Expression of interest for an integrated project – VI Framework Program – Thematic priority 1.1.7 Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based society
Proponent: Centro Studi Difesa Civile, Roma – Italy.
Tel.+39068419672,
e-mail: roma@pacedifesa.org,
web:
www.pacedifesa.org,
www.mediazioni.org
Contact person: Alessandro Rossi.
Partners:
·
Berghof
Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin,
Website:
www.berghof-center.org
Contact
person: Giovanni Scotto. E-mail: giovanni.scotto@berghof-center.org
·
Field Diplomacy
Initiative (vzw - NDI), Leuven - Belgium
tel/fax
+32.16.48.76.54
E-mail:
initiative@fieldiplomacy.be
Website
: www.fielddiplomacy.be
Contact
person Jos De la Haye (jos.delahaye@fielddiplomacy.be)
·
Saferworld,
London – UK
Contact
person: Paul
Eavis, director.
E-mail:
peavis@saferworld.demon.co.uk
·
University of Pavia –
Dipartimento di Studi Politici e Sociali , Pavia - Italy
Tel.+390382504433.
E-mail: cngp@unipv.it
Contact
person: Prof.Gian Paolo Calchi Novati (director).
· Centro Studi Sereno Regis, Torino – Italy
Tel.+39.011.532824, E-mail: regis@arpnet.it, website: www.arpnet.it/regis.
Contact
persons: Erika Grasso, Nanni Salio.
·
Swisspeace,
Swisspeace Foundation, Sonnenbergst. 17 3000 Bern 7 Switzerland, Tel. +41 31 330
12 12 www.swisspeace.ch
Contact
person: Tanja Paffenholz
Institute
for Research on Population and Social Policies (CNR), Rome - Italy email:
a.gigli@irp.rm.cnr.it, website: www.irp.rm.cnr.it
tel. +39 06 4993 2805, fax +39 06 8583 4506
Contact person: Anna Gigli
[Other
Institutions (Universities, NGOs, etc.) have manifested their interest but did
not send an official subscription.]
In
the last years, the topics of Violence Prevention and
Nonviolent Conflict Transformation have rapidly gained importance in the
field of Peace and Conflict Studies.
Facing
an increasing number of intra-state ethnopolitical conflicts in the 1990es,
state and civil society actors were challenged to develop innovative approaches
to deal with phenomena such as escalation of violence, interethnic tension,
civil war and the breakdown of state structures. After hostilities cease, the
international community has to find appropriate ways to deal with the scars of
war and with the challenges of restoring a peaceful order.
Preventing violent
conflict and building
peace have thus become key challenges in the development of a common foreign
policy of the European Union. The challenge of addressing these issues in a
coherent and thus more constructive manner, is a key challenge for the European
Union.
The
events on September 11th, 2001 and the subsequent developments have
further underlined the need for deepening our understanding of conflicts and
enhancing the capacity of dealing with them in a constructive way.
The
main goal of the proposed integrated
project is to foster a culture and practice of nonviolent conflict
transformation in the field of EU Common Foreign Policy as well as at the level
of single States, including associated States and accession candidates. Research
in this field can therefore directly contribute to better address these
challenges.
It
is useful to distinguish different perspectives in analysing conflicts, their
causes and dynamics, as well as strategies for their nonviolent transformation: involved actors, social structures and political institutions, processes
of conflict transformation. Within each perspective a number of foci
for research interest will be sketched.
Internal Actors:
the notion of peace constituencies can be regarded as a key for peacebuilding
and nonviolent conflict transformation, meaning persons and groups within the
conflict-torn society that are willing to promote de-escalation, dialogue and
peaceful transformation of the conflict at different levels of society. Here the
research should aim at identifying and clustering different peace constituencies,
developing criteria and conditions for success of peace constituencies, identify
strategies of capacity building and empowerment to strengthen their role in
politics and society; identifying different societal potentials for peace –
including in the religious, cultural and attitudinal dimensions - out of which
peace constituencies can develop.
External actors:
the roles and functions of external, intervening actors with tasks such as
peacekeeping, peacemaking, peacebuilding, has long been the focus on research on
conflict transformation. However, what is missing in current research is:
-
research evaluating the impact of external interventions
-
research focussing on coherence of different politics
-
research with regard to specific instruments of violence prevention and
nonviolent conflict transformation.
Examples
for specific research topics are :
-
Peace
and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA):
Analytical tools for "Peace and conflict Impact Assessemnt" of
policies and programes are currently being developed and first tested. Aim of
the research in this field will be an evaluation in the use of PCIA techniques,
a further development of the concept, particularly moving from project
assessment to PCIA in whole sectors and to overall assessment of external
intervention in conflicts as a contribution to general policy impact assessment.
Fostering
a culture of peace and conflict impact assessment is an important precondition
to place violence prevention at centre stage in the common European foreign
policy. On the other hand disseminating PCIA among internal actors in conflict
situations might strengthen their awareness and their role as equal partners in
cooperating with external agencies.
-
civilian
peace service, an
innovative instrument for grass-root civilian intervention in conflict
situations, currently developed in several European countries (notably in
Germany). Aim of the research will be to identify sinergies and possible areas
of tension between peacemaking efforts with top level political leaders, work
with middle-range leaderships and civilian peace service actitivies at grassroot
level.
Social and political
structures in conflict-torn societies:
in recent years several European researchers have analysed the mechanisms that
are responsible for a perpetuation of violence in long-standing conflicts. This
has led to a better understaindg of the "political economy of civil wars"
and of the way the influence peace processes. Aim of the research will be to
identify and analyse counter-strategies to weaken social and economics
mechanisms that help perpetuate high levels of violence.
Furthermore,
a major focus of research will be that of designing
institutions for transition: experiences in Southeast Europe show that, in
order to govern peace processes, a dilemma between effectiveness of the external
intervention and ownership by local
society has to be resolved: here the attention will paid to the diverse
experiences in Southeast Europe: Stability Pact for Southeast Europe; High
Representatives of the United Nations and OSCE in Bosnia-Herzegovina, UNMIK and
OSCE in Kosovo. Particular attention will be paid to the experience of the
European Union transitional Administration of Mostar (EUAM).
Mechanisms and
institutions of transitional justice in
the context of peacebuilding are an additional important element to be studied.
In the field of traditional justice (i.e. courts), the International Court for
Former Yugoslavia plays a special role. But also examples of restorative justice,
such as commissions for peace and reconciliation, will be focused on.
Escalation processes,
violence prevention and early warning systems: central
for the development of a common foreign policy based on violence prevention are
early warning systems grounded on knowledge of escalation processes.
Research
will focus on analysis of existing qualitative and quantitative early warning
systems and look specifically into their lessons learned and applicability as a
precondition for external intervention strategies.
De-escalation:
the phenomena of conflict escalation has attracted great scholarly attention.
Less studied and understood are processes and mechanisms of de-escalation,
defusing tension and reducing propensity to violence among conflicting parties.
An important topic in this respect is the relationship between political
leadership and societal forces. Peacebuilding as a strategy often focuses on
societal actors such as middle-range leaderships or grass-roots
social movements and NGOs. However, there has been little understanding
of the complex relationship between these actors and political leaders who, in
several cases, see their main interest in blocking the road towards peace.
Research should fill this gap by comparing different conflict situations and
peace processes, and by drawing general conclusions in form of recommendations,
"best practices" as well as training packages.
Re-escalation:
as the example of Palestina-Israel, and earlier Angola, show, ill-conceived
peace processes bear the risk of producing a situation in which resort to
violence is more likely, attitudes towards peace are undermined by scepticism
and desperation, and the overall political situation experiences a
"re-escalation" of the conflict. Aim of the research on this topic
should be to identify ways to minimise the risk of re-escalation in peace
processes, drawing lessons, among others, from the above mentioned examples.
3.
NEED
& RELEVANCE
The
need for additional research in this field
has been widely stressed in studies carried out from several scientific
actors in different European countries as well as from public declaration made
by NGOs.
Several
EU documents address the need for enhancing civilian capabilities in dealing
with armed conflict prevention and peacebuilding, for co-ordinating at the
European level these capabilities (including civil society actors) in
standardised methods, and for the development of Peace and Conflict Impact
Assessment methods. Among the last most relevant documents are the European
Commission Communication on Conflict Prevention (COM(2001)
211) and relating resolution by the European Parliament, which calls clearly for
“the need for conflict prevention assessment in common policies” and for the
“Establishing a European Civil Peace Corps”.
However,
a basic precondition for a constructive role of the EU in prevention violent
conflict and giving a contribution to peacebuilding is the coherence
of different EU policies as well as the coherence of policies set forth by
Member States politics in this regard. Thus research will take into account the
different actors and instruments of European foreign policy, devising strategies
for fostering coherence among them
The
involvement of a wide range of study centres, universities and Non Governmental
Organisations from several European countries will help addressing the issues of
coherence among different policy levels and between EU countries and it will
contribute to mainstream knowledge and policies on violence prevention and
nonviolent conflict transformation across Europe.
The
proponents also stress the need to include in the research endeavour researchers
and organisation from countries outside the EU experiencing conflict. This will
not only contribute to better quality of research, but also enhance the capacity
to address underlying problems in those countries.
Envisaged
research outputs will also help economic actors in dealing with post-armed
conflict situations, where they play a key role in re-building strategies.
4.
SCALE OF AMBITION & CRITICAL MASS
Overall
objective of the present integrated project is to contribute to European Union
leadership in the fields of violence prevention and nonviolent conflict
transformation.
Since
one of the guiding values of European foreign policy is the spreading of
democratic values through non-violent methods, enhancing effective capacity to
deal with conflicts with civilian
means is essential in this regard.
It
is useful to compare the situation in the EU with the US in the field: on the
other side of the Atlantic, government fund peace research widely and public
agencies such as the United States Institute for Peace play a key role in
advancing research on nonviolent conflict transformation. A wide network of
universities and training facilities facilitates the spreading of
relevant knowledge to practitioners and state officials. A similar
situation can be observed in Canada.
Research
centres, university departments which are active in the field as well NGOs
involved in related activities are all well represented in all European
countries, but they lack a common European project giving enough visibility and
concrete help to European Institutions and public.
As
a first assessment of the institutional critical mass needed to achieve the
objective of advancing knowledge and policy within the EU and
the member states, the integrated project will need the participation of at
least one key institution for each state.
Additionally,
a tight working relationship has to be established with relevant European civil
society networks in the field, such as the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office
(EPLO); the European Network of Civilian Peace Services (EN.CPS); the Conflict
Prevention Network (CPN); the Forum for Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER),
and others.
5. Integration: towards mainstreaming of violence prevention and nonviolent conflict transformation
The
effort of mainstreaming of violence prevention and nonviolent conflict
transformation is central in the project.
The
challenge of mainstreaming violence prevention and nonviolent conflict
transformation in Europe presents itself at the level of common European
institutions as well as at the level of each State. The output envisaged in the
present project will be in form of basic
research, dissemination of knowledge, training, action-research projects.
Following
types of research output for the topics presented in par. 2 are envisaged:
-
Towards
a European culture of peace:
different cultural traditions in European countries have contributed to the
development of concepts of peace, nonviolence, constructive conflict
transformation. Beyond present-day policy challenges, European heritage in the
field of peace and conflict transformation should be highlighted.
-
General
models of peacebuilding, violence prevention and conflict transformation:
Despite the impressive rise of the literature, the field of violence prevention
and conflict transformation still lacks to a large extent studies aiming at
systematizing concepts and data.
-
Case
studies, by
country, region as well as sector of intervention
-
Evaluations,
best practices and lessons learnt by
experiences in the field
Essential
part of the project is to ensure strong links between researchers and
practitioners:
-
Linking research to already existing, practical early warning systems;
-
Transferring research results via practical Manuals and Guidebooks. In
this respect the proponents aim at continuing the successful experience of the Berghof
Handbook for Conflict Transformation, by using the Internet as a medium to
provide state-of-the-art knowledge to practitioners, and to ensure appropriate
channels of feedback an reflection from the field.
- Finally, the project intends to make a contribution to knowledge management in the fields of violence prevention and nonviolent conflict transformation within relevant EU institutions.
Training
both as part of standard university curricula and as a means of professional
advancement for government officials as well as practitioners on the ground
plays a key role in mainstreaming concepts and approaches of violence prevention
/ nonviolent conflict transformation.
Aim
of the research will be to develop and implement appropriate training curricula
for civilian operators in conflict areas and definition of relevant competences
and learning methodologies. Training
modules will be elaborated also to enhance constructive conflict transformation
at all levels, both internal and international, from micro to macro. Main target
groups are: EU and state officials dealing with crisis regions as well as
development cooperation and humanitarian action; practitioners from NGOs and
other civil society actors; State officials and civil society personalities from
conflict zones.
A relevant feature of research on nonviolent conflict transformation is its stress on participative, action-research project. Aim of the researchers, in this case, is not only to gain knowledge about conflicts and their peaceful resolution, but also to become active agents of change. Activities such as participatory observation, capacity building, dialogue projects, problem-solving workshops and seminars with participants coming from societies experiencing conflict are among the most widely conducted project in this field. Within the framework of the project a number of action-research endeavours, particularly in conflict which directly affect the EU, will take place. Their subsequent scientific evaluation will contribute to a better understanding of the relevance and potential difficulties of such instrument of nonviolent conflict transformation.