Ending Conflicts and Building Peace: Main Concepts and Approaches

Conflict is an adversarial social action,
involving two or more actors who show
hostilities towards each other and have
incompatibilities over sources and/or
values (Jeong, 2010: 3). 

In his subsequent work, Galtung (1969: 168) offers a novel perspective of peace, which corresponds
to the “absence of violence”. Positing a broader definition of violence, which delves into the personal and
structural dimensions of the concept, he offers a formulation for a peaceful social order. In his argument,
a peaceful order implies the absence of not only direct/personal but also structural violence, reminding
that the structural violence emanates from social injustice and does not necessarily implement physical
action (Galtung, 1969: 171-185). According to this scheme, “negative peace” simply refers to the absence
of direct violence, while “positive peace” should be understood in a broader sense that secures the equitable
distribution of resources and values within a community (Galtung, 1969: 183).

Conflict prevention
aims to avert the emergence of violent conflict.
In this phase, conflict is aimed to be prevented by
endeavoring to reach a compromise or minimize
the differences and/or incompatibilities between
the confronting sides. It is achieved through
developing structural and interactive tools
or strengthening the capacities for a peaceful
resolution and decreasing the causes of the conflict 

If the conflict already occurred, conflict
management/conflict regulation is implemented
to minimize the effects of the confrontation and
to take the necessary steps for restoring peace.
Conflict management (and conflict regulation) is
a generic term that covers a whole process. The
concept can encompass constraining the conflict,
mitigation, limitation, and decreasing of violence
through negotiation, arbitration, or other methods
and processes in order to create an environment
in which reaching a peace agreement is attainable

The efforts to reach an agreement between the adverse parties are called conflict settlement, during which
elites of the opposing sides take part in a negotiation process, probably through the mediation of a third
party.

The conflict resolution phase refers to the endeavors to resolve the conflict by changing the underlying
structural reasons of the conflict and to end the conflict terminally

Peacekeeping is a conflict resolution strategy
that aims to contain violence and prevent it
from turning to war; to limit the intensity,
geographical spread and duration of the conflict
if it started; and to consolidate a ceasefire and
create an environment for reconciliation in the
post-war period (Ramsbotham et al., 2015:
147). Peacekeeping traditionally refers to the
deployment of lightly-armed military forces
between the armed forces of belligerents in
order to monitor a ceasefire or patrol a buffer
zone. Peacemaking aims to change the attitudes
of conflicting parties to reach a settlement
while peacebuilding addresses structural causes
which lie at the root of the conflict in order
to create a lasting peace (Ramsbotham et al.,
2015: 32).

The final phase of the conflict resolution is the
transformation. The success and ending of conflicts
do not necessarily imply a stable and enduring peace.
With these in mind, it is conflict transformation that
builds peace in the cultural and structural spheres,
with transforming both institutions and discourses
of the conflicting parties so that the profound causes
of the conflict are transformed, and sustainable
peace is restored (Ramsbotham et al., 2015: 31). 

Since the end of the Cold War, the inter-state
conflicts have been few in comparison to intrastate conflicts. According to Wallensteen (2002:
95-96), the reasons for interstate conflicts can be
divided into four categories as the following:
• The first category includes Geopolitik
reasons. That is, seeking control over
certain territories can give rise to interstate
wars. 

• Thesecond is Realpolitik reasons. Seeking to
maximize power and power capabilities-for
example becoming regionally dominantcan lead to wars among states.
• The third is Kapitalpolitik reasons. Economic
issues, such oil prices, pipelines, transportation
routes, and relations between wealthy and
poor countries, can play central roles in the
emergence of interstate armed conflicts.
• The fourth category is Idealpolitik reasons.
Ideological and legitimacy issues can cause
a conflict between two states.

In conflicts that take place among at least
two states, resolution may require the inclusion
of a third party: a mediator, or an arbitration
commission. For instance, an arbitration council,
composed of high-rank judges from different
states, decided on the principles of the dissolution
and the criteria which states gain independence in
the case of Yugoslavia. During the Cyprus conflict,
the United Kingdom (UK), Turkey and Greece
actively took part in the negotiations to solve the
conflict as the former colonial rulers, and home
states of the two communities of the island before
1960

The negative methods to resolve the intra-state
conflicts include:
• assimilation,
• secession/partition,
• population transfer.

Among negative conflict regulation methods,
assimilation is the most common one. Assimilation
aims to create a homogenous identity among
the population of a state. To this end, different
identities or cultures are obliged to disappear and
melt into the identity of the state, which is the
identity of a dominant group of the population
or a newly-constructed identity of the state. 

Secession is the
segregation of two or more entities that have been
living as a seemingly homogenous unit despite
being separate in the beginning, whereas partition
is a fresh-cut division or “tearing” of a unit which
has been together from the beginning (O’Leary,
2007: 888).

These positive methods, from the most
representative to the less, are:
• consociational democracy,
• federalism, and
• control.

The most democratic and representative method
of accommodation is consociational democracy. In
this form, all major groups of the society are ideally
recognized and provided with representation
at the state level. It is achieved through the
compromise of the elites of different groups. 

The most implemented accommodation method is federalism, which is basically a state system in which
at least two sub-units within the state and sovereignty and authority are divided among the center and subunits

Power sharing “is a term used to describe
a system of governance in which all major
segments of society are provided a permanent
share of power; this system is often contrasted
with government vs. opposition systems in
which ruling coalitions rotate among various
social groups over time” (Sisk, 2003) The
main principles of power sharing includes
the following: grand coalition governments
in which nearly all political parties have
appointments; protection of minority rights for
groups; decentralization of power; and decision
making by consensus

Apartheid mean ‘apartness’ in Afrikaans. It is a “policy that governed relations between South Africa’s
white minority and nonwhite majority and sanctioned racial segregation and political and economic
discrimination against nonwhites

The civil war in Colombia is one of the longest and most protracted intrastate armed conflicts in
the world over the last half century. The causes and motivations of the conflict are arguably related to
the deeply-rooted political culture of violence, the (in)capacity of the Colombian state, limited political
participation and inequitable distribution of land and resources (Leech, 2011: 5-8; Haddad and Lehmann,
2017: 155). While the belligerent guerrilla group– Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas
Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia- FARC)– was founded in 1964, the origins of the conflict could
be traced back to the late 1940s to the era dubbed La Violencia and even to the War of Thousand Days

The US policies in Latin America which were stipulated by aiding anti-communist dictatorships and repressive
authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, throughout the 1980s in particular, was most explicitly epitomized
with the Kirkpatrick Doctrine