European Network
for
reasearch on nonviolent conflict transformation
Expression of
interest for a Network of Excellence 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
· Dipartimento di Studi Sociali, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università di Firenze, Florence - Italy, email: labate@unifi.it.
Contact
person: Alberto L'Abate.
[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.
Research
centers, universities departments interested in the field as well as NGOs
involved in related activities are all well represented in many European
countries, but they lack of a common European framework giving them enough
visibility and concrete help to European Institutions and public.
Experiences
are there to demonstrate chances of excellent outputs, which have been partly
obtained by the already contacted partners. Some examples are: SaferWorld’s
activities on global desarmement and security problems,
NDI’s studies, CSDC’s researches both with Defence and Foreign
Affairs Ministries and cooperation NGOs, Beghof Institute’s Handbook
for Conflcit Transformation.
Integration
of different kind of institutions is essential towards mainstreaming of violence
prevention and nonviolent conflict transformation in public policies and in the
society as a whole.
The
establishing of several summer schools,
decentralised in a first phase within the participating countries and then in
the rest of Europe, will help the development of a larger number of researchers
and specialists in the field. This will be a resource for public and private
actors dealing with conflict situation both in international crisis areas (such
as economic actors in post-war re-building activities) and internal conflicts
(social tensions, minorities’ areas, etc.).
Furthermore,
these activities could be “training for trainers” in several professional
areas with conflict transformation is relevant for efficience (industrial
relationships, social assistance, public services, etc.).