New research initiative explores post-accord peacebuilding

The Kroc Institute’s Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict (RIREC) was officially launched at a workshop held on September 24- 25, 2001 at Notre Dame. This new research project focuses on post-accord peacebuilding and the difficult but pressing questions of how to create a sustainable, just peace after a period of protracted conflict.

The launching seminar was attended by a multidisciplinary team of 15 scholars and practitioners working around three research themes: violence, youth/the next generation, and transitional justice. At the heart of the project is an effort to develop new theoretical lenses for comprehending the nuances of post-accord peacebuilding, which will integrate conflict management and conflict transformation concerns, techniques and methodologies. The project will test these lenses against cases and develop relevant policy recommendations.

During the two days of discussions, RIREC participants laid the foundations for the next two years of research. The seminar participants worked in three related research clusters, each representing a key dimension of the post-accord landscape, as well as in full plenary sessions. In addition to identifying research areas they will each examine during the next two years, participants also considered the critical relationship between the three thematic areas.

The participants concluded that each cluster will be responsible for producing a volume and the three cluster directors will edit a synthetic volume. Post-accord peacebuilding has yet not been conceptualized in this fashion, much less systematically studied as a dynamic process generating its own outcomes and patterns of behavior.

RIREC Research Clusters

Violence
Led by John Darby, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the Kroc Institute, this research cluster examines the perpetuation of violence after the accord is signed, either as a vestigial (but nonetheless powerfully destructive) force, or as a tactic used by hard-liners and rejectionists to derail the implementation phase of the peace process.

Cluster participants: Marie-Joelle Zahar, Department of Political Science, University of Montreal; Virginia Gamba, South Africa; Dominic Murray, Director Center for Peace and Development Studies, University of Limerick

The Next Generation
Led by Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Butler University, the project’s second dimension explores the relationships of this violence to the availability of recruits from among the marginalized youth on all sides of the conflict, and, more broadly and programmatically, the conditions under which youth might resist recruitment into gangs and militia, contributing instead in constructive ways to the peace process.

Cluster participants:
Edward Cairns, Department of Psychology, University of Ulster at Coleraine; Jaco Cilliers, Catholic Relief Services; Michael Wessels, Department of Psychology, Randolph-Macon College; Victoria Sanford, Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

Transitional Justice
Under the direction of Tristan Borer, Associate Professor of Government, Connecticut College, and a Visiting Fellow at the Kroc Institute during 2001-02, the third dimension of the project explores the relationship, in turn, between civil society, youth, and patterns of violence, on the one hand, and public efforts at reconciliation and other forms of transitional justice on the other.

Cluster participants:
Charles Villa-Vicencio, Executive Director, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Cape Town, South Africa; Brandon Hamber, Research Associate Democratic Dialogue, Belfast; Juan E. Mendez, Director, Center for Civil and Human Rights, Notre Dame Law School; Pablo De Greiff, International Center for Transitional Justice

 

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