Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Anurag Gangal
Director, Gandhian Centre for
Peace and Conflict Studies (GCPCS),
and Kuldeep Raj Sharma,
Researcher,
Department of Political Science,
Faculty of Social Science,
University of Jammu, Jammu-180006,
Jammu and Kashmir, India.
Existing System: Major purpose of this piece or article is to point out merely
various limitations of the modern conflict resolution machinery and established practices
within the given ambit of prescribed space and policy. Existing system of conflict
resolution appears to be too distant from deeper nuances of conflicts. These include such
aspects as unique and peculiar area, locality and culture specific dimensions amongst the
involved parties to a conflict. For example, in India – Pakistan conflict, short term and
long term vested interests and human psyche of the people and political elites have
seldom been taken into account in any conflict resolution venture. Even so-called
confidence building measures (CBMs) are also somewhat superficially hyped about with
all ice-creams, sweet-limes, rare wines and crowd-collecting cultural gatherings where
only those are able to come who form an elite – and thus, they have generally remained
away from the realities and pains of more recent and emerging as well as prolonged
conflicts.
Hundreds of Ways of Conflict Resolution: There are at least about 250 ways of
conflict resolution. Quite a few recent editions / publications have enlisted these methods.
For instance, among others, Gene Sharp and Joan V. Bondurant have written extensively
in this matter.1 There is, among several others, also a very comprehensive conflict
resolution portal – extremely informative and very dependable. Malaviya Centre for
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Peace Research is yet another institution providing highly useful information and
exercises in applied theory of conflict resolution – with special orientation towards Afro-
Conflict Resolution and Canada: In this surging ahead for conflict resolution,
Canada is the only country fully devoted to conflict resolution and building bridges of
understanding among different faiths, cultures and sovereign nations. Be it Sri Lankan
Crisis, victims of landmines, political asylum to persons with danger to their life or
cooperation with United Nations and University of Peace etcetera – Canada and its
citizens are doing a lot for resolving conflicts -- showing the world the path to peace and
prosperity. All other nations keep on indulging in different types of wars and conflicts
alongside their efforts towards conflict resolution. But Canada does not appear to have
such double standards. This is, indeed, a commonly known fact in international political
circles.
Diversity: Conflicts, disputes, proxy wars, wars, guerrilla warfare, cyber warfare,
terrorism, militancy, insurgency, drugs and armaments’ trade mafia and ecological
degradation among nations pose greatest threats to prospects of conflict resolution today.
Related to these is also the question of violation of human rights in different ways. This
spaceship earth.
About 41 major and perpetual conflicts are on in the world today in the form of
wars, terrorism, civil wars, insurgency, sporadic occasional violence etcetera. These
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conflicts are there mainly in 33 countries of Asia, Africa, America and Europe –
including North America, Latin America, West Europe, West Asia and Central Asia.2
If we look deeper into these countries and their conflicts (as mentioned above), it
will be easy to find that most of the major racial, ethnic, language related and perennial
religious conflicts have not found their way into the common categorization and listing of
conflicts. Therefore, in reality, the world is facing at least estimated 300 different and
Every conflict must, however, be treated as yet another opportunity for positive
conflict resolution with the help of a few select techniques from among the available
nearly 250 methods. One thing must be very clear. Waging war and finally winning it just
method of conflict resolution. Any method not in line with a “civil society” is not to be
civilian way of solving a conflictual tangle. Otherwise, no conflict in the world can ever
be solved.
There are quite a few common and established ways of resolving conflicts
especially among nations on international plane. On the social and interpersonal levels,
the law of the land and diverse pulls, pressures and communication options – formal and
this list.
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arbitration, and adjudication are not new to this world. These established methods and
global, regional and other local challenges and conflicts. See, for instance, conflicts in
conflictual field is different from what can be seen in Latin-America and in Africa (minus
South Africa). Moreover, conflicts in United States, Canada and European Countries
(minus Turkey) are quite similar. Yet their range, intensity circumstances differ a lot.
Conflicts in Turkey, South Africa and Italy are entirely different not only from one
another but also from any other country of the world. There are also some conflicts that
are very much built into the modern systems of efficiency and excellence! These conflicts
emerge from prolonged personal and institutional tensions and depressions. Social,
resolving conflicts.
and set’ system of conflict resolution will not be able to do much in the face of mundane
and varied problems such as ‘Islamism’ and not Islam, Ethnicity, Racialism, Linguistic
religion oriented cleavages, socio-political threats emerging from modern technology and
massive illiteracy, and armaments trade global and national nexus further require more
thoughtful conflict resolution modus operandi or ever new modes of conflict resolution.
away from vested interests of current type. Real vested interest that must go into evolving
this innovative global plan must be resolution of conflicts in a better and more sustained
way. Otherwise, the ongoing process of globalization will also not succeed – for obvious
reasons of prevailing conflicts in the world. Existing conflicts keep generating divisive
impetus and forces among nations and people alike. This trend has to be stopped or at
transnational active participation and continued interaction. It must not remain nearly an
exclusive domain of academic experts, political negotiators, and diplomatic officers only.
Otherwise, conflicts and their resolution will make possibilities of peace ever more
conflictual through their methodological and technical expertise quite away form realities
must, however, percolate down to every common person. That is how things have to be
planned for future. This, indeed, is a field of international and global policy making.
Establishment of democracy in every country has to be a real universal truth for conflict
resolution to succeed.
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“border-less and conflict-free world” for the emergence of a global civil society. This is a
excellence and efficiency – so necessary for globalization through free flow of interactive
information, goods, technology and efforts of people. The essence of globalization is seen
in a nonviolent and largely peaceful world. Conflict resolution and globalization are
mutually interdependent and closely linked to one another. These two are so much
technological development etcetera become, as it were, “out of bounds” for the concerned
population and inhabitants. Multiple regions of such anarchistic conflicts are not difficult
to see especially in Africa, Southeast Asia, West Asia and Central Asia etcetera. Such
regions of conflicts and pockets are living examples of “Hell on Earth!” Future “Hells”
on Earth must, however, be discouraged and not pampered in any way what so ever.
There are several ways. This is also possible through John Burton’s “provention”
and proactive prevention of prospective conflicts.3 For Burton, provention (not merely
prevention) includes better education from the time of early school days in understanding
causes of conflicts. A well groomed culture of conflict resolution is, therefore, needed in
the global civil society today. The global community of nations is, however, not giving
serious and concerted thought to the need of a ‘well groomed international system of
conflict resolution’. That is why the following type of dangerous though routine
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Such explosive conflicts are a daily affair in Middle East, Africa and
a number of Southeast Asian, Asian and Latin American Countries
(Source: http://www.backtohome.com/images/terror.jpg)
It is only above photographed type of occurrences that have paved the way to
terrorist attack on the New York Trade Centre. Events of 11 September 2001 are logical
corollary of massive violence and weapons of mass destruction available to the institution
of State and their apparent smuggling and clandestine trade through various channels.
How to relate this challenge of conflict resolution to realities of conflict “provention” and
agencies’ input and filtered reports that generally form the basis for gathering
information. On this basis, steps and policies are formulated for prevention of conflicts in
insufficient because it is done by professionals who are generally not integral actors and
participants in the concerned conflict. Instead, they are involved, at best, merely as
“Clash of Civilizations”: Quite a few authors and noted experts like Samuel P.
Huntington and others have also extended a thesis of clash of civilisations in the twenty-
Indeed, it is not always easy to agree with Huntington. Civilisations do not clash.
Ideology, economy and culture are highly technical terms and they do not entirely
international politics were not there, ‘civilisations’ still prevailed. The essence of a
civilisation are in the particular ‘way of life’, societal values, ethical ethos, set and
entertainment, and preservation, creation and evolution of knowledge (and not so much
of ‘information’) in a given social and political regime. However, the political aspects are
but off-shoots of the essence of civilisation. Therefore, civilisations can never clash. They
are permanent and ever evolving. Yes, they maybe destroyed physically by an eventuality
of the dropping of a nuclear bomb upon them as it nearly happened in the case of
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 when about 80,000 living and pulsating human
beings were killed and exhumed into thin air almost instantly. This example is merely an
maddening 50,000 nuclear arsenals resting with the United States and Russia minus other
nuclear powers today. “Every such warhead has nearly twenty times the destructive
international authority for conflict resolution on the basis of the principle of a world
federation of nations may be created with in the United Nations system of independently.
civilizations will not clash but they will be completely destroyed and annihilated.
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References
1
Sharp, Gene, The Methods of Nonviolent Action, Porter Sargent, Boston, 1973, pp. 60-70; see also Joan V.
Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, Princeton University Press, New
Jersey, 1988, pp. 36-104.
2
Http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html see also http://www.crinfo.org
3
Burton, John, Conflict: Resolution and Provention, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990; see also John
Burton and Frank Dukes, Conflict: Practices in Management, Settlement & Resolution, St. Martin's Press,
New York, 1990, specially Chapter 20.
4
Huntington, Samuel P., “The Clash of Civilisations?”, Foreign Affairs, 1993. See also
http://history.club.fatih.edu.tr/103%20Huntington%20Clash%20of%20Civilizations%20full%20text.htm
5
Gangal, S.C., Gandhian Thought and Techniques in the Modern World, Criterion, New Delhi, 1988,
pp.14-15.