From the Human Security Report Project. International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect. Coalition bringing together NGOs from all regions of the world to strengthen normative consensus for RtoP. International Crisis Group.
Independent, non-profit organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. See especially their Crisis Watch Database. International Peace Institute. Independent, international not-for-profit think tank dedicated to promoting the prevention and settlement of conflicts between and within states by strengthening institutions.
Unofficial status of NGOs provides more access to conflicting parties, which helps in the process of negotiation. The long-term commitment of NGOs is a crucial factor in establishing trust among the people and to attend to the goal of lasting peace. Pamela Aall prescribes four conditions for NGOs more directly engaging in conflict resolution activities: 1 the NGO must be very familiar with the country, issues and participants in the conflict 2 the NGO should have indigenous partners 3 NGO staff must be well grounded in conflict resolution skills and knowledge and 4 NGO workers must understand and accept the personal risk they run in attempting to intervene directly in the conflict.
State is often seen as one of the parties in a large number of conflicts. Therefore, it is important for NGOs to maintain their independence without loosing trust of the conflicting parties including the State.
NGOs should work in co-operation and co-ordination with each other to reduce duplication in their activities. In this process NGOs should not loose their individual identities. Coordination and networking of NGOs is a key factor in lobbying and advocacy at a higher level. NGOs should not limit their scope of work to mere conflict resolution, but expand it to address the root causes of conflict and enhance the process of peace building.
Hence, the role of the NGOs in conflict resolution is based on their presence at the ground level as actors with a reservoir of good will generated through years of development and rehabilitation work.
Apart from creating a congenial atmosphere for negotiations, where the prospects for such negotiations are not visible at the level of the conflicting actors, NGOs can play a key role in many intractable conflicts. Peace building is now seen as a part of sustaining agreements reached. No organization is perhaps more equipped than NGOs in undertaking this task.
However, in order to play a more effective role in conflict management, NGOs may have to reorient themselves with the requisite attitude and skills, which of course should be seen as an additional element of their development work. Joseph Introduction With the multiplication and escalation of conflicts at various levels, the need for conflict resolution has become more urgent than ever before.
Towards Multi-Track Approach The movement from 'track-one diplomacy' to 'track-two diplomacy' resulted in the emergence of a large number of actors in conflict resolution and peace building processes.
NGOs and International Agencies Over the years there have been a tremendous increase in the number of NGOs, so also the variety of their activities and their geographical spread. The Role of NGOs NGOs constitute an essential part of civil society and they have the potential to play key roles in resolving conflicts and restoring civil society. International Studies Association 41st Annual Convention Los Angeles, CA March , Abstract The following article outlines the increasing focus of peacemaking activities on issues pertaining to human security and rights, and the emerging role of nongovernmental organisations NGOs in a third generation of multidimensional peacemaking activity.
It is in this context that the role of NGOs in complex emergencies, and in peacemaking operations may be usefully located and assessed as part of a socio-political fabric engaged in stabilisation and resolution activities. This may enhance the legitimacy of NGOs and their regulation and will increase the effectiveness of the practice of peacemaking.
NGOs of a humanitarian, developmental, human rights, educational, and conflict resolution orientation are forming a vital role in the development of new approaches to peacemaking in intractable, low and high-level conflicts, particularly in the context of their growing links with transnational organisations and their professed interests in human security issues, which are derived from normative macro-frameworks of political community.
The same tension exists between the goals of IOs and ROs in particular pertaining to human security, and the rule of law in national and international political systems particularly with respect to the elevation of group rights and justice at the local level. At the national level, the rule of law often reinforces majority rule and assimilation and becomes a by-word for minority oppression, while at the international level it endorses problematic Westphalian versions of sovereignty.
Consequently, there has been an increasingly normative reaction to both local and international politics, relating to the wider existence of political communities, an 'international society' and a 'global civil society'. In the emerging post-Westphalian system in which identity, representation, and human security issues are becoming priorities, space is emerging for far more dynamic approaches to peacemaking than ever before.
This paper argues that it is in this post-Westphalian context that NGOs derive their legitimacy, at both the local and global level, and hence their access. As the UN Secretary General has pointed out, NGOs provide access to a global civil society which they themselves have been instrumental in highlighting and promoting. Understanding in particular the role of NGOs in constituting global civil society may enable peacemaking approaches to tap into the relative success that NGOs have had in micro-political environments, and the macro-political changes which are also occurring.
Hence, it is important to understand the linkages between their local legitimacy and their role in global civil society. Two clearly defined generations of mono-dimensional peacemaking activities have emerged so far in an attempt to settle or resolve conflict. International mediation and classic forms of peacekeeping, derived from traditional diplomacy is described in the typology put forward here as 'first generation' and operates at the level of the state in a Westphalian international system characterised by state-centric notions of sovereignty and self-interest via a communitarian world view.
They were derived from a grass-roots movement that decried the state-centric and power-political leanings of high politics as described by dominant theories of the international system. Space has been provided for their activities by second generation, multidimensional peacekeeping activities which have emerged since the end of the Cold War. In order to illustrate these points, this paper provides looks at the inadequacies of first generation traditional diplomacy, followed by a brief examination of the contribution made by second generation approaches to peacemaking.
It then looks at the role of NGOs before investigating the normative implications of global civil society and the potential of NGOs to contribute to broader forms of peacemaking practice based on more comprehensive definitions of security. This is leading to a new generation of multi-dimensional peacemaking, which promotes cultures of pluralism, negotiation, and interdependence in civil society rather than acute and often violent competition.
This new generation operates at all levels local, state, regional and global , including IOs, ROs, states, and NGOs in the context of the post- Westphalian international system, which is characterised by a more cosmopolitan view of world society and global civil society. First generation approaches are based upon the tradition, norms, and culture of western diplomacy and operate at the level of the state in the context of an assumed Westphalian international system.
As such, first generation peacekeeping operations like UNFICYP, for example are based on state interests; international mediation and negotiation represent stylised and formal communication between official and sovereign representatives, based upon zero-sum interests.
Such interests can be manipulated and co-ordinated, but only through the use of coercion, in the presence of ripe moments, mainly engendered by hurting stalemates of the external provision of large incentives, of which the settlement of the Egypt Israel conflict at Camp David, or the more recent settlement at Dayton, are good examples.
In this high level process there is little room for unofficial actors, whose separate legitimacy tends to be unrecognised and subsumed by officialdom. Thus, it is an inflexible process best suited to state-centric types of conflicts that seem to have declined.
The very obvious weakness of first generation approaches have been highlighted by the emergence of ethnic actors, identity claims, humanitarian and development issues, all of which are now often components of conflict and complex emergencies. First generation traditional peacemaking activities therefore attempt to operate in the realms of traditional diplomacy in which the state holds [a somewhat contested] thrall. Mandell has argued that mediation could influence the creation and internalisation of new norms for conflict management, 7 but this is unlikely if such norms are limited to the local and are not derived from a global or regional dialogue.
Power-based mediation, because of its mono-dimensional nature, can do little more that manage short-term strategic interactions, particularly given the fact that under the auspices of a state sponsor, or of the UN, it must observe the norms of international law and international society.
Thus, it often falls victim to the tensions between the two. Because mediation is constructed as a mono-dimensional activity it lacks co-ordination with other peacemaking activities at other levels, and falls victim to the ethical void that traditional diplomacy depicts the international system as being indicative of. It is merely assumed that citizen interests will trickle up to form the national interest, which will influence the formation of foreign policy.
Clearly, such assumptions do not accurately mirror the issues and actors engaged in intractable conflict or complex emergencies, and therefore the whole process of diplomacy tends to become ensnared upon the need for official legitimacy, recognition, and the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention.
In general therefore, first generation approaches peacemaking approaches depend upon the application of substantial external coercion and rewards. The fact that mediation is subject to a failing credibility has significant ramifications for regions where the international community does not have sufficient interests at stake to intervene decisively as it did, eventually, in Bosnia, Kosovo, orin the Middle East.
There may well be emerging regions and conflicts which, returning to a Cold War philosophy, the international community are willing to isolate and stabilise, but have abandoned attempts to bring a greater harmony to- zones of intractable conflict. Intractable conflict tends to be defined as such because disputants have located their argumentation and bottom-line negotiating positions on what they consider to be legitimate aspects of the international system: often the role of the third party becomes one of mediating between two [partly ambiguously] legitimate sets of principles inherent in a flawed international system- for example, self-determination and sovereignty and the continuing controversies over the issue of legitimate intervention, which draw on different approaches to international law and ethics.
In response to the inadequacies of first generation approaches, it has been argued that settlements need to be based upon just political orders which promotes democracy and human rights, new norms, participatory governance structures, civil society, international tribunals, and truth commissions. Disarming, repatriating refugees, building a consensus for peace under the auspices of the UN, and moderate local political leadership play a role in this method.
State centric approaches cannot operate at this level. What this means is that first generation approaches fail in many conflicts because of the structural asymmetry between state and non-state actors make compromise unlikely. INGOs have been a high profile response to the inadequacies of the international system, while NGOs have often been a low profile response to the exploitation of power by political entrepreneurs in domestic environments, and to intractable conflicts, economic inequality, and humanitarian abuses.
Their emergence is indicative of the need for a basis from which all actors can approach a range of security issues in the post Westphalian context, as the logic of state-centricism in the Westphalian context provides a serious impediment to compromise and concessions in anything other than a zero-sum manner- which has often been transposed from inter-state to communal relations.
The search for new approaches implicit in Agenda for Peace including preventive diplomacy, and the UN's wide utilisation broader forms of peacekeeping and peacebuilding to stabilise conflicts, or peace-enforcement, saw the realisation that the NGO community can play a relatively greater, if not vital, role.
This is part of a framework in which traditional concepts of security are being significantly redefined. The concept of preventative diplomacy and post-conflict peacebuilding has moved some way in recognising that the international community could do more to prevent conflict and that ' Ghali's ideas represented an important change of emphasis and provide opportunities for the reconfiguring of peacemaking activities through the contribution of activities that also focus on the citizen or individual.
Ghali also pointed out that the local conflict arena can be addressed with the help of NGOs: "If UN efforts are to succeed, the roles of the various players need to be carefully coordinated in an integrated approach to human security.
First generation peacemaking tends to be overpowered by the tension between the relative interests and leverage of sponsor-states, third party states and actors and the disputants themselves, situating the practice firmly in the realm of traditional diplomacy and power politics.
It is this stumbling block that the international community has attempted to address since the end of the Cold War, and in doing so it has turned to ROs and NGOs.
It is to this that this paper now turns. Initially it was drawn from several strands, including Mitrany's ideas on functional integration among countries to create a common interest in peace, and Haas' empirical analysis of how this had occurred in the case of the European Coal and Steel Community, established in Conflict resolution approaches, which emerged in the late s, developed in reaction to the 'balance of power' conflict management techniques associated with positivist Realpolitik approaches.
This approach sees conflict outcomes as not determined by power in the long run, as power is difficult to define and conflict viewed as subjective, but attempts to understand conflict in terms of human needs, which are inexhaustible, but often are not allocated correctly. As these needs are not negotiable and are distinct from interests, their suppression can lead to conflict because their pursuit is said to be ontological drive common to all.
While they may be suppressed, they will always reappear. The suppression of these needs tends to lead to protracted conflicts, and the coercive mediation derived from traditional diplomacy and first generation peacemaking of the sort which state-backed mediators or the even UN engages in is said to 'promote protracted conflict, even after a settlement Initially, conflict resolution was developed through an analysis of the process of mediation, in which the process was 'to explain conflict, its origins, and its escalation sometimes by reference to other conflicts, sometimes by analytical means, but within the context of a continuing discussion between the parties.
A de-escalatory mechanism is therefore introduced by focusing on a super-ordinate goal, 23 encouraging the two sides to look at each others' needs in an objective fashion. They can therefore explore each other's fears and hence acknowledge their legitimacy, leading to the possibility of a win-win situation.
Enemy images are deconstructed in the context of a global set of common needs or norms, the suppression of which provides a significant imperative for conflict and which are therefore a serious obstacle to conflict management and a reduction of tensions.
This perspective on conflict, and the methodology which is derived from it for solving conflict, is thought to remove the critical difficulties inherent in first generation peacemaking where the common argument is made that mediation is crippled by the intensity of the dispute, the resources or lack of that the mediator has access to, and the type of issues at stake for the disputants.
As the logic of the Westphalian international system is believed at this level to be zero sum, the relationships between disputants and mediator are similarly based and as Mitchell has pointed out, mediation is crippled by its own logic.
This brief analysis of the basis of the conflict resolution debate illustrates an important critique of first generation approaches to peacemaking which may replicate conflict, rather than manage it; the shift into a post Westphalian world seems to be partly derived from this understanding.
Problem-solving workshops aimed at protracted internal and international conflicts, such as in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Moldova, and the Middle East, have increasingly come into use. It is important to note, that Track Two is actually multi-track in which citizen and unofficial diplomacy incorporates many aspects of civil society, 27 and the development of a contingency approach to conflict resolution strategies indicates that there are short and long term strategies which can be applied at various stages in a conflict.
However, there is a difference in the emphasis placed on the various approaches which can be applied and when the various methods of conflict escalation and resolution may be appropriate.
The relationship between traditional mediation and negotiation at the official level and conflict resolution approaches is the subject of much analysis. For some, nonofficial or Track Two methods that precede the more traditional diplomatic approaches may prepare the ground for official negotiations.
Negotiations initiated at the Track Two level or channel may then be passed to an official negotiating forum.
Sometimes, the two work side by side in a related or a non-related manner. Perhaps the traditional diplomatic channel reaches an impasse which conflict resolution can help overcome; often there has, however, been no clear relationship between the two processes- raising the possibility that there may be no basis for a connection, as has occurred in the case of Cyprus where conflict resolution and official processes have been disconnected and have had relatively little impact upon each other.
In the case of the negotiations between the Israelis and the PLO representatives conducted in Oslo, conflict resolution approaches and traditional forms of negotiation where interchanged successfully at different stages of the negotiations.
The Tajikistan Dialogue provides another example in which a wide range of Tajiks where brought together in , after a vicious civil war had erupted after the Soviet Tajikistan had become independent. A series of meetings resulted which entailed five separate stages,. As with the Oslo Accords, some of the Tajiks from different factions also participated in the official negotiations. In Moldova, conflict resolution workshops have blurred the distinction between unofficial and official diplomacy.
These examples also illustrate the fact that problem-solving workshops tend to extend themselves into a series of meetings involving similar participants over a several months or years. This has occurred with the emergence of conflict resolution groups in Cyprus and the Middle East as well; sometimes the groups are organised by the same convenors involving the same participants while it is also common for participants to go on to join other workshops and groups.
This kind of institutionalisation of conflict resolution practice is extremely important in developing awareness at the civil and semi-official level, and does contribute in a variety of ways to the unofficial level. As Kriesburg has argued, ' If they are well co-ordinated, their effectiveness enhances the efforts of any one approach. This applies to intractable forms of conflict which might not qualify to be 'large-scale' in the sense in which Kreisburg implies, though my argument indicates that intractable forms of conflict do raise regional and global issues.
Consequently, conflict resolution activities need to be reframed as including all those activities of NGOs relating to local stabilisation. What conflict resolution offers is a plethora of theoretical and practical approaches to developing peace in conflict environments, and which can be exploited at several levels in order to channel global and regional norms of interdependence, human security and democratisation into unstable local environments.
It is here that the contribution of NGOs to the process of conflict resolution in civil society may be critical. NGOs can play an important role in facilitating a tunnel between global and civil society and thus resolving one of the most serious problems of the conflict resolution genre related to the trickle-up and down effect; this can also contribute to the diplomatic process of peacemaking in the realms of official diplomacy.
NGOs that conduct humanitarian, developmental, human rights, and conflict resolution activites contribute to the objectives that second generation approaches have delineated.
Conflict resolution theory provides a framework for understanding and responding to conflict.. Indeed, conflict resolution has always been undertaken by NGO-type, independent, actors. Conflict resolution approaches also provides a methodology for NGO activity; it identifies the post Westphalian space they fill and in which they operate.
It is no surprise that NGOs have become a vital part of the emerging multi-level and multi-dimensional approaches to peacemaking.
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