DP1 Students: IA Engagements!
Ceasefire, Truce:
Peace Treaty:
UN Peacekeepers:
Other Peacekeeping operations
Soldiers in Azerbaijan meeting with Russian Peacekeeping forces
This is different from Galtung's Conflict Triangle, but could be helpful in understanding the path that a peacemaking process needs to take.
It's a tool that can try to analyze what groups are saying vs what they really need. The closer an agreement can get to that inner triangle, the better off it will be.
We've got stuff on ManageBac for this!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54882564 (on the peace agreement)
This is a bit outdated now, thanks to Russia's late-February invasion, but there had been a peace process and ceasefire in the separatist region of Donbas.
Read the "background" section here: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-crossroads-europe-and-russia
Peace agreement details: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31436513
Vladmir Putin represented Russia and its interests (the separatist groups in Donbas) while former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko represented Ukraine. Former French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel helped to mediate and negotiate the agreement.
How can post-conflict societies reach a state of positive peace?
That is fundamentally the question of peacebuilding. Peacebuilding should be the final step in the process of transforming a conflict. Peacemaking ends the violence, but peacebuilding hopefully creates something that lasts (#sustainablepeace.)
"Moving on" in this case does not mean simply forgetting a conflict, or just putting it in the past. Moving on means dealing with the leftovers. Think about Galtung's conflict triangle. If a conflict has concluded, then maybe the manifest stuff, like conflict behaviors, are gone. But there are still attitudes that need to be addressed, and the root contradictions of a conflict may not have been settled yet.
"Forgive and forget" is a recipe for disaster. In some cases, forgiveness may be helpful. Forgetting almost never is.
The reason why forgetting isn't helpful is because a peacebuilding process requires a certain amount of accountability. Dealing with a conflict and moving forward requires being clear about what happened and why, and who was involved (and to what extent.)
There are two types of justice that could be involved in a peacebuilding process.
Restorative justice: This form of justice looks to find opportunities to repair harm that was done and restore positive relationships. It requires communication between victims and perpetrators, and taking responsibility. The best restorative justice practices seek opportunities to combine accountability with re-integration (so those who have been wronger are able to live alongside those who did the wronging.) One key benefit of restorative justice, when done well, is how it strengthens communities: the negativity of the conflict, and the trauma of the past, is healed by working together and by being open, honest, and vulnerable. Restorative justice could be as simple as a face to face meeting between two kids who fought in school, and go all the way up to something like a truth and reconciliation commission. The name of these commissions tells you what you need to know: they seek to uncover and explain what happened, but the ultimate goal is to reconcile and move forward together.
The opposite of restorative justice is retributive justice. This should not be done by vigilantes or mobs (that would be the start of a new conflict, or the renewal of an old conflict) but rather by institutions (like courts.) Retributive justice is about finding appropriate punishment or penalties, or "retribution," but not going over the top. If neighbors get caught up in a civil conflict, there's a chance that restorative justice can help them live alongside one another again. But the leaders of the country who sparked that civil conflict should not be in charge anymore, and there's a good chance they have more than a little blood on their hands. They should be punished, but in a fair, impartial way that is still helpful to the healing process. If needed, the institutions that carry out retributive justice might be above the state level: this is the whole purpose for why the International Criminal Court exists. A country emerging from bloody civil conflict may not be in the position to use their own institutions, so the ICC is in a position to serve justice.
Keep in mind that peacebuilding goes back to the idea of positive peace, and justice is a critical piece of that puzzle.
The Rwandan genocide only lasted for a short time in 1994, but its effects can still be felt today. It was one of the most horrific representations of ethnic conflict in the 20th century. In the decades since, the government and other actors have tried a number of strategies to heal the wounds of the past and create a lasting peace.
For one thing, there has been a renewed emphasis on national identity, rather than identification with a specific tribe or ethnic group. The Hutu / Tutsi divide still exists today, but young people are more likely to describe themselves as Rwandan.
Rwanda has encouraged victims to share their stories, so the memory of the conflict does not fade; they are open about the harm and hurt that happened. Similarly, perpetrators of violence talk plainly and openly about what they did and why, so that people can understand how regular people can be led into committing such horrific acts.
A lot of Rwanda's process happens at a local level, rather than being carried out through a centralized effort. Part of the peacebuilding process has seen citizens talk about and plan local events and policies together, emphasizing the shared stake that everyone has in the community (victim and perpetrator alike.)
There is some controversy around Rwanda's peacebuilding efforts; former president Paul Kagane, who was the leader of a rebel group at the time of the genocide, had a heavy hand in shaping the reconciliation efforts. He has been criticized as something of an authoritarian at times, so it's sometimes debated whether the emphasis on a Rwandan national identity was more for peacebuilding purposes or his own political goals. Further, the process in Rwanda hasn't always been peaceful. Kagane's rebel group won a military victory in the country, and they killed a lot of the folks who perpetrated the genocide, including in the years after 1994. The real peacebuilding process that we talk about today didn't start until the 1998/1999 and the 2000s, when Kagane's control was undisputed.
Restorative justice is getting some attention in Taiwan, alongside questions of how to deal with problems of the past, like the White Terror and the treatment of indigenous groups.
The Tsai administration's apology to indigenous groups represents one step forward, by acknowledging the harm that was done and some acknowledgement of where the fault lies (with the government and its priorities.) It's unclear how more might be done, or if that will happen.
The White Terror is a bit more tricky; a lot of folks were imprisoned, and we can still see the relics of this period in some aspects of our daily lives. Whether Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei should keep its current purpose, what to do with all the other Chiang statues, the public recognition for Chiang Ching-Kuo (who did set Taiwan on the path towards democratization, but who was also the ruthless head of the secret police in the White Terror) are all issues that haven't been resolved. Resolution will be hard due to domestic political differences -- the KMT just tried to sell an NFT of Chiang's sword, so what on earth would need to happen to get them on board with re-purposing his memorial! ?
Well, this has a lot to do with the complexities of positive peace.
It also has a lot to do with the level of commitment that a peacebuilding process requires. Also, not all conflicts necessarily need a high-level peacebuilding effort; civil conflicts in many countries, particularly where there was a lot of civil violence, often end up in some form of peacebuilding process. Interstate conflicts don't necessarily have a route to use peacebuilding, since they tend to be between state actors rather than regular citizens.
There's also the temptation to just move on and get back to "normal," putting the conflict and its related trauma into your back pocket and just try to pretend that everything is fine.