Suchergebnisse

A number of consociational power-sharing initiatives are compared to explore some of the reasons why the elite conflict regulation model has not settled the Northern Ireland conflict. In the period 1972-85, four attempts by the British government to formulate and implement a power-sharing government within Northern Ireland failed as a result of the recalcitrance of one or other of the mainstream political parties. The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) ended the Unionist veto and included the Irish government in the political process to find a solution. Since 1985, four efforts by both governments to establish a devolved power-sharing government have included previously marginalized political groups in the political process. In this article, I argue that since the 1985 AIA the bilateral external ethnoguarantors - the British and Irish governments - have contained the conflict by using a coercive consociational approach to elite conflict management. Since 1985, four efforts to promote contact between Unionists and Nationalists at all levels and all points show promise in reframing the conflict from resources and interests to identity needs. Such a transformational approach is necessary to open up thinking about conflict and in constructing a multimodal, multilevel contingency approach to peace-building and conflict settlement in Northern Ireland.

RUF commanders have fought the government with guns bought with diamonds, brought from Liberia, or captured from their enemies. They do not have to rely on the goodwill of local inhabitants. … The RUF bases its political power on control over diamonds.

Although retribution for past human rights violations has its place in post-conflict processes of transition and reconciliation, there are many present and foreseeable circumstances in which the case for immunity, amnesty, or sheer forbearance is significantly stronger than Juan E. Méndez' approach to this question can admit.Disagreement about justice is an ineradicable part of political life and a leading cause of violent conflict. Reconciliation cannot always presuppose or await a shared moral understanding; frequently enough, it requires an agreement to disagree, even about fundamental principles – at least with respect to their retrospective application. Where the parties to violent conflict have seen fit to set aside issues of retrospective justice in the service of peace and reconciliation, outsiders, who do not bear the costs of conflict and instability, should second-guess that decision only with the greatest reluctance. They should not look to international human rights standards and mechanisms for a universal solution.