The International Law of Peacebuilding: Engaging the Conflict Resolution and Peace Community

This book contributes to the debate on the international law of post-conflict peacebuilding and suggests a need for closer connections between practitioners and lawyers.

The work argues that significant benefits accrue when lawyers and conflict/peace practitioners, and scholars work with each other to develop a normative framework for building peace. It also attempts to bridge the divisions that exist between lawyers and the conflict resolution/peace community in the specific context of the international law of post-conflict peacebuilding. After introducing the key concepts of the international law of peacebuilding, the book explores aspects of the relationship between lawyers and peacebuilding practitioners and offers ideas about how this relationship might be improved. It then proceeds to identify some principles and processes developed by conflict resolution specialists that may inform and influence discrete parts of the international law of peacebuilding. The work concludes by identifying sites and ways in which international lawyers and conflict resolution/peace specialists may engage with each other to shape this branch of international law.

This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, international law and International Relations.

Omar Grech is Associate Professor within the Department of International Law, University of Malta, and is author of Human Rights and the Northern Ireland Conflict: Law, Politics and Conflict, 1921-2014 (2017).