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42. Rule of Law Programs in Peace Operations
- Author:
- Agnes Hurwitz and Kaysie Studdard
- Publication Date:
- 08-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- Over the last fifteen years, the international community has supported the implementation of programs designed to strengthen the rule of law in countries susceptible to or recovering from violent conflict. Yet the question of how best to restore and/or implement rule of law programs in fundamentally insecure environments and to what degree the rule of law can prevent or mitigate conflict is not yet fully known.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Government, Peace Studies, and United Nations
43. Making States Work: From State Failure to State-Building
- Author:
- Michael Ignatieff, Ramesh Thakur, and Simon Chesterman
- Publication Date:
- 07-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- It is frequently assumed that the collapse of state structures, whether through defeat by an external power or as a result of internal chaos, leads to a vacuum of political power. This is rarely the case. The mechanisms through which political power are exercised may be less formalized or consistent, but basic questions of how best to ensure the physical and economic security of oneself and one's dependants do not simply disappear when the institutions of the state break down. Non-state actors in such situations may exercise varying degrees of political power over local populations, at times providing basic social services from education to medical care. Even where non-state actors exist as parasites on local populations, political life goes on.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, Economics, and Peace Studies
44. EU-UN Partnership in Crisis Management: Developments and Prospects
- Author:
- Alexandra Novosseloff
- Publication Date:
- 06-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- The EU and the UN have taken many practical steps recent years to formalize their relationship. As part this process, the EU has also achieved increasing political influence within the UN, although progress on this front has been limited in the Security Council.
- Topic:
- Development, Peace Studies, and United Nations
45. War Economies in a Regional Context: Overcoming the Challenges of Transformation
- Author:
- Kaysie Studdard
- Publication Date:
- 03-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- This policy report distills key findings from research commissioned by the International Peace Academy's program on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (EACW) on the regional dimensions of war economies and the challenges they pose for peacemaking and peacebuilding. Drawing from analytical research as well as case studies of Afghanistan in Central Asia, Sierra Leone in West Africa, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in Southeast Europe, a number of key issues concerning the political economy of regional war economies and lessons for more effective peacebuilding were identified: The notion that internal conflicts have economic "spill over" or "spill into" effects on neighboring states needs to be extended and deepened. Policymakers should work to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the interstate impacts of civil conflict that gives greater weight to systemic cross-border networks and less to potentially 'one-off' transborder phenomena.
- Topic:
- Economics, Peace Studies, Regional Cooperation, and War
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Europe, Central Asia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and West Africa
46. Program on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars: Principal Research Findings and Policy Recommendations
- Author:
- Karen Ballentine
- Publication Date:
- 05-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- The Program on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (EACW) was launched in 2000 in response to a convergence of political factors, academic interests, and policy concerns that pointed to the need for conflict prevention and resolution policies to be informed by a systematic understanding of the economic dimensions of contemporary civil wars. Preliminary studies undertaken by the International Peace Academy, the World Bank, and university researchers generated many of the broad propositions that guided the program's research and policy development design. These included assumptions that: Economic factors are consequential to warring elites' decisions to pursue war and peace; Economic greed and not socio-economic or political grievance is the chief driver of armed conflict; Countries with a relatively high dependence on natural resources are at higher risk of conflict; and Global economic flows (trade, aid, and investment) affect the incidence, duration, intensity, and character of armed conflict.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Organization, and Peace Studies
47. Peacebuilding as the Link between Security and Development: Is the Window of Opportunity Closing?
- Author:
- Necla Tschirgi
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- Since the end of the Cold War, it has become commonplace to assert that peace and development are intimately linked and that the United Nations (UN) and other international actors need to address the twin imperatives for security and development through integrated policies and programs. Shedding its early definition as “post-conflict reconstruction,” the term “peacebuilding” has broadened its scope in the 1990s to encompass the overlapping agendas for peace and development in support of conflict prevention, conflict management and post-conflict reconstruction.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, Peace Studies, and United Nations
48. From Promise to Practice: Revitalizing the General Assembly for the New Millennium
- Publication Date:
- 05-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- The International Peace Academy (IPA), in collaboration with and thanks to generous support from the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, convened a high-level retreat on May 16-17 entitled From Promise to Practice: Revitalizing the General Assembly for the New Millennium. The retreat brought together, in an informal setting, approximately twenty-five permanent representatives and a very few deputy permanent representatives in addition to a member of the Secretariat and a key outside expert respectively over dinner and one full day of deliberations at the Greentree Estate in Manhasset, New York.
- Topic:
- International Organization, Peace Studies, and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- New York
49. From Promise to Practice: Strengthening UN Capacities for the Prevention of Violent Conflict
- Author:
- Karin Wermester and Chandra Lekha Sriram
- Publication Date:
- 05-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- While the promise of conflict prevention has risen to the fore of international policy agenda since the end of the 1990s, its practice and effectivenes remain elusive. Following in the footsteps of peacebuilding, conflict prevention is a loose conceptual framework for the increasingly broad range of actors engaged in conflict-affected zones. The concept of conflict prevention expands the scope of peacebuilding temporally and spatially, calling for the early prevention of violent conflict and the prevention of further outbreaks through "structural" as well as "operational" initiatives. It promises cross-cutting approaches to mitigate the sources of potential conflict rather than merely the symptoms at arguably a lesser cost and with great potential for lasting peace than other forms of intervention. The challenge, of course, is that violent conflict can be hard to predict, especially in the early phases when efforts to prevent its escalation might be most valuable. More, it is harder to prevent effectively, and further to demonstrate that preventive initiatives have been successful.
- Topic:
- International Organization, Peace Studies, and United Nations
50. The Infrastructure of Peace in Africa: Assessing the Peacebuilding Capacity of African Institutions
- Author:
- Monica Juma and Aida Mengistu
- Publication Date:
- 09-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- In October 2000, the Ford Foundation requested the International Peace Academy's (IPA) Africa Program to generate a database of institutions managing conflicts and crises in Africa. After consultations, the scope of this project was expanded to comprise an assessment of capacity, and determination of the potential of institutions to respond to crises and conflicts in Africa. This report is the outcome of that exercise and hopes to guide and facilitate the design of the Ford Foundation's funding strategy for peacebuilding in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it is hoped that this report will also serve to stimulate further discussion by the Ford Foundation and IPA staff, with the involvement of other relevant donors, about the challenges and opportunities for supporting peace and development in Africa. To that end, this report landscapes the condition of capacity in Africa, provides a diagnostic overview of institutional layout at the regional, national and local levels and proposes areas of intervention that can bolster and improve performance. It must be noted from the start that this report claims to be neither exhaustive nor comprehensive. Many important organizations engaged in useful peacebuilding work in Africa have not been included in this report due to logistical and time constraints. The organizations included in the report are merely illustrative of some of the peacebuilding work being conducted in Africa, and are mainly concentrated in conflict areas.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Peace Studies
- Political Geography:
- Africa