You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world?
Now we do the job for you. This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we benefit from ourselves and want to share.
Just click below at what catches your interest – read, download or send on to a friend.
Peace and war in today’s world
•Voices in the Wilderness
Visit one of the most successful action groups using non-violence in the struggle to end sanctions. It’s on the Nonviolence Web.•Some basic facts about war and peace
The New Internationalist offers thoughtprovoking facts – also on missed opportunities since 1989. But there is one good trend:”Only a third of all civil wars that occurred after 1800 have ended through negotiations. Since 1945 around 25 per cent of conflicts have been solved by negotiations. But recently compromise settlements are becoming more prevalent such as in the cases of Liberia, El Salvador and Guatemala.”
Militarization, New Cold War
• US-Russia ties headed for new conflictIf the Balkan peninsula was the security flash-point of the 1990s, Russia and the Caucasus region are on their way to becoming the conflict zone of the next decade, writes Justin Brown in Christian Science Monitor.
• China and the US disagree on human rights and the US missile project
Read Chinese views in the South China Morning Star. The US continues after the spy allegations and the embassy bombing to antagonize China.• Russia cranks up arms production and sales
Despite the end of the cold war, the two powers are still rivals in the tight world weapons market. And some nations unfriendly to the United States – Libya, Iran, and Syria – are knocking on Moscow’s door looking for sophisticated arms.• Spy pictures show Korea’s empty threatJohn Pike, director of the Federation of American Scientists, a private organisation in Washington that bought the pictures from the space company in Denver, Colorado, said: “These photographs make a nonsense of American foreign policy, which has been dominated in recent years by the perceived ballistic missile threat from North Korea.
But facts like that does not bother American decision-makers:
• Clinton adding to missile defence
The Pentagon argues that the United States faces a growing threat from missile attack. Several countries hostile to the United States, including North Korea, Iran and Iraq, are said to be seeking a capability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. U.S. satellites can detect missile launchings anywhere on the globe, but the United States has no means of shooting down long-range missiles in flight.
“The threat is real, (and) it will, in all likelihood, intensify in the coming years as countries continue to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities,” Defense Secretary William Cohen said last month.
EU’s new policy vis-a-vis pariah states
• EU’s outreach to ‘pariah’ states
There is a new European thinking about relations with “pariah” states. Moving further and faster than Washington, the Italian, French, and other European governments have been building closer ties with Iran and North Korea in recent months, prompted by both economic and political considerations. Prodi’s suggestion that Qaddafi might visit EU headquarters, mooted during a Christmas phone call from the Libyan leader, has sparked consternation in some European capitals. Aside from doubts about the political wisdom of such a trip, diplomats complained that Prodi had made the invitation without consulting either Chris Patten, the European Commissioner in charge of foreign relations, or Javier Solana, the EU’s new security and defense chief. “This is an interesting illustration of how EU foreign policy is coming out of the chute,” says one diplomat in Brussels. “It’s very personal.”
So, when will it shape a policy on Yugoslavia?
Conflict-resolution – Burundi
• Burundi peace initiative fades after rebels reject Mandela as mediator
Hope that Nelson Mandela might bring an end to one of Africa’s most bitter and bloody civil wars – the six-year conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Burundi that has claimed close to 300,000 lives – has started to fade after the country’s two main rebel armies rejected his appointment as the new mediator for peace talks.
Balkans, Kosovo & Yugoslavia
• Pushing for tolerance and jobs in Kosovo
Before NATO airstrikes this spring ended the Serb crackdown on rebellious ethnic Albanians, the workforce was mixed. Now the company is run by ethnic Albanians using only ethnic Albanian workers. Reese, with the help of other Western officials, has been trying to change that. What’s at stake at this and other workplaces is the future of Serbs in Kosovo – officially still part of Serbia – and the success of the international peacekeeping mission here.• What is an old mine worth – in Kosovo?
Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo covet control of the old Trepca industrial complex as a key to rebuilding prosperity. Nor has the UN resolved the rival claims over ownership and management. It has tried, so far in vain, to persuade Trepca’s Serbs and ethnic Albanians to work together. An early, ambitious plan to install an international management team came to nothing when foreign donors refused to pay for it. “Something has to be done with the bloody thing,” says Carolyn McCool, head of the Mitrovica office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “The question is, what?”• No peace in Kosovo – no honouring of agreements – but new war?
NATO snubs agreement, faces new challenge from Russia, Yugoslavia. Russia and Yugoslavia will pose new challenges to NATO’s authority in Kosovo by mid-summer if the Western military alliance doesn’t permit Yugoslav soldiers back into the enclave as mandated by U.N. terms that ended the conflict there last summer.
At issue is whether NATO is prepared to honor Annex 2 of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, signed June 15, 1999, which states Yugoslavia was to be permitted to send a small, lightly armed contingent of soldiers to Kosovo to guard cultural sites, the country’s territorial borders, and to help clear landmines by June 2000.• UN prosecutor to review Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia
“This is a historic opportunity to demonstrate the even-handedness of international justice,” Professor Mandel said after delivering the dossier last year. Other international lawyers argued that such statements could be counter-productive and place the tribunal in an untenable position.• Is the opposition in Belgrade finally getting Together??
The Serbian opposition will be celebrating Orthodox new year tonight in a greater state of harmony than at any stage since the end of the Nato bombing campaign.
Globalisation – the media and the WTO
•Critical perspectives on the AOL/Time Warner 350 bn dollar mergerGlobalization is not only about money, but also about information, propaganda, entertainment – and about culture. It’s about power and democracy. The Media Channel – Eye on global media gives you a lot of references.
• Reflections on the breakdown of the WTO summit in Seattle
Martin Khor of the Third World Network reflects on the revolt of developing nations..
Militarism versus development
• Challenges of feeding the world
World hunger persists, despite three years of bin-bursting harvests. Nearly 1 in 7 people still lacks enough to eat. And the challenge of feeding their children in the next 30 years looks as difficult as it did in the 1960s.• Oxfam report outlines two futures at the turn of the century
“A new world is taking shape at the end of the millennium that has two possible futures. If current trends continue we will have a world divided by immense inequality, with the poorest regions falling further behind. Our children will face a world of environmental collapse, international resentment and insecurity and uncontrolled international crime. Vast swathes of humanity will be excluded from great wealth created by a global economy.
However, if our leaders take the difficult but necessary measures now, a brighter future beckons. Oxfam’s new report seeks to set out key trends, problems and solutions to the main political and economic challenges we face.”
