Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of contributors -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Introducing challenges to youth civic engagement and local peacebuilding -- Chapter 2 Youth engagement in local peacebuilding in the Gaza Strip -- Chapter 3 COVID-19, youth, and the engineered social movements in Iran -- Chapter 4 Youth virtual activism in Morocco: The case fact-checkers -- Chapter 5 Challenges to youth civic engagement and community development in Syria -- Chapter 6 Young people, "child soldiers," in the post-conflict phase: Peacebuilding challenges -- Chapter 7 Young women's involvement in the Yemeni conflict: New roles in a changing environment -- Chapter 8 Youth engagement: From uprising to fragile political transition in Yemen -- Chapter 9 Youth in post-conflict reconstruction: The case of the Gaza Strip -- Conclusion: Young people's future direction and engagement -- Index.

The study investigates initiatives for reconciliation and "dealing with the past" which were undertaken by international organisations, legal institutions and local civil society actors in response to the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The coherence of objectives and strategies and their implications for peacebuilding, forms of cooperation and learning experiences, and the political resonance of the various approaches were a particular focus of interest. The research concentrated on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, which are linked by their history of ethnopolitical conflict and are signatory states to the Dayton Peace Agreement (1995), under which they committed to cooperate in order to overcome the effects of war. The inter-country case study was carried out with input from local partners from civil society organisations and academic institutions. In all, 150 interviews were conducted in 28 municipalities.

"While there is an increasing number of articles and studies identifying lessons from the record of UN peacebuilding operations, it is striking how little we know about the UN's very capacity for organizational learning on peacebuilding, and about learning in international organizations in general. This pilot study seeks to lay the foundations for an in-depth investigation of the UN's record on organizational learning. Our study is motivated by both, a research and a policy imperative. On the research front, studying organizational learning within the UN peacebuilding bureaucracy contributes to opening up the 'black box' of international organizations. So far, mainstream work in the discipline of International Relations (IR) has produced surprisingly few studies on the everyday workings of international organizations, let alone their ability to learn. Studying organizational learning calls for an interdisciplinary approach bringing together IR (including peace and conflict studies), public management and the sociology of organizations. This has the potential of advancing conceptual debates within the discipline of IR. The study proceeds in three steps. The first step surveys the relevant literature from different disciplines and concludes that peace research, IR and organization theory do not offer ready-made frameworks for the analysis of organizational learning in international organizations. Building on existing research, we identify key elements of a new framework starting with a definition of the key term, organizational learning: We define organizational learning "as a process of cognitive change through the questioning of the means and/or ends of addressing problems. The process manifests itself in the development and implementation of new rules and routines guiding the organization's actions." In a second step, we survey the evolution of the "infrastructure of learning" in the UN peacebuilding bureaucracy over the past 15 years. We hold that a number of factors (lack of will both within member states and the UN Secretariat as well as the lack of resources and appropriate incentive structures) contributed to the very slow recognition of the UN's learning needs. Major crises (such as the soul-searching after Rwanda and Srebrenica) plus the Brahimi Report in 2000 provided a certain momentum that brought the need to build up the UN's learning capacity higher on the agenda. Still, a lot of work remains to be done. In a third step, we present a list of variables that influence learning that need to be considered in a future in-depth study. This list of factors includes power, organizational culture, leadership, human capital, staff mobility, knowledge management systems, as well as access to external knowledge. Outlining an agenda for future research, we present a draft model of the learning process that includes 1) knowledge acquisition, 2) advocacy/ decision- making, and 3) institutionalization." (excerpt)

J. C. Lopez and B. Fisher-Yoshida, Peacebuilding in Colombia: From the Lens of Community and Policy. Routledge, 2023, 184 pp., GBP 27.99 (Paperback). ISBN: 9781032313078.

Abstract
This introduction provides a backdrop to the contributions to the special issue of this journal. Specifically, it summarises the main arguments of authors as they addressed the main challenges and prospects for peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and atrocities prevention in Southeast Asia based on select case studies. Among the key themes that this special issue examines are: 1) asean/Southeast Asia's norms and practices and the stickiness of the 'asean Way' against pressures to effectively respond to transborder security threats; 2) the transfer and localisation of global norms like the Responsibility to Protect (r2p); 3) protection of civilians, human rights, and women, peace and security (wps) and 4) regional architecture including the asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, asean Commission on Women and Children, asean Institute of Peace and Reconciliation, and the asean parliamentarians.

This article explores the origins of the European Union (EU) peacebuilding approach in Northern Ireland through the role of the long-serving MEP and Nobel Laureate, John Hume. It gives particular emphasis to the part played by the European Parliament (EP) in this endeavour, which has been neglected in existing studies of the EU influence on Northern Ireland. The article shows how Hume helped to create better understanding, interest and ultimately engagement by the EU to support peacebuilding efforts in Northern Ireland. Local political shifts would prove decisive in creating the peace process that emerged in the region in the 1990s, but the article argues that Hume's efforts, stretching as far back as the 1970s, both encouraged these shifts and then provided the basis for much greater EU engagement in support of the peace process. This deepens our understanding of the EU role in aiding political change in Northern Ireland.