The Rethinking Peace Mediation blog provides a forum for debate on trends and challenges in the field of peace mediation broadly defined.
Rethinking Peace Mediation arose as a project from the need to examine new developments in the peace mediation field. Conflicts have fundamentally changed since the end of the 20th Century, and as a result operational and practical challenges for mediators have multiplied in a world where the global-local nexus has become tighter and is overshadowed by growing threats from new actors and phenomena such as terrorism, cybersecurity and climate change.
The rapid expansion of the field, and the location of peace mediation as a core activity within the Sustaining Peace Agenda has raised the profile of mediation. It has also led to some conceptual tensions in respect of the core aims, objectives and actors. The Rethinking Peace Mediation volume seeks to shine a light on these new trends, including the move towards a more technical and professionalised field of practice, the growth in normative understandings of the purpose of peace mediation, and the range of actors who are included.
The volume also highlights the exclusions of the field – those actors and voices who are not currently captured by the ‘inclusion’ paradigm- as well as alternative disciplinary perspectives that have been marginalised though professionalisation.
As an extension of the book, the Rethinking Peace Mediation Blog seeks to create a space for dynamic and evolving thinking in the field of peace mediation. It welcomes contributions from scholars, policy makers or practitioners that reflect on the theory or practice of peace mediation. It particularly welcomes submissions from beyond mainstream debates or practice; those who bring experiential knowledge of the impact of peace mediation efforts; and those who or are developing new or critical lenses through which to understand peace mediation as a field of theory and practice.
The word ‘resilience’ has featured in most international development policy documents for the past decade. As a recent Stockholm Peace Forum panel noted, resilience has now become a ‘fad’ within the peacebuilding community. This blog contributes to the debate about the relevance of resilience thinking for contemporary peace-making.
Read MoreApplications are invited for a 3 year PhD studentship in Women Peace and Security at Durham University.
Read MoreBespoke conflict resolution nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become key mediation actors within the last three decades, increasingly engaged in direct dialogues between warring parties and professionalizing the mediation field through capacity building and knowledge production. The rise in reputation and prominence of NGO mediators such as the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Inter Mediate, Crisis Management Initiative and many others as key actors in international peace mediation represents an important shift in who conducts international peace mediation and how. But who exactly are these “NGO mediators,” and what consequences does their rise in prominence have on mediation theory and practice?
Read MoreBusiness actors play an important role in conflict management, and the majority have an interest in peace. And yet, engaging business actors in peace, security and stability is an under-explored area for the international community as a whole, and for the United Nations (UN) in particular. Indeed, whether formal or informal, public or private, licit or illicit, the UN has a blind spot when it comes to business actors in countries in conflict.
Read MoreThis workshop seeks to interrogate the synergies that exist between transitional justice and peace mediation. The intersection or ‘nexus’ between the two is most often seen as arising in the context of the ‘peacemakers paradox’ whereby questions of justice must be addressed in the context of peace talks. This workshop, which will be held virtually, seeks conceptual works in progress and case studies that address the relationship between peace mediation and transitional justice.
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