Archive for the ‘Peace and Conflict’ Category

Introduction: Accountability in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity

BY JO-MARIE BURT
In spring 2008, the Transitional/Transnational Justice Working Group, a group of Mason faculty and graduate students interested in issues of global justice and human rights, launched the Human Rights, Global Justice and Democracy Project. The project’s central concern is to examine how societies that experienced mass atrocity cope with the legacies of violence [...]

Posted by admin on January 24th, 2010 No Comments

Are We There Yet: Ideas For Evaluating the Progress of Transitional Justice

BY SUSAN BENESCH
Once unimaginable, prosecutions for state-sponsored atrocities are multiplying rapidly.  They continue to deliver new milestones, both by expanding transnationally and by reaching previously untouchable defendants. Some trials astonish even their own proponents, as this symposium illustrated: Peru’s conviction of its former head of state Alberto Fujimori in April left Ronald Gamarra Herrera pinching [...]

Posted by admin on December 15th, 2009 No Comments

The Role of Criminal Prosecutions in Response to Grave Human Rights Violations at the Local, National and International Levels: the Case of Uganda

BY STEPHEN A. LAMONY
Over the past two decades, Uganda has witnessed an increasing number of fundamental discussions on accountability for mass human rights atrocities at the local and national level. Interestingly, however, there has never been any local form of criminal prosecutions for grave human rights violations. To explain this reality, one has to look [...]

Posted by admin on December 15th, 2009 1 Comment

Reversing Accountability in South Africa: From Amnesty to Pardons and Non-Prosecutions

BY HUGO VAN DER MERWE
In 1995, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) introduced a mechanism that offered a morally compromised form of accountability: amnesty in exchange for public disclosure of truth.  While this was a bitter pill to swallow for the South African public and an unacceptable deal for many victims, it gained [...]

Posted by admin on December 15th, 2009 No Comments

Atrocity in Context

BY SOLON SIMMONS
There is no part of the world more crucial to the strategic interests of the United States as is the Middle East. While the traditional problems of the regulation of international affairs are at play there, Arab language satellite channels have created a new force in the region, and Al Jazeera is one [...]

Posted by admin on July 6th, 2009 No Comments

Security Building & Youth in Morocco

BY VANESSA NOËL BROWN
Located at the intersection of Africa and Europe, the kingdom of Morocco has long been a melting pot and a colorful example of globalization. Since the 9th century AD Berbers, Muslims and Jews lived, worked and studied together in this region. Today’s youth bulge in North Africa can be viewed as both [...]

Posted by admin on November 11th, 2008 No Comments

Blood Diamonds of the Digital Age: Coltan and the Eastern Congo

BY JEFFREY W. MANTZ
Nobody likes to hear about blood diamonds, that something venerated as our culture’s highest token of commitment and affection comes to us haunted by specters of oppression, cruelty and murder. It took a 2006 film with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role of a diamond-embezzling South African mercenary and a $100 million production [...]

Posted by admin on November 11th, 2008 No Comments

The Impacts of Globalization on Tajikistan: New Roles for Conflict Resolution

BY SANDRA I. CHELDELIN AND SUSAN F. HIRSCH

In 2004, in collaboration with a local NGO in Dushanbe, our faculty at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution launched a multiyear project to increase conflict resolution capacities of local actors in Tajikistan. We worked with government, religious and academic leaders, created a conflict resolution resource center [...]

Posted by admin on June 18th, 2008 No Comments

Property, Lawfare, and the Cyprus Impasse

BY REBECCA BRYANT
By the time this article appears, the presidential election campaigns now in full swing in Cyprus should have resulted in a new president for the Republic. It is quite likely, according to many polls, that the new president will also be the old one. Tassos Papadopoulos, president since 2003, presided over an eventful five [...]

Posted by admin on March 20th, 2008 No Comments

Conflict Resolution Networks

BY SUSAN ALLEN NAN

The rise of the network society has shaped both conflict and conflict resolution. Conflict between the global network of capital exchange and locally rooted meaning can be seen in many international conflicts today. Castells argues that many of today’s conflicts are protests (by Zapatistas, American militia, Aum Shinrikyo, al-Qaeda, and the anti-globalization [...]

Posted by admin on March 20th, 2008 No Comments