Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.

We all long for peace within ourselves, families, communities, countries, and throughout the world. We wonder what we can do about the multitude of con?icts currently wreaking havoc across the globe and the continuous reports of violence in communities as well as within families. Most of the time, we contemplate solutions beyond our reach, and overlook a powerful tool that is at our disposal: forgiveness. As a genocide survivor, I know something about it. As the genocide unfolded in Rwanda in 1994, I was devastated by what I believed to be the inevitable deaths of my loved ones. The news that my parents and my seven siblings had indeed been killed was simply unbearable. Anger and bitterness became my daily companions. Likewise, I continued to wonder how the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda could possibly reconcile after one of the most horrendous genocides of the 20th century. It was not until I came to understand the notion of forgiveness that I was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Common wisdom suggests that forgiveness comes after a perpetrator makes a genuine apology. This wisdom informs us that in the aftermath of a wrongdoing, the offender must acknowledge the wrong he or she has done, express remorse, express an apology, commit to never repeating said harm, and make reparations to theextentpossible.Onlythencanthevictimforgiveandagreetoneverseekrevenge.

Experts investigate the role of child development in promoting a culture of peace, reporting on research in biology, neuroscience, genetics, and psychology. Can more peaceful childhoods promote a culture of peace? Increasing evidence from a broad range of disciplines shows that how we raise our children affects the propensity for conflict and the potential for peace within a given community. In this book, experts from a range of disciplines examine the biological and social underpinnings of child development and the importance of strengthening families to build harmonious and equitable relations across generations. They explore the relevance to the pursuit of peace in the world, highlight directions for future research, and propose novel approaches to translate knowledge into concrete action. The contributors describe findings from research in biology, neuroscience, evolution, genetics, and psychology. They report empirical evidence on children living in violent conditions, resilience in youth, and successful interventions. Their contributions show that the creation of sustainable partnerships with government agencies, community leaders, policy makers, funders, and service providers is a key ingredient for success. Taken together, they suggest possible novel approaches to translate knowledge into concrete action.

This book explores how creative ways of resolving social conflicts emerge, evolve, and subsequently come to be accepted or rejected in inter-group relations. Creativity and Conflict Resolution explores a subject with which political communities involved in social conflict have always grappled: creative ways of imagining and actualizing visions of conflict resolution. This is an ambitious question, which concerns human communities at many different levels, from families, regional-independence movements, and national governments, to inter-state alliances. The author argues that unconventional viability lies at the heart of creativity for transcending seemingly intractable inter-communal conflicts. More specifically, conflict resolution creativity is a social and epistemological process, whereby actors involved in a given social conflict learn to formulate an unconventional resolution option or procedure. Demystifying the origin of unthinkable breakthroughs for conflict resolution and illuminating theories of creativity based on 17 international case studies, this book will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, peace and conflict studies, human security and IR. Tatsushi Arai is an Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation at the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont, USA. He has a PhD in Conflict Resolution from George Mason University, Washington DC, and extensive practical experience in the field.

Given the consistent challenge of Islamist acute violence, particularly in Nigeria, this monograph attempts to respond to the question: How can Jesus's followers pattern response to violence after Jesus's model demonstrated in his triumph over death, evil, sin, and violence through staurocentric pathways? And how can Jesus's followers in Nigeria adopt the same staurocentric model in order to not only overcome acute violence within the country but also to extend hands, heads, hearts, and homes of staurocentric forgiveness, hospitality, and other practices toward Muslims? In this study, I posit that peacebuilding contextual theology be grounded on the mystery of the cross (σταυρός-stauros)--a theologico-theoretical framework that the church in Nigeria should espouse in order to position herself to extend hands, heads, hearts, and homes of staurocentric practices, whose appropriation must be undertaken through constructive and critical integration of the God-given African peacebuilding concepts autochthonous to Africa's mosaic cultural contexts. The pivotal thesis is that the staurocentric model remains the triune God's instrument for triumphing over violence, and thus should be espoused by Jesus's followers in every era and context for peacebuilding in contexts of violence through a triadic constructive and critical integration of indigenous peacebuilding concepts.

This volume draws together original research related to conceptual and practical advances at the interface of urban safety and peacebuilding. The book reflects the advances in urban safety and peacebuilding to help address the rapidly increasing risk of conflict and insecurity in cities. Specifically, it draws on contributions to the Technical Working Group on the Confluence of Urban Safety and Peacebuilding Practice, an informal expert network co-facilitated by the United Nations Office at Geneva, UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme, and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. A focus on ‘sustaining peace’ serves as a framework for situating new policy responses against conflict, violence, and exclusion in the city, and for promoting a conversation across disciplinary and specialist silos. The volume thereby broadens the optic of peacebuilding practice beyond interstate and intrastate armed conflicts – and especially their aftermath – and reconnects it to the community-level origins of building peace. The analysis and practice presented here will remind those willing to work towards peaceful and inclusive cities that there are tried and tested approaches available, and a host of experts and practitioners ready to accompany those prepared to lead in their respective contexts. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of peacebuilding, urban studies, security studies, and international relations.

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a large body of research examining the linkage between environmental scarcity, violent conflict, and cooperation. However, this environmental security polemic is still trying to deliver a well-defined approach to achieving peace. Studies are being undertaken to find the precise pathways by which cooperative actions are expected not only to pre-empt or moderate resource conflicts but also to help diffuse cooperative behaviour to other disputed issues. The recognition that environmental resources can contribute to violent conflict accentuates their potential significance as pathways for cooperation and the consolidation of peace in post-conflict societies. Conceived as a single and reliable reference source which will be a vital resource for students, researchers, and policy makers alike, the Routledge Handbook of Environmental Conflict and Peacebuilding presents a wide range of chapters written by key thinkers in the field, organised into four key parts: Part I: Review of the concept and theories; Part II: Review of thematic approaches (resources, scarcity, intervention, adaptation, and peacebuilding); Part III: Case studies (Middle East, Iraq, Jordan, Liberia, Nepal, Colombia, Philippines); Part IV: Analytical challenges and future-oriented perspectives. Enabling the reader to find a concise expert review on topics that are most likely to arise in the course of conducting research or policy making, this volume presents a truly global overview of the key issues and debates in environmental conflict and peacebuilding.