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Accord issue 22 (2011)

Paix sans frontières: building peace across borders

War does not respect political or territorial boundaries. It forms part of wider, regional conflict systems through dynamics that cross borders: refugee flows, nomadic armed groups like the LRA, narcotic or criminal networks, blood diamonds, or psycho-social ties.

But there is a policy gap across borders and in borderlands where statehood and diplomacy can struggle to reach, as international conflict responses focus on states for analysis and intervention.

This twenty-second Accord publication looks at how peacebuilding strategies and capacity can ‘think outside the state’: beyond it, through regional engagement, and below it, through cross-border community or trade networks.

"In many of today's wars, violence is driven in part by cross- border regional conflict dynamics. And, as this important new publication from Conciliation Resources makes clear, failure to take the regional dimension of civil wars into account increases the risk that peacebuilding strategies will fail. What is needed, in addition to the statebuilding policies that are now de rigeur in post-conflict environments, are strategies that address cross- border conflict dynamics with the relevant regional states and cross-border communal engagement."

Andrew Mack, Director of the Human Security Report Project (HSRP) at Simon Fraser University and a faculty member of the university's School for International Studies.

Edited by Alexander Ramsbotham and I William Zartman, Accord issue 22 (2011) includes 20 case studies from Asia, Europe and the Caucasus, to East, Central and West Africa, Central America and the Middle East. Articles also explore cross-border peacebuilding from global, systems analysis and legal perspectives; and focusing on politics, governance and security, social and community relations, and trade and natural resources.

"This Accord edition is a valuable compendium for peacebuilding practitioners who strive to combine theory and practice in converting borders into crossings. The link between human security and conflict transformation across borders is both instructive and illuminating."

Meenakshi Gopinath, Founder and Honorary Director, Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace, New Delhi

 

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