Abstract
E-Communications and Websites
Beyond Intractability
https://www.beyondintractability.org/
Founded in 1988 at the University of Colorado by Guy and Heidi Burgess, the Conflict Information Consortium (CIC) is a multidisciplinary center for research and teaching about conflict and its transformation. CIC's Mission is to raise the profile of the intractable conflict problem and to greatly increase the number of people worldwide who have the motivation, knowledge, and resources needed to address it effectively.
During the late 1990s, the project expanded and Beyond Intractability (BI) was created and now has over 1000 articles written by over 500 authors along with over 100 interviews of scholars and practitioners who are leaders in the field. Today, several project works toward addressing intractable conflicts under BI as CIC continues to add new projects and ventures, such as Moving Beyond Intractability and the Constructive Conflict Initiative.
This resource targets five key audiences:
Citizens wanting information about conflict problems and more constructive ways of handling them. Advocates and Activists wanting to pursue their causes more effectively, avoiding, whenever possible, destructive conflict dynamics that prevent progress. Students and Educators at the undergraduate and graduate level looking for a structured exploration of the intractable conflict problem and how these conflicts can best be approached. Practitioners in formal and informal conflict roles looking for ways to improve their practice or looking for resources for their clients. Expert scholars and practitioners with substantial background in intractable conflict-related fields interested in helping to advance the frontier of the field.
International Development Law Organization
The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) is the only global intergovernmental organization exclusively devoted to promoting the rule of law to advance peace and sustainable development. We have experience working in more than 90 countries around the world with various legal systems. Our network includes thousands of trusted experts, alumni, and partners. Established as an intergovernmental organization in 1988, IDLO has had United Nations Observer Status since 2001.
IDLO envisions a world in which every person lives with dignity and equality under the rule of law. IDLO champions people-centered justice and promotes the rule of law to advance sustainable development and help build more peaceful, inclusive, and resilient societies.
IDLO provides information and engagement across several sectors: Rule of Law, Access to Justice, Peace and Democracy, Women and Girls, Public Health, Sustainability, and Economic Opportunity.
Mediators Beyond Borders International
https://mediatorsbeyondborders.org/
“We build local capacities for peace, advocate for mediation, and facilitate the transformation of conflict globally.”
MBBI recognized a critical need for conflict resolution skills at all levels of community and continues to work to enhance mediation and peacebuilding skills to communities around the world. MBBI organizes initiatives through three essential mechanisms—capacity building, advocacy for mediation, and consultancy services.
Mediators Beyond Borders International has five collaborating regions: Los Angeles, New York, Oceania, Canada, and Europe. Interested individuals can engage in working groups, various initiatives, and literacy frameworks, as a few examples. MBBI produces useful reports and brochures for peacebuilders which can be found on the website.
Book Notices
Listening, Community Engagement, and Peacebuilding: International Perspectives
By Graham D. Bodie (Editor), Debra L. Worthington (Editor), Zenebe Beyene (Editor)
Routledge
2023
ISBN: 978-1032102610
This book explores the role of listening in community engagement and peacebuilding efforts, bridging academic research in communication and practical applications for individual and social change.
For all their differences, community engagement, and peacebuilding efforts share much in common: the need to establish and agree on achievable and measurable goals, the importance of trust, and the need for conflict management, to name but a few. This book presents listening—considered as a multidisciplinary concept related to but distinct from civility, civic participation, and other social processes—as a primary mechanism for accomplishing these tasks. Individual chapters explore these themes in an array of international contexts, examining topics such as conflict resolution, restorative justice, environmental justice, migrants and refugees, and trauma-informed peacebuilding. The book includes contemporary literature reviews and theoretical insights covering the role of listening as related to individual, social, and governmental efforts to better engage communities and build, maintain, or establish peace in an increasingly divided world.
This collection provides invaluable insight to researchers, students, educators, and practitioners in intercultural and international communication, conflict management, peacebuilding, community engagement, and international studies.
Adaptive Peacebuilding: A New Approach to Sustaining Peace in the 21st Century
By Rui Saraiva, Ako Muto, Cedric de Coning (Editors)
Springer International Publishing
2023
ISBN: 9783031182181, 3031182189
This open access book responds to the urgent need to improve how we prevent and resolve conflict. It introduces Adaptive Peacebuilding through evidence-based research from eight case studies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It also considers how China and Japan view and practice peacebuilding. The book focuses on how peacebuilders design, implement and evaluate programs to sustain peace, how interactions between external and local actors have facilitated or hindered peacemaking, and how adaptation to complexity and uncertainty occurred in each case study.
Routledge Handbook of Peace, Security and Development
By Alpaslan Özerdem, Fen Osler Hampson, Jonathan Kent (Editors)
Routledge
August 2022
ISBN: 9781032400006, 1032400005
This Handbook offers a comprehensive examination of the peace, security, and development nexus from a global perspective, and investigates the interfaces of these issues in a context characterized by many new challenges.
By bringing together more than 40 leading experts and commentators from across the world, the Handbook maps the various research agendas related to these three themes, taking stock of existing work and debates, while outlining areas for further engagement. In doing so, the chapters may serve as a primer for new researchers while also informing the wider scholarly community about the latest research trends and innovations.
The volume is split into three thematic parts:
Concepts and approaches New drivers of conflict, insecurity, and developmental challenges Actors, institutions, and processes.
For ease of use and organizational consistency, each chapter provides readers with an overview of each research area, a review of the state of the literature, a summary of the major debates, and promising directions for future research.
This Handbook will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, development studies, security studies, and International Relations.
Reports
A Rule of Law Approach to Inclusive Economic Development: Supporting Fair and Equitable International Investment Agreements in Least Developed Countries
International Development Law Organization
28 February 2023
As a driver of inclusive economic development, the rule of law enables the design and implementation of legal and policy frameworks that are fair, transparent, coherent, and supported by predictable enforcement mechanisms.
International Investment Agreements (IIAs) are a key policy tool to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a source of financing for development. However, they entail significant risks for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) due to their traditionally unbalanced and sometimes unpredictable nature, which can prevent FDI from contributing to LDCs’ development objectives.
Adopting a rule of law approach to IIAs negotiation and management can help LDCs minimize the risks associated with these agreements. Such an approach is geared towards increasing the coherence, predictability, and transparency of negotiation and application of these agreements, as well as achieving a fair and equitable balance of rights and obligations for the parties.
As the only global intergovernmental organization exclusively devoted to promoting the rule of law to advance peace and sustainable development, the IDLO supports LDCs in implementing a rule of law approach to IIA negotiation and management.
Through the Investment Support Programme for LDCs (ISP/LDCs), IDLO provides technical assistance and complementary capacity building to governments and private sector entities on investment-related matters, including IIA negotiation. The programme has provided technical assistance to institutions in The Gambia and Uganda.
Documents
Corruption in Urban Planning: A Guide for Professional and Trainee Planners
Transparency International
April 06, 2023
“Urban planners are entrusted with the power to make critically important, long-term decisions that determine the future development of cities and towns around the world. The decisions they take shape the urban environment and directly affect the lives and livelihoods of entire communities.
Unfortunately, planning systems are particularly prone to corruption. With a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, this guide has been created to equip prospective and established urban planning professionals—from the public, private, and civic sectors—with the necessary knowledge, tools, and tactics to recognize and push back against corrupt practices in their day-to-day work, and within the planning and urban development sector more generally.”
Excerpt:
Corruption within the planning system has many negative consequences for people, communities, and entire countries, including:
damage to the legitimacy and credibility of political and bureaucratic institutions; unjust spatial, social, and economic outcomes, especially for disadvantaged and marginalized people, most notably women, children, people with disabilities and ethnic minorities; increased environmental degradation and hazardous land use; diminished efficiency of urban administrations.
2023 Country Scorebook
Millennium Challenge Corporation
2023
https://assets.mcc.gov/content/uploads/reference-2022001273101-fy23-scorebook.pdf
“The 2023 Country Performance Scorebook is the twentieth publication of country performance data since the establishment of MCC. The Scorebook presents information on country performance on independent and transparent indicators developed by third-parties that measure countries’ demonstrated commitment to just and democratic governance, investments in the people of a country, and economic freedom. These indicators inform the Board of Directors, MCC staff, Congress, and the Administration of candidate countries’ broad policy framework for encouraging poverty reduction through economic growth. We hope this can also be a tool for citizens, civil society organizations, journalists, the private sector, and governments around the world to monitor performance and advocate for continued policy reform.
This year's Scorebook includes data on 81 countries (66 candidates and 15 countries that meet the income parameters for candidacy but are statutorily prohibited from receiving assistance), including countries that were selected as eligible in previous years for compact or threshold assistance. A country is determined to be a candidate for MCA funding if its per capita income falls within predetermined parameters set by Congress and if it is not subject to certain restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance…
In selecting compact and threshold eligible countries, MCC's Board evaluates: (1) candidate countries’ performance on the policy indicators, (2) the opportunity for economic growth and poverty reduction, and (3) the availability of funds. If MCC has worked with a country on a previous threshold program or compact, MCC's Board also takes into consideration performance on the initial program.”
Peacebuilding Commission Advice to the Security Council “Futureproofing Trust for Sustaining Peace”
The Peacebuilding Commission
3 May 2023
In selecting compact and threshold eligible countries, MCC's Board evaluates: (1) candidate countries’ performance on the policy indicators, (2) the opportunity for economic growth and poverty reduction, and (3) the availability of funds. If MCC has worked with a country on a previous threshold program or compact, MCC's Board also takes into consideration performance on the initial program.
Continuing to underscore the imperative of addressing the root causes of conflicts with a view to achieving lasting peace, security, and stability as well as development based on national ownership. Emphasizing inclusivity as key to advancing national peacebuilding priorities to ensure that the needs of all segments of society are taken into account and, in this regard, ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of women in all aspects of peacebuilding and sustaining peace and inclusion of youth in peacebuilding efforts at the local, national, regional, and global levels. Underscoring the contributions of all relevant stakeholders, including regional and subregional organizations, IFIs, private sector and civil society organizations, to engage in peacebuilding activities of the countries on the Security Council's agenda, upon their request, with a view to fostering transparent and trustworthy processes which can lead to sustainable outcomes. Placing a greater emphasis on actions that can have an impact on the ground, complementing the efforts of member states to ensure lasting peace and attainment of sustainable development goals, on the basis of national ownership and existing UN mandates, while ensuring efficiency, coherence, and leveraging our comparative advantages. Emphasizing the importance of a comprehensive approach to sustaining peace, particularly through the prevention of conflict and addressing its root causes, strengthening the rule of law at the international and national levels, and promoting sustained and sustainable economic growth, poverty eradication, social development, sustainable development, national reconciliation, and unity including through inclusive dialogue and mediation, access to justice and transitional justice, accountability, good governance, democracy, accountable institutions, gender equality and respect for, and protection of, human rights, and fundamental freedoms. Expressing its support for adequate, predictable and sustainable funding for peacebuilding activities in support of nationally identified priorities, and encourage the mobilization of financial resources for the implementation of peacebuilding activities. Encouraging the effective monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of peacebuilding activities to assess progress, impact, and determine lessons learned. The Commission stands ready to continue supporting the Council on peacebuilding and sustaining peace initiatives by continuing to provide strategic, targeted, and timely advice to the Council based on good practices in fostering greater trust in peacebuilding processes that have emerged from the Commission's activities.