Is the field of conflict resolution a western liberal imposition or does it have global relevance? Has it grown out of its Cold War roots? Can civil and international conflicts be prevented, managed and resolved? Should the international community use force? What lessons have we learned from successful peace processes in recent years?

A book from the University of Lancaster’s Richardson Institute of Peace Studies and the University of Bradford’s Department of Peace Studies traces the history of conflict resolution and its current state of development. Conflict theories and case studies are used to examine the roles of governments, the UN, NGOs and grassroots groups. Combining personal commitment to the cause of international peace with a realistic measure of the odds stacked against it, the authors argue the scope for intervention and harnessing of latent indigenous peacemaking capabilities even amid the most seemingly intractable and violent of conflicts.

The history of the growth of the discipline, and challenges to its academic credentials from various points on the intellectual and political spectrum, are traced. The authors contest the view that the international community is powerless to curb modern conflicts characterised by ethnopolitical hysteria or neo-medieval non-interstate struggles between warlords, narco-barons and militias. The international community may have failed to prevent horrific violence in the Balkans and Central Africa, but elsewhere timely interventions have resolved Russia’s conflicts with Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine, let Macedonia peacefully secede from Yugoslavia, ended civil war in Guatemala and El Salvador, restored democracy in Fiji, enabled reconstruction in Cambodia and Mozambique and allowed Czechs and Slovaks an amicable divorce.

This wide-ranging book examines the implications of:

• conflict’s impact on civilians: while only 5 percent of casualties in World War One were civilians nowadays they are 80-90 percent
• problems of quantifying the number of victims of ‘deadly quarrels’, varying criteria for inclusion and the unreliability of casualty figures in chaotic contested war zones
• the irony that the task of managing conflicts has fallen to international institutions which are still based on notions of sovereignty and non-interference that the new conflicts undermine
• the growth of the peacemaking camp: there are now more than five hundred international NGOs which define themselves as being engaged in conflict prevention and management
• the routine exclusion of women from high-level peace negotiations
• the UN’s role in post-conflict reconstruction.

The authors argue that violent conflict, like disease, is an ancient and resourceful enemy but one which can be overcome. In order to create humanitarian space, peacemakers are urged to:

• recognise the need to search out and empower indigenous and committed third-party actors
• be more culturally sensitive: ensure that interventions are seen to be legitimate and consonant with local tradition
• do more to understand the economic and psycho-social dimensions of conflict and peace
• track conflict by means of regularly updated conflict maps
• recognise that using force is justified (if at all) only when it is an element in a wider and coordinated peace effort.

Source(s):
‘Contemporary conflict resolution: the prevention, management and transformation of deadly conflicts’, Polity Press, by Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse, May 1999

id21 Research Highlight: 11 March 2002

Further Information:
Hugh Miall
The Richardson Institute for Peace and Conflict Research
Department of International Relations
University of Lancaster
Lancaster LA1 4YL
UK

Contact the contributor: h.miall@lancaster.ac.uk

Richardson Institute for Peace and Conflict Research, University of Lancaster, UK

Oliver Ramsbotham / Tom Woodhouse
Department of Peace Studies
Pemberton Building
University of Bradford BD7 1DP
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1524 594262
Fax: +44 (0)1524 494238
Contact the contributor: o.p.ramsbotham@bradford.ac.uk

Contact the contributor: t.woodhouse@bradford.ac.uk

Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK

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