Eine Stiftung für die Friedensforschung

Kurz nach ihrem Wahlsieg im Herbst 1998 verständigten sich die neuen Regierungsparteien SPD und Bündnis 90/Die Grünen im Rahmen der Koalitionsverhandlungen darauf, die Friedens- und Konfliktforschung verstärkt zu fördern. Die Koalitionsvereinbarung vom 20. Oktober 1998 formulierte im Kapitel Außenpolitik die Absicht der designierten Bundesregierung, sich "für den Aufbau einer Infrastruktur zur Krisenprävention und zivilen Konfliktbearbeitung" einzusetzen, wozu unter anderem die "finanzielle Förderung der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung" gehören sollte

The myth of liberum ius ad bellum : justifying war in 19th-century legal theory and political practice

The proposition of so-called liberum ius ad bellum claims that European states in the 19th century were no longer bound by the moral criteria of just war (bellum iustum) but that they held a sovereign right to go to war. This thesis is widely accepted among scholars of the history of international law and international relations alike. Nevertheless, the realist perspective on international relations was challenged in 19th-century international legal discourse. Several contemporary international lawyers were in favour of the legalization of international relations in order to legally ban unilateral war. Not much attention has so far been paid to the controversial debate on liberum ius ad bellum, which appears particularly in late 19th-century legal treatises. In the present article, this dispute will be analysed by comparing different normative justifications and criticism of war in 19th-century international legal doctrine. As will be shown, by confronting legal doctrine with contemporary state practice, the narrative of liberum ius ad bellum constitutes a myth in the history of international law

Harmony and resilience: US democracy promotion's basic premises

Scholarship on US foreign policy regularly claims that US democracy promotion policy is informed by a coherent and harmonious set of basic premises. In this article, I first examine the validity of this claim for US post–Cold War administrations. I find operational in US foreign policy rhetoric three stable premises: that democracy is a universal(ly aspired to) principle, that external democracy promoters are legitimately involving themselves in another country's political affairs, and that this policy endeavor is in the best interest of all involved stakeholders. Following theoretical expectations that culture and cultural aspects are relatively stable and adaptable entities and promote stability in behavior, I then pursue the question of how these premises have fared in an environment particularly challenging to their validity, namely in the case of US democracy promotion in Egypt. I show how, even in light of contradictory evidence, the basic premises remain resilient and function as a discursive structure that enables and constrains policy options

Computersimulation von Peacebuilding : Anforderungen an die Modellierung von externen Strategien am Beispiel der NATO-Simulationsprogramme ZETA und GAMMA

The following paper examines the requirements of simulating post-conflict peace-building. In particular two NATO simulation tools, named ZETA and GAMMA, are the objects of investigation. The question is to which degree these tools are able to simulate the reconstruction of war torn countries and how they can be adapted to the needs of post-conflict situations. This seems to be of interest due to the changing role of NATO. The first part of the paper tries to create a criteria for evaluation. The central categories of post-conflict peace-building are identified and combined with the lessons learned from completed or ongoing peace-building missions. Eleven core findings are identified and rephrased into requirements. In the second part, these and requirements are compared with the tools under two different aspects: to which degree a simulation is generally possible and how many of the requirements can be fulfilled by the existing scenarios. The research comes to the conclusion that ZETA fulfils the general requirements for post-conflict peace-building simulation to a high degree. Only the linearity and the missing possibility to simulate more than one external actor are missing. The ZETA scenario already includes many of the required elements. However, coordination, the correct assessment of the time dimension and the missing dilemmas were criticized. Although GAMMA can not be used to simulate all aspects of peace-building and although behavioural change is not implemented, GAMMA seems well equipped to simulate important aspects of peace-building: security, coordination and the context-factors are easily implementable. The studied scenario did unfortunately not contain many peace-building elements. The paper comes to the conclusion that the most challenging task of future research to design functioning scenarios, may it be for the planning of missions, for the training of peace-builders or for the analysis and explanation for problems in ongoing missions, would be the development of methods and approaches to identify the important factors and agents, and to quantify their value inside the tools

Bad guys, good guys, or something in between? Corporate governance contributions in zones of violent conflict

In der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung wurden Unternehmen über lange Zeit hinweg als Akteure betrachtet, die Gewaltkonflikte eher verschärfen oder verlängern. Dies wurde insbesondere durch die Forschung zu Kriegsökonomien und zur Rolle natürlicher Ressourcen in Konflikten bekräftigt. In der Global Governance-Forschung wurde in den letzten Jahren jedoch auch diskutiert, inwieweit privatwirtschaftliche Akteure bzw. Unternehmen Steuerungsleistungen erbringen können und welche spezifische Rolle sie in Konfliktregionen haben. Das Forschungsprojekt zu 'Unternehmen in Konfliktzonen' an der Hessischen Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung greift diese Debatte über die potenziell positive Rolle von Unternehmen auf und geht der Frage nach, wie und unter welchen Bedingungen Unternehmen in Konfliktzonen zu Sicherheit und Frieden beitragen. Es wird dabei angenommen, dass Unternehmen dies auf zwei unterschiedlichen Wegen tun können: erstens unintentional durch ihre Geschäftstätigkeit und zweitens durch intentionale Aktivitäten im Rahmen von Corporate Governance. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden hierzu vier Fallstudien vorgestellt: (1) die Nahrungs- und Getränkeindustrie in Ruanda, (2) das Logistikunternehmen 'Kühne+Nagel' in Nordirland, (3) der Reiseveranstalter 'Studiosus' in Israel und (4) der Mineralölkonzern 'Shell' in Nigeria. (ICG

Gendered Agency in (post-) conflict spaces. The engagement of Iraqi Women in NGOs

What role do women play in civil society in post-conflict Iraq, what kind of challenges do arise and how do they regard their own engagement relating to Iraqi society? Until now, research on Iraq post 2003 has focussed on the aftermath of war, processes of political institution building and democratization. International peacebuilding efforts in Iraq have been widely criticised by practitioners and academics. Without neglecting these critiques, I elaborate how external intervention has also created spaces for Iraqi women to exercise different forms of agency. Critical approaches in peace and conflict studies often limit so-called “local” agency to resisting liberal agendas, assuming persistent binaries between local and international spaces. I seek to outline a concept of gendered agency that integrates a relational conceptualisation of space into the hitherto applied understandings of agency. Drawing on empirical evidence from Iraq, I elaborate how a relational theory of space contributes to grasping hybrid realities and notions of agency on the ground. Beyond analysing spaces of agency for women in (post-) conflict Iraq, I discuss the value of incorporating a relational understanding of space into critical peacebuilding studies