Shared History Project: A PRIME Example of Peace-Building Under Fire

Minimal peace building during a violent conflict is suggested as a strategy for future post-conflict peace processes. This paper describes a process of five workshops in which Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli teachers developed a joint school textbook of two narratives (an Israeli and a Palestinian) in regard to three dates in their mutual conflict: the Balfour Declaration, the 1948 war and the 1987 Intifada. The teachers developed these two narratives to be taught in their classrooms. All these activities took place under severe conditions of asymmetry of power relations of occupation (of the Palestinians) and of suicide bombers (against Israelis) throughout the project. The Two-State solution requires in our view textbooks of two narratives, so students learn to respect the narrative of the Other.     

The paradoxes of the ‘everyday’: scrutinising the local turn in peace building

With the advent of the local turn in the mid-2000s, critical approaches have attempted to rethink peace building from the bottom up, placing local agents at the centre of the debate, declaring the end of top-down governance and affirming the fragmented, complex and plural nature of the social milieu. While local turn approaches have become popular in peace-building theory, this article invites the reader to question and problematise the local turn’s use of the concept of ‘everyday’, in order to explore paradoxes and contradictions that indicate the need to think more deeply about the impact of the local turn’s project of critique.     

Corruption in the aftermath of war: an introduction

‘Corruption in the aftermath of war’ brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to enquire into the dynamics of corruption in post-conflict societies. This introduction discusses five themes, problematising and summarising key findings from the 10 articles included. First, we discuss the problems with the corruption concept, related to its moralising connotations and definitional vagueness, and propose viewing corruption as a collective action dilemma as a way of avoiding these moralising aspects. Second, we discuss post-conflict societies, and highlight the great varieties of ‘peace’ that that label can refer to. We suggest that the causes, dynamics and effects of corruption in post-conflict societies bear many similarities with those in other societies, but that the post-conflict situation often generates an intensification and entrenchment of corruption-related problems. Third, we analyse the dynamics between international interveners and domestic actors, and show the contradictions and tensions in international–domestic relations. Fourth, we argue that the inter-linkages between inequality, mistrust and corruption deserve consideration in the study of post-conflict societies, and that inequality in particular merits more attention. Finally, we discuss some methodological challenges encountered by the contributors in their studies of corruption in post-conflict societies.     

The real deal? The post-conflict constitution as a peace agreement

Abstract

When intra-state armed conflicts end through a negotiated settlement, the conflict parties frequently agree to amend or replace the country’s constitution. Their aim is to entrench the settlement, address the conflict incompatibility, reform institutions and take other measures to prevent a recurrence of violence. This article argues that post-conflict constitutions (PCCs) should be understood as peace agreements. It motivates this argument on conceptual, functional and legal grounds. It demonstrates that PCCs comply with conventional definitions of a peace agreement, are an intrinsic component of the conflict resolution process and have a range of peace maintenance functions. As supreme law, they become the definitive peace agreement. Research on peace durability following negotiated settlements should therefore focus not only on comprehensive peace agreements (CPAs) but also on PCCs. PCCs should be conceived not as mere components of CPA implementation but as substantive political and legal agreements in their own right and as independent causes of peace.     

Introduction: Unfolding transrational potential

ABSTRACT

This article presents peace education as a process of unfolding potential for peace and conflict transformation. It discusses how the different contributions to this special issue respond to challenges posed by a transrational understanding of peace education that engages with productive tensions present in research and practice. In this sense, the article asks how transrational perspectives can contribute to further understand and engage with these tensions through embracing complexity, contradictions and paradoxes as a field of transformative potentials. Finally, the article presents the objective of this special issue as exploring diverse ways in which transrational perspectives inform peace education - and are informed by it - in the challenging endeavor to facilitate the unfolding of both personal and collective potentials available for peace and conflict transformation.     

Education for territorial peace in Colombia: what role for transrational peace?

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present the idea of a territorial peace and explore it in the context of Colombia. We locate our investigation in peace education, particularly in Colombia’s Catedra de Paz, and explore the adaptations and application of the iPEACES programme (originally the iPEACE programme, developed by one of the authors with Bevington in 2017) as a possible way of contributing to sustaining the plurality of many peaces in this and other contexts. We outline the Innsbruck school’s many peaces approach and Elicitive Conflict Mapping (ECM) framework in order to show how they contributed to developing the iPEACES programme – which is responsive to territorial peace in the Colombian context. We end by presenting limited findings from four surveys with teachers in Colombia who attended a taster day for the iPEACES programme in 2018. We discuss their contributions and perspectives, and the ways in which we feel the iPEACES programme might be taken up more widely in schools in Colombia and elsewhere.     

YES PM: Years of Experience in Strategies for Peace Making

From the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in September 2000 to the eruption of Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, the international community allocated an estimated $20–25 million for people-to-people (P2P) projects. Since September 2000, almost all P2P projects came to a halt. Many people have asked why this had to happen? Why did the P2P projects cease to work when they were needed the most? Why did the P2P projects fail to produce the desired goals? How could P2P projects have greater impact? Why are some activities continuing, while others have ceased? This article will attempt to deal with these questions. It is based on a research project that involved Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Civil Society institutions; Israeli, Palestinian, and international academics; and other expert conflict resolution and conflict prevention practitioners. A joint team of Israeli and Palestinian researchers was appointed to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the P2P process; two workshops were held to conduct subjective analyses of the P2P process from its start until today. An interactive web site was also produced, and some 40 interviews were conducted with initiators and implementers of P2P projects. We present here the findings of this study.     

Peace building and the depoliticisation of civil society: Sierra Leone 2002–13

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid increase in funds for local civil society actors in fragile states. Current peace-building and development efforts strive for the recreation of a vibrant, active and ‘liberal’ civil society. In the case of Sierra Leone, paradoxically, this growing support has not strengthened civil society actors based on that liberal idea(l). Instead of experiencing enhanced proactive participation stemming from the civil sphere, Sierra Leone’s civil society appears to be largely depoliticised. Drawing on empirical data gathered over the past four years, this article offers three interrelated causal explanations of why this phenomenon occurred during the country’s peace-building phase from 2002 to 2013. First, Sierra Leone’s civil society landscape has become instrumentalised to serve a broader liberal peace-building and development agenda in several ways. Second, Western idea(l)s of participatory approaches and democracy are repeatedly challenged by the legacies of colonial rule and socially entrenched forms of neo-patrimonialism. Third, abject poverty and the lack of education affect activism and agency from below.