Suchergebnisse

In the post-Cold war era, international relations seem to be experiencing two contradicting trends: international law as the solution to conflict on the one hand, as is the case in US-European & inter-European relations; & intensification of the military response to conflict on the other, as is the case in Middle East countries & between these countries & the West. Taking the Gulf war as a case study, it is argued that the world community must embrace the former trend & quell the latter. To demonstrate the implications for peace-building, the root causes of the problems in the Middle East that resulted in the most recent crisis are identified, the likely international & regional consequences & repercussions assessed, & the kind of short- & long-term measures that could be adopted to bring peace & stability to the region in the future.

Recent attention has focused on the difficulties of establishing 'coherence' between humanitarian relief aid in complex emergencies and the objective of ending violent conflict. This paper introduces a parallel problem: absence of total synergy between making peace and building democracy. A widely held assumption in the international community is that in post-conflict situations peace-building and democratization are virtually synonymous; creating the conditions for the one does so for both, the two processes will be reciprocal and mutually supportive. This suggests the policy issues will be simple. But the reality could be very different. Choices have to be addressed between requisites for peace and conditions for democracy; over the different implications for peace of competing designs for democracy; and over the kind of 'democracy' and its relation to other essential developments like state-building Institutional crafting is important; but matters concerning civil society and political culture must be addressed too. Governance and welfare considerations will bear on both peace and democracy but not necessarily in identical ways. There are temporal choices to address as well; the order of passage from peace to stable democracy may be as significant as the rites of passage. The belief that the well-known theory of a democratic peace in international relations has its complement in a democratic domestic peace looks plausible, but 'getting there' after conflict will be challenging. Issues of strategy and policy are most problematic where peace, prosperity and democracy have all been deficient—a situation common to many societies. – democratization ; conflict ; democratic domestic peace

Intrastate war is now the predominant form of armed conflict. The civil wars of the last decade have scarred the world's poorest countries, leaving a legacy of more than five million dead, many more driven from their homes, billions of dollars in resources destroyed, and wasted economic opportunity. Meeting the challenge of curbing such civil wars—and preventing their re-ignition—requires a radical readjustment. Restructuring must reach beyond traditional institutional mandates and methodologies. New players—particularly the private sector, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—must be enlisted in a new approach to economic peace building.

Terminology, if not precisely defined, can lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. This has been the case in the way in which the United Nations has been using peacemaking, peacekeeping and, more recently, peacebuilding. Agenda for Peace, produced by the UN Secretary General in 1992 suffers from some ambiguity in this respect. For example, it refers to the military performing a peacemaking role. The military cannot make peace, that is the role of the diplomat or politician. All that the military can do is to allay, defuse and help to end the manifest violence so that the peacemaking process can better proceed in a stable and calm atmosphere.

Fast 80 Prozent der Bevölkerung Afrikas leben in Staaten, die von Gewaltkonflikten betroffen waren oder noch sind, oft begleitet von illegitimer Regierungsführung. Demokratieförderung und politische Konditionalitäten in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit sind daher zentraler Bestandteil der internationalen Unterstützung von Friedensprozessen.
Internationale Maßnahmen zur Friedenskonsolidierung nach Bürgerkriegen konzentrieren sich oft auf die Unterstützung freier Wahlen. Wahlen sind allerdings nicht immer im Interesse von Nachkriegseliten, da eine potenzielle Wahlniederlage den Zugang zu politischer Macht und zu privaten Einnahmen aus dem Staatshaushalt gefährdet.
Dies gilt insbesondere für Rebellen, die durch Power-Sharing-Regierungen kurzfristig aus einem Konflikt "herausgekauft" wurden. Konzentriert sich die Demokratieförderung in solchen Fällen vor allem auf Wahlen, schränken Eliten die Unabhängigkeit der Justiz ein oder bedienen sich korrupter und klientelistischer Praktiken, um an der Macht zu bleiben.
In der Demokratischen Republik Kongo konnten im Jahr 2006 unter einer Power-Sharing-Regierung und mit internationaler Unterstützung relativ freie und faire Nachkriegswahlen durchgeführt werden. Gleichzeitig schränkte die Regierung unter Joseph Kabila aber die Unabhängigkeit der Gerichte ein und baute ihre Machtbasis durch Korruption aus.
Eine Analyse aller Postkonfliktepisoden zwischen 1990 und 2010 zeigt, dass dieses Muster von relativ freien und fairen Wahlen bei gleichzeitiger Verschlechterung anderer Governancebereiche auch über Subsahara-Afrika hinaus international verbreitet ist.
Der Fokus internationaler Geber auf Wahlen kann autokratische Elemente in Nachkriegsstaaten stärken. Langfristig werden so Stabilität und Legitimität einer Friedensordnung untergraben. Bemühungen um den Aufbau von Rechtsstaatlichkeit, um Korruptionsbekämpfung und die Beteiligung der Zivilgesellschaft müssen gleichberechtigt neben der Förderung von Wahlen stehen. Die neuen Leitlinien der Bundesregierung zur Konfliktbearbeitung sind ein erster Schritt in die richtige Richtung.