NIFF – a New Nordic Institute for Peace Research

At a meeting in Stocken, Sweden, on the 24th of July, of Johan and Fumi Galtung, Kai Frithjof and Denisa Jacobsen, Ola and Erni Friholt, Jan Oberg, and Jorgen Johansen, TRANSCEND, TFF, and the ICL/Praxis for Peace agreed to cooperate on the joint launching of the New/Nordic Institute for Peace Research (NIFF according to the Scandinavian abbreviation, with N standing for both New and Nordic).

Similar initiatives are also being launched by TRANSCEND and the ICL in Canada and Romania (see next months TRANSCEND circular).

The aim of the institute is:

– to re-launch peace research in the Nordic countries.

The aim of NIFF is to promote the highest quality of research, building upon the TRANSCEND approach of Diagnosis – Prognosis – Therapy, combining clear and powerful critique with creative suggestions for what can be done.

As such, it is open to all members in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and we would welcome suggestions for possible members from these countries.

When a sufficient number of Research Papers have been collected from the members of NIFF, a new web-site will be launched (www.niff.org) containing all NIFF Research and Publications.

In the beginning, the Institute will not have one concrete location, but will be based instead upon a network of researchers throughout the Nordic countries, cooperating on joint research programmes and publications.

NIFF Research Papers currently being prepared

1. An Epistemological Hoax: The Democratic Peace Theory

2. How Autocracies End

3. World Economic Crisis

4. A Deep Culture Theory of Peace

5. Coopting Social Movements – NGOs, GNGOs, CSOs

6. Development Imperialism: Aid and the Spread of Capitalism

7. Reconciliation and Forgiveness

Other Research Topics currently under consideration

1. Peace Research–Relaunching a Nordic Tradition

2. Alternative Defence–Peace by Peaceful Means vs.Increasing Militarism

3. Nonviolence and Satyagraha

4. Gender and Conflict

5. Youth and Conflict

6. Peace Education

1-Page outlines for each research topic are currently being developed and will be circulated to all NIFF members.

If you would like to receive copies of these outlines, please contact Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen at <icl@c2i.net>. Suggestions and comments are welcome.

Books currently under preparation

2. The Struggle Continues–Peace Praxis, Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen (<icl@c2i.net>to be translated into Norwegian).

Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen
TFF Peace Antenna

Education & Training

NIFF will be working to promote peace education in the Nordic countries. Current and potential sites include: Tromso (with Vidar Vambheim), Trondheim (with Magnus Haavelsrud), Sandnes (with Tore Lende and Eva Nordland), Bodo (with Martin Eide).

Further sites will be developed throughout the Nordic countries.

Action

NIFF will be involved in direct peace action, both in the Nordic countries, and in cooperation with others internationally.

Dissemination

Dissemination is crucial to NIFF and includes

NIFF Newsletter
A 1-Page Information on Specific Conflicts.

NIFF Research Papers
First internet, then hard-copy.

Channels
Internet – media – organizations – schools (all levels, including colleges, hoyskole, skills specific, etc.) – Shopping centres – journalists – local/national newspapers/television/radio

Targets
Peace activists and grassroots organizations – social and community organizations – teachers and students – journalists – policy makers – general population.

Funding

Initial funding for NIFF includes a 9-month stipend for Kai Frithjof Brand-Jacobsen, who will be working during this period to secure core funding for the institute as well as research specific funding for NIFF Research Programmes.

Motives and needs

The idea of peace, like the idea of health, must be as old as humankind, like the idea of (re)searching for peace. But institutionalized peace research can be traced to the Nordic countries in the late 1950s/1960s; combining scholarly concerns with innovative social science and activist concerns with the disastrous Cold War mix of stalinism and nuclearism.

Forty years, one generation, have now passed, and time has come to make a new, fresh start with a new institute for peace research, Nytt Institutt for fredsforskning, NIFF (N also stands for Nordic), drawing on TRANSCEND’s and ICL’s efforts to promote peace studies around the world, but organizationally independent of either (see www.transcend.org and www.globalsolidarity.org).

NIFF will, at least to start with, be “virtual” until somebody also offers NIFF an abode in real space, somewhere in the Nordic countries.

This is a proposal for a five point program:

(1) NIFF will promote peace by peaceful means by exploring and help enact nonviolent initiatives to defuse dangerous conflict formations (which are much broader than the conflict arenas the media and the governments/diplomats focus on).

(2) NIFF will work actively with peace movements and other NGOs that cannot be suspected of having hidden geopolitical/economic agendas, and develop ideas in dialogue with them.

(3) NIFF will generally work in the three Scandinavian languages, and in English.

(4) NIFF will as soon as possible establish a web-site with research papers by its members; numbered by the order in which they appear. Later they may also be available as working papers, but they will always be freely available through downloading.

(5) NIFF will establish a press service in Nordic languages for adequate journalistic coverage of important conflict formations, including the situation of “minorities” in the Nordic countries. Some of this will be formatted for quick downloading and local posting in shopping centers etc.

The NIFF initiative was launched in this white house

TFF and NIFF

“TFF is proud to be associated with this initiative. Nordic peace research has been successfully institutionalized as university institutes and state institutes over the mentioned four decades. This is well and good, but TFF has, from its inception in 1985, embodied two additional ideas or visions; first, that peace research must also develop outside and independent of these structures. Second, that at least some peace research must be useful to those hit by violence and inform its research by conducting empirical work in conflict regions. In short, research through engagement, not only through in-house academic exchanges and books.

NIFF’s aims and values are completely compatible with TFF’s and we can be highly useful to each other. Sometimes the search and re-search has to imply that we re-start and re-think what it is we want to do as intellectuals-cum-activists.

NIFF will solidify the triangular relations between TRANSCEND, The International Correspondence League ICL/Peace Practise and TFF. Kai is also a TFF Peace Antenna; Johan Galtung – a friend and TFF adviser – and I met for the first time in 1974 in a place that later on should become fateful for European politics and world order: the former Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik and the Inter-University Centre there to be more precise. It feels right to re-launch a peace research effort based on old ideals – such as nonviolence – and apply them to the hard problems of the contemporary world.

I believe that the end of the Cold War since 1989 and the conflicts in the Balkans also justify a re-think of what peace research can do and what roles it should play – and perhaps not play.

One more reason explains why TFF engages in this. We share the view that it is important to try to re-turn to a Nordic research focus which we more or less left with the publishing of “Nordic Security in the 1990s. Options in the Changing Europe” edited by me and published by Pinter Publishers in 1992 (see this site’s Publications section).

It seems to me that it is time to take up questions such as:

* How do people around the world see the Nordic countries, their cultures and policies? What have Nordic societies meant to others; until recently, they seem to have been a model or ideal to many?
* Do they individually and as a region have a special contribution to make to the deeply problematic world order developments these years?
* How come that Nordic security and foreign policies transformed themselves towards European integration and even full endorsement of NATO war-fighting in Europe with so little debate?
* How did each of the Nordic governments manage over a few years to become so loyal to European integration – and now European military integration and build-up – and skip the “Nordicness” of our policies, cultural values and philosophies which are rooted in centuries of traditions and popular visions.
* The Nordic values and social models could, and I believe still can, make an significant contribution to bigger future fields such as world development and social justice, security, peace and democratization. The question is how?

This autumn, TFF will launch a section on our homepage about this European military integration and its implication – helping everybody who cares to re-search what is going on underneath the official rhetoric. It also coincides with Sweden taking over the EU chairmanship from New Year 2001.

And one more thing: NIFF was launched at Stocken on the West coast of Sweden, a place of great natural beauty and peace. We were hosted by two remarkable people who embody peace in every step they take – Erni and Ola Friholt. PressInfo 98 will actually be about them!”

The focus is Nordic, but it is the Nordic region in a wider world perspective. So, we would love to have comments and ideas to all this from people around the world,” ends Jan Oberg.