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1. Turkey and the PKK: Saving the Peace Process

Publication Date:
11-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The peace process to end the 30-year-old insurgency of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) against Turkey's government is at a turning point. It will either collapse as the sides squander years of work, or it will accelerate as they commit to real convergences. Both act as if they can still play for time – the government to win one more election, the PKK to further build up quasi-state structures in the country's predominantly- Kurdish south east. But despite a worrying upsurge in hostilities, they currently face few insuperable obstacles at home and have two strong leaders who can still see the process through. Without first achieving peace, they cannot cooperate in fighting their common enemy, the jihadi threat, particularly from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Increasing ceasefire violations, urban unrest and Islamist extremism spilling over into Turkey from regional conflicts underline the cost of delays. Both sides must put aside external pretexts and domestic inertia to compromise on the chief problem, the Turkey-PKK conflict inside Turkey.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Ethnic Conflict, Peace Studies, Treaties and Agreements, War, and Armed Struggle
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Asia

2. Her Excellency Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Norway

Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Columbia University World Leaders Forum
Abstract:
This World Leaders Forum program features an address by Her Excellency Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Norway titled, To End Poverty, We Need Peace, followed by a question and answer session with the audience.
Topic:
Peace Studies, Political Economy, Poverty, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe and Norway

3. Conflict, Violence, and Instability in the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Author:
Suparva Narasimhaiah
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
On April 26, 2013, the UN Foundation (UNF), Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), the International Peace Institute (IPI), and the Post-2015 Development Team at the Executive Office of the Secretary-General jointly convened a workshop to assess the impact of conflict, violence, and instability on development. The meeting brought together members from the UN Secretariat, agencies, funds, and programs as well as outside experts to consider strategies for addressing the post-2015 development agenda.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, Arms Control and Proliferation, Development, Peace Studies, War, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe

4. Policing in Palestine: Analyzing the EU Police Reform Mission in the West Bank

Author:
Madeline Kristoff
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
International efforts for security sector reform (SSR) and state building more broadly, have faced major challenges in the Palestinian Territories. Donor countries struggled to overcome an unwillingness at home to use aid funding for police reform purposes, while managing Israeli obstructionism and security concerns, rivalries between Palestinian police generals and a lack of Palestinian preparedness for the technical and practical aspects of police reform. In this context, the European Union Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (EU COPPS) was established in 2005 as an EU Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) mission; the European Union Police Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (EUPOL COPPS), the followup EU police mission, began in 2006. The role of EUPOL COPPS was to provide support to the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) for immediate operational priorities and longer-term transformational change.
Topic:
Corruption, Peace Studies, Treaties and Agreements, Territorial Disputes, and Law Enforcement
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, and Arabia

5. Keep Friends Close but Colleagues Closer: Efficiency in the Establishment of Peace Operations

Author:
Heidi Hardt
Publication Date:
04-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
The speed with which international organizations establish peace operations impacts prospects for sustainable peace. In this paper, I explain why some organizations take longer than others to answer calls for intervention. I identify the role of informal relations in a literature that has long favored formality and challenge realist assumptions that intergovernmental decision-making depends strictly on national interests. Based on personal interviews with 50 ambassadors at four regional organizations, I show that differences in response rates largely depend on the strength of interpersonal relations amongst decision-makers. Despite having superior funding, the European Union remains the slowest organization to react because of its highly formalistic culture. Informal bonds of trust help account for the speed with which organizations are able to respond to crises.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, International Organization, Peace Studies, War, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe

6. Religion and Peacebuilding: Reflections on Current Challenges and Future Prospects

Author:
Susan Hayward
Publication Date:
08-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The field of religious peacebuilding has begun to move closer to the mainstream of conflict resolution practice and theory. The 2011 unrest in the Middle East and North Africa—the Arab Spring—reflects ongoing challenges and opportunities for the field. American and European nongovernmental organizations, agencies in the U.S. government, academia, and international organizations—sectors that once held religious issues at a distance or understood religion mainly as a driver of violence—increasingly engage religious communities and institutions as partners in creating peace. Meanwhile, religious organizations that have been involved in creating peace for decades, if not longer, increasingly have institutionalized and professionalized their work, suggesting ways that religious and secular organizations could coordinate their efforts more closely. The U.S. Institute of Peace's own programs on religion reflect the development of the wider field, having moved from research and analysis to on-the-ground programming to foster interfaith dialogue in the Balkans, Nigeria, Israel-Palestine, and Sudan. In addition, it has trained religious actors in conflict management in Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Colombia and developed peace curricula based on Islamic principles for religious and secular schools in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere. As the U.S. field of religious peacebuilding continues to develop, challenges include integrating further with secular peacebuilding efforts, engaging women and youth and addressing their priorities, working more effectively with non-Abrahamic religious traditions, and improving evaluation, both to show how religious peacebuilding can reduce and resolve conflict and to strengthen the field's ability to do so.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Islam, Peace Studies, Religion, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Europe, and Arabia

7. Implementing an arms trade treaty: mapping assistance to strengthen arms transfer controls

Author:
Mark Bromley and Paul Holtom
Publication Date:
07-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Abstract:
It is widely recognized that many states parties to an arms trade treaty (ATT) will need assistance to fulfil their treaty obligations. The issue of international assistance has been consistently raised by United Nations member states throughout the UN process of negotiating an ATT.For example, states will need assistance to establish and strengthen their legislative and administrative frameworks as well as their licensing and enforcement capacities in order to enable them to exert greater control over international transfers of conventional arms. The creation of an ATT will require the expansion of existing assistance programmes as well as the development of new approaches and efforts specifically designed to assist states with treaty implementation. For example, the European Union (EU) already provides funds for technical and material assistance for states to develop or strengthen transfer control systems and is willing to expand these activities to help states implement an ATT. International assistance has been promoted as one of the positive outcomes for states parties to an ATT that are neither major exporters nor importers of conventional arms.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Cooperation, Peace Studies, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
Europe and United Nations

8. Setting a Standard for stakeholdership. Industry Contribution to a strengthened Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

Author:
Jean Pascal Zanders (Ed.)
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, more commonly known as the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), was opened for signature on 10 April 1972. Upon entering into force on 26 March 1975, it was the first treaty ever to ban completely a whole category of weapons. Together with the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the BTWC forms one of the pillars through which the international community deals with weapons of mass destruction.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Arms Control and Proliferation, Peace Studies, Treaties and Agreements, War, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
Europe

9. Worse, not Better ? Reinvigorating Early Warning for Conflict Prevention in the Post Lisbon European Union

Author:
John Brante, Chiara De Franco, Christoph Meyer, and Florian Otto
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EGMONT - The Royal Institute for International Relations
Abstract:
The number and lethality of conflicts has been declining significantly since the end of the Cold War, but five new armed conflicts still break out each year. While costly peace-making, stabilisation and reconstruction efforts have helped to end conflicts, no comparative efforts have gone into preventing them from occurring in the first place. The international community appears stuck in the never-ending travails of managing crises, finding it difficult to act early to prevent new conflicts from escalating. Encouraging signs that this is changing include the United Nations (UN) promotion of the preventive arm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the United States' efforts to improve its capacity to prevent conflicts and mass atrocities emerging from the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Similarly, since the launch of the Gothenburg programme in 2001, the European Union (EU) has embraced the case for conflict prevention in policy documents as well as in the Lisbon Treaty itself, making it a hallmark of its approach to international security and conflict in contrast to conventional foreign policy. Yet, it has fallen significantly short in translating these aspirations into institutional practice and success on the ground. It suffers from the 'missing middle' syndrome between long-term structural prevention through instruments such as conditionality for EU accession and development policy, and short-term responses to erupting crisis through military and civilian missions.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Peace Studies, War, Armed Struggle, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Europe and United Nations

10. Cooperating to Build Peace: The UN-EU Inter-Institutional Complex

Author:
Thierry Tardy
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) are both key institutions in the peacebuilding realm. The UN has, since the end of the Cold War, embraced post-conflict peacebuilding as one of its core activities, and most of its sixteen current peacekeeping operations include a peacebuilding component. Likewise, the EU has become an increasingly important institution of peace consolidation in all its aspects, both through the role of the European Commission and more recently that of the intergovernmental Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Post-conflict peacebuilding is an all-encompassing activity, which takes place at the nexus of security and development and that requires a wide range of policy responses. This theoretically places the UN and the EU in favourable positions, as institutions that aspire to develop a holistic approach, and to cover the entire continuum of conflict management. The simultaneous involvement of these two institutions in post-conflict peacebuilding poses the question of their respective policies in different terms. From Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or Chad, through military cooperation or UN-led but European Commission-financed civilian programmes, questions arise as to the interaction between two different types of actors, the nature and depth of inter-institutional relations, the division of tasks and the level of mutual reinforcement or redundancy.
Topic:
Security, Peace Studies, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Europe