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Preventing conflicts.

UN peacekeepers frequently operate in highly volatile areas with conflict. While peacekeepers work to protect civilians, stabilize conflict zones and strengthen rule of law, they also strengthen social and civic conditions necessary for peace. Peacekeepers help strengthen national and sub-national institution to address the root causes of conflict such as discrimination, inequalities and marginalization.

Our civil affairs officers are a key civilian component that helps facilitate interactions between peacekeeping missions, partners and local communities to prevent conflict. Civil affairs work depends on a mission’s mandate and the evolving situation on the ground. Three constant key activities that civil affairs officers undertake are engaging local stakeholders, participating in local conflict management and supporting the extension of state authority.  To date, Civil Affairs is one of the largest civilian components in peacekeeping operations. In 2020, 565 Civil Affairs officers in eight UN Field Missions, of which hundreds were national Community Liaison Assistants (CLAs), played a key role in early warning and situational awareness of conflict dynamics on the ground.

Engaging local stakeholders and communities

Civil Affairs officers engage extensively with local communities by working on social cohesion, extension of state authority and mitigation of local conflicts. Interactions at the local level are crucial to implement mission-mandated tasks and to enhance a mission’s credibility. Community engagement is a mean to an end and not an objective in itself. It is a critical element in the effective implementation of many mandated tasks, whether these are to protect civilians from physical threats, to improve situational awareness, promote inclusive political processes or address local conflict drivers, just to name a few. Missions like UNMISS in South Sudan and MINUSCA , in the Central African Republic, use a whole-of-mission approach with community engagement that help to have a consistent and coherent method when assisting local communities. MONUSCO , in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was the first to deploy Community Liaison Assistants to reach further and deeper to local communities to better understand their protection needs and concerns, a lead followed by MINUSMA in Mali and MINUSCA. 

Local conflict management

Local conflicts dynamics are complex. They are deeply rooted in the societal grievances of a host-country and as such are both vulnerable to national political power struggles and a destabilizing factor for fragile peace processes. These disruptions can be triggered by political and resource-based factors including land disputes, cattle migration patterns and much more. Peacekeepers work to prevent and mitigate these disruptions by supporting communities and actors at the sub-national level generating opportunities for community dialogue, mediation efforts and localized peace agreements and reconciliation processes that can reduce the toll of civilian casualties and livelihood disruption.

Support to the extension of state authority

The extension of state authority is a key peacekeeping task that focuses on activities to ensure that the state’s institutions are present throughout the territory of the country providing goods and services and that its authority is perceived as legitimate in the eyes of the population. This is an area of work in which peacekeeping operations in Mali , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic , among others, provide technical support and capacity development to state institutions, especially in the area of security and rule of law, and promote good governance practices at the sub-national level by working closely with local authorities, civil society actors and local communities to foster dialogue and accountability.  

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Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more non-state groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030 around half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by conflict and violence. Information and communications 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.

Spring 2023 marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of Pathways for Peace. In the lead up to the anniversary, the UN and the World Bank are gathering reflections from a wide variety of stakeholders on the legacy and continued relevance of the findings of this report in an evolving global landscape.  Read more about the anniversary

• Full Report

Executive Summary

• Chapter PDFs

July 31, 2023

Pathways for Peace: Five Years On

April 14, 2023

Progress on Preventing Conflict

February 21, 2023

Pathways at Five Launch Event

Five Years On – Discussion Papers

Background |

About the 5th anniversary.

Animation |

March 27, 2018

Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict

Infographic |

March 26, 2018

The Economic Cost of Conflict

About the 5th anniversary.

Spring 2023 marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the flagship UN-World Bank report “Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict”. In the lead up to the anniversary, the UN and the World Bank are coordinating a joint initiative, gathering reflections from multilaterals, Member States, think tanks, civil society, and regional partners on the legacy and continued relevance of the findings of this report in an evolving global landscape. A series of papers and digital workshops will examine three key questions:

• Despite what appear to be recent fundamental shifts in the global landscape, does the research summarized in the 2018 Pathways for Peace report remain relevant as a guide for prevention and peacebuilding efforts today?
• Has research and the evidence base evolved over the last five years with regard to what dimensions are critical to prevention?
• To what degree have the UN, World Bank and other global and regional actors in this field built upon some of the key insights and recommendations of this report? How has this played out in different regions?

The reflections gathered through this initiative will serve as inputs to various processes including, for example, ongoing work on the Secretary-General’s New Agenda for Peace, the deliberations of the Peacebuilding Commission and other UN bodies, the mid-term review of the World Bank’s five-year FCV Strategy and the SDG16 Conference.

5th ANNIVERSARY DISCUSSION Papers

Using Conflict Data to Assess Changing Conflict Trends By: Roudabeh Kishi

How the UN system can meet new and emerging prevention challenges. By: Dr. Adam Day

By: Noah Rosen

Main Report

A surge in violent conflicts in recent years has left a trail of human suffering, displacement, and protracted humanitarian need. In 2016, more countries experienced violent conflict than at any time in nearly 30 years. 1 Reported battle-related deaths in 2016 increased tenfold from the post–Cold War low of 2005, and terrorist attacks and fatalities also rose sharply over the past 10 years (GTD 2017). 

This surge in violence afflicts both low- and middle-income countries with relatively strong institutions and calls into question the long-standing assumption that peace will accompany income growth and the expectations of steady social, economic, and political advancement that defined the end of the twentieth century (Fearon 2010; Humphreys and Varshney 2004; World Economic Forum 2016). If current trends persist, by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence (OECD 2015). 

The benefit of preventive action, then, seems self-evident. Indeed, the global architecture for peace and security, forged in the aftermath of World War II, is grounded in the universal commitment to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” (United Nations Charter, preamble). Yet the changing scope and nature of today’s conflicts pose a significant challenge to that system. With conflict today often simultaneously subnational and transnational, sustained, inclusive, and targeted engagement is needed at all levels. 

This reality has accelerated momentum for countries at risk and for the international community to focus on improving efforts at preventing “the outbreak, escalation, recurrence, or continuation of conflict” (UN General Assembly 2016; UN Security Council 2016). Yet, at present, spending and efforts on prevention represent only a fraction of the amount spent on crisis response and reconstruction. 2 A shift away from managing and responding to crises and toward preventing conflict sustainably, inclusively, and collectively can save lives and greatly reduce these costs. 

1. UCDP (2017). The UCDP/PRIO (Uppsala Conflict Data Program/Peace Research Institute Oslo) Armed Conflict Dataset 2017 records all state-based conflict in which at least one side is the government of a state and which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a calendar year. It covers the years 1946 to 2016. UCDP data that record nonstate and one-sided violence that results in at least 25 conflict-related deaths in a calendar year cover the years 1989 to 2016.

2. For example, official development assistance to countries with high risk of conflict averages US$250 million per year, only slightly higher than that to countries at peace, but increases to US$700 million during open conflict and US$400 million during recovery years. Similarly, peacekeeping support averages US$30 million a year for countries at high risk, compared with US$100 million for countries in open conflict and US$300 million during recovery. See Mueller (2017).

Pathways for Peace: Laying the Groundwork for a New Focus on Prevention

Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict is a joint study of the United Nations and the World Bank. The study originates from the conviction on the part of both institutions that the attention of the international community needs to be urgently refocused on prevention. While the two institutions are governed by different, complementary mandates, they share a commitment, founded in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to the prevention of conflict as a contribution to development progress, as expressed in the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council resolutions on sustaining peace 3 and the eighteenth replenishment of the World Bank Group’s International Development Association. 4

This study recognizes that the World Bank Group and the United Nations bring separate comparative advantages to approach the prevention of violent conflict and that they have different roles and responsibilities in the international architecture. Therefore, while a holistic framework is essential to implementing prevention, the findings and recommendations of this study do not apply to all organizations in the same way.

This study seeks to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomatic, justice, and human rights efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. Its key audiences are national policy makers and staff of multilateral and regional institutions.

The background research and literature reviews, including 19 case studies, were prepared in partnership with leading think tanks and academic institutions. Regional consultations were conducted throughout 2016–17 with policy makers, members of civil society, representatives of regional organizations, development aid organizations, and donor partners in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and North America.

3. UN General Assembly (2016); UN Security Council (2016). This study has been greatly informed by and builds on recent reviews by the United Nations and the World Bank. These include World Bank (2011, 2017); UN (2015a, 2015b, 2016); UN Women (2015).

4. National governments and other local actors are the foundation and point of reference for preventive action (see UN General Assembly 2016; UN Security Council 2016; Articles 2 and 3 of the United Nations Charter). The sustaining peace resolutions reaffirmed this principle. UN Security Council Resolution 2282 recognizes “the primary responsibility of national Governments and authorities in identifying, driving and directing priorities, strategies and activities for sustaining peace … emphasizing that sustaining peace is a shared task and responsibility that needs to be fulfilled by the Government and all other national stakeholders.”

Eight Key Messages for Prevention

The study’s findings revolve around eight key messages:

Violent conflict has increased after decades of relative decline. Direct deaths in war, numbers of displaced populations, military spending, and terrorist incidents, among others, have all surged since the beginning of the century. A rapidly evolving global context presents risks that transcend national borders and add to the complexity of conflict. This places the onus on policy makers at all levels, from local to global, to make a more concerted effort to bring their tools and instruments to bear in an effective and complementary way. The human and economic cost of conflicts around the world requires all of those concerned to work more collaboratively. The SDGs should be at the core of this approach. Development actors need to provide more support to national and regional prevention agendas through targeted, flexible, and sustained engagement. Prevention agendas, in turn, should be integrated into development policies and efforts, because prevention is cost-effective, saves lives, and safeguards development gains. The best way to prevent societies from descending into crisis, including but not limited to conflict, is to ensure that they are resilient through investment in inclusive and sustainable development. For all countries, addressing inequalities and exclusion, making institutions more inclusive, and ensuring that development strategies are risk-informed are central to preventing the fraying of the social fabric that could erupt into crisis. The primary responsibility for preventive action rests with states, both through their national policy and their governance of the multilateral system. However, in today’s shifting global landscape, states are often one actor among many. States are increasingly called to work with each other and with other actors to keep their countries on a pathway to peace. Exclusion from access to power, opportunity, services, and security creates fertile ground for mobilizing group grievances to violence, especially in areas with weak state capacity or legitimacy or in the context of human rights abuses. This study points to specific ways in which states and other actors can seek to avert violence, including through more inclusive policies. Growth and poverty alleviation are crucial but alone will not suffice to sustain peace. Preventing violence requires departing from traditional economic and social policies when risks are building up or are high. It also means seeking inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform in core state functions, and redistributive policies. Inclusive decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace at all levels, as are long-term policies to address economic, social, and political aspirations. Fostering the participation of young people as well as of the organizations, movements, and networks that represent them is crucial. Women’s meaningful participation in all aspects of peace and security is critical to effectiveness, including in peace processes, where it has been shown to have a direct impact on the sustainability of agreements reached. Alongside efforts to build institutional capacity to contain violence when it does occur, acting preventively entails fostering systems that create incentives for peaceful and cooperative behavior. In order to achieve more effective prevention, new mechanisms need to be established that will allow greater synergy to be achieved much earlier among the various tools and instruments of prevention, in particular, diplomacy and mediation, security, and development.

This study demonstrates that prevention works. Many countries have successfully managed high-risk conflicts and avoided descents into violence. These experiences offer lessons in prevention that can be applied to other contexts. There is no one formula, as each situation is specific to the actors, institutions, and structures of each society, but common threads can be teased out of these experiences.

This study also shows that prevention is cost-effective. Analysis undertaken for this study finds that a system for preventing the outbreak of violence would be economically beneficial. Even in the most pessimistic scenario, where preventive action is rarely successful, the average net savings are close to US$5 billion per year. In the most optimistic scenario, the net savings are almost US$70 billion per year (Mueller 2017).

The State of Violent Conflict

While interstate conflict remains rare, the number of violent conflicts within states has increased since 2010. Furthermore, high-intensity warfare in certain countries has increased the number of fatalities caused by these conflicts, with the number of reported battle-related deaths rising sharply and in 2014 reaching the highest numbers recorded in 20 years (Allansson, Melander, and Themnér 2017; Sundberg, Eck, and Kreutz 2012).

This increase in the number of conflicts is a surge, but not yet a trend. Most battle deaths occur in a small number of conflicts; the three deadliest countries in 2016 (Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Syrian Arab Republic) incurred more than 76 percent of all fatalities. However, even if battle deaths drop significantly as fighting declines in these countries, these conflicts are expected to be protracted and risks of new outbreaks remain high (Dupuy et al. 2017).

Much of this violence remains entrenched in low-income countries; however, some of today’s deadliest and most complex conflicts are occurring in middle-income countries, underscoring the fact that income and wealth are not a guarantee of peace (Geneva Declaration Secretariat 2015; OECD 2016).

Armed groups have grown in number, diversity, and scope. Many of these groups are not linked to states. They include rebels, militias, armed trafficking groups, and violent extremist groups that may coalesce around a grievance, an identity, an ideology, or a claim to economic or political resources. Membership and alliances tend to evolve over time, depending on resources or leadership.

Violence is increasingly spreading beyond national borders: 18 out of 47 statebased violent conflicts were internationalized in 2016, 5 more than reported in any year since the end of World War II, except for 2015, when 20 were internationalized (UCDP 2017).

The costs of these conflicts are enormous. Battle deaths tell only part of the story of the damage inflicted. Civilians are increasingly vulnerable, and much recent violence has occurred in urban areas and targeted public spaces (ICRC 2017). Between 2010 and 2016 alone, the number of civilian deaths in violent conflicts doubled (UCDP 2017). Many more civilian deaths result from indirect effects of conflict, such as unmet medical needs, food insecurity, inadequate shelter, or contamination of water (Small Arms Survey 2011; UNESCWA 2017).

Violent conflict is forcibly displacing people in record numbers. An estimated 65.6 million people are now forcibly displaced from their homes, driven primarily by violence (UNHCR 2017). Between 2005 and 2016, the number of internally displaced persons increased more than fivefold (UNDP 2016; UNHCR 2017). The number of refugees nearly doubled over the same period, with the majority (55 percent) of refugees coming from Afghanistan, the Republic of South Sudan, and Syria (UNHCR 2017).

More than half of the world’s refugees are children, and many of them have been separated from their families (UNHCR 2017). Violent conflict affects men and women differently. While men make up the majority of combatants during conflict and are more likely to die from the direct effects of violence, women also face a continuum of insecurity before, during, and after conflict (CrespoSancho 2017). Sexual and gender-based violence tends to be higher in conflict and postconflict settings, as does recruitment of girls into trafficking, sexual slavery, and forced marriage (Crespo-Sancho 2017; Kelly 2017; UNESCWA 2017; UN SecretaryGeneral 2015; UN Women 2015). In insecure contexts, girls’ mobility is often highly restricted, limiting their access to school, employment, and other opportunities (UN Women 2015). For children and youth, the long-term effects of exposure to violence and the adversities of daily life in a high-violence context are associated with a range of challenges (Miller and Rasmussen 2010). These include increased risk of perpetrating violence or being a victim of violence later in life, psychological trauma, and negative effects on cognitive and social development (Betancourt et al. 2012; Blattman 2006; Huesmann and Kirwil 2007; Leckman, Panter-Brick, and Salah 2014; Shonkoff and Garner 2012).

The costs associated with the economic losses caused by conflict put a severe strain on state capacity. Afghanistan’s per capita income has remained at its 1970s level due to the continued war, and Somalia’s per capita income has dropped by more than 40 percent over the same period (Mueller and Tobias 2016). Such effects can spread to surrounding countries in the region. On average, countries bordering a high-intensity conflict experience an annual decline of 1.4 percentage points in gross domestic product (GDP) and an increase of 1.7 points in inflation (Rother et al. 2016).

5. UCDP (2017) defines internationalized conflict as those where one side is a state and one side is nonstate, and where an outside state intervenes on behalf of one of these.

The Need for Prevention in an Interdependent World

The nature of violent conflict is not changing in isolation. The increase in violent conflicts has emerged in a global context where the balance of geopolitical power is in flux and a push for more inclusive governance is bringing new voices and new demands. Proxy wars are no longer the exclusive purview of traditional great powers. At the same time, the number of societies that have adopted more inclusive forms of political, economic, and cultural governance has grown rapidly over the last 30 years. While this transition has occurred peacefully in many countries, it can—when not managed carefully— also create a space for contestation and conflict to emerge.

At the same time, fast-emerging global trends are affecting the way people and societies operate and interact. Advances in information and communication technology (ICT) represent great opportunities for innovation, growth, and the unfettered exchange of ideas. However, alongside opportunities are risks. ICT benefits and access are not available to all, and the so-called “digital divide” threatens to widen the gaps between high- and lowincome countries. New technologies and automation are rapidly transforming industries, with the effect of reducing the need for unskilled or semiskilled labor in industries. Interconnectivity also enables transnational organized crime to flourish, allows the rapid transmission of violent ideologies, and leaves economies vulnerable to cybercrime.

Climate change, too, presents new challenges, especially to poor and vulnerable countries and communities (Nordas and Gleditsch 2007). By itself, climate change does not cause violent conflict. However, it does create major stress, especially in fragile situations where governments have limited means to help their populations adapt. Risks associated with climate change can combine with and exacerbate risks of violence through factors such as food insecurity, economic shocks, and migration (Marc, Verjee, and Mogaka 2015; Schleussner et al. 2016).

This new global landscape features significant demographic shifts that may create new stresses, as well as opportunities, for global and national systems. Already there are more young people in the world than at any other time in history—1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24—and the vast majority of young people live in low-income countries, many of them already affected by conflict (UN DESA 2015). In Africa, 60 percent of the population is under the age of 25 (UN DESA 2015). Harnessing the potential of a growing young population is an important challenge. In addition, population growth, while a positive force for economies, also puts pressure on labor markets, which will have to absorb the estimated 600 million new workers entering the workforce in the next 10 years (ILO 2016). These demographic shifts are occurring against the backdrop of slow and uneven global economic growth. World trade value, merchandise exports, and commercial trade services all grew substantially over the past 70 years, contributing to consolidating peace in the aftermath of World War II. However, trade growth has been marked in recent years by downturns and a prolonged period of only modest improvement since the global financial crisis of 2007. In 2016, trade growth fell, for the fifth consecutive year, below 3 percent. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment has also been decreasing, adversely affecting growth and productivity (Hale and Xu 2016). These trends do not directly affect violent conflict; however, they do put additional stresses on systems and people and can increase the tendency for groups to mobilize for perceived grievances.

The Pathways for Peace Framework

Prevention is about creating incentives for actors to choose actions that resolve conflict without violence. An important corollary is that inclusive approaches to prevention should recognize and address group grievances early. Violence is highly path- dependent: once it takes hold, incentives and systems begin to reorient themselves in ways that sustain violence. Effective prevention requires acting before grievances harden and the threat of violence narrows the choices available for leaders and elites, understood as groups who hold power or influence in a society. A society’s ability to manage conflict constructively is tested continuously by risks that push it toward violence and by opportunities to advance sustainable development and peace. To help to visualize how these risks and opportunities act on and within a society, this book introduces the term “pathway” for the trajectory that every society shapes through the constant, dynamic interaction of its actors, institutions, and structural factors over time. As figure ES.1 illustrates, a society encounters many dimensions and levels of risks and opportunities that affect its pathway. The pathway construct helps to conceptualize the temporal aspect of prevention. The behavior of domestic actors will adjust to changing events and the decisions of other actors. Reforming institutions to sustain peace and addressing structural factors that underpin grievances can take longer. This temporal aspect is important for international action. Development actors, for example, tend to decrease their engagement or withdraw altogether when risks escalate. Political actors tend to engage only when the risk of violence is high or violence is already present. Instead, viable, sustained action in support of preventing violence is needed throughout policies and programs.

Why People Fight: Inequality, Exclusion, and Injustice

Some of the greatest risks of violence today stem from the mobilization of perceptions of exclusion and injustice, rooted in inequalities across groups (Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Cramer 2003; Fearon and Laitin 2003; Lichbach 1989; Østby 2013). When an aggrieved group assigns blame to others or to the state for its perceived economic, political, or social exclusion, then emotions, collective memories, frustration over unmet expectations, and a narrative that rouses a group to violence can all play a role in mobilization to violence (Nygard et al. 2017; Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010; Justino 2017; Sargsyan 2017).

People come together in social groups for a variety of subjective and objective reasons. They may share feelings, history, narratives of humiliation, frustrations, or identities that motivate them to collective action in different ways, at different times, and in different situations. Perceptions of inequality between groups often matter more in terms of mobilization than measured inequality and exclusion (Rustad 2016; Stewart 2000, 2002, 2009). This pattern of exclusion include inequality in the distribution of and access to political opportunity and power among groups, including access to the executive branch and the police and military. Political exclusion provides group leaders with the incentive to mobilize collective action to force (or negotiate) change.

Exclusion that is enforced by state repression poses a grave risk of violent conflict (Bakker, Hill, and Moore 2016; Piazza 2017; Stewart 2002). Countries where governments violate human rights, especially the right to physical integrity, through practices such as torture, forced disappearances, political imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings, are at a higher risk for violent conflict (Cingranelli et al. 2017). In these contexts, repression creates incentives for violence by reinforcing the perception that there is no viable alternative for expressing grievances and frustration.

Societies that offer more opportunities for youth participation in the political and economic realms and provide routes for social mobility for youth tend to experience less violence (Idris 2016; Paasonen and Urdal 2016). With the global youth population increasing, the ability to harness the energy and potential of youth presents a strong opportunity for this “unique demographic dividend,” as the 2015 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 notes (UN Security Council 2015).

Similarly, cross-country studies find evidence that high levels of gender inequality and gender-based violence in a society are associated with increased vulnerability to civil war and interstate war and the use of more severe forms of violence in conflict (Caprioli et al. 2007; GIWPS and PRIO 2017; Hudson et al. 2009; Kelly 2017). Changes in women’s status or vulnerability, such as an increase in domestic violence or a reduction in girls’ school attendance, often are viewed as early warnings of social and political insecurity (Hudson et al. 2012). Prevention of violent conflict requires a strong focus on women’s experiences and on measures to ensure their participation in political, social, and economic life. Some evidence suggests that when women take leadership roles and are able to participate meaningfully in peace negotiations, the resulting agreements tend to last longer and there is greater satisfaction with the outcomes (O’Reilly, Ó Súilleabháin, and Paffenholz 2015; Paffenholz et al. 2017; Stone 2015; UN Women 2015).

What People Fight Over: Arenas of Contestation

Inequality and exclusion manifest most starkly in policy arenas related to access to political power and governance; land, water, and extractive resources; delivery of basic services; and justice and security. As the spaces where livelihoods and well-being are defined and defended, access to these arenas can become, quite literally, a matter of life or death. The arenas reflect the broader balance of power in society, and as such, they are highly contestable and often resistant to reform.

Competition for power is an age-old source of conflict. Power balances and imbalances can put a society at risk of violence. Experience shows that more inclusive and representative power-sharing arrangements lower the risk of violent conflict. Decentralizing, devolving, or allowing autonomy of subnational regions or groups can help to accommodate diversity and lower the risk of violence at the national level.

Resources such as land, water, and extractives are traditional sources of friction. The effects of climate change, population growth, and urbanization are intensifying these risks. Disputes over resources have spilled over into violent conflict and instability across the world. Improving the sharing of resources and benefits derived from them as well as strengthening local conflict resolution mechanisms are important areas of focus.

Service delivery does not have a direct relationship with violence, but it affects state legitimacy and the ability of the state to mediate conflicts (Brinkerhoff, Wetterberg, and Dunn 2012; Sacks and Larizza 2012; Stel and Ndayiragiie 2014). The way in which services are delivered and the inclusiveness and perceptions of fairness in service delivery matter as much as— perhaps more than—the quality of services delivered (Sturge et al. 2017).

Security and justice institutions that operate fairly and in alignment with the rule of law are essential to preventing violence and sustaining peace. Accountability of security forces to the citizen, stronger community policing approaches, and improved efficiency of redress mechanisms are among the responses often needed.

What Works: How Countries Have Managed Contestation and Prevented Violent Conflict

Drawing on the pathways framework, the study describes the experience of national actors in three key areas: shaping the incentives of actors for peace, reforming institutions to foster inclusion, and addressing structural factors that feed into grievances. From the case studies analyzed for this report, common patterns emerge even if specific prescriptions do not. Overall, the studies suggest that effective prevention is a collective endeavor—led domestically, built on existing strengths, and with international and regional support.6

A central dilemma for all countries examined is that the incentives for violence are often certain and specific to an individual or group, while the incentives for peace are often uncertain, and diffuse (World Bank 2017). To shape incentives, governments took advantage of transition moments to introduce both long-term reforms or investments targeting structural factors, while implementing immediate initiatives that buttressed confidence in commitments to more inclusive processes.

The more successful cases mobilized a coalition of domestic actors to influence incentives toward peace, bringing in the comparative advantages of civil society, including women’s groups, the faith community, and the private sector to manage tensions. Decisive leadership provided incentives for peaceful contestation, not least by mobilizing narratives and appealing to norms and values that support peaceful resolution (World Bank 2011).7

Nevertheless, before or after violence, countries that have found pathways to sustainable peace have eventually tackled the messy and contested process of institutional reform. Expanding access to the arenas of contestation has been key to increasing representation and alleviating grievances related to exclusion. Often, the transition moment that led to sustainable peace was based on a shift away from security-led responses and toward broader approaches that mobilized a range of sectors in support of institutional reforms.

Alongside institutional reform, however, in many cases, governments invested in addressing structural factors, launching programs targeting socioeconomic grievances, redistributing resources, and addressing past abuses even while violence was ongoing.

In these experiences, the greatest challenge lay not so much in accessing knowledge, but in the contentious process of identifying and prioritizing risks. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that violence narrowed the options for forward-looking decision making needed to invest in institutional or structural conditions for sustainable peace. Conflict did not bring a windfall of resources; instead it brought a move to equip and support police, military, or security operations that strained national budgets. Furthermore, preventive action was at times unpopular, with popular demands for visible and tangible security measures trumping longer-term, more complex responses addressing the causes of violence.

In these processes, formal political settlements, or at least durable settlements, have been important, but also rare events. In some cases, political settlements have been applied only to address specific aspects of conflict, while underlying causes were targeted more comprehensively through government action. In others, political settlements were not used as part of the prevention process at all.

6. The insights are drawn from the background country case studies and research commissioned for this study and a review of broader relevant literature. The case studies cover Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the Arab Republic of Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, the Kyrgyz Republic, Malawi, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Republic of South Sudan, and Tunisia.

7. In addition to transition moments like a natural disaster or global economic shock, opportunities can arise when a society’s tolerance for violence changes.

A Global System for Prevention under Stress

Since the end of the Cold War, the multilateral architecture for conflict prevention and postconflict peacebuilding has struggled to adapt to a fast-changing situation in the field and globally. Despite many challenges, there have been clear achievements.

At a systemic level, comprehensive international normative and legal frameworks are in place to regulate the tools and conduct of war; protect human rights; address global threats including climate change, terrorism, and transnational criminal networks; and promote inclusive approaches to development (the SDGs).

Operationally, the United Nations and regional organizations such as the African Union and the European Union have provided global and regional forums to coordinate international responses to threats to peace and stability. The result has been important tools—including preventive diplomacy, sanctions, and peacekeeping—that have proven instrumental in preventing conflicts, mediating cease-fires and peace agreements, and supporting postconflict recovery and transition processes.

As conflicts have increasingly originated from and disrupted the core institutions of states, international and regional initiatives have accompanied these changes with greater coordination and resource pooling among development, diplomatic, and security efforts. While this evolution is welcome, with conflicts becoming more fragmented, more complex, and more transnational, these tools are being profoundly challenged by the emergence of nonstate actors, ideologies at odds with international humanitarian law, and the increased sponsorship of proxy warfare. These conclusions increase the need to focus on the endogenous risk factors that engender violence and on support for countries to address their own crises.

Building Inclusive Approaches for Prevention

Prevention is a long-term process of reinforcing and steering a society’s pathway toward peace. This study amassed overwhelming evidence that prevention requires sustained, inclusive, and targeted attention and action. Deep changes are needed in the way national, regional, and international actors operate and cooperate so that risks of violent conflict are identified and addressed before they translate into crisis. However, few incentives now exist for this coordination, collaboration, and cooperation. Instead, preventive action often focuses on managing the accompanying crisis rather than addressing underlying risks, even when solutions to the underlying risk are available.

Pathways for Peace highlights three core principles of prevention.

• Prevention must be sustained over the time needed to address structural issues comprehensively, strengthen institutions, and adapt incentives for actors to manage conflict without violence. It is easy, but wrong, to see prevention as a tradeoff between the short and long term. Sustainable results require sustained investment in all risk environments, while development investments should be integrated into overarching strategies with politically viable short-term and medium-term actions. The need for sustainability requires balancing effort and resources so that action does not reward only crisis management.
• Prevention must be inclusive and build broad partnerships across groups to identify and address grievances that fuel violence. Too often, preventive action is focused on the demands of actors that control the means of violence and positions of power. In complex, fragmented, and protracted conflicts, an inclusive approach to prevention puts an understanding of grievances and agency at the center of national and international engagement. It recognizes the importance of understanding people and their communities: their trust in institutions, confidence in the future, perceptions of risk, and experience of exclusion and injustice.
• Prevention must proactively and directly target patterns of exclusion and institutional weaknesses that increase risk. Successful prevention depends on pro-active and targeted action before, during, and after violence. Modern conflicts arise when groups contest access to power, resources, services, and security; alongside efforts to mitigate the impacts of violence and de-escalate conflict, preventive action must actively and directly target grievances and exclusion across key arenas of risk.

Devising National Strategies for Prevention

The state bears the primary responsibility for preventing conflict and shaping a country’s pathway toward sustainable development and peace. The following are some recommendations for effective national action in partnering for prevention.

Monitor the Risks of Conflict

Engaging early in preventive action requires a shift from early warning of violence and toward awareness of risk:

Identify real and perceived exclusion and inequality, which requires strengthening the capacity for identifying, measuring, and monitoring SDG indicators 8

• Strengthen national early warning systems and design systems that can effectively influence early response by national actors at various levels
• Harness technology to improve monitoring, especially in remote and conflict-affected areas, including through application of ICT and real-time data collection methods • Ensure that surveys and data collection measure inequality, exclusion, and perceptions and are conflict-sensitive and capacity-sensitive. 9

Address Different Dimensions of Risk

National actors often deal with multiple risks simultaneously with limited budgets, political capital, and time:

• Bring institutions and actors together under a peace and development framework that prioritizes the risk of conflict
• Target risk spatially with investments and other actions in border and peripheral areas where grievances and violence may be more likely to exist
• Manage the impact of shocks when tensions are high
• Target action and resources to identified risks in arenas where exclusion and grievances arise over access to power, resources, services, and security and justice, and manage contestation and conflict by redistributive policies, among other possible actions.

Aligning Peace, Security, and Development for Prevention

One of the objectives of Pathways for Peace is to stimulate new thinking about the relationship of development, peace, and security—a relationship that takes concrete form in inclusive approaches to preventing conflict. A coherent strategy that can be sustained over time demands levels of integrated planning and implementation that are often challenging to development, security, humanitarian, and political actors. Each has comparative advantages at different stages of risk but sustained, inclusive, and targeted prevention requires that they coordinate more effectively. The following are some recommendations for better alignment.

Ensure that Security and Development Approaches Are Compatible and Mutually Supportive

Mutual support requires rebalancing growth and stability targets, as aggrieved groups whose exclusion poses a conflict risk may not be the poorest and may not be in areas of high potential for economic growth. Where security interventions are warranted, social services and economic support should also be provided so that security forces are not the only interface between the state and the population.

Build Capacity and Allocate Resources to Ensure that Grievances Are Mediated Quickly and Transparently

Capacity building can be addressed through training, development of guidance, and strengthening of institutions. Support for national and local-level mediation can be integrated into planning and programming at the local level (Rakotomalala 2017).

Engage Actors beyond the State in Platforms for Dialogue and Peacebuilding

Many actors involved in conflict today are not directly accessible to state institutions or agents. Inclusive prevention entails a focus on strengthening the capacity of the society, not just the state, for prevention. Inclusive prevention is a bottom-up process that should involve as broad a spectrum of people and groups as possible. Coalitions should reflect the importance of young people, women, the private sector, and civil society organizations.

Adopt a People-Centered Approach

A people-centered approach should include mainstreaming citizen engagement in development programs and local conflict resolution to empower underrepresented groups such as women and youth. Service delivery systems should seek to make people partners in the design and delivery of public services through mainstreaming participatory and consultative elements for all planning and programming in areas at risk of violent conflict.

Overcoming Barriers to Cooperation in Prevention

Development organizations need to adjust incentives toward prevention. International development actors and multilateral development banks are constrained by mandates, intergovernmental agreements, and institutional culture from engaging on sensitive risks with governments. Development organizations should ensure that prevention has a higher priority in their programming.

Share Risk Assessments

In the absence of a coherent process to share data, many organizations carry out assessments of different risks using different indicators. These data mostly remain internal to these organizations and are not shared with the national government or other relevant national actors, mostly because this information is often seen as politically sensitive. Risk monitoring and assessment methodologies also must become more widely shared, with specific focus on developing shared metrics across the various risks to development, peace, and security.

Commit to Collective Mechanisms to Identify and Understand Risks at Regional, Country, and Subnational Levels

The absence of effective mechanisms translates into ad hoc and fragmented actions among international partners.

Ensure That Joint Risk Assessments Articulate Jointly Agreed Priorities

Joint risk assessments should be based on agreed indicators that allow trends to be monitored over time. For example, the joint United Nations–European Union– World Bank Recovery and Peacebuilding Assessment offers one such approach for aligning priorities. Currently used mostly during and immediately following conflict, this approach could be used further upstream and developed into joint platforms for prioritizing risk.

Build Stronger Regional and Global Partnerships

Efforts should include the strengthening of regional analyses and strategies for prevention and the sharing of risk analyses to the extent possible at a regional level.

Explore New Investment Approaches for Prevention

Financing for prevention remains risk averse and focused on crises. As a result, current models are too slow to seize windows of opportunity and too volatile to sustain prevention. Complex and multilevel efforts are often constrained by the lack of needed and readily available resources, resulting in ad hoc resource mobilization attempts to generate financing from donors, often resulting in delayed and suboptimal responses. Options include strengthening support for financing national capacity for prevention, combining different forms of financing, and strengthening financing for regional prevention efforts.

8. Several SDG targets and indicators could have relevance for assessing risks of horizontal inequality. Specifically, key core targets include SDG5 (5.1: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere); SDG10 (10.2: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, or economic or other status; 10.3: Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies, and action in this regard); and SDG16 (16.3: Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all; 16.7: Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision making at all levels).

9. Implementing the monitoring of perceptions and issues such as horizontal inequality requires several important safeguards to be in place. Governments and other actors can use questions on perceptions, identity, and aspirations to identify certain groups, target them for security purposes, deny people’s rights, or support implementation of exclusionary policies. It is essential that very strong attention be given to protecting individual and collective rights of the population interviewed and the people collecting the information.

A comprehensive shift toward preventing violence and sustaining peace offers life-saving rewards. Pathways for Peace presents national and international actors an agenda for action to ensure that attention, efforts, and resources are focused on prevention. Today, the consequences of failing to act together are alarmingly evident, and the call for urgent action has perhaps never been clearer. The time to act is now.

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• COMPANION REPORT
• BACKGROUND PAPERS
• Pathways for Peace Two-pager | French | Arabic  
• Executive Summary  | French  
• Full Report    
• Chapter 1. A Surge and Expansion of Violent Conflict   
• Chapter 2. The Need for Prevention in an Interdependent World  
• Chapter 3. Pathways for Peace  
• Chapter 4. Why People Fight: Inequality, Exclusion, and a Sense of Injustice  
• Chapter 5. What People Fight Over: Arenas of Contestation  
• Chapter 6. Country Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict  
• Chapter 7. The International Architecture for Prevention  
• Chapter 8. Pursuing Pathways for Peace: Recommendations for Building Inclusive Approaches for Prevention  
• Appendix A - Thematic Papers and Case Studies
• Main Messages and Emerging Policy Directions  
• Comolli, V. 2017. “ Transnational Organized Crime and Conflict. ” Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC.
• DCAF (Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces). 2017. “ The Contribution and Role of SSR in the Prevention of Violent Conflict. ” Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC.
• Min, E., M. Singh, J. N. Shapiro, and B. Crisman. 2017. “ Understanding Risk and Resilience to Violent Conflicts. ” Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC), Princeton University. Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC
• Mueller, H. 2017. “ How Much Is Prevention Worth? ” Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC.
• Nygard, H. M., K. Baghat, G. Barrett, K. DuPuy, S. Gates, S. Hillesund, S. A. Rustad, H. Strand, H. Urdal, and G. Østby. 2017. “ Inequality and Armed Conflict: Evidence and Data. ” Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC.
• Paffenholz, T., A. Hirblinger, D. Landau, F. Fritsch, and C. Dijkstra. 2017. “ Preventing Violence through Inclusion: From Building Political Momentum to Sustaining Peace. ” Inclusive Peace & Transition Initiative (IPTI), Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC.
• Payne, L., A. Reiter, C. Mahony, and L. Bernal-Bermudez. 2017. “ Conflict Prevention and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence. ” Background paper for United Nations–World Bank Flagship Study, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict, World Bank, Washington, DC.

Related Links

• Video: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict
• World Bank Fragility, Conflict & Violence Group
• UN Peacebuilding Support Office

REPORT COVERAGE

• Preventing conflicts could save between 5 and 70 billion dollars, according to a study by the African Development Bank - African Development Bank Group
• U.N., World Bank report looks at new approaches to preventing conflict - The Daily Star, Lebanon
• Replay: Pathways for Peace Seminar at Danish Institute for International Studies
• Replay: Report Launch at US Institute of Peace

• Get involved

Preventing conflict and building peace is now more important than ever

The global outlook appears grim. United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Elizabeth Spehar and Assistant Secretary-General Ulrika Modeer say there is reason for hope.

June 1, 2022

Even before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, it was estimated that 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2022, largely as a result of violence and the effects of climate change.

Elizabeth Spehar

UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support

Ulrika Modéer

UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy, UNDP

As we met last week at the ninth annual Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, co-hosted by SIPRI and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the global outlook appeared undeniably grim; the world faces multiple, compounding risks: conflict, COVID, climate change. Today, one quarter of humanity lives in conflict-affected areas.

In May 2022, we reached a disturbing milestone: a record number of 100 million people – 1 percent of the global population – who have been forcibly displaced around the world because of persecution, conflict and violence. In 2022, it has been estimated that 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance, largely as a result of violence and the effects of climate change. That projection was made before the tragic developments in Ukraine, bringing war back to the European continent and shaking our norms-based world order – enshrined in the UN Charter – to its core. Human rights and international law are under assault; decades of development gains are being lost and conflicts and violence are pushing millions of people into poverty and hunger.

However, the Stockholm Forum’s focus this past week – bringing together peacebuilding leaders, practitioners and partners from around the world – was undoubtedly one of hope: “from a Human Security Crisis Towards an Environment of Peace”. Today, as two senior UN representatives working across the fields of development and peace and security, we carry three messages:

First, it is now more important than ever that the international community invest more in prevention and peacebuilding.

The costs of responding to crises – instead of investing in preventing them in the first place – are unsustainable. Within a decade, the international community spent US$349 billion on crisis response, humanitarian assistance and in-donor costs for refugees.

Amid a pandemic with vast health and socioeconomic needs, global military expenditure increased by 2.6 percent in 2020, totaling nearly $2 trillion. In 2021, it surpassed the two trillion US dollar mark. Investing in peacebuilding and development to address the root causes of crisis and fragility is a bargain in comparison, and also critical for reducing the enormous humanitarian needs. The trend we are currently seeing of reduced funding for long-term development, therefore, is extremely unfortunate, at a time when long-term and sustained investments in prevention and peace are needed the most.  

In the context of ongoing, complex crises and multi-dimensional challenges, our path out of conflict and fragility will rest on us working collaboratively between humanitarian, development and peace actors through delivering what we call a “nexus approach”.

This requires that we invest in a strong international system and support actors across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. While ensuring that the development actors such as UNDP stay engaged, aid recovery and support development solutions in the midst of crisis – such as is currently happening, for example, in Afghanistan – we must innovatively look at how to support prevention, peacebuilding and social cohesion as an integrated part of our development assistance.

While prevention and peace have been at the heart of the mandate of the United Nations from the start, the development tools that the UN agencies such as UNDP have at hand to support peace are not well known to the public. Most importantly, UNDP’s engagement with prevention is not confined to "conflict" settings, but emphasizes preventive responses across all development settings. This is because we know how absolutely critical the long-term presence, the broad development engagement and close partnership with national actors at all levels - are for supporting sustained peace.

Intergovernmental bodies such as the UN Peacebuilding Commission also contribute to the efforts at sustaining peace by mobilizing resources and helping to build solidarity and support to tackle issues such as the peace implications of climate change in Somalia or to help women in conflict contexts overcome financial barriers through peace-positive investments.

Another important, complementary tool facilitating more rapid response to peacebuilding needs in countries is the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), which provides flexible, catalytic and timely peacebuilding support to countries. It is the only instrument dedicated to financing coherent UN system-wide peacebuilding action, supporting national priorities worked out between governments and UN leadership on the ground. UNDP is one of the largest implementing agencies of the PBF, and there are many examples of how this support delivers peacebuilding results on the ground.

In Colombia, for example, a Peacebuilding Fund-supported initiative enabled UNDP and the UN Environment Programme to build the capacity of local organizations in conflict-affected areas to earn carbon credits.

The Peacebuilding Fund through UNDP action has also helped enhance trust among local communities and reduce farmer-herder conflicts in Southern Chad and in border regions of Burkina Faso.   

At the Mali-Niger border, funding from the Peacebuilding Fund helped reduce local land conflicts in communities by integrating environmental protection into the work of local land commissions and strengthening local capacities for environmental protection and conflict resolution. An ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure.

Second, if we are to make every ounce count, our approach must be an inclusive one. Challenges to peace and security cannot be addressed without empowering women and youth to participate and to lead.  We will never achieve sustained peace nor development if the perspectives, capacities and creativity of large segments of populations are not considered or engaged in the process.

In Tajikistan, for example, youth are supported to participate in local decision-making and are provided training to expand their economic opportunities and prevent their recruitment to violence, through a UN Peacebuilding Fund initiative led by UNDP, together with UNICEF and UN Women.

And third, to ensure sustainable peacebuilding, we need to develop broader partnerships to work for peace - locally, nationally and globally - and to count on an expanded network of partners.

We need cooperation with governments, with regional and sub-regional organizations and international financial institutions, bilateral partners, traditional and non-traditional donors, civil society organizations, faith-based groups, civil society organizations, local peacebuilding stakeholders and the private sector. There is a role to play for all.

This partnership effort includes ensuring that those actors making larger development investments do so in a conflict-sensitive way and, when possible, contribute to peace and social cohesion, even when peacebuilding is not their primary objective. The immense value of partnerships was repeatedly highlighted in the discussions of the Stockholm Forum this past week.

If we continue to advance along these three lines, we sow the seeds for hope.

As we now focus on Stockholm+50 – a crucial international environment meeting being held in Stockholm this week – and the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference 2022 (UNFCCC COP27), our work on climate finance for sustaining peace is firmly in mind. We need to ensure that there is a particular spotlight on conflict- affected countries and regions, many of which are highly vulnerable to climate change.

We are reminded that our world is deeply interconnected and we rely on one another. As the Secretary-General has underscored, we have a pressing need for an inclusive multilateralism that draws on civil society, business, local and regional authorities and others. The international community must deliver on its commitments, and invest in a world that ought to be. We can only do so together.

"Our path out of conflict and fragility will rest on us working collaboratively between humanitarian, development and peace actors."

Conflict prevention means tackling economic, social, institutional drivers of strife

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Preventing conflicts requires closing development gaps, shrinking inequality and bringing hope to people around the globe, senior UN officials told the Security Council on Tuesday.

“History has shown that conflicts do not emerge out of thin air, nor are they inevitable”, Secretary-General António Guterres   said . 

Too often, they result from lack of access to basic services and life staples – such as food, water and health care – or from gaps in security, laws and governance systems. 

The #SecurityCouncil in fulfilling its mandate also relies on the success of the #UNGA, #ECOSOC & the # ICJ fulfilling their respective mandates & in creating conditions that foster a truly sustainable peace. Pic taken prior to 🇲🇽s Open Debate on Preventive Diplomacy pic.twitter.com/HI2VwK4vvk UN GA President UN_PGA

Conflicts can also be sparked by gaps in public trust, both in institutions and in one another.

“These gaps are potential flashpoints for violence and even conflict”, spelled out the UN chief. 

That means not only defusing tensions through dialogue, but also ensuring that no mother is forced to skip a meal to feed her children. Closing development gaps and bringing people hope can help stabilize societies and reduce the inequalities that stoke conflict .

UN prevention toolkit

The UN chief emphasized that for 76 years, the UN has given the world “a home for dialogue, as well as the tools and mechanisms necessary for the peaceful settlement of disputes”. 

Citing the judicial dimension of prevention – provided by the Hague-based  International Court of Justice  – as well as the Economic and Social Council’s work to advance sustainable development, he also recalled his own calls for a surge in diplomacy and conflict prevention efforts.

Those efforts have included reviews of all the tools comprising the UN’s peace architecture, better integration of prevention and risk-management and more innovation and foresight.

Another crucial tool is the UN’s increasingly close partnerships with regional and subregional groups, such as the African Union, which bring critical in-depth knowledge of dynamics on the ground.

He highlighted the  Our Common Agenda  report, which takes a holistic view of global security and proposes a new social contract.

Drivers of instability

President of the General Assembly  Abdulla Shahid said that over the decades the UN has learned more about the link between socioeconomic factors and conflict.

Spotlighting some of today’s most critical emerging challenges, he pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as exacerbating socioeconomic struggles and inequality; the climate crises that threaten displacement; and ineffective institutions that rob people of hope.

Meanwhile, the absence of democratic participation, political freedoms and equality deprives entire populations of their human rights .

While global security will always fall under the Security Council , he maintained that it can be complemented by the Assembly and the Economic and Social Council’s (ECOSOC) efforts to build more resilient and prosperous communities.

Economic and social dimensions

ECOSOC  President Collen V. Kelapile recalled that organ’s mandate to promote the economic and social advancement of all peoples, protect human rights and oversee the UN’s development and humanitarian systems – drawing links to conflict prevention.

Suffering continues in Africa’s Sahel region “because of the failure to appreciate the complex interplay of human survival, in a very fragile and culturally diverse environment”, he said.

And extreme poverty in South Sudan is rooted in over 50 years of conflict, while Haiti’s vast challenges stem from historical and structural inequality, governance deficits and vulnerability to climate change.

However, despite the UN’s interlinked mandates to address such crises, interactions between them have remained sporadic and  ad hoc . 

“ Today’s complex challenges require more institutionalized collaboration ”, Mr. Kelapile underscored.

Dispute settlement at the ‘World Court’

Also briefing the Council, President of the International Court of Justice Joan E. Donoghue explored ways that the body can contribute to conflict prevention.

She said that States may resort to the Court as a means of dispute settlement to defuse tensions over resources, land or water boundaries or other sources of potential conflict.

While the circumstances and requirements of each case vary, Ms. Donoghue said that all the principal UN organs have the opportunity within their respective purviews to help implement the Court’s judgments and contribute to the promotion of peace, security and justice.

“The Court itself stands ready to receive any requests for advisory opinions that relevant UN organs and specialized agencies may make”, she upheld.

• security council
• Conflict prevention

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Article contents

Conflict analysis and resolution as a field: core concepts and issues.

• Louis Kriesberg Louis Kriesberg Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
•  and  Joyce Neu Joyce Neu Facilitating Peace
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.512
• Published online: 20 November 2018

Core concepts of the interdisciplinary social science field of conflict analysis and resolution (CAR) are discussed. Work in the field is based on numerous generally accepted ideas about the nature of conflict and constructive approaches to conflict. These ideas include ways of waging conflicts constructively, tracing the interconnectedness of conflicts, and assessing the multiplicity of actors. Other important core concepts relate to stages of conflicts: emergence, escalation, de-escalation and settlement, and sustaining peace. Finally, current and future issues regarding CAR conceptualizations and their applications are examined.

• conflict management
• constructive conflicts
• de-escalation
• future work
• interaction
• interconnected conflict
• nonviolent struggle
• normative concerns
• stages of conflict

Introduction *

This article addresses core concepts of the interdisciplinary social science field of conflict analysis and resolution (CAR), primarily in terms of ideas, as expressed in the literature, about the ways in which conflicts can be done constructively. In focusing on the ideas that constitute the field, it looks at relevant theory and research, treating CAR as an interdisciplinary social science field, particularly as it relates to international relations. Additionally, it considers some relatively prescriptive writing when it derives from a degree of empirical evidence. Significantly, peace studies is one of the sources for the field, and it now overlaps with and contributes to the field (Kriesberg, 1991 ). Peace studies work helps to foster normative concerns about the goals sought in waging conflicts and the strategies for reaching them.

The contemporary CAR approach builds on academic research and theorizing, as well as on traditional and innovative practices. Scholars of the approach share a number of generally accepted ideas about the nature of conflicts and constructive approaches to resolving them. These ideas provide the foundation for analyzing conflicts, finding ways of waging conflicts constructively, tracing the interconnectedness of conflicts, and assessing the multiplicity of actors. The CAR approach tends to rely minimally, if at all, on the use of violence in waging and settling conflicts. It also tends to emphasize the role of external intermediaries in the ending of conflicts and in conflict processes that generate solutions yielding some mutual gains for the opposing sides. Another important foundational concept is stages of conflicts: emergence, escalation, de-escalation and settlement, and sustaining peace.

As CAR evolves, workers in the field debate the salience of various ideas and even the meaning of basic concepts in the field. This engagement has led to increased contributions to the CAR literature by scholar-practitioners. These contributions offer a view based on experiencing the realities of various conflicts. This section discusses these ideas and realities, noting some contemporary variations in their interpretation (Bercovitch, Kremenyuk, & Zartman, 2009 ; Coleman, Deutsch, & Marcus, 2014 ; Sandole, Byrne, Sandole-Staroste, & Senehi, 2009 ; see also the companion article by Neu and Kriesberg, “Conflict Analysis and Resolution: Development of the Field of Scholarship (forthcoming),” in this encyclopedia.)

This article has three main sections. The first, “ Constructive Approaches to Conflict ,” explores the generally accepted ideas about the nature of conflict and about constructive approaches to conflict and how they play out in the scholarship on analyzing conflicts, finding ways of waging conflicts constructively, tracing the interconnectedness of conflicts, and assessing the multiplicity of actors. The second, “Conflict Stages,” addresses stages of conflicts: emergence, escalation, de-escalation and settlement, and sustaining peace. The third, “Current and Future Issues,” discusses concepts that are likely to become more controversial as the social-political context becomes less supportive of the CAR approach.

Constructive Approaches to Conflict

There is general consensus within the conflict analysis and resolution (CAR) community on some core ideas about social conflicts. First, social conflicts are universal and potentially beneficial, providing opportunities to achieve desired change. Second, social conflicts are waged with different degrees of destructiveness, and the parties in conflict determine how constructively or destructively they will conduct the conflict. Third, social conflicts entail contested social constructions; each party has its own view of what the fighting is about and who its opponents are. Fourth, social conflicts can be transformed; no matter how entrenched the conflict, outside actors or the parties themselves can take positive steps to move toward peaceful transformation. Fifth, social conflicts are dynamic and tend to move through stages; these stages reflect the constantly changing nature of the conflict and therefore may not always be linear (Kriesberg & Dayton, 2017 ).

Social constructions . Each party interprets its own and its adversaries’ identities, as well as which issues are at stake, from its own vantage point. Differences between parties’ interpretations, therefore, often are contentious.

Heterogeneity of adversaries . Within each party, there are different interests and goals—notably, among and between its leaders and their constituencies others. As relationships within the party change, a shift in the direction of the conflict may be feasible.

Variety of inducements in waging conflict . These include coercive sanctions to force change, positive inducements to reward constructive change, and the use of persuasion to appeal to the other’s best interests and values.

Interconnectedness . Conflicts are interrelated and overlap in time and social space. A conflict is not a closed system and so may be amenable to the intervention of external intermediaries who can help transform the conflict.

Consideration of others . Establishing long-term legitimate relations among adversaries by considering the opponents’ concerns and interests as well as the long-term interests of their own people may be the most difficult challenge for everyone, but it often brings mutual benefits (Kriesberg, 2015 ).

Mediation . Third-party intervention to assist de-escalation and negotiations among adversaries can help to transform and settle conflicts.

Dynamism . Conflicts move through stages during which parties can act with greater or lesser constructiveness to advance positive conflict transformation.

Analyzing Conflicts

There is long-standing general agreement that the initial step in engaging in or studying a conflict is to analyze it (Schirch, 2013 ; U.S. Department of State, 2008 ; Wehr 1979 ). This includes identifying the parties in the conflict and the issues in contention, as the parties perceive them. In any large-scale conflict, each party is highly differentiated, and there will be some variation among different groups within each entity, even regarding what is in contention. Moreover, many other parties have an indirect interest in the conflict and are affected by its course, and they therefore may become directly engaged in the conflict or withdraw from engagement in the future. Thus, the parties and intermediaries in a conflict are likely to be affected by both the possible and the actual interventions of external actors. All parties ought to reflectively analyze a conflict before acting in it.

The perspectives of the analysts influence their analyses. Generally, people who are engaged in a conflict, whether as partisans or as interveners, tend to focus on the explicit positions of the parties in the conflict and how they are acting in the conflict. Those who are less directly engaged tend to place more emphasis on the structure of the relationship among the adversaries and the social context of the conflict. The former kinds of analyses tend to emphasize factors that are amenable to change in the short term; the latter kinds of analyses tend to emphasize structural factors that are less malleable in the short term.

The methods of engagement that people employ influence their analyses. Those who rely heavily on military methods often tend to see conflict as framed by military force; whereas CAR practitioners, who engage in training, workshops, and dialogue work, may emphasize the role of opposing narratives and misunderstandings when analyzing conflicts. Theoretical and ideological inclinations also influence analyses. Greater recognition of these different circumstances may help foster more comprehensive analyses and better synthesizing and sequencing of strategies.

Asymmetry between adversaries in a conflict greatly affects the course the conflict and how it is waged and ended. Members of the CAR field stress the multidimensional character of asymmetry and its fluidity, since they vary with different issues (Mitchell, 1995 ). Reducing certain asymmetries, then, is not necessarily conducive to transforming a conflict and settling it constructively. That depends in good measure on the direction in which a particular asymmetry is reduced. Thus, if one side has greater solidarity and cohesion than the other, asymmetry that is reduced by increasing the other side’s ability to effectively change policies would be conducive to mutual conflict transformation. By the same token, if one side has greater commitment to the issue in contention, asymmetry that is reduced by that side softening its unyielding position would be conducive to bringing about a mutually acceptable conflict transformation.

The changing character of power differences and other kinds of asymmetry are crucial in choosing the appropriate interventions. For example, if equitable accommodations are sought, certain kinds of mediation may not be advisable when the asymmetry in resources between the adversaries is very great.

Recognizing the complexity of this kind of conflict analysis, CAR scholars have produced a broad array of frameworks for conflict analysis (Fund for Peace, 2014 ; Goodhand, Vaux, & Walker, 2002 ; Mason & Rychard, 2005 ; Samarasinghe, Donaldson, & McGinn, 2001 ; U.S. Department of State, 2008 ), together with more in-depth examinations of conflict analyses (Levinger, 2013 ; Schirch, 2013 ).

Methods of Waging Conflicts

A cardinal tenet of CAR is that social conflicts are inevitable and often necessary to improve peoples’ rights. The critical matter in this regard is the way the conflict is conducted and the methods each adversary applies. Conflicts are commonly defined as struggles in which each side tries to hurt the other to advance toward its goals. A basic CAR insight, however, is that efforts to achieve a contested goal are not only coercive, involving only negative sanctions (Boulding, 1989 ; Kriesberg, & Dayton, 2017 ). Positive sanctions can be a second powerful kind of inducement to obtain desired goals. A third kind of inducement is to use persuasive appeals and arguments, relying on shared values and identities. These three kinds of inducements are combined in many ways to constitute a particular strategy at a given time.

Interestingly, this idea has been articulated by leading public figures who are not identified as practitioners in the CAR field. Joseph S. Nye ( 2004 ), for example, has influentially written about the importance of “soft power” in world politics, referring to the many noncoercive inducements that the United States can and does effectively deploy in foreign affairs. Armitage and Nye ( 2007 ) further elaborated on combining “soft power” and “hard power,” particularly military power, which would constitute “smart power.” Hillary Clinton, at her January 2009 confirmation hearings for secretary of state, spoke clearly about the importance of using smart power and not relying solely on military power.

As the field has expanded to address how adversaries may be brought to the negotiating table, more thought has been given to noncoercive inducements and also to applying coercive force that tends to avoid destructive escalation. One strategic method that has been increasingly examined and employed is nonviolent action (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011 ; Schock, 2005 ; Sharp, 2005 ). Imposing nonviolent sanctions can avoid dehumanizing the enemy and holds out the promise of future mutual benefits.

Interconnectedness of Conflicts

One important reason for conflict fluidity is that each conflict is interconnected with many others (Dahrendorf, 1959 ). Many conflicts are nested in larger conflicts and also encompass smaller ones. Conflicts are generally also linked sequentially, each arising from a previous one. And each party in a large-scale conflict experiences numerous internal conflicts that arise among different factions, ranks, and identity groups (Colaresi, 2005 ). Furthermore, each party is simultaneously engaged in numerous conflicts with a variety of adversaries.

As the salience of one conflict increases, it tends to reduce the salience of the other conflicts. Enemy number one may slip to being enemy number two, making de-escalation in that secondary conflict easier and likelier. Partisans and intermediaries may choose strategies that are intended to alter the salience of a conflict and speed its peaceful resolution.

Multiplicity of Actors

Workers in the CAR field are sensitive to the reality that conflicts are rarely between two homogeneous, unitary entities. Rather, many parties are involved directly or indirectly in every conflict (Crocker, Hampson, & Aall, 1999 ; Touval & Zartman, 2001 ). Even when there appear to be only two sides, in actuality, each side has some characteristics of a coalition. Divisions among the members of each party in a conflict, particularly among leaders and other groups, significantly affect the course of a conflict. External conflict can strengthen internal solidarity, but not always and not forever (Wilkenfeld, 1973 ).

As a conflict de-escalates and moves toward resolution, some factions or allied groups may resist the movement or even reject a signed agreement. They are spoilers, unsatisfied with the terms of the accommodation with the adversary or with their portion in that accommodation (Goren & Elman, 2012 ; Stedman, Rothchild, & Cousens, 2002 ). The parties making the agreement then may try to placate and co-opt the rejectionists or to isolate, marginalize, and overwhelm them. If the parties have not dealt with their spoilers by the time the peace talks begin, then it falls to the third party to decide the best course of action for the talks—either talking to the spoilers or sidelining them. In varying degrees, spoilers are a widespread phenomenon. Attention to them is often critical in undertaking de-escalation and in constructing and sustaining an equitable accommodation.

Actors who are not directly engaged in a conflict can also affect its course (Ury, 2000 ). They are potential or actual intermediaries, allies, and antagonists. The actions of those who are directly engaged in a conflict are affected by concerns about the potential interventions of external actors. In the CAR field, the possible effects of a mediator in facilitating and hastening a negotiated end to a conflict is a major topic of study.

The demand for official Track I mediation to resolve armed conflict has increased and with it, the number of organizations and individuals interested in meeting this demand. There are multiple mediators in peace processes, who may have different skill levels, understandings of the conflict and parties, and conflicting interests. This may allow the parties to play one mediator off the other to the detriment of the process. One idea to minimize competition between potential mediating organizations was suggested by the African Union: to have the most local of the intergovernmental organizations take the lead mediation role (de Coning, 2015 ; Nathan, 2016b ). But considering the meager organizational resources of many regional and subregional organizations, this is not a plausible solution. Nathan ( 2016b ) has suggested that partnerships at the decision-making level of intergovernmental organizations would be more powerful in securing cooperation and coordination in peace processes. Recognizing the problem of multiple mediators, the United Nations issued guidelines emphasizing the critical need for “coherence, coordination and complementarity of mediation efforts” (United Nations, 2012 ).

Other international actors take part in peace processes as “friends of” the mediation or as interested states. They may not be directly involved in the talks, but they can have a positive influence if they support the goals of the peace process (Whitfield, 2010 ). Finally, representatives of civil society, women, and youth from the conflict areas will be present as participants in the talks, observers, or advisers to the parties or the mediation team or both.

Conflict Stages

A central tenet of the CAR approach is that conflicts are not immutable and that even highly intractable conflicts decline in intractability as policies and circumstances change. This happens as conditions change within the adversaries, in their relationships, and in their social contexts. This understanding is manifested in the recognition that conflicts move through a series of general stages. There is little consensus about the names for the stages, but they may be identified by terms such as emergence , escalation , de-escalation , termination , and recovery (Kriesberg, 1982 ; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986 ). In 1992 , the UN secretary-general, Boutros-Ghali, issued his “Agenda for Peace,” bringing attention to the different phases of peacemaking and peacebuilding (Boutros-Ghali, 1992 ). The stages are not clearly bounded or always linear; past stages may recur. Furthermore, groups engaged in the conflict may not participate at the same pace in all the stages. Nevertheless, it is analytically useful to distinguish between the different stages to highlight the relevant CAR factors and processes at each stage.

The field of CAR initially focused on negotiating the end of conflicts, sometimes using mediation. Soon, concern about the prior and later stages of the conflict increased. Greater attention was directed at getting adversaries to the negotiating table and on the quality and sustainability of agreements that are reached. With the increase in outside intervention in internal societal wars and attention to nonstate actors, the field expanded to include giving greater attention to preventing the outbreak of warfare and to recovering from past violent outbreaks. The field presently incorporates the full range of conflict stages, and practitioners often specialize in particular stages of conflict. The ideas and practices that are particularly important at each stage are discussed next.

Conflict Emergence

Conflict emergence draws attention to the underlying conditions that precede an overt conflict. Thus the conditions of structural violence, of unsatisfied human needs, and of exploitation are often pointed to as crucial in characterizing a latent conflict preceding the outbreak of a manifest conflict (Burton, 1990 ; Dahrendorf, 1959 ). In actuality, conflicts often break out not because of the actions of the most oppressed, but because of the actions of the more powerful. The oppressed may have reason to fight, but they often do not believe that some particular group is responsible for their poor circumstances or that they can change those others in a way that will improve their conditions. The more powerful, however, have reason to believe that they can readily get more of what they want from the weaker party. Acting on this belief, they may provoke resistance and a violent conflict.

Adversaries’ beliefs about collective identities, the perceived capabilities of each side, judgments about what is fair and just, and the chance of achieving sought-for goals determine if and when a conflict becomes manifested in deeds. This is why the ideologies that are constructed and adopted by members of a collectivity are critical in conflict emergence. Political, religious, military, and intellectual leaders can utilize a suitable ideology to arouse and mobilize supporters against an enemy and influence the means to be used in the struggle against that enemy. This also is highly relevant for conflicts that stress ethnic differences or differences in religious or political systems of thought.

Conflict Escalation

How a conflict emerges influences how quickly and destructively it escalates. Often, a burst of violence at the initial manifestation of a conflict results in a rapid and sustained escalation, which can entrap the adversaries, who will want to keep fighting in order to justify the losses they have already experienced (Brockner & Rubin, 1985 ). A careful, proportional, tit-for-tat series of exchanges, however, can often contain the scale of the escalation and result in cooperation (Axelrod, 1984 ). The way adversaries interact is the basic determinant of the duration and destructiveness of a conflict’s escalation (Dayton & Kriesberg, 2009 ). Attention to the growing role of nonviolent action and to transforming feelings and thought via social media has increased attention about constructive escalation (Kriesberg & Dayton, 2017 ).

External interventions, often in the form of mediation and consultation by, for example, representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other international governmental organizations, helped prevent destructive escalation in Eastern Europe after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (McMahon, 2007 ; Möller, 2006 ). External actions or the threat of them can also help to contain a conflict, inhibiting wide-ranging violent attacks. They can also help channel the means of the struggle to electoral politics or nonviolent actions. Unofficial Track Two conflict resolution training and the facilitation of workshops can contribute to such channeling.

Conflict De-escalation and Settlement

Before the emergence of the CAR approach, research and theorizing about de-escalation were relatively neglected topics. Now there is considerable work on the factors and processes that contribute to de-escalation, conflict settlement, and, particularly, negotiating agreements.

Processes and factors that are internal to each adversary, pertain to their relationships, and are components of the external context can contribute to turning an escalating conflict around. Internally, some groups come to believe that the burdens of continuing to fight to achieve some contested goals are costlier than those goals are worth. The relationship between adversaries may change as conciliatory gestures by one side are convincingly made (Mitchell, 2000 ). Changes in the global system’s power relations or salient norms can help shift a conflict toward de-escalation.

The transition from confrontation to de-escalation is a matter of great interest in the field. The idea that a turning point is reached when the adversaries are locked in a hurting stalemate is an influential one (Touval & Zartman, 1985 ). Indeed, members of the opposing sides often come to believe that neither side can impose the settlement it would like, and they begin to search for a settlement they can accept. The discovery or construction of a new option may then appear highly attractive. An interplay between the conflict conditions at a given time and the possible new options marks the suitable time for a particular solution to be proposed and accepted.

Sustaining Peace

There has been a growing literature since the 1990s about the content of peace agreements, recovering from violent societal conflicts, reconciliation, building legitimate institutions of governance, and other matters pertinent to fashioning an enduring and equitable peace (Bar-Siman-Tov, 2003 ; Pouligny, Chesterman, & Schnabel, 2007 ). Peace agreements are difficult to obtain and to sustain. Of 121 armed conflicts between 1990 and 2005 , only one third were concluded by peace agreements (Harbom, Hogbladh, & Wallensteen, 2006 ). Yet since the 1990s, negotiated settlements have become the preferred way to end wars (DeRouen et al., 2010 ).

Walter ( 2002 ) defines the success of a peace agreement in terms of duration: if there is no violence for at least five years after the agreement is signed and the parties make efforts to implement the terms of the agreement, then it is successful. Hampson ( 1996 ) suggests that a “partial success” would be when the parties observe the terms of the agreement they have signed. A more complete success would entail putting in place structures and institutions that discourage the parties from going back to war. Westendorf ( 2015 ) posits that a minimalist view of success would be physical security and the absence of war—that is, a negative peace. A maximalist view would be establishing a positive peace—which would require a deeper and longer term commitment to making the changes needed to establish conditions that are popularly viewed as equitable and legitimate institutions that can address potential conflicts.

Durable peace agreements are characterized by (a) adequate state capacity to implement the agreement (DeRouen et al., 2010 ), (b) third-party intervention during the peace process and post-agreement implementation (DeRouen et al., 2010 ; Hampson 1996 ; Walter 2002 ), (c) inclusion of a mechanism that foresees and addresses problems that may arise during implementation; and (d) participation of civil society and women in the peace process and in post-agreement implementation (Nilsson, 2012 ; O’Reilly, Ó Súilleabháin, & Paffenholz, 2015 ; Wanis-St. John & Kew, 2008 ).

Some of the reasons given for the fragility of peace are that civil society is not always in a position to provide the space and resources for peacemaking, that ongoing violence is socially and politically destabilizing, and that most peace processes have a narrow focus on governance reform (Brewer, 2010 , p. 30).

Current and Future Issues

Given the diversity of CAR’s sources, the changing topics of inquiry, and the increasing domains of work, it is to be expected that many contentious issues are currently matters of disagreement and dialogue. Consideration of seven such matters follows.

Universal or Cultural

An enduring controversy relates to the universality of particular ideas in the CAR approach. As in the case of conflict emergence, some in the field emphasize a particular set of universal human needs, which, when unsatisfied, result in conflicts. Others stress that ways of negotiating, forms of mediation, styles of confrontation, and many other aspects of conducting and settling conflicts vary among different national cultures, religious traditions, social classes, gender, and many other social groupings (Abu-Nimer, 2003 ; Cohen, 1997 ; Faure, 2005 ). Moreover, within each of these groups are subgroupings and personal variations. The differences between groups are matters of central tendencies, and there is a great overlapping of similarities. More needs to be known about the effects of situational as well as cultural effects and about the ease with which people learn new ways of contending and settling fights. The UN declarations and conventions on human rights offer CAR analysts and practitioners standards that can guide CAR practice and yield equitable and enduring settlements (Hayner, 2009 ).

Discipline or General Approach

A major internal issue in the CAR field concerns the extent to which CAR is and should be a focused discipline, a collection of loosely related arenas of research and practice, or a shared broad general approach. In the 1950s, the vision of many workers in the field was of a new comprehensive, interdisciplinary, research-grounded theory, but that was not realized.

Considerable agreement does exist about particular conflict processes and empirical generalizations. Without a comprehensive theory, however, inconsistencies among various generalizations and propositions are not reconciled. Moreover, without a comprehensive theory or theories of the middle range, it is difficult to know under what conditions a particular social process or empirical generalization is or is not operative, and to apply such knowledge to practice. On the other hand, the more general and necessarily abstract perspective about social conflicts lacks the precision needed to make reliable applications. Despite these considerations, empirical generalizations and knowledge of relevant conflict processes can be useful guides to effective actions that minimize the destructiveness of conflicts if used in conjunction with good information about a particular conflict.

Complicating the CAR approach are the differing places occupied by theory and practice. Each has varied in prominence within the field, and both are, in principle, regarded as important. In actuality, however, theory and practice have not always been well integrated. Theory has rarely sought to specify or assess major theoretical premises or propositions. Often, it is largely descriptive of patterns of actions. And though more research on assessing practice is being done, it has been focused on particular interventions, executed and assessed within a short time frame. Although in some spheres, there is a strong interplay between theory and practice, notably regarding negotiation, mediation, nonviolent action, and problem-solving workshops, additional work is needed to integrate other realms.

Nonviolence or Limited Violence

Another contentious issue relates to the use of violence in waging conflicts. There is widespread agreement among CAR analysts and practitioners that violence is wrong, particularly when it is used to serve internal needs rather than for its effects on an adversary. The presumed internal needs may be psychological, status- or power-based, or economic in nature and situated within individuals, organizations, or larger collectivities. Adherents of CAR generally agree that violence is morally and practically wrong when violence is used in a broad, imprecise manner and when it is not used in conjunction with other means to achieve constructive goals. The increasing use of “smart bombs” and missiles from drones pose moral and practical problems about what is good policy regarding the recourse to such allegedly targeted killing. From its origins, some workers in the CAR field have opposed resorting to the use of violence in any conflict, whereas others have believed that limited violence is necessary and effective in some circumstances, as, for example, is articulated in just war theory.

These differences in values and beliefs are becoming more important with the increased use of military intervention to stop destructive and escalating domestic and international conflicts and gross violations of human rights. The challenges are made greater by the increased cooperation of CAR adherents with governments. Much more analysis is needed about how specific violent and nonviolent policies are combined and with what consequences for the various parties under particular conditions. More specificity is needed beyond the generalization that great reliance on naked violence often fails. When violence is undertaken, in desperation, against a mightier antagonist, it most likely fails.

Neutral Process or Good Result

A long-standing issue in the CAR field is whether the emphasis should be on the process by which a conflict is settled or on the justice and consequences of the settlement. If the process is emphasized, the value of the neutrality of the intermediary is stressed and less attention is directed at the nature of the conflict to be settled. This matter is particularly acute in considering when and how mediation is best undertaken (Laue, 1982 ). Some practitioners in the field stress mediator neutrality and the mediator’s focus on the process to reach an agreement. Others argue that a mediator either should avoid mediating when the parties are so unequal that equity is unlikely to be achieved or should act in ways that will help the parties reach a balanced and just outcome (Nader, 1991 ).

Internal Affairs

As is no doubt the case in any field, research findings and best practices have not always been applied internally within the CAR field. Gender bias, for example, remains a challenge. There is notable progress, in many CAR programs in universities, women now appear to be in the majority. According to the ISA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, women earned 58% of doctoral degrees in the social sciences, and 42% of those in political science. Yet the committee found that women constituted only 12.3% of full professors compared to 23.5% for men (Hancock, Baum, & Breuning, 2013 ). With the rise of contingent workers at universities, women faculty members are disproportionately employed in part-time positions (Curtis, 2013 ). Women and men faculty express the same preference for research and share the opinion that service is an imposition, yet women spend significantly more time teaching, mentoring, and providing service to the university than do their male counterparts (Chenoweth et al., 2016 ; Misra, Lundquist, Holmes, & Agiomavritis, 2011 ).

Gender bias extends to whose research gets taught and whose work is cited. Consistent with numbers in the top international relations journals, 82% of the assigned reading in international relations proseminars was written by male authors. Work by women and mixed-gender teams made up the remaining 18% (Colgan, 2015 ). Other research shows that international relations articles written by women were cited less than those by men and that even when a research article by a woman is published in a top journal, it receives significantly fewer citations than had that article been written by a man (Maliniak, Powers, & Walter, 2013 ).

External Relations

The way CAR relates to other fields and to its social context raises several issues. As the number and variety of would-be intermediaries in large-scale conflicts increase, the relations among CAR-associated organizations and other kinds of governmental and nongovernmental actors becomes more problematic. The engagement of many organizations allows for specialized and complementary programs but also produces problems of competition, redundancy, and confusion. Adversaries may try to co-opt intermediary organizations or exploit differences among them. For example, human rights organizations and conflict resolution organizations can complement each other; but they may also interfere with each other’s work (Babbitt & Lutz, 2009 ).

To enhance the possible benefits and minimize the difficulties of relations among many intervening organizations, coordination of some sort can be helpful. Research indicates that a variety of measures may be undertaken, ranging from informal ad hoc exchanges of information to regular meetings among organizations in the field and having one organization be the “lead” agency (Kriesberg, 1996 ; Nan, 2008 ). The Applied Conflict Resolution Organizations Network (ACRON) was founded in the late 1990s to promote collaboration among conflict resolution organizations to become “a true force for peace” (Applied Conflict Resolution Organizations Network, 2000 ). ACRON went through a name change in 2003 , finally becoming, in 2006 , the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP). The AfP brings together 125 organizations and 1,000 individuals engaged in peacemaking and peacebuilding work. Although coordination will always remain a work in progress, the AfP has succeeded in providing global linkages that have strengthened peacebuilding efforts.

The funding for CAR work usually comes from external sources, which raises another set of issues. The Hewlett Foundation ended its 20-year program of support for conflict resolution programs in 2004 , and no comparable source for sustaining programs of theory, research, and applications has since appeared. Tuition charges help support education and training; service fees help sustain nongovernmental organizations doing applied work; and government agencies and various foundations provide funds for research and service projects. All this keeps the work relevant for immediate use. However, the small scale and short duration of this kind of funding hamper the making of long-term and large-scale research assessments and the theory building that are needed for creative new growth and appropriate applications.

Autonomy or Dependence

Finally, issues relating to autonomy and professional independence deserve attention. CAR analysts and practitioners may tailor their work to the preferences, as they perceive them, of their funders and clients. This diminishes the goals that in their best judgment they might otherwise advance. These risks are enhanced when tasks are contracted out by autocratic or highly ideological entities. Furthermore, as more nongovernmentals are financially dependent on funding by national governments and international organizations, issues regarding autonomy and co-optation grow.

On the other hand, CAR ideas are increasingly picked up by people who do not consider themselves as being in the CAR field. For example, the evidence that countries with democratic political systems do not fight wars with each other has been used as a reason to try to make countries democratic, even by warfare. Obviously, officials and other actors who do not accept the CAR approach as a whole may selectively use elements of it. Such usage sometimes appears to be misusing the approach and making it ineffective. Nevertheless, as people who do not think of themselves as being in the CAR field adopt particular methods and ideas of the field, those methods and ideas are diffusing into society and gaining + credibility.

On the Future

Undoubtedly, the sociopolitical context in the United States and in many other countries in the 21st century has become less conducive to the rise and acceptance of the CAR approach. As discussed in Neu and Kriesberg, “Conflict Analysis and Resolution: Development of the Field of Scholarship (forthcoming),” the sociopolitical context in earlier decades supported the emergence and institutionalization of the CAR approach. Several recent developments have contributed to the deterioration of this support. Notably, in the United States, political parties have become highly polarized with a high level of mutual hostility (Dionne, Ornstein, & Mann, 2017 ). Growing economic inequality, stagnating wages for many, and increasing wealth for a few generated grievances among the nonrich. Some of the rich used their resources to further enrich themselves—by denying inconvenient scientific facts, disregarding democratic civility, weakening trade unions, and denigrating opponents of these actions. Republican Party leaders often joined in promoting such practices. Moreover, Democratic Party leaders failed to deal with the growing public dissatisfaction with these developments (Frank, 2016 ).

Many other broad, external changes contributed to the foregoing changes. These include technological changes relating to the evolving social media that reduced previously widely shared views of reality. Conversely, technological developments have also contributed to the growing integration of the world, with accompanying economic effects. Following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 , a surge of wars prompted waves of refugees entering Europe. Terrorist attacks added fears, gave rise to anti-Muslim feelings, aroused ethnonationalist sentiments, and contributed to authoritarian tendencies in many countries around the world. In the United States, the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States is a symptom of and promotes views and behaviors that are antithetical to the CAR approach. This is illustrated by his bullying style, lack of empathy, and discounting of empirical evidence.

Many aspects of the reaction to these developments in the United States and elsewhere, however, are consistent with and lend support to the CAR approach. A reliance on many aspects of nonviolent action has been evident in massive demonstrations and acts of solidarity with people threatened by the policies of the Trump administration. Resistance has taken many forms, including forming broad coalitions and creating new social organizations, notably in the national Indivisible movement (Dionne, Ornstein, & Mann, 2017 ). Moreover, many of the persuasive efforts convey empathy for and propose alternative policies to alleviate the grievances that drove some people to vote for Trump. Generally, the persuasive efforts foster mutual regard for all people and attention to evidence-based understandings of reality.

The new circumstances should be met with new adaptations among workers in the CAR field. Broadly, this would include giving more attention to enhancing human rights and satisfying human needs in the ways conflicts are waged and transformed. Attention to such matters would extend to sustainable peacebuilding. This could include work on the ways governmental officials and nongovernmental organizations work together constructively (Gerard & Kriesberg, 2018 ). Humans, over many thousands of years, have gradually come to live together with declining rates of violence (Pinker, 2011 ). Work in the CAR field can contribute to continuing that progress, despite setbacks.

Links to Digital Materials

Note : The following list is not intended to be comprehensive; it is, however, illustrative of the diversity of CAR resources. Many of the descriptions are from the organizations’ websites.

ACCORD: The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (Durban, South Africa). ACCORD is a South Africa–based civil society organization working throughout Africa to bring creative African solutions to the challenges posed by conflict on the continent. ACCORD publishes the African Journal on Conflict Resolution , Conflict Trends , and Policy and Practice Brief .

Alliance for Peacebuilding (Washington, DC). The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) leads a community of more than 100 organizations building peaceful and just societies around the world. In this integrated field, the AfP amplifies the strengths of its members through collaboration, tackling a spectrum of issues too large for any one organization to address alone.

Berghof Foundation (Berlin, Germany). The Berghof Foundation is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports efforts to prevent political and social violence and to achieve sustainable peace through conflict transformation. The foundation publishes the Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation .

Beyond Intractability (Boulder, CO). Created by a team of more than 400 distinguished scholars and practitioners from around the world, the Beyond Intractability/CRInfo Knowledge Base is built around an online “encyclopedia” with easy-to-understand essays on almost 400 topics. The essays explain the many dynamics that determine the course of conflict along with the available options for promoting more constructive approaches.

The Carter Center (Atlanta, GA). The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization in partnership with Emory University, is guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering. It seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.

Centre for Conflict Resolution (Cape Town, South Africa). The center aims to contribute to a just and sustainable peace in Africa by promoting constructive, creative, and cooperative approaches to the resolution of conflict through training, policy development, research, and capacity building. The center produces a wide range of publications including seminar reports , policy briefs , books , and occasional reports .

HD: The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (Geneva, Switzerland). The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) is a Swiss-based private diplomacy organization founded on the principles of humanity, impartiality, and independence. Its mission is to help prevent, mitigate, and resolve armed conflict through dialogue and mediation. The center publishes reports on the conflicts and issues in which it is involved.

Centre for Mediation in Africa (Hatfield, South Africa). The center strives to make mediation efforts throughout Africa more effective by offering academic and practical courses in mediation, researching new and current best practices, and supporting organizations such as the United Nations, the African Union, and those African governments involved in the mediation process. The center produces research on mediation best practices.

Conflict Management Initiative (CMI) (Helsinki, Finland). The Conflict Management Initiative (CMI) works closely with all conflicting parties in some of the world’s most intractable conflicts to forge lasting peace through informal dialogue and mediation. CMI was founded in 2000 by Nobel Peace laureate and former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari.

Conflict Resolution Information (Boulder, CO). A free online clearinghouse, indexing peace- and conflict-resolution-related webpages, books, articles, audiovisual materials, organizational profiles, events, and current news articles.

Conciliation Resources (London, UK). The mission of Conciliation Resources is to provide practical support to help people affected by violent conflict achieve lasting peace. It draws on shared experiences to improve peacebuilding policies and practice worldwide. Conciliation Resources publishes the Accord series.

Crisis Group (Brussels, Belgium). An independent, nonprofit nongovernmental organization committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict, Crisis Group conducts analyses of major current conflicts based on fieldwork and makes policy suggestions. It publishes alerts, reports, and briefings on the various conflicts it works on.

European Institute of Peace (Brussels, Belgium). The European Institute of Peace (EIP), launched in May 2014, is an independent partner to the European Union and Europe, augmenting its global peace agenda through mediation and informal dialogue. The EIP pursues multitrack diplomacy and acts as a flexible external tool in support of EU mediation efforts where the EU has limited freedom to act. It also serves as an operational hub, connecting existing expertise and sharing knowledge and lessons on European mediation.

Institute for Peace and Security Studies (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). The Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) at the Addis Ababa University is the premiere institute for education, research, and policy dialogues on peace and security in Africa. The IPSS produces two types of policy periodicals, the IPSS Policy Analysis and the IPSS Policy Brief to provide comprehensive policy options in the areas of peace, security, and governance.

INCORE: International Conflict Research Institute (Ulster, UK). INCORE is a joint project of the United Nations University and the University of Ulster. It provides a Conflict Data Service and a comprehensive database and resource guide to conflict-prone regions and countries.

Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (Accra, South Africa). The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) is one of three institutions designated by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a regional Centre of Excellence for the delivery of training and research in the areas of conflict prevention, management, and peacebuilding.

Nairobi Peace Initiative–Africa (Nairobi, Kenya). The Nairobi Peace Initiative–Africa (NPI-Africa) is a continental peace resource organization, engaged in a broad range of peacebuilding and conflict transformation initiatives in Africa.

Peace and Collaborative Development Network (Washington, DC). Created by Dr. Craig Zelizer in 2007, the Peace and Collaborative Development Network (PCDN) is the go-to hub for the global change-making community. The PCDN is a rapidly growing social enterprise that gathers over 35,500 professionals, organizations, and students engaged in social change, peacebuilding, social entrepreneurship, development, and related fields.

Peace Research Institute of Oslo (Oslo, Norway). Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) conducts research on the conditions for peaceful relations between states, groups, and people. It publishes the journal Security Dialogue and the Journal of Peace Research .

Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute (Stockholm, Sweden). The Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute (SIPRI) is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control, and disarmament. SIPRI provides data, analyses, and recommendations based on open sources to policymakers, researchers, media, and the interested public. SIPRI produces the annual SIPRI Yearbook .

United States Institute of Peace (Washington, DC). An independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by the U.S. Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent international conflicts; promote postconflict stability and development; and increase conflict-management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The USIP offers online and on-site courses, and the United States Institute of Peace Press has been publishing books on CAR since 1991.

UN Peacemaker (New York, NY). UN Peacemaker is the online mediation support tool developed by the United Nations Department of Political Affairs. Intended for peacemaking professionals, it includes an extensive database of peace agreements, guidance material, and information on United Nations mediation support services. UN Peacemaker is part of the United Nation’s overall efforts to support UN and non-UN mediation initiatives.

West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (Accra, South Africa). The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) is a leading regional peacebuilding organization founded in 1998 in response to civil wars that plagued West Africa in the 1990s. Over the years, WANEP has succeeded in establishing strong national networks in every member state of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and has over 500 member organizations across West Africa.

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* This article and Conflict Analysis and Resolution: Development of the Field update and expand Conflict Analysis and Resolution as a Field .

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Disinformation, Democracy, and Conflict Prevention | SSRC Essay Series

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Preventing Violent International Conflict

Tuesday, April 27, 1999

Publication Type: Teaching and Learning Guide

This guide from the 1999 National Peace Essay Contest uses case studies from Poland in 1815 and Czechoslovakia in 1938 to examine the effectiveness of the international diplomacy in preventing violent international crises. It also contains a review of basic concepts and bibliographic materials.

Teaching Guide on Preventing Violent Conflict Introduction In this teaching guide students examine two cases of preventing violent conflict, Poland in 1815 and Czechoslovakia in 1938, as a means of developing an understanding of conflict and conflict prevention. The teaching guide is designed specifically to help students develop analytical writing skills on this topic. The objective of this guide is to provide lessons aimed at helping students to:

• Develop an understanding of principal concepts regarding conflict and conflict prevention.
• Formulate thesis statements to inform the structure of an essay.
• Use primary source materials in addition to secondary sources.
• Reinforce analytical writing skills in sample case studies.

This guide will fulfill these objectives through five suggested lessons: Lesson I acquaints the students with the writing prompt, presenting crucial concepts used in the writing prompt with exercises designed to activate student understanding. Lesson II presents two case studies with background information and primary sources to illustrate success and failure in preventing violent international conflict. Teachers can use this lesson to explain how to use primary source materials as evidence to support or refute a thesis statement. Lesson III reinforces the analytical skills developed in the previous lesson through small group and class discussions. the writing prompt is reintroduced in Lesson IV , allowing class members to compose sample essays integrating the concepts and case study materials. Finally, Lesson V prepares students to write individual essays on "Preventing Violent International Conflict." Lesson I: Concept Development Lesson I will take approximately two class periods. Have the students read the writing prompt, "Preventing Violent International Conflict" and list any questions students have pertaining to concepts, themes, or tools contained in the writing prompt. The objective of this lesson is for students to acquire an active understanding of key concepts beyond rote memorization of definitions. Victor Rentel developed a five-step system for concept development that will be adapted to the key concepts in the writing prompt. Students will learn to label, compare and contrast, categorize, and apply information inherent in each concept to the particular context in which the concept is used in individual essays. To reinforce key concepts and integrate them successfully into essay composition, students will apply various approaches to thoroughly understand each concept. The following outline of these approaches uses the concept "balance of power" as an example. Establish a label for the concept. Connect the concept with particular word associations for clarity and understanding. For example, balance of power, defined as a "relatively equal distribution of military power between states, allowing no single state or coalition of states to dominate the others," can be associated with the European power system resulting from the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), called the Concert of Europe. Emphasize attributes of the concept. Identify the characteristics of a concept that make it similar to or different from other concepts. To develop attributes of a balance of power, one might compare and contrast the characteristics of the Concert of Europe with those of the hegemonic system of Napoleonic Europe. Provide both positive and negative examples of the concept. Through examples and counter-examples, discuss state systems that represent a balance of power or an imbalance of power (such as a state of chaos or hegemony), and explain how certain historical and contemporary alliances represent positive and negative examples of the concept. Discover the essence of the concept by categorizing it and relating it to other concepts. By categorizing various forms of balance of power arrangements, link the concept to collective security systems and coalitions, and to other concepts mentioned in this lesson or brought up by students. Apply the concept to historical topics or current issues. Once the students understand the key concepts in the writing prompt, integrate each concept into issues discussed in class. For example, did the balance of power agreed upon at the Congress of Vienna ensure peace in Europe (with only isolated bilateral conflicts) between 1815 and 1914? If so, why did it fail in 1914?

Key Concepts The following concepts are taken from the writing prompt "Preventing Violent International Conflict" and are intended to give the students a better understanding of the topic. Power : The ability to influence or control the behavior of others, events, outcomes, or the rules of the game. Strength, resources, leadership, and moral persuasion are attributes necessary to exercise power. Balance of Power : A relatively equal distribution of military power between states, allowing no single state or coalition of states to dominate the others. Coalition : A group of states that cooperate with each other on a short-term basis to achieve a common goal or work against a common threat. Hegemony : The possession by one state of a preponderance of military and economic power in the international system. This state can create and enforce rules and impose its will on other states. Alliance Systems : A formal commitment between states to coordinate a political or military response against a specific enemy or specific contingencies. Low-level disputes : Conflicts between independent political units in which the violence is below the threshold of all-out military combat but above peaceful competition between states. Escalation : An increase of military or political efforts to achieve one's goals by raising the stakes and expanding the existing or perceived limits of the conflict, often making it harder to control any resulting violence. Violent International Conflict (War) : A major armed conflict between organized military forces of independent political units to achieve political advantage over other combatants. Preventive Diplomacy : Measures taken to keep low-level or long-festering disputes from escalating into significant violence between parties and to limit the spread of violence if it does occur. Preventive Measures : Specific actions taken to keep disputes from arising or escalating.

• Early Warning System : A set of indicators based on information and intelligence to help identify where and when the most harmful conflicts and crises might occur.
• Hot-line : A direct and open communications link between heads of state in order to facilitate fast communication during emergencies or crises.
• Economic Assistance : Bilateral or multilateral aid to provide resources for economic development, hasten economic recovery or transformation, or supply basic humanitarian needs.
• Economic Sanctions : The limitation or interruption of economic relations between countries to bring about a change in the policies of the target country.
• Diplomatic Sanctions : Actions such as denial of visas, withholding of political support, and lessening of military commitments, taken by governments against other states in order to bring about a change in the policies of the target country.
• Fact-finding Mission : Representatives of international organizations dispatched to an area of conflict to establish the facts and root causes of the conflict in order to assist with conflict prevention.

Coercive Measures : The use of threats or limited force to compel an adversary to take a course of action it might not otherwise take. Deterrence: The use of threats or limited force to dissuade a state from taking a particular course of action. International Organizations: Intergovernmental structures that develop cooperative activities among states and create agreed rules, norms, and procedures for specific state behavior. Diplomacy (Diplomats) : The management of international relations in general and, specifically, the conduct of relations between states through communication and negotiation, as well as promises, threats, and force. Mediation (Mediators) : The use of an outside party to help disputants to resolve differences without violence by facilitating communication, re-framing the discussion, or offering incentives or disincentives to negotiate or come to agreement. Preventive Deployment : Deployment in a conflict area of military or police personnel representing the United Nations or a regional organization such as NATO in order to prevent an outbreak of violence. Peacekeeping (Peacekeepers) : The use of military forces under United Nations or regional organization auspices to function as a buffer between disputants to prevent fighting or enforce a cease-fire. Demilitarized Zone : An area in which parties to a conflict agree after a cease-fire that military weapons and personnel will not be permitted, in particular as a means to separate potential belligerents or create a buffer zone that will make attack less likely by a neighboring country.

Lesson II: Building Analytical Skills through Sample Essays Lesson II will take two class periods, and requires an overnight homework assignment. Now that the students have a better understanding of the concepts and tools found in the writing prompt, apply this new understanding to writing analytical sample essays. Review two historical case studies: Poland in 1815 and Czechoslovakia in 1938. Divide the class into two groups. One group will write an analytical essay that illustrates success in preventing violent international conflict: the case of Poland in 1815. The other group will write an analytical essay that illustrates failure in preventing violent international conflict: the case of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Each essay should have a clear thesis, a statement of the problem and efforts made to prevent violent conflict, a concise presentation of the evidence as found in the primary source documents, an original analysis explaining why peaceful preventive measures were successful or unsuccessful, suggestions of efforts that might have been successful, and concluding remarks. At this point, the students should remain focused on primary source documents. Do not allow the students to conduct any additional research on the topic they are assigned. Students may look up terms they do not understand (for example, Third Reich) in the glossary of a history book, but beyond term clarification, no other materials should be used in this exercise. Students should write the essays individually, preferably as a homework assignment. The essays should be no longer than two pages. The emphasis here is on analytical writing, not description. Case Studies Have selected students read the writing prompt and apply it to the case study of Czechoslovakia. Hand out the background materials and primary source documents for Poland and Czechoslovakia. Make sure the students include the following concepts and tools in their essays. Success in Preventing Violent International Conflict: Poland, 1815

• Balance of Power
• Alliance System
• Collective Security

Failure to Prevent Violent International Conflict: Czechoslovakia, 1938

• Diplomatic Sanctions
• Fact-finding Mission
• Preventive Measures
• Coercive Measures

Lesson III: Group Discussions of Analytical Essays Lesson III builds on the analytical skills developed in Lesson II by focusing on small group class discussions. Group discussions will last one to two class periods. After the students have completed their assigned essays on Poland, 1815, and Czechoslovakia, 1938, divide them into small groups of two, four, or six, with half the members of each group having done Poland, the other half, Czechoslovakia. Have the students read and discuss thesis statements with their peers, asking questions such as why they chose particular pieces of evidence to support their thesis statements. Have the students discuss the analytical aspects of their essays, sharing original ideas. The purpose here is to illustrate the discipline of the thesis statement and primary source evidence, but also to reward original analysis. Analysis must, however, be based on evidence. Have students make the leap from primary sources to analysis without depending on pre-digested secondary source analyses to do the hard work of thinking through questions and answering them. In the course of small group discussions, students should discuss their choices of concepts, noting the use of some of the same concepts in each case study. Make sure students understand how evidence and concepts are used to make each case, and how one learns from failures in thinking about future successes. Gather the students together as an entire class and discuss the two essays, constructing on the black/whiteboard for each case study a class thesis statement, suggestions of the strongest evidence, and collective analyses. The notes collected during this class discussion should be recorded and distributed to class members for use in Lesson IV of this guide.

Lesson IV: Writing a Sample Essay Lesson IV revisits the writing prompt "Preventing Violent International Conflict," allowing students to compose sample essays and integrate concepts and case study materials. The lesson will take one to two class periods in either a full-class or small-group arrangement. Now that the students have reviewed concepts and tools crucial for understanding the writing prompt, and have written and discussed case studies illustrating the success and failure of preventive diplomacy, they are ready to re-examine the writing prompt and write a sample outline and essay with the case study information already presented and analyzed. To participate in this lesson, the students should have their initial notes after they read the writing prompt, their case study essay, and a copy of the collective notes assembled by teacher and students in discussions of the sample case study essays. Diagram the writing prompt on the blackboard, with student input. The objective here is to make sure the writing prompt is understood and to build student confidence in writing an essay on the topic. Re-read with the class the first two paragraphs of the writing prompt. Use the examples of Poland and Czechoslovakia to address the issues discussed. Remind the students of the partitions of Poland and the rights allotted the Poles by Napoleon. What were the objectives of Congress representatives? What problems were festering in the Polish issues, and how did the diplomats approach these problems? Do the same in the discussion of Czechoslovakia, discussing the Versailles Treaty and the notion of "self-determination" to understand the emergence of the Czech crisis. This should be a quick discussion, as the students already possess this information. The objective here is to apply already-known information to the writing prompt. Discuss the second two paragraphs of the writing prompt, using the knowledge accrued through the study of concept development in Lesson I. The students should feel confident in discussing the terms and should be able to categorize the concepts and tools useful to writing an essay on the topic. Develop a sample outline of an essay, using the case studies of Poland, 1815, and Czechoslovakia, 1938. Have the class develop a thesis statement. The presentation of the evidence should be straightforward. The emphasis here is the value of primary source documentation. The students should have a vigorous discussion of the analytical features of an essay. Encourage creativity in thinking, while reminding students of the importance of linking creative analysis to evidence.

Lesson V: Choosing an Essay Topic Lesson V is the starting point for students to write individual essays. The time frame for this lesson can be adapted to fit your course schedule. The objective of this lesson is to prepare students to write individual essays and encourage original thought and analysis. As a homework assignment, have the students make a list of case study topics they might choose to pursue when writing the individual essay. Students should think creatively and can use cases and tools that are not detailed in the writing prompt. Instruct the students to list the concepts and tools relevant to each case study as they note why they have chosen each case study. Keep in mind that one example of preventive action must be a success, one a failure, and one of the two cases must be post-World War II. Discuss student case study choices in class, emphasizing student-proposed concepts and tools to be integrated into the research and outline of the question. Guide students to bibliographic sources, including primary source materials. The U.S. Department of State series Current Documents and American Foreign Policy, as well as the Department of State's Bulletin, are useful starting points.

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In Russia’s Hybrid War on Europe, Moldova’s Critical Next 15 Months

By: Donald N. Jensen, Ph.D. ; James Rupert

A rising risk in southeast Europe is Russia’s sharpening of conflicts to block Moldova’s effort to join the European Union. The Kremlin is escalating a hybrid campaign to manipulate three Moldovan elections over the next 15 months. Moscow last week hosted the formation of a political bloc around its primary Moldovan ally, a fugitive billionaire convicted of the country’s worst-ever bank fraud — and sent a startling flood of pre-election cash that police seized at Moldova’s main airport. This is a critical season for Moldova’s democratic allies to help it defeat Russian disinformation and election subversion.

Nine Things to Know About Myanmar’s Conflict Three Years On

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

By: Ye Myo Hein

On March 28, 2021, barely two months after the February 1 coup in Myanmar, a minor skirmish erupted at the Tarhan protest in Kalay township in central Sagaing region as demonstrators took up makeshift weapons to defend themselves against ruthless assaults by the junta’s security forces. This was the first recorded instance of civilian armed resistance to the military’s violent crackdown on peaceful protesters since the February 1 coup d’état.

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106 Conflict Resolution Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Conflict resolution is an essential skill that plays a crucial role in various aspects of our lives. Whether it is in personal relationships, the workplace, or even on a global scale, conflicts are inevitable. However, it is how we address and resolve these conflicts that determines the outcome and impact they have on our lives and the world around us.

Writing an essay on conflict resolution can provide a deeper understanding of this skill and its significance. To help you get started, here are 106 conflict resolution essay topic ideas and examples:

• The importance of conflict resolution in personal relationships.
• Conflict resolution techniques used in international diplomacy.
• The role of empathy in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution strategies for parents and children.
• The impact of unresolved conflicts on mental health.
• Conflict resolution in the workplace: best practices.
• The role of effective communication in resolving conflicts.
• Conflict resolution in multicultural societies.
• The influence of gender on conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution and negotiation skills in business.
• The role of compromise in resolving conflicts.
• Conflict resolution in online communities.
• The impact of conflict resolution on organizational productivity.
• Conflict resolution and its effect on community building.
• The role of forgiveness in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in educational settings.
• Conflict resolution in the criminal justice system.
• The impact of cultural differences on conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in the healthcare industry.
• Conflict resolution in sports teams.
• Conflict resolution and human rights.
• The role of power dynamics in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution and social media.
• The impact of conflict resolution on economic development.
• Conflict resolution in environmental disputes.
• Conflict resolution and international cooperation.
• The role of mediation in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in the family business.
• The impact of conflict resolution on personal growth.
• Conflict resolution and social justice.
• Conflict resolution and restorative justice.
• The role of negotiation in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in political campaigns.
• The impact of conflict resolution on romantic relationships.
• Conflict resolution in the classroom.
• Conflict resolution and conflict prevention.
• The role of compromise in international conflicts.
• Conflict resolution and the media.
• Conflict resolution in the digital age.
• The impact of conflict resolution on community engagement.
• Conflict resolution and public policy.
• Conflict resolution and mental health stigma.
• The role of leadership in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in the family court system.
• Conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
• The impact of conflict resolution on employee satisfaction.
• Conflict resolution in the nonprofit sector.
• Conflict resolution and social inequality.
• The role of trust in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in the music industry.
• Conflict resolution in urban planning.
• The impact of conflict resolution on interpersonal relationships.
• Conflict resolution in the military.
• Conflict resolution and workplace diversity.
• The role of emotions in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution and environmental conservation.
• Conflict resolution in international trade disputes.
• Conflict resolution and community policing.
• The impact of conflict resolution on team dynamics.
• Conflict resolution in diplomatic negotiations.
• Conflict resolution and conflict transformation.
• The role of dialogue in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution and social change.
• Conflict resolution in healthcare teams.
• Conflict resolution and human rights violations.
• The impact of conflict resolution on organizational culture.
• Conflict resolution in online gaming communities.
• Conflict resolution and the justice system.
• The role of compromise in interpersonal conflicts.
• Conflict resolution and urban development.
• Conflict resolution in the tech industry.
• The impact of conflict resolution on workplace communication.
• Conflict resolution and gender equality.
• Conflict resolution in community organizations.
• Conflict resolution and sustainable development.
• The role of active listening in conflict resolution.
• Conflict resolution in international peacekeeping missions.
• Conflict resolution and social entrepreneurship.
• The impact of conflict resolution on employee well-being.
• Conflict resolution in the film industry.
• Conflict resolution and environmental justice.
• The role of negotiation in interpersonal conflicts.
• Conflict resolution in public health emergencies.
• Conflict resolution and poverty reduction.
• Conflict resolution in online dating.
• The impact of conflict resolution on family dynamics.
• Conflict resolution and international human rights law.
• Conflict resolution and workplace ethics.
• The role of compromise in political conflicts.
• Conflict resolution in the fashion industry.
• Conflict resolution and sustainable agriculture.
• Conflict resolution in international aid organizations.
• The impact of conflict resolution on organizational effectiveness.
• Conflict resolution in online marketing campaigns.
• Conflict resolution and racial justice.
• The role of empathy in interpersonal conflicts.
• Conflict resolution in disaster response efforts.
• Conflict resolution and social media activism.
• The impact of conflict resolution on team performance.
• Conflict resolution in international business transactions.
• Conflict resolution and sustainable tourism.
• Conflict resolution in humanitarian interventions.
• The role of compromise in environmental conflicts.
• Conflict resolution and sustainable energy.
• Conflict resolution in international sports competitions.
• The impact of conflict resolution on community empowerment.

These essay topics cover a wide range of areas where conflict resolution plays a significant role. Whether you are interested in personal relationships, international affairs, or social justice, there is a topic that suits your interests. Remember to conduct thorough research and provide examples to support your arguments. Good luck with your essay!

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Conflict Prevention, Climate Change, and Why Ghana Matters Now

Photo: CRISTINA ALDEHUELA/AFP/Getty Images

Brief by Anastasia Strouboulis, Erol Yayboke, and Abigail Edwards

Published March 22, 2023

Available Downloads

• Download the Brief 2324kb
• Underlying structural, economic, and security-related challenges in Ghana   mean that its status as a paragon of stability in a turbulent region should not be taken for granted.
• Significant challenges in the realms of economy, politics and governance, and climate change   are contributing to growing levels of violent conflict, particularly outside of Accra.
• Ghana benefits from innovative domestic and regional conflict prevention and response systems ; however, successful maintenance of Ghana’s peace requires concerted focus at the district, national, and regional levels.

Situated in coastal West Africa, Ghana is a country of more than    32 million people , well-known for its competitive elections and peaceful transition of political leadership. In a region beset by volatility in recent years, Ghana is regularly heralded for its relatively stable democracy and for its socioeconomic growth and security interventions; as such, it has been viewed as a reliable partner to other African nations, to Europe, and to the United States. Its government has consistently pursued policies promoting private-sector growth and foreign investment as well as strengthening public social services and welfare programs.

So why a CSIS brief on conflict prevention in Ghana? Because some of the underlying economic and security factors that have promoted stability over the years are fraying and have the potential to deteriorate further due to climate change. Because the sense among many in Ghana is that the eruption of violence is a matter of when, not if. Because now is the time to focus on conflict prevention in Ghana and across broader coastal West Africa.

This brief presents an initial examination of fragility factors in Ghana and the potential of climate change to exacerbate or multiply those factors and drivers of conflict.

Economics .   Ghana is an active member of the   Economic Community of West African States   (ECOWAS). The Ghanaian economy grew by   5.8 percent   annually between 1991 and 2013, compared to an average growth rate of 3.7 percent in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. This positive trajectory has been fueled by Ghana’s valuable exports (gold, cocoa, timber, and, most recently, crude oil), though household-level livelihoods are heavily dependent on agriculture and livestock. Ghana is the   top   gold-producing country and is now the   eighth-largest   oil-producing country in Africa. With additional   technical support   and due diligence measures, the country has significant potential to maximize revenue and export earnings.

Politics and Governance .   Ghana’s two main parties (the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress) have peacefully alternated control over the executive and legislative branches in recent decades, with eight free and fair elections held between 1996 and 2020. This is in sharp contrast to the political instability that many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have experienced, including   successive military coups   and coup attempts in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Sudan just since August 2020.

Security. Ghana is a key   contributor of troops   for African peacekeeping missions and a regular participant in   joint military training exercises , including with the United States. It is also situated within a hotbed of   persistent insecurity . Though there has not yet been an attack by the violent extremist organizations (VEOs) operating in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin, Ghana’s neighbors— Burkina Faso   to the north,   Togo   to the east, and   Côte d’Ivoire   to the west—have each experienced extremist attacks in recent years; the threat is escalating in Ghana as these operations get closer and closer to its borders. The Ghanaian government has responded to the intensified security threat by adopting a comprehensive   National Counterterrorism Framework , conducting capacity-building and simulation exercises, and being the key interlocutor for the   Accra Initiative   (see textbox later in the brief), a regional security cooperation mechanism.

A CSIS research team traveled to Ghana in October 2022 to explore the impacts of climate change on the potential for violent conflict. This brief presents the results of dozens of meetings with key stakeholders, augmented by significant desk research. The team found that although Ghana has benefited on the global stage from its stable progress, it currently faces heightened vulnerability to conflict due to internal conditions and the higher-than-usual potential for external shocks—including those related to climate change—to exacerbate its internal state fragility.

Factors of Fragility

Economics .   Like many countries in the developing world, Ghana’s economy is highly susceptible to global shocks. The Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have shifted the country’s economic situation significantly since early 2022. Inflation spiked from   13.9 percent   in January to   40.4 percent   in October 2022, with food prices increasing by 122 percent since January 2022 alongside rising prices for water, fuel, and public transport. As one interviewee described it, these conditions are forcing people to go into “survival mode,” where they are focused on meeting their basic needs. A March 2022 World Bank and UNICEF survey found that adults in   almost half   of households with children were skipping meals because they did not have enough money to feed themselves. Moreover, Ghana’s public debt rose to   104.6 percent   of GDP while its currency depreciated by   60 percent , making it the world’s   worst-performing   currency in 2022. With most government revenue required for debt servicing—which includes a recent   $3 billion bailout   from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—there is a limited surplus for investment in public services and policies to offset rising consumer costs. These factors are combining to stunt the country’s economic trajectory; the World Bank predicted that GDP growth will drop to   3.5 percent   in 2022, far below the average pre-pandemic performance of 7.0 percent.

Politics and Governance .   One of the root causes of Ghana’s current economic crisis is fragile governance, particularly poor domestic resource management and dissatisfaction with public services and institutions. Tax exemptions for large corporations, weak credit controls, and a lack of discipline in accounting for resources have contributed to significant gaps in public resources. CSIS analysis of a report by Ghana’s auditor general revealed that between 2016 and 2020 financial irregularities in the public sector increased by   1,204 percent   according to the authors’ analysis. The 2021 report showed that financial irregularities amounted to   17.5 billion   Ghanaian cedis (at the time, the exchange rate was roughly 6 cedis = 1 USD), representing a 36 percent rise from   12.856 billion   cedis in 2020.

Corruption also persists in the public services sector. In 2021,   a quarter   of Ghanaians who interacted with a public official claimed to have paid, or were asked to pay, a bribe—amounting to roughly 17.4 million bribes paid that year. Public frustration with the manifestations of corrupt governance is apparent. A   recent Afrobarometer survey   found that the most important problems facing Ghana were the mismanagement of the economy (22 percent), unemployment (19 percent), and infrastructure (12 percent), all issues heavily influenced by corruption. Last year the social media campaign #FixTheCountry mobilized   thousands   of protestors in Ghana’s capital, Accra, expressing frustration with government mismanagement and the lack of educational and economic opportunities. Corruption issues do not just affect socioeconomic conditions; major electoral candidates have hired political vigilantes who are involved in electoral violence to promote and protect their party’s power under a “ winner-takes-all ” mentality.

Citizens’ wavering trust in electoral processes, coupled with a declining economy, may prompt some to question the legitimacy of democracy. While they represent a small minority, the number of people that say that, in some circumstance, a nondemocratic government could be preferable has steadily increased from   10 percent   in 2014 to   14.4 percent   in 2022. Moreover, the combination of rapid and severe currency devaluation and inflation, rising taxes, spiraling debt, and the recent IMF bailout amount to a high risk of   social unrest   in the coming months.

While it has enjoyed political stability since 1992, Ghana is currently experiencing more the absence of violence—often referred to as “negative peace”—rather than sustainable peace. Systemic and structural challenges inhibit that stability and a more sustainable “positive peace.” International partners would do well to acknowledge but not take for granted Ghana’s status as a paragon of progress and prosperity in an otherwise volatile region. In that spirit, the   Biden administration identified   Ghana as part of a priority coastal West African region for implementation of the   Global Fragility Act   (GFA) in April 2022. While most   bilateral assistance   to the region has focused on economic development and health, there has been a recent increase in peace and security-related assistance—for example, under the U.S. Agency for International Development’s   Littorals Regional Initiative . With a vested interest in the region through the GFA, the United States has a critical opportunity to apply a concerted conflict prevention lens to Ghana, which must also include consideration of climate-related impacts on peace and conflict.

Ghana is currently experiencing more the absence of violence—often referred to as “negative peace”—rather than sustainable peace.

The Global Fragility Act

The landmark  Global Fragility Act  (GFA) was signed into U.S. law in 2019. In April 2022, the Biden administration identified coastal West Africa—Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo—as a priority region in a  prologue  it added to the 2020 U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability (SPCPS), sometimes referred to as the “ Global Fragility Strategy .” Under the strategy, the United States has committed to at least 10 years of programmatic efforts aimed at lowering violence levels and enhancing conflict-prevention efforts in the region.

For more details on the GFA and the SPCPS, please see “ A Policymaker’s Guide to the Global Fragility Act ” and “ The Global Fragility Strategy Gets a Refresh .”

Climate Change .   Climate change threatens to disrupt the lives and livelihoods of many Ghanaians, including those living in the more volatile and arid northern regions, as well as in Ghana’s coastal regions. Notably, by 2080, temperatures are expected to rise by between   1.7 to 3.7 degrees   Celsius and water availability could decline by as much as 70 percent. Ghana’s coastal regions are likely to also experience   significant sea level rise : climate models predict that by 2080, the sea level on Ghana’s coast will have risen by nearly 40 centimeters, affecting coastal communities and livelihoods. Overall, vulnerability to climate change is related to limited access to public services (such as water, sanitation, and healthcare). Furthermore, many Ghanaians depend on agriculture and livestock—sectors likely to be severely impacted by climate change.

Models project that Ghana’s economy will   significantly decline   as the planet warms; an increase in temperatures of 1 degree Celsius would correspond with a 2 percent decline in GDP, while an increase of 4 degrees Celsius would correspond with a 17 percent decline in GDP. Throughout the country, climate change is already threatening infrastructure.   One study   found that, in 2007 alone, “1016 km of roads were destroyed, 13 bridges collapsed, and 442 sewers damaged in the northern region of Ghana” due to extreme weather events. These events have also led to the   erosion and subsequent decimation   of over half of Keta city. Similarly, the once-coastal town of   Fuveme   has been transformed into an island, leading to a forced exodus of its people.

Ghanaians have been explicit in their concerns about climate change: according to Afrobarometer,   60 percent   of those who are aware of climate change say that it is making life worse, and that both the government and citizens must take action. While the Ghanaian government has adopted several written policies and strategies to deal with the effects of climate change, the aforementioned corruption and overall fragile governance systems have limited the effectiveness of these policies and strategies to spur meaningful climate adaptation.

Climate change also interacts with violent conflict in increasingly prevalent— and   well - documented —ways. A vicious cycle (see Figure 1) emerges when conflict-prone communities are never able to build the resilience necessary to cope with man-made shocks, whether of the climate or conflict variety.

Governance is often a determining factor in the outcome of the relationship between climate and conflict. Weak and incoherent governance can escalate community vulnerability to climate change and increase the risk of conflict. On the other hand, effective, accessible, and inclusive conflict resolution mechanisms, along with policies to address the adverse impacts of climate change, can mitigate these insecurities. For its part, the Ghanaian government and external partners have taken several steps to address the progressively visible threats of climate change and widespread conflict; however, climate response efforts largely exist on paper only, and linkages between climate and conflict systems are not yet visible in policy and programming.

The 2013   National Climate Change Policy   and several additional policy directives—such as the   Renewable Energy Master Plan   of 2019—provide plans for climate adaptation, and Ghana has at least   eight   government institutions that have some role in implementing these policies. While these institutions provide a strong foundation for climate and natural resource governance, there is limited transparency and accountability on policy implementation. Moreover, institutions lack the financial, technical, and personnel resources to execute their mandates effectively.

Several climate-related policies reference the need for local conflict resolution mechanisms to address potential natural resource-based conflicts; however, the overarching challenges of execution and resourcing have inhibited conflict mainstreaming across all sectors. There is plenty of blame to go around: conflict-related initiatives similarly neglect, or fail to fully mainstream, climate considerations. For example, in 2017 the Ministry of Food and Agriculture collaborated with the Ministry of National Security to launch the   Ghana Cattle Ranching Project   to address farmer-herder conflicts. Under the program, large swaths of land were fenced off for cattle to graze. However, one of the   challenges   the program faced was that, as climate variability continued to impact water and food security, people who relied on the ranch for their livelihoods were not provided with the appropriate resources to sustainably adapt to changing environmental conditions.

With climate impacts manifesting primarily at the local level, interviewees expressed the importance of foreign assistance being distributed outside of Accra to develop local governance capacities. But with limited government focus on, and execution of, climate policies and strategies, international and national stakeholders who appreciate the interrelated nature of climate change and conflict in Ghana have few avenues through which to formally engage at the policy levels needed for more systematic change. But it is these vulnerable communities—like many in northern Ghana—that are dealing with the consequences: forced displacement, loss of livelihoods, increased household debt, rural to urban migration, and more. Climate change-related environmental issues—extreme heat, desertification, sea level rise, and intensifying rains, just to name a few—will vary from community to community; however, all impacts require concerted policies   and   policy implementation efforts to support and protect communities, including from those that are ready, willing, and able to take advantage of climate vulnerabilities, even through violent conflict.

Four Ways Conflict Can Manifest

• Protracted Chieftaincy Contestation

Many current risks of violence stem from localized conflicts, including competition over chieftaincy succession. In Ghana, chiefs are considered part of the formal governance system under   Article 270   of the constitution and they have significant political and cultural influence. Chiefs are the traditional custodians of the land and determine how it is used. They are also traditional leaders responsible for managing community development and mediating conflicts. Because there is no established political process for deciding succession after the death of a powerful chief, there can be violent clashes between hopeful ascendants. Though primordialism does have a role in driving chieftaincy conflicts, these can also have political dimensions, with actors hoping to secure greater control over territory and resources. Political elites and opportunists often   take sides   in these conflicts, leveraging them to mobilize support during election periods while stalling conflict resolution efforts. There are currently   over 350   protracted chieftaincy conflicts around the country, with the most violent ones concentrated in northern Ghana. For example, the northeastern municipality of Bawku—where colonial administration   hardened   political affiliations along ethnic lines—is an epicenter of ethnic conflict between the Kusasi and Mamprusi ethnic groups.

Access to environmental resources is critical to socioeconomic standing and, for chiefs, to political power. Extreme weather events and climate shifts escalate tensions as chiefs compete for shrinking resources. With agriculture accounting for   21 percent   of Ghana’s GDP and especially vulnerable to climate change, the role of chiefs in ruling over land disputes will become increasingly frequent. Research has identified that   less than 1 percent   of the national crop area is irrigated, meaning that yields of staple crops like maize, millet, and cassava will continue to rely on increasingly volatile rain patterns. With   projections   showing a significant decrease in the yield of maize and millet, along with an increase in drought exposure nationwide, the stakes of chieftaincy succession conflicts will likely grow.

• Farmer-Herder Disputes

The second type of conflict in Ghana is between farmers and herders. Both groups depend on access to and control over land for growing crops and grazing cattle. However, there are rising tensions over productive land resources that are being depleted by climate change, population growth, and expanded industrialized cultivation. Fulbe herders—an ethnic group that extends across the Sahel and West Africa, also known as Fulani or Peuls—are often involved. The Fulbe first began migrating southward from the Sahel in the early twentieth century, a pattern that   has continued   due to the increased incidence of climate variability, scarcity of viable grazing lands, and safety concerns (cattle rustling, attacks on livestock markets, etc.) across the Sahel that threaten their lives and livelihoods. Farming activities have become more intensive at the same time that grazing lands have receded; with communities becoming more densely populated, farmers’ and herders’ lands are converging.

There is precedent of   coexistence and intergroup cooperation   between the two as well as conflict among farmers themselves and herders themselves. Still, most tensions emerge as farmers plant crops on designated cattle pasture or transhumance corridors and then cattle   trample or feed   on the crops; these tensions can potentially escalate to violent attacks between farmers and herders. Moreover, while chiefs traditionally mediate these localized incidents, they are not always neutral. Chiefs frequently own the cattle under the care of Fulbe herders or simply back the conflict party who pays the highest bribe, undermining the perception that they are a neutral arbiter. More generally,   identity politics, the ineptitude of the formal justice system, and the exclusion of key stakeholders —such as women and Fulbe herders themselves—in mediation processes weaken the sense of trust and justice within conflict resolution efforts.

While environmental degradation related to climate change is undeniably a root cause of these types of violent conflicts, ethnic dimensions also play a significant role. The Fulbe are an ethnic group that has historically engaged in long-range transhumance. However, a portion of the Fulbe population has permanently settled in Ghana. Despite some Fulbe having lived in Ghana for generations, they continue to face   social marginalization and political exclusion   as a minority population. For example, Fulbe are deliberately omitted from the national census, face barriers in obtaining government documents—including ID cards and passports—and experience land confiscation and eviction because they cannot claim ownership over the land. Beyond institutional framing of Fulbe as “noncitizens,” some other Ghanaian ethnic groups have entrenched   harmful stereotypes   of them being uncivilized, criminals, rapists, and perpetrators of violence against farmers. These prejudices, combined with a pervasive resource scarcity mindset, have forced Fulbe populations to live in the periphery of their communities without access to quality public services while perpetuating vicious cycles of retribution.

• Illegal Artisanal Mining

A third area that presents the potential for conflict is “galamsey”—the illegal artisanal and small-scale mining of natural resources, namely gold, bauxite, and manganese. Illegal mining was not a government priority   until 2017 , leaving significant gaps in regulatory frameworks and environmental protections. However, in recent years, mining has transitioned from a rudimentary, localized activity to a “ capital intensive, mechanically and politically driven cash generating venture ” that includes local businessmen, politicians, and foreign nationals. An influx of   about 50,000   Chinese miners over the last 15 years has driven this shift thanks to the introduction of mechanized equipment and techniques by Chinese national-led operations, which has boosted the scale of these mines and led to country-wide gold production increases from less than 20,000 ounces in 1990 to   1.6 million ounces in 2016 .

Galamsey is a problem not just because of forgone government revenue: it can adversely impact the environment, the physical health of miners, and the broader livelihoods on which many Ghanaians depend. Existing research shows that galamsey also causes water pollution and land degradation. Mining and mineral processing generate or use pollutants, including high turbidity, oil and grease, and arsenic and mercury. Mercury exposure is especially harmful to Ghanaian youth who work at these mining sites without adequate safety protections. In addition to decimating crop growth, people who live near galamsey sites are at risk of   mercury poisoning   through drinking water and fish consumption, which can cause neurological disorders.

Galamsey represents a point of fragility in three ways. First, farmers and miners compete to access and control the same inputs—land, water, labor, and capital. Galamsey has consistently proven to be environmentally destructive, with one 2014 study revealing that   30 to 50 percent   of farmlands in the Amansie West district of south-central Ghana was rendered unfit for agricultural production due to mining activities. Moreover, after mines are depleted, operators   fail to implement proper closure and land reclamation plans , so the land remains unusable for farming, herding, and other forestry activities. Local Ghanaian cocoa farmers have been particularly impacted by galamsay, with a   significant majority   of farmers reporting declines in their annual harvests due to labor shortages, pollution, land destruction, and flooding from mines full of rainwater. While Ghana is the   sec ond-largest exporter of cocoa in the world, farmers are being forced to supplement their incomes by either   directly participating in or selling their land   for mining. These conditions create an antagonistic relationship between miners and farmers working in the same geographic area, another source of resource-based violent conflict.

Second, the government’s securitized response can escalate conflict. The government outlawed small-scale mining in 2017 and has used the military for enforcement. The Ghanaian president   launched   Operation Vanguard in mid-2017 with 400 dedicated security personnel; after   allegations   of extortion, corruption, and excessive force, it was dissolved in March 2020 and replaced by Operation Halt II in April 2021. Militarization has led to indiscriminate   arrests   and   clashes   with security personnel and   criticism   of the approach, as the actions target miners themselves and not the politicians and officials often fueling—or at least complicit in—galamsay.

While Ghana is the second-largest exporter of cocoa in the world, farmers are being forced to supplement their incomes by either directly participating in or selling their land for mining. These conditions create an antagonistic relationship between miners and farmers working in the same geographic area, another source of resource-based violent conflict.

Third, there are concerns that violent extremists living in and around Ghana could exploit grievances associated with livelihood losses, militarized responses, and economic gains for foreigners. As seen in the   Central Sahel , natural resource extraction is a lucrative source of revenue and recruits, and the clandestine nature of galamsey in Ghana’s forests makes it an especially attractive exploit.

Figure 2: Conflict Dynamics in Northern Ghana

Source: Reproduced with permission from Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, ed., The Jihadist Threat in Northern Ghana and Togo: Stocktaking and Prospects for Containing the Expansion (Promediation, March 2022).

• Violent Extremism

This leads to the fourth source of potential conflict: Ghana’s proximity to violent extremists operating in West Africa and the Sahel, primarily though not uniquely Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims—JNIM). According to one report, there are   at least 189   unofficial entry points on Ghana’s border with Burkina Faso alone. Each one of Ghana’s neighbors has experienced a terrorist attack recently as militant cells have   pushed southward   over the last few years.

Ghana currently serves a useful purpose for VEOs: a place for rest, relaxation, and restocking. The Ghana-Côte d’Ivoire-Burkina Faso tri-border area is a   key route   in illicit arms trafficking, including ammunition, small arms, and   fertilizer   for improvised explosive devices. There are also reports that fighters have sought refuge in Ghana; for example, following   Operation Otapuanu   in southeastern Burkina Faso in March 2019, jihadists   reportedly   fled to Benin, Togo, and Ghana. Interviewed experts frame the threat of violent extremism as “a ticking time bomb”—while they have not yet gone on the offensive, extremists’ activities and presence have created a foothold for potential future attacks.

Armed groups also exploit existing grievances to create   compelling narratives for recruitment . There are concerns that violent extremist groups could enter Ghana’s Upper East, Savannah, and Upper West regions, places that have significant police presence but are facing service deficits. Inadequate healthcare, weak infrastructure, limited availability of potable water, and limited educational and economic opportunities make youth particularly vulnerable. There are reports that   200 to 300 Ghanaian youth   were incorporated into JNIM and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS, another active VEO) units, trained in the Sahel, and sent back to their home communities to proselytize and recruit. Socioeconomic marginalization and unemployment have been an entry point for recruitment throughout the Sahel, a phenomenon some worry could spill over into Ghana.

Existing vulnerabilities to VEOs can be exacerbated by climate-related environmental changes. Shifting rainfall patterns, depleting arable land, and diminishing access to water for herding and crop growing intensify competition over resources. The compounding effects of reduced agriculture output, increased food prices, and other environmental stressors—coupled with existing conflict dynamics—diminish community resilience to VEOs. As seen elsewhere, notably in   Syria , extremists have weaponized access to critical resources for strategic or tactical purposes and “as a means to terrorize, coerce, and subjugate local populations.” While civilians have not yet turned to VEOs as an alternative en masse, if frustrations with the status quo continue to escalate, there is potential for radicalization and further exploitation.

An Example of VEO Exploitation of State Fragility

Violent extremist organizations (VEOs) are known to foment ethnic tensions between Fulbe and non-Fulbe populations to boost support. In June 2021, Abu Dujana, an ethnic Fulbe living in Ghana, detonated a suicide bomb at a French military camp in Gossi, Mali, as part of a JNIM attack. In a pre-recorded video, Dujana called upon the Fulbe to  fight local authorities  to protest their mistreatment and injustice. While some may not believe armed resistance is an effective solution to systemic marginalization, persistent realities  reinforce feelings of Fulbe alienation  from formal political and security institutions. In the video, Dujana also references a JNIM contingent  operating along  the Burkina Faso-Ghana border. The Upper East Region towns of Bawku, Garu, and Zebilla are already embedded in jihadist-controlled illicit trade networks and the prevalence of chieftaincy and farmer-herder conflicts in the north has led to an influx of weapons in these communities. The Upper West region is an entry point for armed groups operating in the porous cross-border area between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and certain groups have reportedly already  become involved  in gold mining sites.

Ongoing   Conflict-Prevention Efforts

Ghana has some natural and earned immunities to the conflict dynamics presented above. Relative to its neighbors, Ghana has significant professional capacity in the security sector. The government has prioritized increased capacity and capabilities, particularly in its military. There is valuable defense cooperation between Ghana and the United States, with U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) forces conducting   training   with special operations units and yearly regional   military exercises   such as   African Lion.   The   United Kingdom   and   France   have also engaged in joint military exercises with the Ghanaian army. In addition to bilateral military cooperation, the military has forward-deployed forces around its northern borders. For example, under   Operation Conquest Fist , which launched in July 2019, an additional 600 to 800 military, police, and border officials were deployed to Ghana’s five northern regions. Similarly, three separate short-term operations under the   Koudanlgou   name in 2018 and 2019 saw Ghanaian forces jointly deployed across the region with troops from Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo focused on transnational threats, including violent extremism, smuggling, and drug trafficking.

But Ghana’s immunities extend beyond its professional security services. Many people interviewed emphasized the historical and cultural preference for religious and ethnic tolerance as a key aspect of Ghanaian society. An active and free civil society provides a regular venue for this tolerance to be exercised and for conflicts to be adjudicated. Ghana’s security and peace councils offer further possibilities for conflict prevention, representing an innovative, decentralized architecture worth considering in more detail.

Existing vulnerabilities to VEOs can be exacerbated by climate-related environmental changes. Shifting rainfall patterns, depleting arable land, and diminishing access to water for herding and crop growing intensify competition over resources.

Security Councils

The evolving security landscape both within Ghana and in its West African neighborhood has compelled the government to cultivate a network of defense and peacebuilding institutions. Within the security sector, the Ministry of National Security, particularly the National Counterterrorism Fusion Centre, has a key role in stemming external threats. Ghana’s counterterrorism strategy, the   National Framework for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism , articulates four components: prevention, preemption, protection, and response. Security officials interviewed shared the nuance between prevention (identifying and mitigating the root causes of conflict) and preemption (addressing potential threats identified through intelligence). Officials also emphasized the importance of non-kinetic human security approaches in conflict prevention, recognizing the importance of reducing vulnerabilities, improving state presence and effectiveness, and engaging with organizations representative of the local population. Nonetheless, other interviewees stressed that these initiatives, while welcome, are largely overshadowed by hard security approaches, with limited interaction between the Ministries of National Security and Defence and civil society.

Ghana’s security councils are a core network of institutions focusing on human security. The National Security Council works on countrywide issues, while Regional Security Councils cover each of Ghana’s 16 regions. District Security Councils serve 260 districts across Ghana. Meant to represent communities, these councils are comprised of representatives from Peace Councils, civil society organizations, traditional leadership, religious leaders, and the media. The security councils are responsible for information sharing with the rest of the security apparatus and implementing counterterrorism initiatives at the local level. For example, the National Security Ministry launched a “ See Something, Say Something ” campaign in early 2022 to educate the public on identifying potential threats and reporting suspected extremists.

Peace Councils

Ghana also has an innovative infrastructure for peace and stability. Following several flare-ups in violence in the 1990s and early 2000s, the National Peace Council (NPC) was established in 2006 and, in May 2011,   Parliamentary Act 818   provided a legal framework for the peace councils. The councils follow the same three-tiered structure as the security councils, with the national board acting as a supervisory and coordinating body for the regional and district levels.

The core mandate of the NPC is to facilitate and develop mechanisms for conflict prevention, management, and resolution and to build sustainable peace in the country. To achieve this, each council is comprised of   13 members : four representatives from Christian organizations, three representatives from Muslim organizations, a representative of the African traditional religions, a representative from the traditional authorities (e.g., a chief), two representatives nominated by the president (one of whom must be female), and two representatives from other organizations, including the media, the private sector, and civil society. Regional Peace Councils (RPCs) are present in 12 of Ghana’s 16 regions, though there is a planned expansion to all 16 in the coming months. Despite good national and regional coverage, significant gaps remain in establishing district-level peace councils—in large part because of funding challenges—with some estimates suggesting that less than five District Peace Councils (DPCs) are operational out of the 216 total districts across the country. Ghana has not yet been able to meaningfully deploy its innovative peace architecture at the district level.

Nonetheless, RPCs and DPCs are meant to actively engage with their complementary regional and district-level security councils. The RPCs and DPCs (where they exist) have largely earned community trust because of their inclusive and transparent nature. This enables them to mediate various conflicts, including land disputes, succession contestation, and election-related violence. For example, to address violence caused by   hired vigilante groups   ahead of the 2020 elections, Ghanaian political candidates   signed the Presidential Peace Pact   whereby they agreed to use peaceful, democratic means to resolve election-related issues. In addition to conflict resolution, the peace councils also employ a   conflict prevention approach —identifying and addressing the root causes of conflict through localized trust-building programs, public education campaigns, dialogues, and reconciliation processes for sustainable peace.

Ghana has not yet been able to meaningfully deploy its innovative peace architecture at the district level.

In 2018, Ghanaian authorities initiated a   territorial redrawing , which expanded the number of regions from 10 to 16. In particular, the division of Ghana’s north into five regions—rather than one large one—has improved early warning capabilities by enabling more granular information gathering and sharing between the local and national peace and security structures.

The Accra Initiative

The domestic security and peace council structures are complemented by Ghana’s involvement in the Accra Initiative. Launched in September 2017 by Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, the Accra Initiative  exists to  “prevent spillover terrorism from the Sahel and to address transnational organised crime and violent extremism in member countries’ border areas.” The  three pillars  of the Accra Initiative are sharing information and intelligence, training security and intelligence personnel, and conducting joint cross-border military operations. In taking lessons from previous regional security mechanisms, the Accra Initiative operates through specific focal points in each member country and a central coordinator in Ghana’s National Security Secretariat. The initiative is also self-financed, meaning member states are not reliant upon or beholden to external funders. Finally,  quarterly meetings  at two levels—one with each country’s security and intelligence officials and the other among government ministers in charge of security—have fostered trust-building among its participants. These institutional structures reduce bureaucratic hurdles and ease collaboration.

Under the Accra Initiative, Ghana has conducted yearly joint multinational security operations since 2018, known as Operation Koundanlgou I-IV. In the most recent  November 2021 iteration , over 5,700 troops were deployed at member countries’ borders. These operations targeted individuals involved in transnational crimes such as terrorism, smuggling, illegal mining, and drug trafficking, though there are  reports  of excessive force during raids and arrests. Moreover, the limited duration and limited geographic reach of these operations are not sufficient to fully uproot armed group activities.

Importantly, there are also non-kinetic elements of the Accra Initiative, with national authorities establishing localized programs, committees, and tool kits to prevent radicalization and promote community resilience. While these programs are critical in addressing the root causes of conflict, the military may not be best placed to implement these programs without concurrent commitments to decentralizing governance and upholding human security. As one interviewee said, “Terrorism has never been defeated on the battlefield, only through hearts and minds.”

The Way Forward

None of the conflict dynamics discussed above—chieftaincy succession contestation, farmer-herder disputes, illegal artisanal mining, and spillover violent extremism—were caused by climate change. But all of them are exacerbated by it. Thus, efforts to prevent conflict in Ghana should focus on the conflict dynamics at play, but with a deeper understanding of how the environmental changes in areas of concern will only make the job harder. At the same time, efforts must be made to increase the adaptive capacity of communities on the front lines of climate change, especially in Ghana’s north where its effects exacerbate tensions and undermine progress.

Successful violent conflict prevention must be executed at the local   and   national levels, especially in light of climate change. Unfortunately, Ghana will be unable to fund many (if not all) of these and other priorities, even if it so desires. The current fiscal crisis (and resulting recently negotiated IMF bailout) will focus much of the government’s attention on fiscal issues—such as higher taxes, more fees, and budget cuts to social services—which, in addition to diverting funds away from important climate adaptation and peace and conflict prevention priorities, could itself also result in more social unrest and fragility.

Efforts to prevent conflict in Ghana should focus on the conflict dynamics at play, but with a deeper understanding of how the environmental changes in areas of concern will only make the job harder.

For 2023 and perhaps beyond, Ghana will require external support. Given Ghana’s strategic importance, the international community would be wise to provide it.

Much of this support should be targeted at the local level, prioritizing:

• Providing adequate and longer-term financial support for the establishment and maintenance of all district and regional peace councils and local civil society organizations (CSOs), all of which provide the forum for conflict resolution and prevention.
• Strengthening social cohesion and building trust between disparate communities through dialogue and mediation, with a particular focus on the inclusion of marginalized groups (e.g., the Fulbe).
• Offering technical support to dispute resolution mechanisms, including capacity building workshops for peace council members and CSO workers.
• Supporting the drafting and dissemination of standard templated written agreements between farmers and herders.
• Establishing mechanisms for chieftaincy succession plans to be put in place and publicized well in advance of the death of a chief.
• Establishing resource (e.g., land and water) management committees to train local leaders on available legal frameworks, empowering them to inform community members of their rights and how to peacefully resolve resource-related conflicts.
• Providing alternative sources of income for artisanal miners, especially youth, and the communities that rely on such illegal activity.
• Developing livelihoods and other productive opportunities for youth, especially in areas (e.g., in northern Ghana) with significant VEO presence.

At the national level, priorities should include:

• Supporting broad campaigns for community peacebuilding and sensitization focused on intra- and interethnic coexistence, recognizing early warning indicators, and reducing stereotyping.
• Developing public-private partnerships that link development and government actors with market actors, including around incentivizing investment in smallholder farmers, building resilient agricultural ecosystems, and ingraining more adaptive, climate-resilient farming techniques.
• Supporting the development—and, more importantly, the execution—of national climate change plans and strategies, aligning and integrating them with those focused on peacebuilding and conflict prevention.
• Funding scientific research on agricultural conditions and production, socioeconomic conditions (including Fulbe inclusion and representation), and political economy analysis—particularly on understanding relationships within communities, public perception of security forces (e.g., military versus police), trust in chiefs, and citizen confidence in the peace and security councils.
• Training the military and police on human security issues, human rights principles, and other non-kinetic roles for security actors in peacebuilding.
• Developing a policy framework and execution strategy for more regular and coherent inclusion of minority groups (e.g., the Fulbe), including support to local authorities to more regularly issue birth certificates and national identification cards.
• Avoiding the urge to create standalone climate-related programming, instead integrating a “climate lens” (in other words, how is climate change going to make the issues and efforts to address them more challenging) into existing conflict prevention and peacebuilding programming.
• Enabling regular donor coordination, strategy alignment, and (where appropriate) cofinancing of efforts, especially amongst international actors supporting peace and working within the complex systems at the heart of the identified factors of fragility: economics, politics and governance, and climate change.

Anastasia Strouboulis   was a research assistant with the Project on Fragility and Mobility (PFM) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Erol Yayboke is a senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program and PFM’s director. Abigail Edwards is a research assistant with the CSIS PFM.

The authors would like to thank the dozens of people in Ghana and West Africa who agreed to be interviewed for this research and the many reviewers of early drafts of the brief. Thank you also to PFM research intern Ángeles Zúñiga for her valuable support.

This brief is made possible by the generous support of Chemonics International, Inc.

CSIS Briefs are produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

© 2024 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.

Anastasia Strouboulis

Erol Yayboke

Abigail Edwards

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• Food and Agriculture

Water for peace: preventing conflict related to water and wetlands

Joyce kortlandt, julia karlysheva, mara tignino, caroline pellaton.

Water can be a key trigger of conflict among communities or between citizens and the state. This is happening all over the world: from Iraq to Guatemala and from Mali to Lebanon. Preventing water-related conflicts can save lives and is good for the economy. The Water, Peace and Security (WPS) partnership and the Geneva Water Hub show how water-related conflict prevention looks in practice, and how to measure the success of such programs. Clarity about programming and measuring impact are needed to unlock more investment in conflict prevention and to do so efficiently and effectively. 

“Water is becoming more scarce relative to demand,” says Dominick Revell de Waal, senior economist at the World Bank, “with population and economic growth this is inevitable”. When water insecurity repeatedly affects populations, it can increase the risk of conflict, fueling the perception that institutions and governments are not doing enough, exacerbating grievances, creating new risks, and deepening inequities. Water-related fragility can manifest itself from local conflict between fishers, farmers and herders about access to wetlands to international conflict between entire countries over the construction of a dam. “Greater fragility in turn, makes it harder to achieve water security. We must disrupt the vicious cycle of water insecurity and fragility”, says de Waal.

When combined with perceptions of exclusion and inequality, water-related conflicts can spill over into violence and instability across the world, fueled by the effects of climate change, and resulting in unacceptably high financial and human costs. The international community is increasingly calling for violent conflict prevention for two main reasons: prevention saves costs and lives. Prevention saves lives because people do not resort to violence and take up arms, and it saves money because investment in crisis response during and reconstruction after conflict is much more costly than investment in prevention. According to the latest Global Peace Index , for instance, if the world decreased violence by just 10%, our global economy would save $1.45 trillion.

Despite the case for prevention, only a small amount of development aid goes that way.  Growth of Official Development Assistance (ODA) is concentrated in fragile contexts, but most of this growth has been in humanitarian assistance. In 2016, only 2% of ODA for fragile contexts was dedicated to conflict prevention . There are two key reasons for this. First, the lack of clarity about what conflict prevention means for programming. Second, it is very difficult to quantify and measure success in preventing conflict.

Programming related to water, wetlands and conflict prevention requires a multi-pronged approach. The Water, Peace and Security (WPS) partnership , a collaboration among an expanding group of organizations supported by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, puts forward four key components: understanding, awareness raising, capacity development and dialogue. What does that mean in practice?

Mali is a case in point. Karounga Keïta, director of Wetlands International Sahel Office, one of the WPS partners, describes the situation in Mali: “Conflicts around water resources in the Inner Niger Delta, a major wetland in the center of Mali, contribute to violence in the country.  The wetland supports the livelihoods of up to two million people including farmers, fishermen and pastoralists. Since 2012 there has been an intensification of violence in Mali, including violent competition over natural resources provided by the wetland, such as watergrass fields - essential breeding grounds for fish and a vital food resource for the region’s cattle – and fish.”

Such degradation of the wetland can fuel an already complex situation where jihadist groups have been able to get support based on old grievances. Understanding the links between water, wetlands, peace and security is therefore a key component of the WPS program approach. Awareness of these links by national and international actors helps to design water management systems that contribute to the prevention of more water-related conflict. This requires promoting dialogue at different levels and training key players (governments, civil society and others) in inclusive and sustainable water management, resulting in carefully designed investments that promote stability instead of undermining it.

Linking policy and science is a fundamental tool for conflict prevention. Collaboration is a key element of programming related to water, wetlands and conflict prevention; at local, national and international levels. “Water is at the heart of the sustainable development, peace and humanitarian agendas”, says Danilo Türk , lead political advisor of the Geneva Water Hub , a joint initiative of the Swiss Confederation and the University of Geneva. The Geneva Water Hub aims at bringing together actors implementing the global agenda on water and local stakeholders. It works to ensure that water is used as a vehicle for peace and, the water-peace discourse is better understood and recognized.

Measuring the impact of water and wetland related programs on conflict and fragility is challenging. “It requires both general and specific monitoring approaches”, says Aseel Naamani, program manager in Lebanon at International Alert, another member of the WPS partnership.

Eight years into the Syrian crisis, tensions between host communities and Syrian refugees in Lebanon are still high. The deepening economic crisis pushes more people in Lebanon into poverty and in need of services. Women have identified access to water as one of the drivers of conflict. Alert uses key performance indicators as a monitoring and management tool to review, adapt and monitor their water and conflict program.

“We design indicators to capture progress and success at different levels and we analyze relations with gender and age because men, women and different age groups respond to and interact with water issues in different ways”, says Naamani. Indicators include accessibility of local populations to water resources, levels of violence and insecurity as experienced by local stakeholders and strengthened rule of law. Dialogue in the Bekaa valley, facilitated by Alert’s program, highlighted the central role of municipalities in curbing inter-community tensions by ensuring conflict and gender-sensitive approaches to provision of water, wastewater management and other services.

Measuring the impact of such water and wetland related programs on conflict and fragility will be key for making the case for more investment in conflict prevention, and ultimately making a real difference to people’s lives.

For more information about the cycle of water and fragility, programming to prevent water-related conflict, water as a connecter and measuring impact, listen to the podcasts with Dominick Revell de Waal (World Bank), Karounga Keïta (Wetlands International), Danilo Türk (Geneva Water Hub) and Aseel Naamani (International Alert).

This guest blog was contributed by Wetlands International as part of the Fragility Forum 2020 .

• Fragility Conflict and Violence
• Pathways for Peace

Senior Advocacy Officer, Wetlands International

Media Relations and Communications Manager, International Alert

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Corporate Operations Administrator, Geneva Water Hub

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What Are Some of the Challenges for Conflict Prevention and Resolution over the Next Two Decades?

By Nick Grono, Deputy President of the International Crisis Group. To Conference on "Global Conflict - Future Trends and Challenges towards 2030", at Wilton Park, UK. Wednesday 2 March 2011.

The first question I’ve been asked to address is whether countries doing conflict prevention, and those affected, have a shared sense of the challenges and opportunities.

The simple answer is “no”.  You don’t need to look beyond the remarkable developments in North Africa and the wider Arab world in recent weeks to reach this conclusion.  For instance,  how would the different actors in that region define and rank the challenges?  Are they political stability, the threat of Islamic extremism, lack of political voice, economic inequality, army rule, relations with Israel, the right of regimes to forcibly suppress challenges to their authority, sovereignty versus humanitarian intervention, or something else? And how different would the answers have been if the same question had been asked just three months ago?

Who is to define the challenges? If a government is not broadly representative of its people – as will be the case in most authoritarian states – then you can’t readily assume that the rulers and the ruled have the same perspective on the challenges. The regime will likely identify stability and threats to it, and many of its people will focus on lack of political voice and economic inequality.

And, momentous though North African developments are, they are just a slice of the conflict spectrum.

Ask the US and Europe what the big conflict and security challenges are, and they would answer: failed and failing states, Islamic extremism, mass casualty terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational organised crime and variations thereof.

Whereas much of the developing world might answer: poverty, infectious diseases, climate change, food security and internal conflict, and perhaps the West’s willingness to override sovereignty in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Let me give two examples to better illustrate how the perspectives of the conflict- affected countries can be quite different from those of external actors

The first is Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government of Mahinda Rajapaksa waged a “successful” counterinsurgency campaign against the LTTE, a brutal, violent terrorist group. But was it successful conflict resolution? I suspect you would get different responses on that question from the Sri Lankan government, from the Tamil population and from, say,  the EU or Beijing.

In executing its campaign, the Sri Lankan government waged total war. Perhaps 30,000 civilians were killed in the last few months of that conflict (Jan-May 2009). Crisis Group has documented the deliberate targeting of civilians, hospitals and humanitarian missions by the Sri Lankan military . The LTTE was wiped out. The iron rule of the central government has been restored throughout the country.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Defence Minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, have trumpeted this as a model of how to deal with terrorist or insurgent groups. The Sri Lankan armed forces are now holding seminars for militaries around the world on how to deal with troublesome insurgencies.

And if the end justified the means, then this campaign was brutally effective. On the other hand, if you believe in universal human rights and a rules-based international order (as opposed to a force-based one), then the means were utterly unacceptable – with the deliberate trashing of the Geneva Conventions being just one of many egregious breaches of international law.

With a smothering peace now in place, the government of Sri Lanka  argues that what is important is reconciliation and economic development, and that reconciliation means forgetting about the past. Others, such as Crisis Group, argue that without accountability for atrocity crimes, there will no sustainable peace over the longer term. And accountability is essential to make clear to other governments contemplating the Sri Lankan option of unrestrained warfare (such as Libya), that it is not an acceptable or viable approach.

Which leads into the second issue I want to discuss briefly - international justice. Is international justice a challenge or an opportunity when it comes to conflict prevention? The role of norm promotion as a check on bad behaviour is a particularly important issue when looking at a 20-year conflict horizon.

The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, now has 114 ratifications, including 31 from sub-Saharan Africa and every EU member state. It has investigations or prosecutions going on in Congo, Uganda, Sudan, CAR, and Kenya. All in Africa. In Congo, Uganda and CAR, the governments specifically requested ICC intervention. In Sudan the Security Council sent the situation to the ICC, and in Kenya the government was initially welcoming, before turning cold. And of course on Saturday we had the UN Security Council unanimously refer Libya to the ICC.

So is the ICC a Western imperialist imposition on the South, and on Africa in particular, or a means to bring greater accountability and justice to abusive actors? African leaders increasingly seem to think the former, though it’s unclear whether their people, and particularly the victims of conflict, would agree.

The EU has repeatedly expressed its support for international justice as a concept, and the ICC in particular. But it is in a bind when it comes to specific cases. Right now European leaders are actively considering whether to put the ICC prosecution of Bashir on hold for a year, as a reward for the successful Southern succession referendum and an incentive for future restraint. Yet while those talks are going on, Sudanese armed forces are still mounting disproportionate attacks on civilians in Darfur. How does that sit with the European commitment to justice and the ICC? And how can EU leaders call for the ICC to investigate Muammar Gaddafi for atrocities against his own people, and expect to be taken seriously as proponents of justice if they are simultaneously contemplating deferring proceedings against Bashir?

Another way of framing this issue is, should justice and accountability be seen as ends in themselves, or simply a tool in the conflict resolution toolbox? If the latter, then will the shorter-term imperatives of crisis management always trump the longer-term objectives of justice and its role in preventing future conflicts? And given that 3 of the P5 have not signed up to the ICC, how can it be argued that international justice in the form of the ICC is a universal value, and not simply a tool to be used by the strong against the weak? Certainly that’s the view of many leaders in the developing world, self-serving though that often may be.

What should be done differently?

We are in the policy prescription business, and we’ve been tasked to propose what might be done differently.

At Crisis Group we are cautious about our ability to predict trends and big picture scenarios  – particularly given our role as country-specific conflict analysts.  We tend to take the approach that much of what drives conflict today will continue to drive conflict for the next two decades.

These drivers include:

• Weak states with low capacity.
• Tensions between authoritarian regimes and popular demands for greater political space.
• Competition over scarce resources, exacerbated by climate change
• Extremist religious movements seeking violent political change
• The growing reach and power of transnational organised crime networks.

Given this context, in many cases it’s not about doing things differently, but doing better the things we already know should be done.  The findings of the most recent Human Security Report, are of interest here – the report stresses the importance of the full range of UN interventions, and how, despite their considerable limitations and flaws, they have had very significant impact over the last 20 years because there were few or no effective multilateral interventions before.

So, what needs to be done differently, or better?  One credible scenario presented at this conference was that of  growing global wealth, a continuing decline in the number of authoritarian states, and a consequent rise in the number of democracies. Given the conflict prone nature of such moves from autocracy to anocracy to democracy, these transitions will likely provide much (though by no means all) of the context for conflict in the next two decades. This is what we are seeing right now with the dramatic events across North Africa and the wider Arab world right now.

That being the case, I’d like to share some of Crisis Group’s thinking on what needs to be done differently or better in supporting  transitions from authoritarian rule to a more pluralistic form of governance.

The following observations are drawn from Crisis Group’s internal discussions on what lessons, if any, can be drawn from these events. The specific examples (and much of the language) are those of our analysts, particularly in our Asia and the Middle East programs.

The starting point is that policymakers need to have a sophisticated understanding of the key dynamics of the countries they are dealing with. Of course, I would say that, working for a conflict analysis organisation. But the North African events starkly demonstrate the validity of this premise. While there are clearly some general linkages between the various countries and their uprisings,  not least that they all have authoritarian leaders and limited political space, they are all distinct in ways that will influence how these transitions will play out over the longer term.

Let me list some of the differences, as identified by our Middle East and North Africa program: the role of the military (somewhat similar in Egypt and Tunisia, very different in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen); the use of pro-regime militias (in Egypt, Yemen and Iraq – as a way of hiding the regime’s role) or mercenaries (Libya and Bahrain – fighting alongside, or as part of, security forces); the role of tribes (none in Egypt, Tunisia or Bahrain, prominent in Libya, potentially important in Yemen, Jordan and Iraq); variations in state legitimacy (the presence of prior national dialogue, as in Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan; no legitimacy in Egypt and Tunisia except for the military, none at all in Libya), and so on.  

And in the search for solutions, there is a temptation to too readily draw parallels with past popular uprisings elsewhere in the world. There are no shortage of precedents. Just take Asia for example:

Dhaka 1971; Manila 1986; Rangoon 1988; Beijing 1989; Bangkok 1992; Jakarta 1998; Bishkek 2005; Kathmandu 2006; Rangoon 2007; Bangkok 2010; Bishkek 2010  (a non-exhaustive list from our Asia program).

They have very mixed legacies: Manila in 1986, Bangkok in 1992, Jakarta in 1998, and Kathmandu in 2006 could all be judged as successful to some degree. Dhaka created Bangladesh but led to the slaughter of 1.5 million. Thailand's post-1992 democracy was more or less overturned in subsequent years, Kyrgyzstan has been hollowed out completely. There are no unalloyed successes here. Rangoon's uprisings ultimately went nowhere, likewise Beijing’s in 1989.

Yet there are some general points that can be made on what approaches might best  support reform and improve the chances of a transition ultimately leading to a peaceful and democratic state.   But these must be viewed through the lens of the earlier caution – all of these situations are unique to a greater or lesser extent, and lessons and interventions must be tailored to the specific circumstances.

1. Reform has to happen quickly before the impetus runs out, which it will very quickly. If reforms don’t happen almost immediately, the opportunity is soon lost. Not full democratic transition of course, but enough to establish momentum for continued transformation.  Indonesia is a positive example. There was no leader in the 1998 uprising that forced Soeharto out, but it was public pressure that forced a creature of the old system (Habibie) to undertake dramatic reforms to save his own skin. The Philippines didn't move quickly (Aquino was too feudal and had to deal with coups), Thailand didn't deal with its military (the King didn't want that to happen).

2. Democratisation after protests may come more easily and rapidly in places that don't have deeply entrenched traditional elites. In Asia, Taiwan and Korea had been through land reform and industrialisation which had eroded many traditional structures. They were more modern societies that were comfortable with change.  In Eastern Europe, the elites with popular credibility were more often than not the dissident intelligentsia. But frequently popular uprisings are co-opted or taken over by the members of the existing elite. Sometimes this is defensive, to ensure the elites’ survival, after the sacrifice of a few leaders - query whether this is what is happening in Tunisia and Egypt; at other times, as recently in Kyrgyzstan, the revolt was simply an extra-constitutional, intra-elite, reshuffle.

3. Try to get the military out of politics as quickly as possible. They rarely go back to the barracks unless there is a powerful civilian component to the revolt leadership. All too frequently Western nations seem comfortable with this, as the militaries are known entities, create a semblance of order and normality, and their commanders have often been trained at Leavenworth or Sandhurst. But more often than not, the military just ends up undermining democratic development, as in Pakistan. Political parties end up looking to the military instead of voters for their blessing.

4. Get elections right. That means not holding them too early, or too late, and understanding they are not an endgame. Elections in divided societies, or in the absence of strong, impartial institutions and the rule of law, carry the risk of increased conflict. High-stakes contests for power can spark violence: politicians may use it to influence outcomes or protest results; spoilers attack the process itself. Look at Cote d’Ivoire right now, and reflect on the fact that there are some 20 presidential or parliamentary elections scheduled for Africa this year. Elections almost always reflect, rather than transform, deeper societal trends. Without the rule of law the powerful win office. Corrupt countries suffer electoral fraud. Authoritarian rulers skew the playing field or manipulate elections to their own ends. Dominant executives dominate elections. It sounds obvious, but the extent to which expectant new electorates and donors hope for polls insulated from broader negative trends is astonishing. Often it will be better to build elections from the ground up – starting with local elections before moving to parliamentary or presidential polls, as local democracy helps build capacity.

5. Understand that outsiders are largely bystanders during the transition -  at least in the initial chaotic stages. The UN, EU, US, Arab League and African Union have been irrelevant in influencing  the course of the uprisings and regime responses to date (with possible exception of the US vis-à-vis Bahrain). The US did not persuade Mubarak to leave, nor could the Saudis convince him to stay – the Egyptian army decided. Whether Gaddafi stays or goes will depend on the internal revolutionary forces, not the international community. Where outsiders may have a role is in supporting any transition after the initial stages, but even here influence is likely to be limited. Over the longer term there will be a role for the international community in supporting fragile states as they grapple with their new-found freedoms and longstanding problems: particularly in addressing economic injustice, providing humanitarian and development support and so on.

6. Don’t try to pick winners. It’s too often an irresistible temptation for international actors, and it usually fails. The focus should be on building institutions over preferred individuals. In fact, a focus on chosen individuals often contributes to the lack of development of institutions for fear that they will undermine or constrain the chosen leader. This has been done with Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, at a significant cost to governance in that country. But perhaps the starkest case study is the U.S. enthusiasm for Africa’s renaissance leaders: Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, Ethiopia’s President Meles Zenawi and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. All have been in power for since the mid-90’s for multiple terms, and appear unlikely to voluntarily leave power anytime soon, while their legislatures and other checks on power have whithered.

7.  My final point. In the end, so much of it comes back to prevention. Conflict prevention matters. The long term, painstaking work of investing in institutions, building the rule of law and developing civil society may be the most effective way for outsider actors to influence these transitions, in the years before they occur. Those countries with more developed institutions and more entrenched rule of law will likely stand a better chance of a stable transition than those without – think Jordan, or even Egypt, as compared to Libya. But this requires policymakers to commit the necessary resources – political, diplomatic and financial – for many years, without much evidence, let alone certainty, of a return. That’s the challenge for policymakers, and as events in the Arab world are so starkly demonstrating, it’s one they ignore at their own peril.

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