Conflict management and violence prevention

Conflict management and violence prevention*

True story: in 2010 I was the Team Leader evaluating parts of the European’s African Peace Facility (APF), which is a very complex and incredibly expensive fund to pay the salaries and equipment of soldiers. These are supposed to be peace-keepers, but many of us do not believe that you can make peace with soldiers. The fundamental building-blocks of peace are things like basic needs, peace education empowering women, investing in agriculture and forestry. The EU Member States are also NATO members, and NATO only thinks in terms of firearms and uniforms. They say different, but they say wrong!

Anyhow, the story is this: we were presented with the new Road Map for the African Union Peace and Security department, funded by the EU and created by some European consultant with whom I had fundamental problems. He had included in his Road Map an illustration labelled: The Conflict Cycle, which was a circle: meaning that he saw conflict as unending.

We were hired by the same Consulting Group as the Road Map consultant; but when I queried the “unending circle of permanent conflict” the Consulting Group was 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, so long as they were paid for the report he had written.

Naturally, I did not let it rest there. During a meeting with EU officials in Brussels, I observed that their Road Map for the African Union included this non-sensical permanent conflict cycle and 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.

What could I do? I decided to create an annex for my APF evaluation, to put on record what CONFLICT is really all about. Here it is: this is now an official EU definition of conflict management and prevention published in the referenced report. Please use it, dear reader! And please do not believe that violent conflict is permanent and unending. 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 in:

2010-11 Dec 2010 – April 2011 Team Leader for 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

*For further analysis of conflict and creating ‘positive peace’ see Galtung, Johan, 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means. Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. PRIO, Norway. p. 73. Galtung likes to quote a Chinese saying, ‘There exist people without conflicts--they are called corpses.’

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