Organizations that bring together people from multiple sides of a conflict can play an important role in motivating participants to become activists for social change.
When military spending increases by 1%, spending on health decreases by 0.62%.
In the context of civil war in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, the line between “armed actors” and “communities” was porous, creating a situation where peacebuilders spanning these categories in some cases had special access to armed actors for the purposes of negotiation.
The exclusion of some rebel groups from peace negotiations can perpetuate civil war, rather than hastening a resolution.
In this issue, some of the articles focus on intractable conflicts, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or civil wars of the recent past, like Sierra Leone or Côte d’Ivoire. While conflict is persistent in these settings, there are examples of peacebuilding at the interpersonal and local levels. The choice between violence and nonviolence is highlighted in two other articles, though in quite different contexts. Research conducted in Iran finds that nonviolent resistance garners more support than violent resistance does even after the previous failure of a nonviolent movement. Other research reveals that the inclusion of armed groups in negotiations can move them away from the use of violence, while their exclusion makes a return to violence more likely. Additionally, national governments continue to play a powerful role in shaping outcomes for peace and security, from decisions about whether to participate in negotiations with armed groups to decisions about how much to allocate towards defense spending.
The focus of civil resistance movements on ousting rightwing populist leaders is counterproductive because it plays into narratives of “us vs. them” and hampers efforts to gain broad-based support by polarizing supporters and detractors of rightwing populism.
When governments are less corrupt and have high levels of women’s participation, they are better able to promote and support peacebuilding.
Women play a crucial role in building peace at the grassroots level in Myanmar, even if they are not represented adequately in the formal peace talks.
More militarized UN peacekeeping mandates do not address the root causes of conflict and can contribute to cycles of violence and terrorist recruitment.
People care about deaths in war, whether the killing of their own soldiers or the killing of foreign civilians, which affects their support for military action.