Conflict Prevention from Rhetoric to Reality: Opportunities and Innovations

There is a widening range of organizations that are being called upon to do conflict prevention. These actors range from the corporate sector and NGOs to regional and multilateral economic and political organizations, with diverse mandates, leadership, funding, and operational activities. Conflict Prevention from Rhetoric to Reality, Volume 2: Opportunities and Innovations offers a critical evaluation of existing and emerging approaches to applied conflict prevention. An international team of practitioners and researchers with rich theoretical and field experience examine the analytical requirements to understand the causes of conflict and link these causes to a range of response options by a variety of relevant actors. They also discuss the newest frontiers of conflict prevention, including the threat of terrorism and the role of the private sector. While development practitioners, the corporate sector, foreign policy makers, and NGOs are coming to conflict prevention from different directions, they nevertheless reflect common objectives, and need to be able to speak each other's language. The volume highlights innovative approaches to allow individuals within these organizations to understand how they can best use the array of political, economic, social and developmental instruments available to them to be better analysts and to provide for more effective responses.

Albrecht Schnabel is Senior Research Fellow at swisspeace, Bern. David Carment is Director of the Centre for Security and Defense Studies and Associate Professor of International Affairs at Carleton University, Ottawa.