PEACE & CONFLICT PERSPECTIVES

Peace & Conflict Perspectives come out of the TRANSCEND program Peaceful Conflict Transformation directed by Johan Galtung, reflecting his experience with conflict during more than half a century.  Rather than critiquing-moralizing the perspectives are constructive.  Most of the conflicts are geo-political, but there are also conflicts at the micro and meso levels.

A perspective is a way of looking at a conflict.  They carry dates (06z stands for December 2006) and are sometimes updated, sometimes, maybe, dated. The numbering is by and large chronological.

The methodology is one-on-one dialogues with many parties, high and low, governmental and not--across the fault-lines gender-generation-race-class-nation/civilization-state/region. Guidelines: empathy with all parties, creativity, and non-violence.  Peace by peaceful means.

The perspective is tripartite, Diagnosis-Prognosis-Therapy: analysis,  mapping the conflict in parties, goals, and clashes and testing goals for legitimacy; forecasting what will happen without intervention and bridging legitimate goals by transcending, opening for a new reality where a sustainable solution acceptable to most may be located.

Conflict is a contradiction/clash between goals and dangerous when it leads to violent behavior and hateful attitudes. Unresolved conflict may turn very violent. But the search for acceptable and sustainable solutions is also an opportunity to create new reality. A solution is not the same as a settlement--a sheet of paper with signatures--which may or may not be a solution. Solutions are not invalid because some parties today declare them "unrealistic", meaning that they disagree. Solutions are like the seeds being sown, nurtured toward blossoming and carried by democratic dialogues of tomorrow's settlements.

This web-site is one form of communication. Another is directly with conflict parties and others, or via workshops and TRANSCEND Peace University courses on-line and on site. Some have been converted into politics; others are on the way. Many were published in Searching for Peace (with CG & K Jacobsen, London: Pluto, 2000-02).  For methods and 40 case studies see Johan Galtung, Transcend & Transform London: Pluto Boulder CO: Paradigm, 2004; in many languages.

Anybody is invited to make use of these perspectives.  Thieves are most welcome - we are not in the academic quotation game.  But if you quote the source it is kind of nice - - .

Peace is a relation, not a country or a person. So is conflict, so is violence, so is peace.  We get violence and war when conflict is handled badly, and peace when is handled well.  But the capacity to handle a conflict relation rests with countries, persons and actors in general.  A major task in today's world is to increase that capacity through a conflict transformation culture stimulating constructive, concrete, creative ideas. In a culture of peace a culture of peaceful conflict transformation is a key component.