Theory of Institutional Peace and Peacebuilding in Transboundary River Basins

ABSTRACT Social developments have led to prompt the significance of concentrating on peace and the factors influencing it throughout history. In order to analyze this concept, various theories have been proposed in the field of international relations and peace and conflict studies. Institutional peace theory is one of the prominent theories that emphasizes the role of international institutions to achieve meaningful change and cooperation among governments at the international level. Most researchers in the field of environmental challenges in general and water challenges in particular have also based liberal institutionalism in their research at the international level. Attention to the role of institutions in dealing with water conflicts and peacebuilding in transboundary river basins has led to the need to analyze the theory of institutional peace in the management of water conflicts. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study is to analyze the capacity of institutional peace theory in dealing with water conflicts in transboundary river basins. With this goal in view, while using library resources, the effectiveness of institutional peace theory in the management of water conflicts is analyzed. Based on the analyses, it can be acknowledged that despite the positive effect of water institutions in relieving water conflicts in some river basins, there are significant criticisms of this theory. KEYWORDS: Water Conflicts, Institutional Peace, Transboundary river basins, Institutionalism

Complexities and Context: Women's Peace-Building in Conflict and Post-Conflict Bougainville

<p>The potential role of women in conflict and post-conflict environments has been the subject of much debate in the field of peace and conflict studies. In 2000 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325, which called for a greater involvement of women and acknowledgement of gender issues in conflict and post-conflict environments, and this has led to further discussion about what this might mean and how it might be implemented. Despite this women are continually under-represented in nearly all peace processes and there is no universally agreed upon way to ensure this situation does not come about. The barriers women face range from cultural to logistical and economic, and surmounting them can be hard to achieve. One case where women have been involved at all levels in the peace process with substantial success is the Pacific island of Bougainville, where a conflict over mining issues and secession from Papua New Guinea was waged from 1988-1997. Women were active in attempts to bring all parties to negotiations during the conflict and have also been heavily involved in the continuing reconciliation and healing processes. For cultural reasons Bougainvillean women were well placed to perform the role of peace-builders but that is not to say that they did not face challenges and barriers to their involvement. This thesis examines the involvement of women in both the immediate peace negotiations and the longer-term aspects of the peace process in Bougainville in order explain how and why they enjoyed these successes and what lessons can be learnt from this case in regards to the potential roles of women in other post-conflict environments. Four factors will be identified as key to women's involvement in the peace process: the history of Bougainville up to and including the conflict; the grassroots mobilisation and organisation of women; the traditional cultural roles of women in Bougainville; and the identification of women with motherhood and its associated traits. These factors indicate that the involvement of women in peace processes is highly context-specific and although there are policies which can be pursued to encourage their participation the potential barriers to this are imposing.</p>

Complexities and Context: Women's Peace-Building in Conflict and Post-Conflict Bougainville

<p>The potential role of women in conflict and post-conflict environments has been the subject of much debate in the field of peace and conflict studies. In 2000 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325, which called for a greater involvement of women and acknowledgement of gender issues in conflict and post-conflict environments, and this has led to further discussion about what this might mean and how it might be implemented. Despite this women are continually under-represented in nearly all peace processes and there is no universally agreed upon way to ensure this situation does not come about. The barriers women face range from cultural to logistical and economic, and surmounting them can be hard to achieve. One case where women have been involved at all levels in the peace process with substantial success is the Pacific island of Bougainville, where a conflict over mining issues and secession from Papua New Guinea was waged from 1988-1997. Women were active in attempts to bring all parties to negotiations during the conflict and have also been heavily involved in the continuing reconciliation and healing processes. For cultural reasons Bougainvillean women were well placed to perform the role of peace-builders but that is not to say that they did not face challenges and barriers to their involvement. This thesis examines the involvement of women in both the immediate peace negotiations and the longer-term aspects of the peace process in Bougainville in order explain how and why they enjoyed these successes and what lessons can be learnt from this case in regards to the potential roles of women in other post-conflict environments. Four factors will be identified as key to women's involvement in the peace process: the history of Bougainville up to and including the conflict; the grassroots mobilisation and organisation of women; the traditional cultural roles of women in Bougainville; and the identification of women with motherhood and its associated traits. These factors indicate that the involvement of women in peace processes is highly context-specific and although there are policies which can be pursued to encourage their participation the potential barriers to this are imposing.</p>

'Youth': Victim, Troublemaker or Peacebuilder? Constructions of Youth-in-Conflict in United Nations and World Bank Youth Policies

<p>Examination of how the United Nations ('UN') and World Bank construct youth affected by armed conflict and political instability (referred to as 'youth-in-conflict') in their respective youth policies reveals that the UN constructs youth-in-conflict as 'victims' requiring protection. This results in humanitarian/rights-based approaches to youth development. In contrast, the World Bank constructs youth-in-conflict as 'capital' that has potential to bring about economic growth, resulting in economics-driven policies. Such divergent identity constructions are because 'youth' and 'youth identity' are fluid concepts used in various ways by different people in different contexts. In peace and conflict studies, the dominant discourses in relation to youth-in-conflict are that youth are either 'victims' of war or 'troublemakers'. Both discourses are contested by an emerging third discourse of youth as peacebuilders, which challenges the representation of youth-in-conflict as passive victims or as negative threats. While the UN and World Bank’s respective humanitarian/development and neo-liberal economic approaches shape these divergent youth-in-conflict constructions, both institutions are also influenced by the global trends in youth-in-conflict discourses. This 'discursive' relationship means that as the UN and World Bank engage in the global youth debate and are shaped by more complete understandings of youth-in-conflict, they will also have an influential role in perpetuating or challenging dominant discourses.</p>

'Youth': Victim, Troublemaker or Peacebuilder? Constructions of Youth-in-Conflict in United Nations and World Bank Youth Policies

<p>Examination of how the United Nations ('UN') and World Bank construct youth affected by armed conflict and political instability (referred to as 'youth-in-conflict') in their respective youth policies reveals that the UN constructs youth-in-conflict as 'victims' requiring protection. This results in humanitarian/rights-based approaches to youth development. In contrast, the World Bank constructs youth-in-conflict as 'capital' that has potential to bring about economic growth, resulting in economics-driven policies. Such divergent identity constructions are because 'youth' and 'youth identity' are fluid concepts used in various ways by different people in different contexts. In peace and conflict studies, the dominant discourses in relation to youth-in-conflict are that youth are either 'victims' of war or 'troublemakers'. Both discourses are contested by an emerging third discourse of youth as peacebuilders, which challenges the representation of youth-in-conflict as passive victims or as negative threats. While the UN and World Bank’s respective humanitarian/development and neo-liberal economic approaches shape these divergent youth-in-conflict constructions, both institutions are also influenced by the global trends in youth-in-conflict discourses. This 'discursive' relationship means that as the UN and World Bank engage in the global youth debate and are shaped by more complete understandings of youth-in-conflict, they will also have an influential role in perpetuating or challenging dominant discourses.</p>

Bridging the gap between cyberwar and cyberpeace

The conceptual debate around the term cyber warfare has dominated the cybersecurity discipline over the last two decades. Much less attention has been given during this period to an equally important question: what constitutes cyber peace? This article draws on the literatures in peace and conflict studies and on desecuritization in critical security studies, to suggest how we might begin to rearticulate the cybersecurity narrative and shift the debate away from securitization and cyberwar to a more academically grounded focus on desecuritization and cyber peace. It is argued that such a move away from a vicious circle where states frame cybersecurity predominantly within a national security narrative and where they seek to perpetually prepare for cyberwar, to a virtual cycle of positive cyber peace, is not only a desirable, but a necessary outcome going forward. We assert that this is particularly important if we are to avoid (continuing) to construct the very vulnerabilities and insecurities that lead to the prioritization of offence and destruction in cyberspace, rather than transformative, human-centred development in information and communications technology innovation.

Temporality and contextualisation in Peace and Conflict Studies: The forgotten value of war memoirs and personal diaries

This article contributes to debates on appropriate levels of analysis, temporality, and the utility of fieldwork in relation to Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS), and International Relations more generally. It observes a recentism or privileging of the recent past in our studies and a consequent overlooking of the longer term. As a corrective, the article investigates the extent to which wartime memoirs and personal diaries (specifically from World War I and World War II) can help inform the study of contemporary peace and conflict. In essence, the article is a reflection on the epistemologies and methodologies employed by PCS and an investigation of the need for greater contextualisation.

What is an emancipatory peace?

There has been frequent reference to the concept of an emancipatory peace in the critical academic literature on peace and conflict studies in IR, much of it rather naive. It has developed an ecosystem of its own within debates on peace without drawing on wider disciplinary debates. Terms such as ‘emancipation’ and its relative, ‘social justice’ are widely used in critical theoretical literature and were common parlance in previous ideological eras. It was clear what such terms meant in the context of feudalism, slavery, imperialism, discrimination, a class system, nuclear weapons and racism over the previous two centuries. Now it is less clear in the context of changing peace praxis.

The Everyday, Circuitry, and Scalability

This chapter unpacks two concepts that lie at the heart of the book: the everyday and circuitry. In order to understand everyday peace, it seems sensible to unpack the notion of the everyday and illustrate why the hyperlocal level is relevant to how peace is embodied and enacted. The chapter defines ‘everyday peace’ and discusses the ‘local turn’ in peace and conflict studies before going on to discuss how we might see the local level in comparison with other scales such as the national, the international, the transnational, and all levels in between. It is here that the chapter uses the notion of biological and electronic circuits as a way of explaining the multi-scalar nature of peace and conflict and the messy connectivity between them. In its final substantive part, the chapter considers how everyday peace might be scaled up and thus become more significant than local-level actions and stances. Important here is the notion of scaling out, or the horizontal spread of civility. This leads us to think about how there can be multi-speed and multilevel peace.