Positive and sustainable peace
Activist poster displayed in the streets of New York, United States, May 2017
Credit: Lucile Maertens
Summary
Historically, peace has mainly been studied from the angle of its treaties. During the 1950s, peace studies reinterpreted the definition of peace and violence: no longer was peace considered simply as the absence of conflict. The social and economic inequalities endangering a more comprehensive form of peace are also denounced.
Historically, the study of peace has focused mainly on peace treaties, like the Peace of Westphalia treaties (1648) that ended the Thirty Years War and established the international system based on the coexistence of sovereign states, the Congress of Vienna (1814) that ushered in the Concert of Nations, and the Treaty of Versailles (1919) ratified between France and Germany after the First World War. It was not until the 1950s that peace studies emerged as an independent discipline, reinterpreting the definition of peace and violence and inspiring a range of intervention tools that are still in use today.
Peace studies
Montesquieu observed how the mechanisms of commerce advance peace in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), while Kant, in his essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795), outlined the various conditions necessary to achieve perpetual peace between republics, based on universal reason and the institutionalization of interactions between states. These ideas were subsequently reworked, notably in theories of democratic (or liberal) peace – highlighting the fact that peace studies can draw upon a long history of philosophical and religious thought on this subject. Nonetheless, academic research has focused above all on seeking to understand conflict.
Inspired by the normative ambition of advancing peace, initial studies of peace undertaken in the United States and Europe during the 1950s started out by undertaking a systematic analysis of war. Working at the intersection of several different disciplines, these researchers adopted a positivist, scientific approach motivated by a concern to legitimize their research with the realist school that held sway in international relations, for whom they were linked with the idealism of the inter-war period.
The creation of the International Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO, 1959), the Journal of Peace Research (1964) and then the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI, 1966) represented landmarks in the institutionalization of this research field. Often linked, sometimes controversially, with pacifist and nonviolence movements, the discipline has since expanded substantially in both methodology and thematic reach, blurring the boundaries with other research fields such as critical security studies. The work of Johan Galtung and the development of concepts of positive peace and structural violence remain its most notable contributions.
Positive peace and structural violence
In his editorial for the first of the Journal of Peace Research, Galtung outlined the binary aspect of the peace concept: negative peace, i.e. “the absence of violence, absence of war”, and positive peace, meaning “the integration of human society.” This definition of positive peace evolved in parallel with the reconceptualization of violence. In response to Marxist critiques expressed during the Vietnam War, favoring a more radical and grounded field of study, Galtung reformulated the foundations of peace research by starting with violence (physical and psychological). He distinguished personal violence (intentional or unintentional) from structural (or indirect) violence, manifest or latent. Intrinsically linked with social injustice, structural violence is “built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances.” This paved the way for a new definition of positive peace in terms of social justice. From this perspective, social policies around education and healthcare are just as important as military policies – indeed even more so – with respect to achieving peace.
Military and Education expenditure, 2012-2016
Comment: This cloud of dots compares public spending on education (along the horizontal axis) with expenditure on the military (along the vertical axis), both amounts being expressed as share of GDP. Data are only available for a hundred or so states – which excludes China, Nigeria, and Egypt, for example – and it appears that, overall, spending on education is around double that for the army. Some countries spend more on the military sector than on education (Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Russia, Jordan, etc.) whereas, at the other end of the scale, the Scandinavian countries pay at least five times more for education than for the army.
What matters, then, is no longer to regard peace as merely the absence of conflict, but to condemn social and economic inequalities that jeopardize a more comprehensive form of peace, as well as security-focused rhetoric that seeks scapegoats (migrants, the unemployed, marginalized minorities, etc.) rather than analyzing the structural causes of violence. The realization that different forms of inequality anddiscrimination are interdependent, articulated in the concept of intersectionality, complements this analysis by highlighting the plurality of structures of domination and the cumulative impacts of inequalities relating to gender, class, race, age, disability and sexual orientation.
No systematic correlation between migration, unemployment and crime, 2017
Sustaining peace
In 1976, Galtung proposed three methods for maintaining peace: the dissociative approach (peacekeeping), the resolution approach (peacemaking) and the associative approach (peacebuilding). These concepts were taken up by the UN and still underpin contemporary intervention policies. Peace is often at the heart of the interventionist discourse, which focuses on democratic peace in particular. Building on the empirical evidence that liberal states do not engage in war between themselves, Michael Doyle identifies three pillars – economic, institutional, and ideological – that explain the peace between liberal democracies. Liberal peace theories, which have since been criticized, remain key instruments for justifying some international interventions.
If the definition of peace itself remains contested, the interdependency of security, human rights, economic development and social justice is an established fact. At a time when peace negotiations persist in excluding a large number of stakeholders, women in particular, an inclusive approach to peace seems more consistent with the goal of “sustaining peace” affirmed by the UN alongside its 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.
Female participation in peace negotiations, 1992-2011
Comment: In 2012, UN Women published a report (Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations: Connections between Presence and Influence) which used a sample of 31 peace negotiations to assess the proportion of women who participate in these processes. This was very low until the late 2000s (around 10% of the negotiators, signatories, and witnesses) and before 2008 there were no women among the head mediators. Negotiations held at the end of this period (2008-2011) show an improvement, with the proportion of women varying from 20 to 30% depending on particular cases and functions.
- Westphalia
- Signed in 1648 by the countries of Europe (except for England and Russia), the treaties of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Years War (Sweden, France, Spain and the Germanic Holy Roman Empire). In addition to reshaping the geopolitical map of central Europe, they enshrined new political principles: 1/ a gradual secularization of politics, 2/ the collapse of the hegemonic, imperial and Catholic policies of the Hapsburgs, which were succeeded by a concept of political and religious balance to ensure peace in Europe, 3/ the strengthening of the identity and independence of states with the establishment of precise borders recognized by all, and within which the prince or monarch was sovereign, 4/ the establishment of standing armies. The terms Westphalian “order” or “model” are used in the context of these treaties.
- states > State
- The state is a political system that is centralized (unlike the feudal system), differentiated (from civil society, public/private space), institutionalized (institutions are depersonalized), territorialized (a territory whose borders mark the absolute limit of its jurisdiction), that claims sovereignty (holding ultimate power) and that bears responsibility for ensuring its population’s security. In public international law, the state is defined as a population living on a territory defined by borders subject to a political authority (the national territorial state).
- Nations > Nation
- Political community based on an awareness of shared characteristics and/or a will to live together. It is common practice to contrast political and cultural concepts of the nation – which in practice are mutually influential and tend to converge. In the political concept, the nation is invented and produced by a state: the territory precedes the nation and defines its contours (this is known as the French concept, based on the republican melting pot and jus soli, right of the soil). In the cultural understanding of nation, a shared common culture produces the nation. The national project consists in bringing this population together on a single territory (the cultural or romantic or German concept of the nation, based on jus sanguinis, right of blood). The latter concept intrinsically produces conflicts and can lead to ethnic cleansing or genocide (Nazi Germany, Greater Serbia, etc.).
- institutionalization > Institutionalization
- Institutionalization refers to the process by which society’s workings are organized on a long-term basis. It includes the creation and implementation of systems of rules, standards, routines, roles and beliefs shared by a social group. This process concretizes generally held values in the form of enduring institutions, generally formal and codified (law, courts, parliament, currency, church, marriage, etc.). The term is also used of the creation of organizations charged with implementing a political decision. Conversely the permanence of institutionalized practices can be challenged by a process of institutional dismantling in which the codified system is transformed, replaced or abandoned.
- realist > Realism
- A theoretical stance according to which international relations are built on a dichotomy of internal and external factors and which postulates the central role of states. These compete for power in order to ensure their own survival in an international environment lacking any supra-national authority, where war is consequently always on the cards.
- security > Security
- A set of representations and strategies developed by an individual or collectivity to reduce the threats to which they feel exposed. At the international level, security may consist of: 1) an unstable, precarious balance between the security of different nations, underpinned by their degree of power; 2) the concerted organization of this balance (international security); 3) the establishment of a security regime imposed on all states that have signed up to it (collective security). Above and beyond any tangible threat, the language of security tends to represent objects or groups of people as dangers for the security of states, notably in order to justify particular security policies (state of emergency, military action, closing of borders, etc.).
- peace > Peace
- The definition of peace is much debated. A restrictive definition sees peace simply as an absence of conflict (negative peace). Peace Studies reinterpreted this definition to include the conditions necessary for peace – positive peace must be an integral aspect of human society. Combined with the concept of structural violence, positive peace was then defined more broadly to include social justice. Among the different theories of peace, the sometimes criticized notion of democratic or liberal peace asserts that the liberal democracies do not go to war with each other and only fight against non-liberal states (this approach qualifies Kant’s postulate in Perpetual Peace, 1795).
- structural violence > Structural Violence
- Defined by Johan Galtung, structural violence is a form of violence that “is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances.” Intrinsically linked to social injustice, its indirect nature sets it apart from personal violence of a physical or psychological nature, whether deliberate or not. Structural violence may be manifest or latent and is reflected in all mechanisms and institutions that suppress human development, including economic inequalities and the unequal distribution of political power.
- unequal > Inequality
- Unequal distribution of goods, material and/or non-material, regarded as necessary or desirable. Beyond income inequality (national, international and global), cumulative inequalities can also be measured with respect to accessing public services (healthcare, education, employment, housing, justice, effective security, etc.) and accessing property and natural resources more generally, and also relative to political expression or the capacity to respond to ecological risks. When these inequalities are based on criteria prohibited by law, they constitute discrimination.
- migrants > Migration
- Movement of people leaving their country of origin permanently (emigration) to relocate to another country (immigration), which might be voluntary or forced (war, poverty, unemployment, human rights violations, climate factors, etc.), and which often involves temporary stays of varying duration in several transit countries. Migratory flows, which are an integral component of humanity’s history, give rise to a range of public policy measures linked to specific political, economic and cultural contexts and understandings of nationality. Host states seek to organize immigration, sometimes to attract it (need for labor, exploitation of specific territories, naturalizations, etc.), and most often to restrict it (border controls, quotas, residence permits, etc.). In most cases the states of origin seek to maintain relations with their nationals and diaspora communities living abroad.
- minorities > Minority
- Any social group which finds itself in an inferior situation relative to a dominant group in a given society. This situation can be expressed quantitatively, but can also be defined with reference to qualitative data of a cultural nature (linguistic, religious, ethnic, national, even social minorities). Membership of a minority can be a matter of self-identification or an ascribed identity; it may bring with it various kinds of discrimination. The presence of minorities can give rise to social engineering policies (positive or negative discrimination), or demands for protection and recognition.
- intersectionality > Intersectionality
- Intersectionality illustrates the interplay of multiple structures of domination and the cumulative impacts of inequalities relating to gender, class, race, age, disability and sexual orientation. Research undertaken on intersectionality during the 1990s, analyzing the discrimination experienced by black women in the United States, demonstrated the cumulative effects of a combination of social relations – showing that economic relations were not ultimately the sole determining factor. By extension, an intersectional approach reflects the connections between these inequalities – their entanglement – in developing strategies of resistance and mobilization.
- gender > Gender
- Historic, social, cultural and psychological construction of a binary categorization between sexes (men/women) and between the values and representations associated with them (masculine/feminine). Arising from the feminist works of the 1970s, the concept of gender spread through the United States during the 1980s and then in Europe from the 1990s before being taken up in the literature on sexual minorities. The gender concept views relations between the sexes as a power relationship (historically constructed around the material and symbolic subordination of women compared to men) that cannot be isolated from other power relationships such as social class, race, age or disability.
- race > Race
- A homogenous biological group in the animal kingdom, distinct from the rest due to its hereditary physical characteristics. Although scientific studies have endlessly demonstrated that human beings form a single race, several political doctrines since the 19th century have used the notion to distinguish human populations, this despite the recognition of fundamental human rights and successful prosecutions in many countries and at the international level (Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948). The notion of race is now used in a very different way – which can, however, lead to confusion – in official statistics, positive law and some social science research, notably in the United States and Canada, to describe and analyze the social organization and values of different ethnic communities.
- peacekeeping > Peacekeeping
- The UN defines peacekeeping as “a technique designed to preserve the peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted, and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers” (Capstone Doctrine, 2008). It is different from peacemaking, which relates to conflicts currently under way, and to peace enforcement, which involves coercive measures including the use of force. The concept of peacebuilding refers both to the complex process of creating the conditions for sustainable peace and to targeted measures designed to reduce the risk of a return to conflict and to lay the foundations for sustainable development. These are the principles that guide the conduct of peace missions – principles that have at times attracted criticism.
- democracies > Democracy
- A political system based on sovereignty of the people, in which the right to govern depends on acceptance by the people. Inspired by the model set up in Ancient Greece and the individual liberties promoted by liberalism, democracy today is mainly representative and based on the principle of citizens’ equality (elections by universal suffrage). It cannot be dissociated from respect for fundamental human rights, which include freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of information, and so on. While it has gradually become universalized and is tending to become the norm, it does not refer to a single model since it always depends on the social and cultural context in which it is implemented, which varies from one place to another and according to time period.
- human rights > Human rights
- These are the fundamentally inalienable and universal rights and duties of human beings, which are indefeasible and universal. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these were limited to “natural rights” (basic freedoms considered to be allied to human nature) but human rights have now been expanded to include civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights on the basis of human freedom and dignity. Human rights have been enshrined in the constitutions of most democratic regimes. They are also subject to many protective provisions at both regional and international levels.
- negotiations > Negotiation
- Practice which aims to secure agreement between public or private actors, satisfying the participants’ material and symbolic interests by means of mutual concessions. International negotiations are one of the methods of peacefully resolving disputes and can be bilateral (between two actors) or multilateral (three or more actors). They often result in an official document (joint declaration, peace agreement, trade treaty, international convention). Collective negotiation (or collective bargaining) refers to negotiations within a company between the employer and workforce representatives (generally belonging to trade unions) regarding the application of labor law.
- 2030 Agenda > Agenda 2030
- The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an action plan adopted by the UN in September 2015. Its purpose is to eradicate poverty and protect the planet by the year 2030. It includes 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) shared by all states and focusing on five areas: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships. On a voluntary basis, each state gives an annual account of progress achieved. Agenda 2030 replaced the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (2005-2015).
- sustainable development > Sustainable development
- Sustainable development is a form of development which fulfils present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their own needs. The concept is defined in the UN Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, which recognizes the compatibility between a market economy and environmental protection; as such, it has been criticized in some quarters. Based on three foundations (economic, social, and environmental), sustainable development seeks simultaneously to attain economic growth, greater social equity in order to limit global inequality, and respect for the ecological balance.