Peace Education

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Description: Studies and other documents on Burma/Myanmar as well as on peace and conflict in other countries in SE Asia
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
Date of entry/update: 2012-10-22
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Description: Executive summary: "International peacebuilding actors have so far been wary of engagement with political parties. However, there is growing recognition of the importance of working with local political systems, institutions and parties in the promotion of peace. It is therefore important that international actors strengthen their understanding of political parties in conflict-affected contexts and how such parties relate to conflict and peacebuilding, as well as examine how best to deepen engagement with them. This report examines the nature of political parties in conflict-affected contexts and the challenges such parties face in becoming effective actors for peace. It analyses three cases ? Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar ? where parties have played very different roles in relation to both the grievances and struggles that have fuelled conflict, and efforts to build and sustain peace. It then discusses how lessons from these cases can inform the work of international peacebuilding actors. Finally, the report examines the track record of the international community in working with political parties in conflict-affected contexts. It argues that international actors must move beyond ?blueprint” approaches to party support and instead develop more comprehensive and context-relevant responses to the specific challenges that such parties face."
Creator/author: Clare Castillejo
Source/publisher: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center
2016-01-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 140.44 KB
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Description: "This publications showcases final short papers from 2011 graduates of CPCS? Applied Conflict Transformation Master?s Course that we offer in cooperation with the Pannasastra University in Phnom Penh..."....."....In the following chapters an array of issues are tackled resulting in a colourful collection of insight and analyses. Chapter 1 situates the works through a detailed introduction to the ACTS course, and a discussion of the effectiveness of action learning to build the capacity of peace practitioners in the region. In Chapter 2 we begin to see the work of the students themselves as they engage and challenge key assumptions and perceptions of poverty in Vietnam and conflict in Afghanistan; ultimately these reports urge careful and rigorous analysis of the context of any intervention. Chapter 3 sees the theoretical discussion of two Designs for Peace. These articles provide innovative alternatives for responding to violence both in Bangladesh (by developing a peace curriculum for youth) and in Cambodia (through the architectural design of a museum for peace). In Chapter 4 we are presented with three articles which seek to share the larger lessons from the authors? own experiences at the practical level. This is achieved through discussing donor cooperation in Banda Aceh, community feedback mechanisms in the GRP ? MILF peace process, and civil-military cooperation in Maguindanao. Finally Chapter 5 takes on a more personal face with two particularly reflective accounts by the viii students, who question how to improve their own role as practitioners in Sri Lanka and Thailand..."
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2012-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 1.33 MB
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Description: "Co-authored by CPCS Academic Director Noah Taylor, this conceptual paper explores the diversity of perspectives on peace moving beyond the idea of peace in relation to the absence of conflict and the presence of security. In this framework peace is explored as impure, diverse and conflictive, advocating for an understanding of peace that embraces diversity, and engages with conflict rather than suppresses it.".....Abstract: "While the central question of diversity has often been how to live in peace with difference, we approach the question —what happens when diversity also involves conflicting approaches to peace? This paper contains the authors? reflections on the colloquium with the same title held in the On Diversity Conference 2012 in Vancouver, where the authors and participants explored peace itself as an expression of diversity. We argue that an attempt to answer this question requires a change in focus; if there is no longer a unifying peace, how can we engage with diversity in a plurality of conflicting peaces? Mainstream peace and conflict studies literature understands conflict as opposite to peace. Supported in contemporary critical research, we argue that the concept of peace rather than being perfect, absolute and pure is in fact impure, diverse, and conflictive. Hence, an understanding of peace that attempts to embrace diversity will necessarily be relational, include conflict and engage with it, in contrast to silencing it or suppressing it. We argue that instead of being its opposite, conflict is in fact an essential component of peace. To elaborate on the argument, we deal with two of the possible interpretations of peace in history and culture: peace linked to security, understood as the eradication of threats from others and therefore recurring to ideals of perfection and homogeneity; and peace as an experience of harmony, highlighting mystical or musical harmony, which, far from being pure, emerges also out of conflicting tones. We conclude that both in traditions of mysticism and in security politics, diversities in friction lie at the core of experiencing and conceptualizing peace."
Creator/author: Florencia Benitez-Schaefer, Shawn Bryant, Catalina Vallejo, Noah Taylor
Source/publisher: The International Journal of Community Diversity, Illinois USA via Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2013-00-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 340.08 KB
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Description: "This mapping exercise seeks to provide a better understanding of national apologies by analysing the nuances associated with the term while studying examples of apologies made by states to their people."....Abstract: "The national apology is a phenomenon which can loosely be defined as a collective, political, intra-state apology, issued from one group to another through the use of appropriate representation. Broadly speaking the ?age of apology? started twenty years ago, yet even with age the term ?national apology? has remained one which is particularly analytically elusive. The bulk of the concerned literature has attempted to face up to this dilemma, to clarify the issues and fortify (or discredit) the utility of the practice. However what it has achieved is confusion over the points of suitable definition, purpose, form, delivery, target audience, and so on. This paper attempts to address these issues through analysing the nuances associated with the term, to contribute meaningfully to the topical discussion through a mapping exercise. As such this paper seeks to provide the knowledge for understanding both composition and critiques of national apologies. The process of mapping national apologies is started through mounting a discussion of its variables which are historical location (historic or recent), incidence (discrete or sustained) and significance (whether it remains relevant in the current context). It then continues to argue that the correct form for a national apology requires paying particular attention to the publicity, official character, and ceremony of the statement, as well as by choosing an appropriate speaker. Such contextual adequacies however are not enough to validate an apology. The statement must include within its content an acknowledgement of the injustices committed, an expression of remorse, a guarantee of non-repetition, and refrain from appealing for forgiveness. Finally complementing such an apology with further reparative action (measures of sincerity, National Apologies: Mapping the complexities of validity4 corrective action, and material compensation) give the best chance for a national apology to be considered valid and accepted. In conclusion the report affirms that although the mapping exercise has surely been informative to the reader, and may act as a resource for the analysis and correct construction of national apologies, the information put forward is clearly not intended to be indisputable. It is a current theory in the face of a lack of engagement with this under studied topic, and the author?s intention has been to inspire debate. When this field has a significant potential to contribute to reconciliation and peace efforts around the globe it seems inappropriate to accept it as unexplainable. Thus, the report finishes by suggesting it is only through persistent and constructive dialogue between academics and practitioners that we may hope to one day reach consensus on best practice of national apologies."
Creator/author: Eneko Sanz
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2012-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 751.22 KB
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Description: "Encouraging practitioners to question and challenge narratives around strategic peace building frameworks this research critically analyses such narratives and shows that they tend to be subjective in nature, signal certain political positions and are often framed through the lens of modernist state-building theory.".....Introduction: "There are innumerable actors engaging post-conflict contexts at the international, national and local level. Their activities target a broad range of political, economic, social and cultural agendas, spanning long pe riods of time and enduring particularly unstable conditions. Since the publication of An Agenda for Peace,2 the international community has been driven to amalgamate all such activities into an increasingly broad and multidimensional enterprise labelled post-conflict peacebuilding. As ti me passed, additional elements related to this new concept continued to be identified and duly incorporated into the undertaking, seeing in practice the ever-widening scope and breadth of peace building. In light of this, and after a string of less than successful experiences, practitioners and policy-makers alike recognized the need to tame such complexity and requested a more coherent master plan. In response to this demand s trategic planning frameworks for int ernational post-conflict peace building (SFPs)3 have been pr oduced since the mid-nineties, by the UN, IFIs, governments of donor and conflict-affe cted countries, regional organiz ations and NGOs. By 2010 the g7+ group of fragile states had identified ?the pr oliferation of strategic frameworks” as a significant challenge to peace building.4 Meanwhile, the European Parliament was considering drafting the EU?s own SFP.5 SFPs are policy planning documents comprising analysis and recommendations. They belong to the genre of technical- administrative texts but, as many plans do, SFPs also make use of narrative devices usually associated with literary works. In trying to produce a coherent prioritization, phasing and sequencing of activities, they construct a plot with a beginning, middle and end. In the process of attempting to identify and coordinate multiple actors, SFPs make distinctions between main and secondary characters, and between heroes, villains, and victims. And in trying to give a common meaning and purpo se to the myriad of tasks performed under the label of peace building, these documents portray themes of progress and crisis against the backdrop of dramatic stories about the fight between good and evil. This paper will try to illustrate how such narrativity present in SFPs signals certain political positions. To achieve this it will present an outline of the narrative analysis approach to policy planning. This is followed by a description of how the methodology has been adapted for this study to the requir ements of SFPs. The analysis is then divided in two distinct parts. The first discusses some features of the characters in the ?peace building story”: who are the heroes and their allies, the anti-subjects, the donor, and what does this signify. The second part deals with plot: how SFPs are structured around the triad Security-Development-Political Reform, and how this produces a set of recognizable stories. It is considered how the attempt to give coherence to a collection of literally hundreds of episodes, each of them an intricate narrative in itself, reflects the fact that the peace building story may turn out to be a version of another one, namely the modernist state building story. The paper ends with some reflections about how a narrative policy analysis can help us read and construct different discourses on peace building."
Creator/author: Eneko Sanz
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2013-07-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 2.31 MB
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Description: "his paper reflects on Conciliation Resources? experience of formal hybrid mediation support in the Mindanao peace process. Key lessons are drawn from this new approach and its potential for further use in the field of mediation and conflict transformation is evaluated.....Summary: -The International Contact Group (ICG) in Mindanao is the first ever formal hybrid mediation support initiative..It developed organically over 15 years of protracted negotiations...Diplomats and international NGOs played complementary roles, strengthening the overall value of their participation...The experience of the ICG suggests that hybrid Contact Groups can be a valuable response to the complexity of long-standing conflicts
Creator/author: Kristian Herbolzheimer, Emma Leslie
Source/publisher: Conciliation Resources via Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
2013-07-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 168.94 KB
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Description: "Kyoko Okumoto, a well-respected Japanese peacebuilder, once said to me, ?I firmly believe that to be an effective peacebuilder you need to be able to trust.” By trust she did not mean a blind, naïve faith in whomever or whatever comes along; she meant a will- ingness, across cultures, faiths, political affiliation, and gender, to allow other in—that is, to suspend all our prejudices and stereotypes. Such trust requires us to show our vulnerabilities to people we might not ordinarily reveal them to, in order to demonstrate that we have flawed humanity in common. This means entering into a place of insecurity and entrusting our host or guide to lead us and take care of us. This position of cultural humility is the foundation of peace work, allowing practitioners to connect with people on a basic level that is both informative and insightful in shaping effective peace prac- tices and programs..."
Creator/author: Emma Leslie
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2013-09-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 263.02 KB
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Description: "In January 2012, our Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies facilitate a visit of the Karen National Union to visit the Moro Islamic Libera tion Front in Cotobato City, Mindanao. The KNU had asked about the experience of armed groups in ceasefires, and there is no better place in the region today than to see how hard the Philippine government and MILF have worked to sustain a ceasefire while there peace talks go on. The Chairman of the MILF peace panel, Mohagher Iqbal, chose carefully his advice to the KNU. Number one he said: ?Prepare, prepare, prepare. And when you think you are ready prepare some more.” He explained that as an armed group you have been well trained to fight in the jungle, but negotiations is a different arena, and requires training, preparation, knowledge, awareness, tactics, strategies, skills. He understood that even when you think as the group demanding your right you are ready, there will some aspect of the negotiation you have not yet considered. Secondly, he said: Maintain military discipline. He said military discipline is not just for fighting wars. He said when you sign a ceasefire agreement you need to ensure that your chain of command is in tact. A ceasefire does not mean disarm. A ceasefire is the ceasing of hostilities so talks can go on. If you sign a peace agreement you need to know that when you tell you troops to disarm they will put down their guns and they will go home. You can negotiate confident you cannot deliver on your own promise. Thirdly he said: You will think negotiating with your opponent is hard, but negotiating within your own group is even harder. Unifying and bringing your people along with the negotiation is the most challenging aspect of peace talks. At times you will feel closer to your negotiating counterpart, then you do to your own stakeholders..."
Creator/author: Emma Leslie
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2013-10-14
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 84.77 KB
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Description: "Over the past few decades, the shifting dynamics of the nature of war, combined with a maturing field of peace process support, have led to parallel shifts in the nature of mediation in peace processes. There has been a significant increase in the number of ongoing civil wars, as opposed to interstate wars, and the field of conflict transformation has changed accordingly. Under the leadership of Kofi Annan, the United Nations began the process of mainstreaming the inclusion of civil society and other actors into the fields of peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Now, more actors, using more-advanced support mechanisms, are engaging in peace-process support. This maturing of the field has also helped facilitate innovative approaches to overcoming the challenges of contemporary peace talks in a civil war setting. This article will reflect on some of the changes in practice in relation to the peace process currently underway in the Philippines..."
Creator/author: Emma Leslie
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
2013-12-17
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 89.54 KB
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Description: "Third parties? interventions to support conflict resolution in South East Asia have been rather rare in the last decades. Indeed, it has proven difficult for outsiders to play a facilitation or a mediation role in that part of the world and this for different reasons. Among some possible explanations: the perception of interference in internal affairs, the history of a colonial past impacting the present, and the mistrust towards foreigners. In particular, in comparison to most of the African conflict resolution cases, the interventions in South East Asia have been mo stly locally conducted and space for outsiders is scarce. Nevertheless some foreigners have found ways to contribute to support peace in that part of the world and Emma Leslie is a stimulating example of this. She is currently involved in three peace processes across the region ? the Moro Islamic Liberation Front/Philippine government; Karen National Union and Myanmar government; and the All Burma Students Democratic Front and Myanmar government. The Mediation Support Project (MSP) round table discussion therefore focused on the Philippines and Myanmar. Emma shared her experience on how to deal with those specific mediation/facilitation challenges and draw lessons from those cases..."
Creator/author: Emma Leslie
Source/publisher: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS),
2013-06-10
Date of entry/update: 2016-02-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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