Conflict Resoultion & Mediation Due Dec. 19th
For this assignment, access . Once on the Internet site:
1. Click on Peace Programs (Top Bar)
2. Click on Conflict Resolution Programs (Top Bar)
3. On the right bar, under Conflict Resolution Program Links, click on Activities by Countries
Within this site, there are 11 country case studies in which the Carter Center has served as a mediator. Selecting one country, provide a brief overview of the conflict resolution situation. Additionally integrate the review with the assigned readings from “The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution, by , .
Here is the lesson notes from the professor that may help also.
Lesson 3
Negotiations and Mediation
I. Negotiations & Mediation: The Construct
There are two basic paradigms for understanding mediation: structuralism and social-psychological.
Structuralism: posits that – with persuasion, incentives, and disincentives – parties to a conflict can be lead to a negotiated settlement. From this perspective, the causes of conflict are objective issues that can be resolved through negotiation. The prime condition for settlement is when all parties to the conflict “perceive the costs and prospects of continuing a war to be more burdensome than the costs and prospects of settlement.”
Social-psychological: the focus is on the processes of communication and exchange as a way to change attitudes and perceptions. A key to this process is engaging wider groups of civil and opinion leaders into the discussions. From this paradigm, conflict can occur over objective reasons but it can also reflect subjective and social fractures.
II. Life Cycles of Conflicts
The typical life cycle of a conflict includes:
A period of rising tensions between or among parties
Confrontation
Outbreak of Violence
Escalation of military hostilities
Cease-fire
Formal settlement
Rapprochement
Reconciliation
At the lowest level of violence, there may be more chances for mediation. At this stage, attitudes and perceptions have not hardened and institutionalized channels of communications are still open. Negotiations at this level are relatively low-risk. However, negotiation is less attractive because the parties have not let experienced the costs or limits of what can be gained on the battlefield. Violence in support of unilateral goals may still be seen as a viable option to compromise and negotiated settlements.
Inversely, higher levels of violence see fewer opportunities for engagement of belligerents in negotiations but greater likelihood of mediation success.
Who mediates is an important consideration and is dependent on the willingness of parties to the negotiations and the need to demonstrate force to move the negotiations to a possible settlement. The US resolve to use increasing levels of force in the former Yugoslavia did achieve a settlement. The same resolve, however, did not deter Saddam Hussein from attacking Kuwait or be more forthcoming with UN Weapons Inspectors. The issue here may well be the ability of a belligerent to correctly perceive the intentions of others.
III. Regional Actors
As we look at various regional organizations (Table 1), it is typically organizations that have a security or military component that have the capabilities to participate in peace support operations. Of course, there are distinctions between the capabilities of NATO, the European Union (EU), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and other regional organizations like the African Union or Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Table 1
{] provides a thorough background on several regional organizations:
1. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), sometimes called North Atlantic Alliance, Atlantic Alliance or the Western Alliance, is an organization for defense collaboration established in 1949, in support of the North Atlantic Treaty.
The core provision of the treaty is Article V, which states:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. Consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
This provision was intended so that if the USSR and its allies launched an attack against the Western European allies of the United States, it would be treated as if it was an attack on all member states, including the United States, which has the largest military in the alliance and could thus provide the most significant retaliation. However, the feared invasion of Western Europe never came. Instead, the provision was invoked for the first time in the treaty’s history on September 12, 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States the day before.
2. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen countries, founded on May 28, 1975 when 15 West African countries signed the Treaty of Lagos. Its mission is to promote economic integration.
It was founded to achieve “collective self-sufficiency” for the member states by means of economic and monetary union creating a single large trading bloc. The very slow progress towards this aim meant that the treaty was revised towards a looser collaboration. The ECOWAS Secretariat and the Fund for Cooperation, Compensation and Development are its two main institutions to implement policies.
Member states of ECOWAS are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. The current executive secretary is . The current chairman is President of Niger. In 2002, Mauritania left the organization.
3. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (in Russian: Содружество Независимых Государств (СНГ) – Sodruzhestvo Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv) is a confederation or alliance consisting of 12 former Soviet Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
The creation of CIS signaled the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, according to leaders of Russia, its purpose was to “allow a civilized divorce” between the Soviet Republics. However, many observers have seen the CIS as a tool that would allow Russia to keep its influence over the post-Soviet states. Since its formation, the member-states of CIS have signed a large number of documents concerning integration and cooperation on matters of economics, defense and foreign policy.
4. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is an international organization for security. In its region, it is concerned with early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation. It has 55 participating states from Europe, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North America.
5. The African Union (abbreviated AU), founded in July 2002, is the successor organization to the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Modeled after the European Union (but currently with powers closer to the Commonwealth of Nations), it aims to help promote democracy, human rights and development across Africa, especially by increasing foreign investment through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) program. Its first chairman was South African president .
Goals for the African Union include an African parliament and a central development bank. As with its predecessor, the OAU, the African Union is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Pan-African Parliament opened officially September 16, 2004, in Midrand, South Africa. Because of the membership of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara), Morocco is the only African nation that has chosen not to be a member.
The AU’s first military intervention in a member state was the May 2003 deployment of a peacekeeping force of soldiers from South Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique to Burundi to oversee the implementation of the various agreements. The mission was known as AMIB and has since been taken over by the United Nations, which has designated it ONUB.
The AU faces many problems, from the HIV epidemic and poverty to many civil wars. In response to the ongoing Darfur crisis in the Sudan, the AU has deployed 300 soldiers, mostly from Rwanda, to Darfur to protect the AU observers. As of 2004, it is considering the deployment of up to 2,500 peacekeepers to the region. In 2005 there was a donor’s conference held in the African Union’s headquarters in Addis Ababa where enough money was raised that it is believed there will be enough money to raise AU troop levels to 7,000 in September and to 12,000 in the beginning of 2006.
In response to the death of , president of Togo, on February 5, 2005, AU leaders described the naming of his son the successor as a military coup [1]. Togo’s constitution calls for the speaker of parliament to succeed the president in the event of his death. By law, the parliament speaker must call national elections to choose a new president within 60 days.
As of 2005, current conflicts also include the:
Algerian Civil War,
Casamance Conflict,
Second Congo War,
Somali Civil War,
Second Sudanese Civil War and
Second Ugandan Civil War.
IV. Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)
The term NGOs represent a type of institution so varied and broadly defined that it is almost impossible to generalize about these organizations. The role of a number of these organizations involved with humanitarian assistance and development has expanded in the post-Cold War era to include not only humanitarian aid but also conflict resolution and reconciliation interventions. NGOs are being asked to perform four basic functions:
1. monitoring human rights violations,
2. acting as neutral mediators among warring factions in a conflict resolution role,
3. providing humanitarian relief, and
4. influencing foreign policy decisions in Western capitals.
The reason for such an expanded role includes:
· NGOs are the best early warning system for impending conflict. On-site workers tied to an information-management system at the central headquarters can be effective in getting the news out.
· NGOs have deep roots in the community usually at the lowest level of social organization that can provide contact points in conflict areas.
· Where government has collapsed, NGOs may be the only source of authority.
· NGOs can diminish the traumatic consequences of civil violence by the distribution of relief efforts.
· During complex emergences, NGOs are often the only organizations with the operational capability to provide needed assistance.
· NGOs with no affiliation to or formal connections to any government might be well positioned to intervene.
· NGOs with a focus on developmental assistance consider longer-term consequences of their actions and better understand the complexities of each conflict.
However, there can there be problems created by NGOs as well.
· In conflicts where law and order has broken down, humanitarian assistance workers might find themselves in situations that require their rescue.
· Relief efforts can also distort the local economy as well unintentionally providing the means of support to a belligerent party. In this case, the conflict could be prolonged.
· The proliferation of organizations and their autonomy often prevent the development of a coherent plan.
· NGOs with church sponsorship might have a theological aversion to the use of military force and would make coordination and collaboration difficult in some peacekeeping operations.
NGOs – just like all organizations — have strengths and weaknesses as they carry out their humanitarian assistance role.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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