but the latest outbreak of fighting in August 2014 has been the
worst in many years: this fighting has already claimed dozens of
lives on both sides. It's required a strong grass-root activation to
mediate and transform the conflict but there are many challenges: a)
lack of political support, b) conflict is still unresolved and memory
is still new (since the memory of the causes and the past is going to
be lost in the youngest generations), c) conflict is conceived as
coming from the governments, so expectations are mostly towards the
institutions, d) difficulties in social activation, so the IFOR
project applies a theory of “individual change” and “public
attitude”. You can change prejudices by applying a process of
break-down of circles of isolation, polarization and marginalization.
Combining such theories and approaches, you can involve and engage
people in finding a way to face a conflict solution, based on
awareness, participation and commitment.
Wednesday,
August 13th,
2014
Plenary
Session
Aude
Fleurant (Director
of SIPRI Arms Transfers/Production Programme and Military Expenditure
Programme) is one of the major experts in
the monitoring of international arms transfers and expenditure. We
see actually a decline in military expenditure in North America and
West Europe that began in 2010 and is furthering changes in the arms
industry that date back to the 1990s and the 2000s. The decline
sustains a process of greater dissemination of arms production
capabilities in countries without significant defence assets before.
It leads states to adjust their arms export control policies to
support domestic companies' efforts on international stage and makes
the monitoring of some aspects of arms trade more difficult, raising
issues of transparency and accountability. Further-more, in other
regions less impacted by the crisis, the situation presented itself
differently. Taking advantage of significant growth in gross domestic
product (GDP) in the 2000s, countries such as Brazil, India and China
launched strong military equipment modernization programmes, designed
to build indigenous arms production capabilities. Awards of major
contracts to foreign suppliers came with demands to develop and
implement local activities directly linked to the military system or
platform acquired, as well as for transfers of technologies and
training for engineers and workers. So, in the context of current
defence market changes, it is important to look at the evolving
inter-actions between arms industry and arms transfers, as these may
affect issues of transparency, accountability and control of arms
export and require new tools and strategies for monitoring.
Naresh
Dadhich (Professor
of Political Science and former Director of Centre for Gandhian
Studies in University of Rajasthan, Jaipur),
as one of the main Gandhian experts in the world, speaks about forms
and practices of Gandhi non-violent action, through the following
points and arguments:
Gandhi
non-violent action is a political engagement since it requires
participation and preparation and because non-violent action is the
most powerful to achieve social changes,
Non-violent
action is not just a moral one but a political action capable to
contribute to change at any level, meaning a change in personal life
and a change in societal structures,
We
need to think in terms of non-violent “actions” - in many
different ways - to apply many different methods for many different
social actions and to challenge injustice at any level,
Social
matters are increasing day by day so we need to define non-violence
according to the context where it's
applied and coherently with its principles (friendship, respect for
all, truth),
Non-violence
techniques are not aggressive, but concrete, coherent and practical
and can be used by everyone and everywhere, by any people and in any
possible context in the world,
Non-violent
action is a political strategy (in terms of people's power) as a
collective action and a social mobilization and it occurs to
reinforce methods of protest without the violence,
Non-violent
actions are possible if used in a moral way, considering all humans
as human beings: 65% of humanity,
somewhere and somehow, have been affected by non-violent actions,
Non-violent
actions are not institutional and require any time a full popular
involvement, since they are set up inside a political strategy of
social commitment and mass participation,
Non-violent
actions are seen as a system of principles, methods and initiatives
to produce social change, face social injustices, reinforce moral
shape, change cultures and structures,
Gandhi
successfully used non-violence basing on the conviction that
non-violence is like “the Voice of God” and invented
“Satyagraha” as main action for all the people in the world.
Gandhi's
Satyagraha is not passive resistance since it is both active
involvement and active initiative engaging
all the people and the community, like in the “Shanti Sena”. In
this sense, Gandhi was a great innovator and contributed - like
Thoreau and Rawls - to introduce new definition of humanity.
Stephen
Zunes (Professor of International
Studies at University of San Francisco and senior policy analyst for
the Foreign Policy in Focus Project of the Institute for Policy
Studies) keeps an analysis about non-violence vs. militarism. We need
to put forward credible alternatives to the war, because the war is
no more necessary in the contemporary world and people all around the
world have the resources to say “no” to the war. You can now see
the non-violent alternatives in practice, in many different cases,
all around the world, from Latin America to the Balkans, from Middle
East to Asia, just if you consider the “Arab Springs”, the
“Bosnia Spring” and the social movements all around the
Mediterranean. As it's known, non-violence is more effective than
violence and non-violent actions have much more success than any
violent action. Non-violent resistance challenges political
dictatorships, authoritarian regimes and military occupations, you
can see examples after examples from movements for social rights and
civic freedoms in the Philippines to the non-violent resistance
movement in Palestine. Meanwhile, non-violent resistance has only
success if it embraces adequate tactics,
engaging people in lasting uprisings
and
keeping high the challenge against
authoritarianism.
Grace
Asirwathan, Deputy
Director-General of OPCW
(Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons),
intervenes on the topic “disarmament and non-violence” and the
question how to put disarmament, counter-dissemination and
non-violence into action. She lists some key arguments as:
a. In July
2014, the Syrian program of dismantling chemical weapons was
concluded: this means that has been completed the destruction of the
entire consignment of 600 metric tonnes of Category 1 Chemicals from
Syria. This ends a crucial stage in the complex international
maritime operation to remove and destroy Syria's chemical weapons
stockpile after the agreement with Syrian authority
b.
This initiative has been a huge opportunity to contribute to free the
world from chemical and highly destructive weapons, also taking in
consideration the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction), and also a
significant chance to put in clear the importance of negotiation and
diplomacy to take step forward in the weapons' dismantling direction,
it has been also, in fact, a very positive example of multilateral
cooperation between Syria, the Organisation
and the entire International Community
c.
More than 30 countries have participated into the dismantling of
Syria chemical weapons and, also from this
point of view, this effort represents a hope for multilateral
cooperation on international level, in order to solve global issues
on the base of mutual agreements. The Geneva Protocol failed to
prevent the use of chemical weapons also against civilians. So, we
need to reinforce agreements and cooperation in order to strengthen
the lasting process to make the world free from chemical weapons.
Conflict
Resolution and Peace Building Commission
In the
third day Conflict Resolution and Peace Building Commission, Emily
Knowles (University of Edinburgh, UK)
presents a study about “stress-testing conflict resolution” in
Georgia, where the out-side conflict with the Russia had an in-burst
into the territorial conflict with Abkhazia and Ossetia, which
declared unilaterally independence in 2008. The Russo-Georgian war
was a conflict between Georgia and Russia, along with the separatist
regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, run in August 2008, after some
provocations from Ossetian side and a subsequent Georgian large-scale
military offensive against South Ossetia. Russia officially deployed
units of Russian 58th Army and airborne troops into South Ossetia,
claiming that as “peace enforcement”. The war ended with the
separation and the self-proclaimed independence of both countries,
recognized by Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua. The presentation
showcases some of the insights come out of the research and explains
preliminary attempts to distil primary research into a series of best
and worst case scenarios against which the current resolution process
will be measured, providing a comprehensive evaluation of the key
sticking points and areas of constructive engagement to inform peace
academics and policy-makers alike. Advances such as the discursive
rejection of a military resolution to the disputes made by Georgian
government will be contrasted with a continued impasse
surrounding the signature of a pact of non-aggression, providing
detailed analysis of the complexities surrounding a region where not
only local but also international actors often have a role to play in
the evolving security and peace environment.
Gianmarco
Pisa (Italian Peace Research Institute
- Civil Peace Corps Network) reports about non-violent peacekeeping
and “culture-oriented peace-building” in the Balkans, with regard
to the study-case of Kosovo. After NATO bombing in 1999, Mitrovica,
Kosovo, where the EULEX mission is on-going, is geographically
divided in two parts: the Northern part, where majority of the
population are Serbs, and they do not accept so-called “State of
Kosovo” institutions; and the Southern part, which is also part of
the institutional framework of Kosovo, where majority of the
population are Albanians. Such a division, being a geographical one,
portrayed by the conflict and the power, is also a division in minds,
feelings, perceptions. In the Balkans,
especially in Kosovo, you can find a lot of memorials
of the past,
related to the memory
of the war, the ethnic cleansing and the genocide, but you can also
perceive one thing is the “memorial” ruling to preserve, in a
static way, the remembrance linked with the tragic, and a complete
different thing is the living “memory”, which continues its
function till the present and preserve an awareness of the past able
to be translated into action. The way the power use cultural symbols
to preserve the State authority through the divisions can be reverted
into a re-own of those symbols as belonging to the whole community
living in a given - not displaced - place. This is a major challenge
for “culture-oriented peace-building” as a main source for
conflict transformation and positive peace, either working
in the conflict, through interposition
and open spaces for dialogue and communication, and working
on the causes and the meanings and
bridging the gaps and the divide.
Patrick
Mbugua (University of Otago, N.
Zealand) introduces the topic of the “discursive approach” for
peace-building and conflict resolution. Such a discursive approach is
based on the following issues a) peace agreements in conflict
contexts, b) peace support operations also by local civil society and
c) evolutions of conflict trends in the specific conflict context,
with a special focus on Africa, especially S. Sudan. Successful peace
process starts from war, then goes through ceasefire, then to
mediation, peace-agreement, peace-keeping and ends with
peace-building process in order to establish a sustainable peace,
especially in the sense of the “positive peace” (based on social
texture and justice). Transition from civil
war to positive peace requires a process of
conflict transformation as a resolution
or a resettlement
of the underlying causes of the conflict itself. Dominant theory
approaches are agency-structure-multi-cause approach, while the
discursive approach is based on the critique of the agency-centred
and structure-centred approach itself; it's inspired by
post-structural, post-colonial and feminist approach and is based on
a social constructivist (human-based) theoretical approach. In this
sense, the “discourse” has two major dimensions: the discursive
forms and the social practices. The first ones are spoken texts,
written texts and forms of knowledge; the second ones are
institutional, organizational and social practices, including broader
cultural policies, programmes and initiatives. Through the discourse:
a) actors in conflict can construct collective meanings; b)
collective meanings are placed as social realities;
c) discourse can help understanding peace processes. The
discursive approach helps actors in conflict to form their collective
identities and a shared meaning of peace.
Mehmet
Ganić
(International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
introduces terms and topics, especially based on social and economic
indicators, of the post-conflict transition in Western Balkans. In
former Yugoslavia, private sector created 25% of GDP and the life
level, according to any social and economic indicator, was higher
than all the other (apart from Soviet Union and DDR) socialist
countries. Croatia reached the pre-collapse 1989 GDP level in 2005
and is nowadays pretty the only country of former Yugoslavia to have
achieved such a goal, since Bosnia is now at 80% of the 1989-level
and Serbia at 70% of the 1989-level. The post-collapse (meaning
post-2000) economic reforms were based on the typical neo-liberal US
approach and EU oriented: these reforms were based on the following
key-points, foreign direct investment, massive privatization and huge
foreign penetration in the bank system. Nowadays, major problems are:
a) the lack of adequate economic structure, b) the technological
backwardness and c) the massive unemployment; as a consequence, even
if these economies are listed by international organizations as
middle-income economies, they are in effect less developed economies.
Non-military regime change requires to stabilize economy, to calm
ethnic tensions and to establish a sustainable peace. The EU approach
is devoted to stabilization and association, with the main purpose of
the integration and the membership, while a good chance for the
present and the future is also relying on CEFTA system. The CEFTA is
the Central European Free Trade Agreement, established as a trade
agreement between non-EU countries in South East Europe (Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and
the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)
as officially recognized government authority in Kosovo, since the
incomplete recognition and the prescriptions of UNSC R. 1244/1999),
based on criteria like: a) WTO membership or commitment to respect
WTO regulations, b) any European Union
Association Agreement, c) Free Trade Agreements with current CEFTA
member states.
Thursday,
August 14th,
2014
Plenary
Session: The Future of Peace Research
In the
conclusions of the conference, by Linda
M. Johnstone (Executive Director of
Siegel Institute for Leadership, Ethics and Character and ex-Director
of Master of Science in Conflict Management Program at Kennesaw State
University in Atlanta, Georgia), Ayşe
Betül Çelik (Professor of Political
Science and Conflict Resolution at Sabanci University in Istanbul,
Turkey) and Karenjot Bhangoo Randhawa
(Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at University of California,
Berkeley) some of the main directions for the future of peace
research are outlined to move into next steps and challenges:
the
development of innovative methods, approaches and tools for conflict
resolution and peace-building, as a comprehensive civil society
strategy to positively transform conflicts and achieve effective
changes in society, addressing injustices and creating cooperative
networks,
the
focus on those sectors of civil society (positive and peace-oriented
groups, democratic NGOs expressing democratic and peace-loving parts
of society, academic groups, researchers, operators and
practitioners) able to create ties and to support processes for
sustainable peace,
the
ability to create social networks – recreating ties – in the
civil society in order to overcome the painful consequences of the
violence and to bridge the divide also to establish social links.
In the
last Peace Building and Conflict Resolution Commission relations,
Samantha Smith
(University of W. Australia) talks about “preventing inadequacy”.
Preventive diplomacy is conceived as any action aiming at preventing
disputes or escalations into violent or armed conflict. There are two
types of preventive diplomacy: fire-break and structural. It's
effective when conflicts tend to become worse and worse and the range
of political options remains wide. The lack of early action is
generally connected to a lack of political will: effective actions
require a broader consensus and, at least, no-one in the Security
Council (P5) against and all in the Security Council (P5) in a
position to achieve an agreement. The action is effective if it takes
into proper consideration local actors, local needs and local
concerns. Otherwise, an effective action can easily become
interference, so you have to perceive bias and active meddle.
It's a matter of will, legitimacy and credibility, where human factor
is decisive.
At the
end of the session, Kevin Clements
(Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago,
New Zealand and Director of New Zealand National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies) reflects on the “social dominance theory” to
prevent violence. Social identity theory focuses on inter-personal
social relations (social dominance theory put it into concrete
hierarchical domestic relations) in terms of identity, memory,
narratives, symbols and victimization. Relationships between internal
and external affairs, issues and topics are important to better focus
and understand this dynamic. It's a way to discern a grammar
of social power in a certain social system. Cultural ideologies
legitimizing myths are going to provide moral justification for
power, hierarchy and war. Universal drivers of hierarchy are: age,
gender and arbitrary systems, in the sense in many social structures
and constructs the age (the power of the elder: age-based hierarchies
give more power to adults than children), the gender (the power of
the men: gender-based hierarchies grant more power to one gender over
others) and certain systems of arbitrary create scales of values and
determine the hierarchical position of the members in a certain
community. Social dominance theory is based on the empirical
observation that surplus-producing social systems have a group-based
hierarchy structure: as said, age-based, gender-based and “arbitrary
set-based,” including race, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity,
faith, etc. Most forms of group conflict and oppression (racism,
homophobia, ethnocentrism, sexism, nationalism) can be regarded as
various manifestations of the same predisposition to form group-based
hierarchies. This complex structure of myth, ideology and
hierarchical systems is running in all the social levels, macro,
intermediate and micro, from the level of the international
controversies to the one of inter-personal disputes. In a certain
patriarchal, male chauvinist and capitalist society, this hierarchy
can reach its highest level. You can see there some structural and
cultural cause of the violence and you can also move to address the
causes of the violence in order to change them and conflict
transform.
References
This
minute of the works and presentations of the 25th
IPRA General Conference is not conceived to give analytical
proceedings of the conference, but just to provide information about
the richness of the theoretical suggestions coming out from the
conference. In the same way, the summary of the presentations and the
speeches is not intended as a precise transcription of those works
but as an overlook and a synthesis about the topics and the arguments
focused by the different speakers. It's quite easy to see how intense
was the work run by the conference and how intriguing the richness of
proposals and suggestions, giving a powerful and effective
contribution to the future of peace studies.
Useful
links:
J.
Galtung:
transcend.org/tms/2014/08/uniting-for-peace-building-sustainable-peace-through-universal-values-at-the-centenary-of-world-war-i-criminalizing-war
L.
Reychler:
lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/314603/1/timeforpeace.pdf
K.
Clements:
kevinclementspeaceandconflict.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/reflections-on-war-and-peace-the-warrior-and-the-pacifist-traditions
N.
Dadhich:
nareshdadhich.com/pdf/Chapter%203%20GANDHIAN%20STUDIES.pdf
S.
Zunes:
ozy.com/c-notes/a-force-more-powerful-than-war-nonviolent-resistance/30051.article
General
info:
IPRA
Web: http://www.iprapeace.org
IPRA 2014:
http://ipra2014.org
IPRA Prog:
http://ipra2014.org/?page_id=118
