Since relationships are so critical to peacebuilding processes and outcomes, peacebuilding practitioners should focus on building strong relationships with local partners and stakeholders informed by genuine dialogue, cultural sensitivity, and self-reflection.
Reflecting on our role as peace scholars and practitioners, we realize that our work has focused too narrowly on conflict dynamics and violence prevention abroad and has failed to adequately address those same dynamics in our communities at home.
Two prominent non-police anti-violence models—the public health and community empowerment models—“hold promise… as community-centered replacements for, or alternatives to, the use or threat of police violence and incarceration as the primary means to control and reduce criminal violence.”
An average of one Iraqi civilian was killed at a coalition checkpoint each day between 2006 and 2007.
When governments are less corrupt and have high levels of women’s participation, they are better able to promote and support peacebuilding.
Planning staff in EU peacekeeping and crisis management missions maintain traditional understandings of security as a gender-neutral domain in relation to which “gender issues” are seen as an afterthought—not as essential to security work itself
Militarism, militarized security, warfare, and the military itself all depend on gender hierarchies—the privileging of masculinity and its associated traits over femininity and its associated traits—and “gendered myths and images” to function.
A critical feminist perspective is necessary to a more accurate understanding of problems around gender and militarism, security, warfare, and militaries themselves. All of these depend on gender hierarchies—the privileging of masculinity and its associated traits over femininity and its associated traits—and “gendered myths and images” to function.
Questioning assumptions about violence, security, and development shows how violence manifests in different contexts, in relation to power and inequality.