Conflict Resolution

A comprehensive look at the different aspects of Beijing's ADIZ in the East-China Sea, including the motivations behind the move, the reaction by different countries (including Taiwan and Russia), the origins and evolution of ADIZs in international law, and the underlying conflicts between China and other nations. The paper also provides an overview of ADIZs in international law, indluding their origins and evolution. The connections between EEZs and ADIZs are also noted, together with Chinese perspectives on International Law.

Community media studies have often neglected how community media can contribute in areas ridden with conflict to more peaceful ways of cohabitation. This article aims to look in detail at how the Cyprus Community Media Centre (CCMC) has developed conflict resolution strategies to reduce the antagonism in the Cypriot society, an island divided since 1974. Then it looks at the problems and complexities that this organization has to face when trying to realize its remit, caused by the fallacies in the community media model and by the Cypriot context of conflictuality. Despite the difficulties, the CCMC illustrates that community media can play a role in conflict resolution, creating more opportunities for mutual understanding and for the humanization of the other.

"The Lisbon Treaty has equipped the European Union with more
tools in the field of foreign and security policy and provides
for a new beginning for Europe in international peacemaking.
In this report a team of researchers at the Uppsala Conflict
Data Program (UCDP) of the Department of Peace and Conflict
Research, Uppsala University, demonstrates that there is a need
for such a new start. In the documentation of EU engagement
in international affairs, the report finds the record to be below
expectations. The report also asserts that there is a potential for
the EU to take on a more significant international role.

The report recommends that the EU should refocus its international conflict activity to constructive engagements for peace and security; make more use of, and develop, its crisis management capacities; and strengthen its performance in peacekeeping. These dimensions of peacebuilding should be integrated into a new doctrine of international conflict resolution, firmly rested on the values expressed in the Lisbon Treaty. Furthermore, the EU should emphasise its role as a leading force for human rights and democracy by making its actions more effective; draw on the competence of the entire Union; and make its goals clearer and increase its visibility when cooperating with other international bodies."

The deepest level of Conflict Resolution is considered to have been attained when positivepeace and development are restored to communities experiencing violent social conflicts.However the complexity of the nature of internal conflicts in contemporary times hasgenerated confusion about both the factors that cause such conflicts; and about the bestapproaches to resolving and transforming such conflicts into a positive change for the society.The first section explains the difference between three levels of Conflict Resolution namely;conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and conflict transformation. The second part exploresthe legal and political dimensions of the concept of amnesty and how it has been a crucialtool for reconciliation, restoration of trust and confidence-building amongst disputing partiesin civil conflicts. Examples are drawn from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in SouthAfrica as well as the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme in Nigeria. The last part argues thatamnesty plays a vital role in providing a way out of deadlocked relationships betweenconflicting parties, where communication has broken down, trust has been eroded, polarisedpositions have been solidified and violence has become a viable option. However achievingthe deepest level of conflict resolution still requires a step further from amnesty, intoconstructive dialogue and collaborative problem solving until the root causes of violentprotracted social conflicts are resolved

الثأر نمط من أنماط ممارسة العنف الأولى الذى يحدث بين البشر من منطلق الحفاظ على توازن المكانة والقوة بين البشر والذى يظل مرهونا بتحقيق السلام والعدل الاجتماعى بين جماعات البشر. انه الشكل الأولى للعنف الذى يستوجب الرد ويعيد الأمور الى نصابها . وهو العنف الذى يقترن بالحياة القبلية بأعرافها السابقة على فكرة  وجود الدولة وفقا لنظرية العقد الإجتماعى. هذه الظاهرة مرتبطة بمفهوم الشرف فى مجتمعات البادية بالمنطقة العربية . ويحاول هذا المقال أن يحلل طبيعة الثأر فى المجتمعات العربية  والأسباب الاجتماعية والاقتصادية والسياسية لاستمرار ممارسات الثأر وإعادة انتاجه فى عالمنا المعاصر، وأسباب فشل الدولة الحديثة التى تأسست فى العالم العربى باعلائها لسيادة القانون فى أن تقضى على حوادث الثأر. والمقال يستند الى قراءة نقدية لدراسة أحمد أبوزيد عن الثأر.

The Earth Liberation Front is a radical environmental movement that developed from the ideological factionalization of the British Earth First! movement of the 1990s. Its ideological underpinnings are based in deep ecology, anti-authoritarian leftism highlighting its critique of capitalism, a commitment to non-violence, a collective defense of the Earth, and a warranted feeling of persecution by State forces. In its current form, the Earth Liberation Front is a transnational, decentralized network of clandestine, autonomous, cells that utilize illegal methods of protest by sabotaging and vandalizing property. The small unit cells are self-contained entities that can operate without the support of external entities such as financiers or weapons procurers. Tactical and operational knowledge is developed and shared through commercially available books written by the broader environmental movement throughout the last four decades, as well as inter-movement publications produced by the cells and distributed through numerous sympathetic websites. Membership in the Front can be understood as occurring on two levels, the covert cell level and the public support level, both of which operate in tandem to produce and publicize acts of property destruction. At the cell level, individuals conduct pre-operational reconnaissance and surveillance, develop and construct weapons systems, carry out orchestrated attacks, and announce their actions to support groups and media while maintaining internal security and anonymity. At the aboveground level, support entities help to publicize attacks carried out by cells, respond to media inquiries and other public engagements, identify and coordinate aid to imprisoned cell members, and develop and distribute sympathetic propaganda produced by, and in support of affiliated individuals. This case study uses the history of the Earth Liberation Front‟s United States attacks as its unit of analysis, and seeks to outline the ideology, structure, context and membership factors that constitute the movement.

As final preparations for the 23rd Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on 15th-17th November 2013 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, this FPC Briefing by Gilberto Algar-Faria examines the challenges Sri Lanka faces dealing with the aftermath of its civil war and recent attempts to facilitate regional autonomy through the Northern Provincial Council (NPC). It explores the tensions faced by the international community in balancing the need for reconciliation and calls for action on human rights issues.

"Armed jihad in the Islamic legal tradition has been the subject of lengthy discussions, interpretations, and deliberations among Muslim jurists and scholars for over 14 centuries. Different interpretations of the nature of armed jihad as offensive or only defensive armed conflict have been advocated depending on the interpretations of certain incidents of fighting that took place between the Prophet and the enemies of the Muslims after the flight to Medina and the Qur'ānic texts addressing these incidents. The Islamic rules developed by the classical Muslim jurists regulating the use of force considerably succeeded in humanizing the primitive war situations of their times. However, the different interpretations of the texts and contexts of these incidents of fighting, on the one hand, and the struggle to put limitations on the use of force in certain primitive war tactics and operations in order not to endanger the lives and property of enemy non-combatants without losing the war, on the other, resulted in advocating contradictory rules by jurists of the different schools of Islamic law. Therefore, the redevelopment of Islamic rules regulating the use of force in the contemporary war situations and in the light of the international treaties becomes a matter of urgent necessity for today's world peace and security.
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""Beginning in the late 1990s, the United States federal government (or, the “State”) initiated a counter-terrorism campaign directed at an emerging network of domestic environmental, and animal rights, direct action activists targeting property (e.g. vandalism, sabotage, theft and arson) under the monikers of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.  With measured pace, federally managed law enforcement agencies identified a “threat” which they perceived was growing.  The State then accelerated its observation, gathered information on the environmental and animal rights movements, and began to allocate local and national resources to address the movements’ surges. 

Ironically, the FBI acknowledged in 2005 that the number of incidents of property damage was actually decreasing, although it attributed the drop to its Operation Backfire convictions.  Nonetheless, the perceived threat of environmental and animal rights-themed property destruction was framed politically as a primary domestic threat deserving of national attention.  However, the federalized investigations of these incidents represent a divergence in traditional jurisdictional limitations of US law enforcement.  Even court records imply that the National Security Agency (NSA), typically employed for outside military operations, might have been used to conduct wiretapping domestically on these activists.

Upon deciding to engage with these movements, the US government developed laws and organizational structures for the intelligence and law enforcement community to use in their efforts to prosecute, uncover, and disrupt them.  This is not dissimilar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) counter-intelligence operations (“COINTELPRO”) of the 1960s and 1970s.  However, more pervasive than COINTELPRO, the counter-terrorism strategy, taken as a whole, has been able to incorporate all three branches of government.  The State was able to coalesce its abilities through multi-departmental taskforces built on agencies’ specialized skill sets, and through information sharing and international cooperation.  The FBI was able to make arrests and to use defendants’ testimonies, leading to indictments, arrests, and convictions.""