A Conflict Management Typology for the European Union

True story: in 2010 I was the Leader of a team evaluating parts of the European’s African Peace Facility (APF), which is a very complex and incredibly expensive fund that mainly pays the salaries and equipment of soldiers. These are supposed to be peace-keepers, but who believes that you can make peace with soldiers? I remember in 1999 when the very LAST thing we needed to see on the traumatised streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone, were men in military uniforms. I argued for soldiers to remove their uniforms and leave them in the barracks .... in order to reduce the feelings of fear and war throughout the city.

The fundamental building-blocks or peace are things like basic needs, peace education empowering women, investing in agriculture and forestry. And integrating former solders and rebels back into civilian society .... which can only be done by women and community leaders. That is why I edited and published a book written by Civil Society leaders in Sierra Leone: “Bound to Cooperate - Conflict, Peace and People in Sierra Leone” offers stories about building the blocks of peace: local NGOs were leading the re-integration damaged young people into a world of peace; teaching child war victims how to play and sing and dance once more; helping war-traumatized men to integrate back into family life, avoiding the violence which had been their everyday lifestyle for too long.

At that time I was a Senior Research Fellow at UNIDIR in Geneva: the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Our mission was to promote ideas about disarmament and peace making, and to bring these ideas to the attention of the 190+ Member States of the UN. The richest Member States are also NATO members, alas! If ever NATO people think about peace, their officials see “peace” in terms of “the opposite of war” = firearms and munitions and military uniforms. EU Member States try to tell a different story, claiming to understand peace, but they say wrong!

My EU evaluation story is this: as we met a series of EU officials for our initial APF briefings, we were presented with the new Road Map for the African Union Peace and Security department, funded by the EU and created by a European consultant with whom I had fundamental disagreements. He had included in his Road Map an illustration labelled: The Conflict Cycle, which was a circle with labels: meaning that he saw conflict as unending.

EU’s Berlaymont building in Brussels, one of many EU offices.

We were hired by the same Consulting Group as the Road Map consultant; but when I queried his “unending circle of permanent conflict” the Consulting Group manager were furious with me! I was not supposed to query something for which they were being paid. In fact: they did not really care what their consultants were writing. All they wanted was to be paid for the report he had written.

Naturally, I did not let it rest there. During a meeting with EU officials, I observed that their Road Map for the African Union included this non-sensical permanent conflict cycle. I saw some of the intelligent officials around the table smile. But my question was swept under the table: intelligence in a bureaucracy works less well for a person’s career than keeping silent.

This is the book that explains what is happening in the Sahara, profiles all the armed movements and their leaders, and analyses the causes of Mali’s collapse from democratic governance into a Failed State. Our answer is that Mali was destroyed by “A Clash of Corporations” .... extractive, military, religious and criminal mafia Corporations all backed by foreign money and foreign armies.

When we published our book “The Limits of Democracy” my co-author Raffaella was working for the EU. One of her senior colleagues told her: “You are insane to write such a book, which will damage your career inside the EU.” Raffaella was shocked that anyone would question her integrity, or her right to express opinions and the results of her many years of research into the causes and nature of African migrations. You will not be surprised to learn that Raffaella now works for a different agency.

What could I do, I wondered, to counter this ludicrous – and potentially very harmful – cycle of unending conflict? I decided to create an annex for my APF evaluation, to put on record what CONFLICT is really all about. Here it is: it contains an official EU definition of conflict management and prevention published it the referenced report. Please use it, dear reader! And please do not believe that violent conflict is permanent and unending. Peace is possible. Violence is not inevitable!

Conflict management, conflict prevention and the conflict cycle

Conflict is a natural part of the human condition and can be a positive mechanism for social change, provided it is not be allowed to degrade into violence. A Fulani proverb : ‘The tongue and the teeth are good neighbours and they work together every day, yet occasionally the teeth bite the tongue.’

There are lots of overlaps in the management – prevention - mediation – intervention - peace continuum. The following definitions are followed in the present report :

Conflict management is a long-term process through which government officials, local authorities, traditional leaders and civil society organisations (including women’s associations) maintain peace and keep conflicts non-violent using appropriate mediation, culture-specific negotiation and policing mechanisms.

Conflict resolution means reframing the positions of the parties in order to address root causes of conflict, aiming to find common ground through which the parties can work out solutions.

Conflict transformation tries to move beyond the 'root causes'. Often they are myths that cannot be resolved because they go too far back, or are understood differently by the different actors to the conflict. The alternative is to transform the violence into the non-violence, identify legitimate goals and shared values that allow society to build a new consensus for peace.

Conflict prevention – which is really ‘violence prevention’ - includes a range of activities designed to prevent conflict from breaking out into violence : education, mediation, legislation, police (or even military) mobilisation, small arms collection, youth job creation, new elections, negotiations with opposition leaders, national conference, etc.

Peacekeeping is needed only if the previous measures have failed to prevent violence. This usually implies the deployment of military and civpol assets to separate conflict parties physically and prevent violence.

Peace interventions (peace enforcement) imply the arrival of outside military and policing and civilian peace forces (REC or AU or UN or other) to separate conflict parties physically.

Peace operations may cover any or all of the above prevention and peacekeeping components, and include military, civilian and police (and aspects such as border controls, etc).

Peace building is the post-conflict process of negotiation and reconciliation, healing society, rebuilding political, legal and other institutions of the State, integrating former combatants and helping mutually beneficial trade and economic progress with infrastructure investments, to recover from violent conflict.

Conflicts have a beginning (underlying myths and causes - often linked to exploitative economic forces - and the spark of violence that triggers awareness of the conflict in reports by the early warning system) ; a middle (conflict management, negotiation, mediation, prevention, sometimes involving violence) ; and an end (peace building and sustainable development). Violence may end while conflicts may simmer on; or they may end only when a new generation finds ways to transform conflict.

Peace interventions by outsiders occur during ‘the middle’ of the conflict cycle, but only if violence threatens because mediation and conflict management systems are failing. Police or military resources will be brought in to stop the violence. In this exceptional case (and only if the prevention phase requires external support), a full Peace Support Operation may be launched. It is better and cheaper to act early.

A Peace Support Operation usually sets out to separate protagonists, protect civilians, and impose a ceasefire. This is a state of ‘negative peace’, where people are no longer shooting each other but the conflict still exists. In the post-conflict phase, ‘negative peace’ must be transformed into ‘positive peace’ by addressing the underlying causes, providing alternative and new ways to transcend or engage or collaborate. Conflict transformation and peace building should lead to peaceful economic and social and political regeneration, that can be facilitated by the development-security nexus and links between APF and EDF.

The ‘conflict cycle’ comes to an end when positive peace comes to fruition and the economy starts moving again. This could be called ‘the start of the ‘peace cycle’ involving long-term trade, economic relationships and cultural exchanges between former protagonists. The world’s best example of conflict transformation, and a 65-year peace cycle, is the European Union.

Published as an Annex to the following EU document in 2011:

British and Scottish flags flying alongside the EU flag. My report was published when no one had seriously considered BREXIT. In 2016 the Conservative Party’s ill-considered referendum took place. BREXIT was approved by 51.9% of voters, against 48.1% who voted “Stay” on a turn-out of 72%. My British consulting company became ineligible for EU contracting, and that was the end of EPES Mandala Consulting Ltd.

Evaluation of the EU’s €1bil Africa Peace Facility. « Funding the Africa Union’s peace architecture: Reviewing the Procedures of the APF and Possibilities of Alternative Future Sources of Funding. » Letter Of Contract N° 2010/254164: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/where/acp/regional-cooperation/peace/documents/evaluation_apf_i_final_report_en.pdf