A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

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Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com Conflict prevention and resolution Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN in the lead up to the Iraq war, is reported as saying governments need to re-learn an understanding of the limits of power, broaden the means of tackling conflict and modify their attitudes to the use of force. They should support the UN at all times. Positive News, Spring, 2007 contains short articles, including one about the World Court Project UK which is attempting to bring legal pressure on nuclear armed states through the World Court and Rethink Trident. The Ministry of Defence spends £33bn annually on the military, almost 10% of all the tax we pay, yet only about 3% of this sum is spent on conflict prevention. How much better it would be to spend the major part of these resources on promoting peace and reconciliation and policies of global economic and social justice. UK is far behind other nations such as Norway, Canada and Germany in building resources fit to help in conflict prevention and resolution. Scilla Elworthy, member of the World Future Council, says: “Since the early 1990s almost twice as many wars have been ended by negotiated settlement rather than by military victory. Yet peace-building efforts receive negligible funding; for every dollar spent on conflict prevention around the world, nearly two thousand times as much is spent on defence and the military.” Increasing UK Security through non-military prevention and resolution of conflict The evidence demonstrates that non-military conflict prevention and resolution is far more effective than military intervention. This case is made convincingly in Scilla Elworthy’s comprehensive paper, Increasing UK Security through Non- military Prevention and Resolution of Conflict, delivered to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues (APPGCI). Here is a brief summary and edited extracts from that paper. However, it is well worth studying in full. What does war prevention mean? While the term is in common currency in Europe, it is still unfamiliar in the UK and more so in the US. It means the systematic use of proven, non-aggressive methods to prevent or stop killing: What war prevention means peace-keeping the introduction of trained inspectors to detect and report killing, ethnic cleansing, torture, rape and other forms of violence civilian protection control of arms entering the region incentive schemes to collect weapons law enforcement bringing warlords and militias under control Track II or 'back channels' diplomacy muscular support for locally-based opposition to dictators providing independent information daily training of mediators and bridge-builders active reconciliation measures 188
Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com The report points out the fundamental inconsistencies in British policy, how Britain falls behind other countries and the EU in allocating resources to peace building and training people in these skills. Whilst force is sometimes needed, research shows that in general, prevention and peace building are not only more successful but far less expensive. A fundamental inconsistency in British defence policy MoD emphasises the importance of conflict prevention activity supported by confidence and security building measures to help create transparency and trust. It vaunts its efforts to counter the threat from the proliferation of conventional arms whilst at the same time spending some £426 million to subsidise British arms sales. The UK regularly achieves second or third place in sales of arms to developing countries. The main response to terrorist attacks, especially from the United States, has been military action in Afghanistan, the extension of military bases into Central Asia, support for counter-insurgency activities in numerous countries and the war with Iraq. Others have taken quite different approaches to problems of political violence and conflict, approaches that seek to prevent conflict while understanding some of its root causes. In particular, there is a growing understanding of the classic cycle of violence. This cycle is evident in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in central Africa and repeatedly in different regions of former Yugoslavia; if unbroken, this cycle ensures that conflict follows conflict. Break the cycle of violence A key part of conflict is the cycle of violence. Scilla Elworthy argues that, to break the cycle, effective intervention must address the physical, the political and the psychological security of people trapped in violence; all are equally important, and one without the other is insufficiently strong to break the cycle. In every case, the people involved in situations of violence must be supported in the development of their own resources for transformation. What works – grounds for hope It always makes sense to study what works. It is easy to feel hopeless about the enormity of the challenges that face us in transforming human addiction to war and violence. After all, there never has been a time when there were no wars. We need the encouragement of successful initiatives that provide grounds for hope, and the inspiration of good news. Evaluation and cost effectiveness: "bang for the buck" Recent experience both in Afghanistan and Iraq has conclusively demonstrated the need for greater emphasis on non-military measures in Britain's defence and foreign policy forward planning. These measures are relatively cheap as well as cost-effective ways of preventing war, reducing the destructive effects of conflict, or enabling those caught in a cycle of violence to break out of it. From the available figures it appears likely that non-military interventions, while slower, not only tend to cause less destruction than bombing or armed intervention, but also work better in saving lives. They are definitely far cheaper. In 1999 the Oxford Research Group examined 240 cases of non-violent intervention in conflict in different parts of the world and the fifty most effective of these in "Conflict Prevention Works: 50 stories of people resolving conflicts". These case studies show that small groups of highly motivated people, determined not to use weapons, can achieve extraordinary results in preventing or stopping killing. These 189
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