News article added on Mar 12 2008
Europe and South Asia are far more nearly engaged today than they were twenty years ago, and there is growing interest in cooperative peacemaking and peace-building. For effective cooperation, both regions need a better understanding of each others’ policy formulations.
This project, which has received a grant of €770,000 from the European Union, will contribute to this end through collaborative work, curriculum development, staff exchanges.
Europe and South Asia are far more nearly engaged today than they were twenty years ago, and there is growing interest at the policy level in working together in peacemaking and peace-building. For effective cooperation, both regions need a better understanding of each others’ policy formulations; the best way to fill this gap is by training scholars and future policymakers.
The chief obstacle to European and South Asian collaboration in peacemaking and/or peace-building is ignorance of each other’s policy histories, leading often to misinterpretation due to lack of continuous interaction. Because there are very few institutions creating the human and knowledge resources that could be deployed when opportunities for collaboration are created, the opportunities often dwindle off. The project will contribute to supporting future developments through collaborative curriculum and human resource/faculty development, to produce 4 course modules on European and South Asian peacemaking and peace-building. Course modules will be introduced into teaching programs by the applicant and partner universities, web-linked and disseminated through universities networks. As peacemaking and peace-building are potential growth areas for EU-South Asia collaboration, the course modules will help European and South Asian policymakers and practitioners cooperate more effectively in the short term; and in the median to long-term, it will help produce informed next generation policy-makers and practitioners.
The key areas of focus for the project are
Peacemaking at home:
Both Europe and South Asia have engaged with difficult identity and border conflicts in their regions, with varying degrees of success. How did each region engage with its conflicts, how did policies evolve, what were the lessons learned, how were they applied, what are the tested and/or emerging models for making, keeping and building on peace at the local, national, federal and regional levels? Are there structural parallels to be drawn between selected European and South Asian peace processes such as Kashmir and Northern Ireland or France-Germany and India-Pakistan, and how much do they alter if looked at from the pre to post conflict phases? What do the differences illuminate?
Coincidentally, Europe and South Asia are also grappling with their several diversities at this time, and the different models of governance and statehood that each region contains are once again being scrutinized for lessons on how best to incorporate pluralism into administrative and social institutions, so that no group feels marginalized. What have been the experiences with these different models, how far are they adaptive to peace and security needs? What are best practices in each region, are they normative and in which way?
Collective Security
European countries have long looked to collective security mechanisms as a means of preventing their disputes from turning into violent conflicts, and have to a large extent succeeded in this goal through European integration. South Asian countries have eschewed collective security in their region but many South Asian countries have entered bilateral and multilateral security arrangements. There is today an emerging “wisdom” that peace in a conflict affected neighbourhood can only be established through collective security – but collective security only becomes possible when the countries of the region decide war is too costly, as European countries found after WWI and II. Does South Asia have to undergo the same trajectory or are there other routes to collective security? Can economic integration pave the way, as is the ASEAN hope?
Peace-building Abroad (including human security and sustainable development)
Europe and South Asia are both deeply engaged in peacekeeping and peace-building activities abroad – in fact India, Pakistan and Bangladesh contribute the vast majority of UN peacekeepers – but while the European countries are now working to integrate peace-building capacities, the South Asian countries have not considered pooling experience or building common best practice doctrines. With one qualifier – they have started, through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), to pool best practices on sustainable development initiatives, of which South Asia has a rich tradition, and on disaster management, health, environment and poverty reduction.
What are the peace-building lessons learned from South Asian initiatives in human security and sustainable development? If we pool South Asian peacekeeping experiences, will a doctrine of practice emerge? How will it compare to European peace-building ideas?
The Partners are:
Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia University.
www.jmi.nic.in (Lead parter)
Centre for International Studies, Dublin City University
Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict, Queen’s University of Belfast
Social Sciences Department, Lahore University of Management Studies, Pakistan
Website of lead partner, Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India