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Little evidence exists on the design and implementation of anticipatory action (AA) in complex crises. This article examines a 2022 United Nations ‘early action’ pilot in South Sudan in advance of extreme flooding. As a case study of efforts to act in a complex crisis, it contributes to learning on assisting conflict‐affected and displaced populations in advance of extreme weather events. The research points towards the possibility and value of implementing forecast‐informed early action in complex contexts with limited forecast skills and multiple hazards when trigger‐based AA is not possible. It also argues for the need to link AA implemented in complex crises to development and peacebuilding actors and processes. More broadly, examining the perceptions and processes of AA in the form of early action, rather than a formal AA framework, is highly relevant for the AA community as attention is increasingly placed on providing AA in countries affected by fragility and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although United Nations peace missions have played an important conflict management role for decades, a backlash against the post-Cold War model of 'liberal peacebuilding' and other recent developments have called their future into doubt. Some observers contend that a 'pragmatic turn' is now underway—a shift away from ambitious plans to transform war-torn societies into liberal democracies and towards more modest and realistic goals. Whether 'pragmatism' offers a viable alternative framework for peacebuilding, however, is less clear. This article challenges key assumptions of the pragmatic approach to peacebuilding, including the notion that UN missions can be 'agnostic' about the governance arrangements of societies that host these operations, as some proponents of pragmatism recommend. Historical case-studies show that such assumptions are integral features of collective conflict management systems, including UN peace missions. Moreover, a close examination of the pragmatist approach reveals that it, too, is based on such assumptions—namely, that building peace requires the promotion of pluralist societies and states. Pluralist peacebuilding, the article concludes, could offer a compelling foundation for future UN missions in an era of rising statist–authoritarianism, but developing this approach will first require discarding pragmatism's pretence of ideological agnosticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This empirical study draws from the extensive academic literature on leadership as a phenomenon and a topic of study, the leadership and peace nexus, and business leadership theories such as resistance leadership, system leadership, and wise and ethical leadership. It examines actual leadership through in-depth interviews of three Japanese business leaders under three themes: how they understand the existing system, connect or envision connecting people, and care for human dignity. The study finds that the leaders appraise the existing system from a broad perspective, attempt to use business to change it, and connect people transnationally. In this process, they illustrate care for the dignity of the people involved. Their vision of transforming their businesses into transnational communities across stakeholders and to change the world for the better can be a model for peacebuilding through business. We also posit that the flexibility and speediness of business leaders' decision-making and actions are advantageous for peace leadership and that businesses have the potential to engage in peacebuilding sustainably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, the use of indicators to track implementation of international peacebuilding and peacekeeping programmes, policies and practices has proliferated. Indicators are criticised by many scholars for their technocratic, standardised and colonialising effects. This article follows a different line of inquiry. Can indicators be transformative? Contemporary critiques place indicators as bureaucratic artefacts in a vacuum, detached and decontextualised from the nuances of human agency developing, utilising and subverting them. I conceptualise indicators as powerful gendered technologies of knowledge creation developed, used and subverted by institutional actors. Using interviews with institutional actors and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Reports, I trace institutional stories of one indicator (out of 26) developed to capture implementation of the UN Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The indicator investigated tracks the number of senior gender experts employed within UN Peacekeeping and Special Political Missions. Stories of progress, skill, and location in the reporting of this indicator between 2010 and 2020 highlight strategies deployed and opportunities taken by feminist-change advocates within the UN to prompt a deeper implementation of the WPS agenda. While indicators hold the danger of reinforcing neoliberal norms, the failure to conceptualise the potential for developing, utilising and/or subverting the indicators smacks of hubris, limiting opportunities for meaningful transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the tension often experienced in "Arts for Peace" programmes between the desire meaningfully to evaluate a creative process and the need to account to funders for the delivery of pre-determined expected outcomes that makes no allowance for discoveries made as the project unfolds. Taking the EU-funded Theatre and Peace-building Academy programme (2018–2020) as its case-study, it reflects on the efficacy of the arts to engage with a wide range of people at a deep level, helping them to challenge their assumptions and presuppositions and to begin to see things in new ways and from opposing perspectives. In particular, it invites a re-examination of some of the assumptions that typically frame peacebuilding activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decades following the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement saw an expansion of support for cultural activities aimed at fostering reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Yet in spite of an increase in funder-led processes of audit and evaluation, there exists a significant absence of accessible data recording the development, production and experience of such cultural and artistic practices. Using the concept of the archive as a site of memory and forgetfulness, this article explores how funders of Art for Reconciliation (AfR), and the power implicit in their relationships with funded practitioners, influence what traces of this work are officially archived and in what form. The selectivity of this archive reflects a managerialism associated with the liberal peace ideology that decontextualises and depoliticises peacebuilding. In order to develop effective AfR practices, we explore ways to recollect and disseminate those aspects of AfR practice that existing methods of documentation have tended to forget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The undertaking of a long-term study of art for reconciliation (AfR) throws up problematics in terms of instrumentalist evaluation, short-term funding, a lack of archiving and insufficient long-term view/memory of the activity. In researching twenty years of funding and practice we argue that the concepts of reconciliation lack conceptual coherence in approach within an environment that resonates with tensions and conflict. One reason for these tensions is the under-appreciation of the role of the aesthetic given funders rarely develop a proper understanding of arts social peacebuilding roles. The article not only promotes the concepts of AfR and the multi-methodological approaches required to study long-term aspects and outcomes but also highlights the potential of research that brings funders, those funded, artists and participants together to map out more cohered AfR approaches. Reconciliation requires time to develop and embed and within that understanding, its potential to achieve will remain underdeveloped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of rising contestations to the Liberal International Order (LIO), it is crucial to highlight the contribution of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region to international institutions and global governance, particularly considering its peripheral position in the world order. The Triple Nexus Approach (TPA), adopted in 2016, promotes a coordinated effort in providing humanitarian assistance and aid for development by integrating them with peace endeavours. The LAC region has provided political and conceptual contributions to each TPA component, providing alternative perspectives on multilateral governance in humanitarian action, development and peacebuilding, emphasising the pursuit of collective and context-specific outcomes for crisis prevention. Focusing on the period from the early 21st century to 2019, a time when the Triple Nexus theoretical structuring publications emerged, it is highlighted how contestations to the LIO and the changing world order have impacted global governance norms, creating opportunities for emerging and peripheral countries to shape post-liberal rules. This allows Global South countries to set self-determined development objectives and make a meaningful contribution to global rule-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although new policy frameworks such as the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus are emerging to better respond to increasingly complex and protracted conflicts and humanitarian crises, analysis of their impact remains limited. We analyse the case of Iraq in the aftermath of the ISIL conflict with data that measures the impact of interventions from across the nexus domains. Results show that humanitarian and development outcomes improved steadily over time, while peace outcomes remained poor and relatively unchanged. Improvement in the 'soft' security elements of peace related to social cohesion and coexistence were superseded by a deterioration in 'hard' security elements linked to protection of civilians and security configurations over time. These findings are explained by the lack of integration of hard security elements into an otherwise comprehensive international response along HDP Triple Nexus components. Separate hard security interventions rather had a critically different scope focused primarily on counterterrorism without further encompassing the wider range of security issues facing conflict-affected populations, including those internally displaced seeking to return, nor did they consider the diffusion of local powers and actors in this regard. This has left particularly vulnerable displaced and conflict-affected communities without remedy as priorities in the country shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines narratives and practices of post-conflict recovery in Bougainville and Solomon Islands respectively, with particular emphasis on the governance of justice and security. The original visions and pathways to recovery differed markedly in each case. Drawing on local strengths, including traditional leadership and customary practices of reconciliation, was integral to Bougainville's aspirations for peacebuilding and the shaping of its post-conflict social and political order. Under the auspices of a major Australian-led regional intervention, Solomon Islands followed a more conventional state building approach that made few concessions to the significance of local non-state social institutions and actors in relation to justice and security. Despite these initial divergences, recent years have seen growing areas of convergence in both places, notably around acknowledging the importance of practical hybridity between state and non-state forms of justice and security governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) are understood to offer cheap justice, a justice not bound by the law. South African experience in the postapartheid era shows that they are significant tools for peacebuilding as well as statebuilding. The experience shows that the use of TRCs has created an authoritative record of what happened; enabled the victims to tell their stories without fear or embarrassment, and recommended legislative, structural and institutional reforms that avoided the repetition of past abuses. Successful peace and statebuilding are based on the above in order to achieve sustainable peace. TRCs promote rule of law, human rights protection, and ensure healing and freedom for all. However, the relapses of conflicts and political tensions, intercommunal hatred and divisions in African countries, create more questions than answers. These continuous issues show that TRCs have instead not resolved conflicts. The paper found that TRCs can only lead to successful peacebuilding and statebuilding if there is willingness on the side of the citizens as well as their political leaders. There is need to learn from the South African experience to ensure that TRCs lead to successful peacebuilding and statebuilding. The paper relied on historical research designed to study TRCs in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractHow do efforts to reduce ethnic inequality in schooling interact with narratives of inequality and past grievances in schools after ethnicity-based conflict? In this paper, I analyse interviews with 114 youth in Burundi to explore the intersection of these narratives given a power-sharing agreement and changes in group status in post-war Burundi. I show that despite government efforts, narratives of exclusion and inequality in the past persist, and have become more complex. This study has implications for our understanding of the role of redressing education inequalities in short- and long-term peacebuilding processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the role of anti-extractivism as environmental peacebuilding through a conflict transformation framework. Environmental peacebuilding aims to foster peace through addressing environmental issues to remedy root causes of conflict; such efforts must further account for and respond to the changing climate. To this end, we explored how community-level movements encounter structural constraints, oppressions, or opportunities. Rather than relying on existing structures as a means to resolve conflict, we suggest that environmental conflict transformation presents an opportunity to foster climate resilient peace responding to differing needs of various groups, extending beyond the absence of war, and responding to the realities of climate change. We conducted case studies with the organizations Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico and Movimento Bem Viver in Brazil to explore how conflict transformation helps shift environmental peacebuilding toward both being able to respond to destructive patterns and to achieve a more peaceful future through a process of change. We argue that the act of negating extractivism is a positive action toward transformation for peace. We thus contribute theoretical and empirical insight to the study of environmental peacebuilding, broadening ongoing discussions on building climate resilient peace that is beneficial to both humans and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The triple humanitarian, development, and peace nexus is rising in prominence to promote better coordination between actors and actions. In this article, we examine three key challenges regarding the addition of peace to the double humanitarian–development nexus: how (1) the peace component affects the humanitarian principles; (2) projects adapt to differing timescales of activities; and (3) donor financing strategies and funding modalities affect the nexus implementation. Methodologically, we analyse projects in Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, conduct a literature review and 55 interviews. Our findings show that incorporating peace into the humanitarian–development nexus requires systemic and cultural shifts in how international aid is delivered and accounted for, including, in some cases, a move away from project-based approaches. The main implications of this research are that adding peace to the nexus approach requires increased coordination and a critical rethink of humanitarian and development systems across political and operational actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the potential of empowering children as peace agents through education by using the case of the TEC4Schools program. The program is based on Allport's Contact Theory and promotes prolonged exposure to the 'other' culture among culturally diverse groups of students. It is based on the hypothesis that extended contact periods encourage more positive attitudes towards different cultures. The study involved three groups of mainly 5th and 6th grade students: The first group participated in the program for the first time, and we call them first-year participants and some of them participated in the program for second year and we call them second-year program participants, and the control group who never participated. Surveys were distributed at the beginning and end of the year, exploring attitudes, proximity, and friendships with peers from the other group. The results showed that second-year participants improved their attitudes towards and willingness to be close to children from other cultures. These findings suggest that the TEC4Schools project and the TEC Model effectively improve attitudes towards children from other cultures among second-year participants. Further research is needed to understand these differences and refine the project to be more effective for all participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pope Francis both grants the right to use armed force in self-defense and regards all war as 'a defeat for humanity'. This seeming paradox can be explained by the fact that what is a theoretically just use of force (according to the criteria of just war theory) inevitably results in unjust violence when carried out in practice. The undertaking, processes and practices of war are highly susceptible to what Augustine called the libido dominandi. The theory of just war is carried forward in institutions of actual war-making that foster escalation, discourage restraint, and adapt the theory itself to accommodate increasing violence. 'Just war' fails to embody the social and institutional virtue of justice. Thus, as Pope Francis exhorts, the Christian ethics of war and peace should prioritize the theory of just peace and the cultivation of peacebuilding dispositions, practices, and institutions. These strategies favor justice, but success is not guaranteed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the arc of Blanchot's life, in conversation with a recent critical biography, to suggest what the significance of his writing might be today. It first situates Blanchot in the 1930s through the lens of contemporary debates about the period. It then explores what his turn to literary criticism and narrative in the 1940s might have signified and allowed him to negotiate as a "counter‐law." Finally, it turns to his time as a dissident postwar thinker who sought to invent ways of thinking capable of forgoing power, often formulated as an inoperative "relation without relation." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of political violence are felt across generations; for example, extent of parental competitive victimhood (feeling that one's ingroup was relatively more victimised during the conflict) predicts adolescent's intergroup discrimination. We extend that research to children, born a generation after the height of violence. Participants were 223 family dyads with children aged 7–11 (M = 9.05, SD = 1.30; 52.4% female): Croatia (n = 82) and Republic of North Macedonia (RNM: n = 141), equally split by group status (i.e., Croatia: Croats/Serbs; RNM: Macedonian/Albanian). Parents reported on competitive victimhood while children reported on intergroup contact intentions (e.g., shared education initiatives). Moderation analysis across sites found a significant status by competitive victimhood interaction; increased parental competitive victimhood was associated with decreased contact intentions among minority, but not majority, children. We review site‐specific findings in relation to their historical context, concluding with the implications for shared education, reconciliation and peacebuilding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitional justice jurisdictions aim to promote reconciliation. Although previous research focuses on truth commissions, the reconciliatory role of redistributive justice is less clear. This article investigated the association of conditional cash transfers and victims' reparation with demand for redistribution, belief in forgiveness, support for the peace process and community participation in Colombia. We analysed three nationally representative samples of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) surveys in 2011 (Study 1; n = 1503), 2016 (Study 2; n = 1563) and 2018 (Study 3; n = 1663). Consistently across studies, conditional cash transfers (and not victim reparation programs) predicted higher community participation, with little effect on other reconciliation indicators. Further, redistribution is indirectly associated with other reconciliation indicators through community participation, supporting the observation that transitional justice relates to reconciliation when it satisfies a need for agency and empowerment. We discuss how the null effects of the victim reparation program suggesting context‐specific constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jewish Left in Palestine/Israel has its own legacies of Palestinian-Jewish activism. I will examine those legacies with a particular focus on the thirty years from 1993 to 2023, when the Jewish anti-occupation independent Left shifted from prioritizing Left anti-colonial secular internationalist ideologies as grounds for regional and international visions of equality from the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea into a hermeneutical introspection of what "Jewish" might mean in Palestine/Israel through intersectional and decolonial prisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of the production of the animated documentary series My Story. The Children Who Fought War in Colombia. The series was developed through a participatory creation process between young victims of the armed conflict and student animators from the Visual Arts programme at Universidad Javeriana, Colombia. The objective was to construct narratives that promote peace and generate new imaginaries. Interviews with the series director, Mathew Charles, and an animator, along with a review of the creative process, revealed the distinctive elements of this production. The study concentrated on the manner in which participatory animation encourages the formulation of innovative paradigms that challenge the conventional representations of the conflict. The objective was to cultivate empathy and mutual understanding among the participants. The findings emphasise the importance of participatory animation in the reconstruction of peace narratives, offering innovative perspectives in post-conflict contexts. This research demonstrates the significance of artistic intervention, particularly through participatory animation, as a valuable tool for constructing narratives that encourage critical reflection and promote a deeper, empathetic understanding of the experiences of those who have endured war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I develop the conceptualisation of affective recognition as a means of deepening understandings of education’s contribution to peacebuilding and social justice in conflict-affected contexts. Scholars have highlighted that one of the crises in peacebuilding education today is the failure to understand and harness the role of the transrational and the affective. I therefore bring together feminist theories of social justice and affective economies to analyse non-formal education programmes with young people in Cambodia and Kosovo and develop the concept of affective recognition. I contend that affective recognition demonstrates the central role of affect in enabling processes of peacebuilding and social justice through educational programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peacekeeping is helpful in resolving civil wars, but there is little chance of peacekeeping operations or other international peace-building interventions for many conflicts. How do internal wars stabilize in the absence of meaningful international involvement? Two key factors, the government's political space for bargaining and the relative power of armed groups, help to explain when it is possible to reach either stable cooperation between states and armed groups or negotiated settlements. We analyze three conflict trajectories—"long-term limited cooperation" arrangements, state incorporation or disarmament, and ongoing conflict—to show that the paths to stabilization are often ethically fraught and empirically complicated but exist even when international involvement is off the table. We use quantitative and qualitative data to study the relationships between armed groups and governments in much of post-colonial South Asia, including during periods of little or no violence. Understanding these trajectories provides policymakers, analysts, and scholars with useful tools for identifying policy options and political trade-offs as they seek to reduce the human costs of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Forgotten crises' constitute a permanent background to any present and future global humanitarian and development efforts. They represent a significant impediment to promoting lasting peace given concurrent catastrophes exacerbated by climate change. Yet, they are routinely neglected and remain unresolved. Building on critical and feminist approaches, this paper theorises them as forgotten sites of local knowledge production. It asks: what is local knowledge of and from forgotten crises? How can it be recovered and resignified, and what lessons can such knowledge provide at the global level? Drawing on examples from the intersections of conflict, disasters, and pandemics in the Philippines, the paper makes a case for valuing local knowledge arising from forgotten crises because of its potential contribution to adapting global humanitarian and development systems to address crises on multiple fronts. Such epistemic margins are generative of vantage points that can present a fuller account of how different crises interact and how best to respond to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing how transitional justice (TJ) mechanisms address the role of economic and political elites in contexts of widespread violence is crucial for understanding their possible transformative impact. The type of challenges faced by TJ instruments when trying to deal with economic elites involved in human rights violations also reflects the extent and degree of these groups' power in a specific transitional context. Looking at the two main transitional justice processes in Colombia, this paper argues that accountability for these privileged actors tends to materialize in cases in which the alliances between different kinds of elites are threatened, or even collapse. However, as this article will show, judicial TJ mechanisms on their own can only have a very limited transformative impact on the accountability of economic elites and their liability for human rights violations in the absence of strong support by state institutions. TJ instruments can provide an exceptional framework to trigger and motivate meaningful transformations. Nonetheless, the concrete realization of these changes far exceeds the possibilities, capacity, and resources of TJ, which in and of itself cannot replace state institutions, especially an ordinary justice system that should continue to make progress on these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses what the disavowal of abject forms of white supremacy reveals about the racial logic of the global preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) agenda. We argue that the global P/CVE agenda is built on racialised concepts such as prevention, radicalisation and community – concepts that render it incommensurate with the newly identified problem of white supremacist violent extremism or domestic terrorism. Through analysis of interviews with experts and practitioners working within the broad field of P/CVE, we discursively analyse how the enmeshment of the agenda within the development and peacebuilding space exposes the agenda's primary intent to manage presumably ungovernable populations in or from the so-called Global South. Taking the theoretical insights culled from textual analysis of practitioner interviews, we then consider the inclusion of right-wing extremism, and specifically white supremacy, within Western states' domestic P/CVE agendas, primarily in the US. Our argument – that the move to consider far-right extremism within domestic CVE policy reveals rather than disrupts the P/CVE agenda's racist foundations and intentions – contributes to a growing body of research that insists on attending to race, racialisation and racism within security studies and international relations, and which includes an emphasis on whiteness as an organising principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at appraising the nature of two major community relationships (I-Thou and I-It) in Ethiopia and analyse how these types of relationships play a corresponding role in resolving or exacerbating conflict and building/deteriorating peace. This study adopted an exploratory research design and primary data is collected from different social and mainstream media. The I-Thou relationship is a genuine societal relationship that led to a genuine dialogue between groups, which, in turn, creates mutual understanding, enrichment, reciprocity, and enlightenment. The I-It relationship, on the other hand, is characterised by mutual suspicion, prejudice, misunderstanding, wearing masks, and keeping secrets where there is no genuine dialogue. The study explores that the type of relationship that best characterise the Ethiopian society is mainly the I-It relationship. Since the society is polarised mainly based on ethnic and linguistic lines, the relationship has resulted in conflict, mass killing, displacement, and gross human right violations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of peacebuilding evaluation has evolved over time in response to the complex nature of peace efforts. However, it still predominantly relies on evaluation models that aim to measure discrete peace outcomes adhering to rigid notions of rigour. The inclusive rigour framework presented in this article responds to this challenge, adding to complexity-aware and epistemologically plural approaches to build credible causal explanations in conditions of uncertainty. It identifies three interconnected domains of evaluation design and practice: effective methodological bricolage, meaningful participation and inclusion, utilisation and impact. Rigour here is not defined by methodological choice alone, but rather, relies on an active view of evolving methodological choices throughout an iterative process as maximum use value and meaningful participation are sought. Using three cases, we highlight the critical role of partnership arrangements and associated evaluation cultures and mindsets underpinned by power dynamics that enable or hinder the practice of inclusive rigour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalation of ecclesial and religio-political conflicts since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has further complicated the convoluted ecclesial situation in Ukraine and has been addressed in a series of sermons, formal statements and documents issued by senior Russian and Ukrainian ecclesiastical figures. Their ideological and theological rhetoric demonstrates the active participation of senior Russian Orthodox clerics in the justification of the Russian military effort which represents some radical ruptures in Eastern Orthodox ecclesial involvement in war-making and mobilisation. The Moscow Patriarchate's war-legitimisation stances and policies have major repercussions for the current debates on and reconceptions of the Christian just-war tradition in the frameworks of just peace, peacebuilding and reconciliation, as well as the potential key role of Christian religious actors in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war in Ethiopia is ongoing, causing immense bloodshed, destruction of infrastructure and displacement of people. Communities involved in war that experience gross violations of human rights and excessive violence are likely to experience long-term trauma and deep psychological consequences. Religious leaders could support conflict-affected communities by facilitating peacebuilding activities and trauma-healing. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC), as a country-wide and prominent religious institution, would be in position to play such a role had it made efforts to promote dialogue and peace at the peak of the conflict and openly condemned the violence in Tigray. Instead, the inactivity of the Church leadership resulted in the Diocese in Tigray declaring its separation from the EOTC. The current paper seeks to examine the challenges that the Church leadership faces in encouraging dialogue and reconciliation in the country given the rifts it has experienced within. It also explores the ability of the Church leadership to influence state actors to make peace and to rehumanise those dehumanised by the politics of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite wide agreement among practitioners on the need for integration, mental health and peacebuilding practice remain siloed in conflict‐affected contexts. Yet before the integration of these two fields should occur, a revaluation of existing practice is needed. Within the field of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), critics have long questioned dominant assumptions and treatment models, raising concerns about top‐down implementation, Western‐centric approaches, and a lack of community leadership. These criticisms are largely echoed within peacebuilding literature. Furthermore, both fields underappreciate the overlap between their practices. For example, the relationship between the structural drivers of poor mental health or the social‐psychological drivers underpinning peacebuilding. Accordingly, this article seeks to contribute to the development of a novel, integrated approach to MHPSS and peacebuilding—or 'psychosocial peacebuilding'. In doing so, we address dominant critiques of both fields, before discussing the relevance of critical (community) psychology as an ideal means in which to bridge a theoretical and practical gap between fields. Using quality peace as a guiding normative theory, we will also reinforce the argument that working to address mental health concerns is essential to creating peace in post‐conflict contexts. It concludes by exploring potential avenues for further research. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To strengthen political capacities for transitions in territories, based on democratic mediations of social conflicts, oriented towards reconciliation and the construction of stable and lasting peace. Methodology: The research was framed within the framework of Research-Action-Participation (IAP), which involved the design, formulation, implementation, and evaluation of processes articulated between communities, public and private institutions, and social organizations, mainly using qualitative methods. Results: This article explores public policies as an ambiguous field of a transdisciplinary nature, and then reviews their connections with concepts such as 'participation,' 'deliberative capacity,' and 'mediation,' assumed as central axes in the formation of public policies. Likewise, it delves into different notions of peace (paces, in a broad sense), which allows us to highlight how different epistemological and methodological conceptions in pacifism determine approaches and devices in social construction. Finally, it examines the links between public policies as devices (strategies) for social mediation, and peacebuilding as a route for the agency of multiple social processes. Conclusions: The central conclusion revolves around the assertion that public policies acquire a peaceful nature insofar as they involve non-violent forms of social interaction. With them, those involved seek to achieve the highest possible level of well-being based on the resources and contexts in which they find themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Norwegian parliament has agreed to fund the Nansen Support Program for Ukraine, promising to deliver a total of NOK 75 billion (EUR 6.7 billion) in military and civilian aid to Ukraine over the period 2023–2027. In 2023, half of the aid was delivered in the form of military support, the other half constituted civilian support, including humanitarian relief and direct support to the Government of Ukraine. Over the next four years, the distribution between military and civilian aid through the Nansen Support Program will be decided on an annual basis. To achieve the long-term goal of making Ukraine ‘well-functioning, democratic and safe’, and supporting the country’s ambitions for European integration, the Norwegian aid is intended to strengthen democratic institutions, the rule of law and civil society in Ukraine. This paper examines the debate on Norway’s assistance to Ukraine and discusses the competing, or even conflicting, goals of helping Ukraine win the war and strengthening Ukrainian civil society, looking for answers to several difficult questions: How will the Norwegian government ensure that funding to Ukraine is in fact spent ‘in line with Ukraine’s needs’ and does not enrich criminals or facilitate unlawful activities? How will the funding help strengthen Ukraine’s democratic institutions and civil society? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most consistent findings on UN peace operations (UNPOs) is that they contribute to peace. Existing scholarship argues this is because UNPOs' peacekeeping troops solve the security dilemma that inhibits combatant disarmament and prevents their political leaders from sharing power. We argue that existing scholarship's focus on peacekeeping troops overlooks UNPOs' role in enabling governments to implement redistributive power‐sharing reforms contained in peace agreements, along with their broader peace processes. While peacekeeping troops can help belligerents refrain from violence, military force alone cannot explain how political elites implement redistributive reforms that threaten their status. We argue that UNPOs that have predominant peacebuilding (as opposed to peacekeeping) mandates help sustain political elites' commitment to implementing peace agreement reforms and, thus, contribute to inclusive peace (increased political inclusion and reduced violence). We test our argument using a data set on UNPO mandates and original fieldwork on three sequential UNPOs in Burundi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the landscape of the Old City of Mostar eighteen years after the reconstruction of its famous Old Bridge. The reconstruction project took place within broader international peace-building efforts, foregrounding the bridge as a symbol of multicultural reconciliation and initiating the development of tourism. We explore a landscape perspective to reflect on the aftermath of this neoliberal peacebuilding project which created a commodified landscape image, endangering the site as a public space. By disallowing the local community to engage with the reconstruction process, the project limited participatory ways of dealing with the past, but also public arenas for negotiating a shared future. To unpack this, we look at the heritage-landscape as a process and focus on its infrastructural aspects. We aim to outline an infrastructural perspective which helps understand how the future of public space and participation were conditioned by the process of neoliberal peacebuilding through heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set in the peak of the so-called "European Migrant Crisis" and situated in the conflict-affected Cypriot context, this article examines Greek-Cypriot High School students' representations of Syrian refugees as they were debated in classroom discussion. Drawing on ethnographic research that took place in 2016 in a Lower Secondary School in Cyprus, we analyse the interactional dynamics through which 'bordering' processes took place, showing how different types of borders were (re)-negotiated and re-instated in the classroom. Considering the sociohistorical context of Cyprus, we also investigate how teachers' and students' understandings of borders and ethnic identity-making were reshaped by local discourses. Our analysis shows that teachers, despite prompting students to take an active stance towards Syrian refugees as part of a peacebuilding stance, mobilised ethnocentric discourses that victimised refugees, portraying them as someone whose agency is taken away from, and for whom we can speak and act. Approaching borders as social constructs, we show how the national border separating "us" and "them" was construed and reaffirmed in such discussions, and how the representation of refugees as 'the victim' functioned as a way of narrating the 'cultural fantasies' of the national self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on civic education and the constitution of subjects within a complex landscape of peace and war making in Colombia. Using a genealogical approach to study the manufacturing of citizens, and drawing on a document analysis of policies, curricular guidelines, and teaching resources, this paper evidences an increasing attention to students' skills, conducts, and interpersonal relations, rather than structural inequality and injustice. Through the examination of the "integral citizen," I argue that the development of students as skillful civic subjects has become central to the aspiration of building and sustaining peace and democracy. Such citizens are described as individually embodying the virtues and skills of problem-solving, conflict-management, autonomy, and self-regulation of emotions. This research adds to our understanding of the construction of the ideal citizen in conflict-affected settings, and how education policy intersects with larger efforts for meaningful and sustained change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]