English:Conflict, Security, and Peacebuilding
Conflict, Security, and Peacebuilding
Introduction
Conflict, Security, and Peacebuilding examines why conflicts emerge, why some become violent, how societies and international actors try to protect people, and what makes peace more durable. This aiMOOC is designed for Grades 11–13. It connects peace and conflict studies, political science, international relations, history, law, geography, sociology, and civic education.
Conflict is not the same as violence. People and groups can disagree strongly about interests, values, identity, territory, resources, or political power without using violence. The central challenge is therefore not to remove every conflict, but to create institutions, relationships, and practices that allow conflict to be handled without coercion or physical harm.
Security can also be understood in different ways. A state-centred view asks whether a country can protect its territory, institutions, and population. A human security view asks whether people can live with survival, livelihood, and dignity protected from serious threats. Peacebuilding connects these perspectives by looking beyond a ceasefire toward the conditions that make renewed violence less likely.
The image above represents Sustainable Development Goal 16, which links peaceful societies with access to justice and effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions.
Learning Goals
By the end of this course, you should be able to explain major concepts in conflict and security studies, distinguish prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, analyze a conflict without reducing it to a single cause, apply basic principles of international humanitarian law, evaluate the strengths and limits of peace operations, and design peacebuilding ideas that are inclusive, conflict-sensitive, and measurable.
You should also be able to compare state security with human security, explain why legitimacy and local ownership matter, recognize the roles of women and young people in peace processes, and assess how justice, reconciliation, security reform, and development can interact after violence.
Understanding Conflict
Conflict, Violence, and Peace
A conflict exists when actors perceive that their goals, interests, needs, identities, or values are incompatible. Conflict may occur between individuals, social groups, political organizations, states, or networks that cross national borders. It can be peaceful, competitive, institutionalized, or violent.
Direct violence includes physical attacks, killing, torture, destruction, and other immediate forms of harm. Some approaches in peace and conflict studies also use the idea of structural violence to describe avoidable harm produced by social or institutional arrangements, for example when groups are systematically excluded from basic opportunities. This is an analytical concept, so you should state clearly how you use it and what evidence supports your claim.
A useful distinction associated with peace research is between negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace means the absence of organized direct violence. Positive peace is broader: it refers to social and political conditions that allow conflicts to be managed fairly and nonviolently. A ceasefire may create negative peace without yet solving exclusion, insecurity, impunity, or distrust.
Conflict Is Usually Multi-Causal
Violent conflict rarely has one simple cause. A strong analysis separates several layers:
| Layer | Guiding question | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Structural conditions | What long-term patterns shape the conflict? | Political exclusion, unequal access to land, weak institutions, discrimination, regional inequality |
| Proximate pressures | What is making tensions worse now? | Economic shocks, disputed reforms, elite competition, armed mobilization, inflammatory rhetoric |
| Triggers | What event may accelerate escalation? | A contested election result, a violent incident, a breakdown in talks, a sudden security crisis |
| Resilience factors | What helps people resist escalation? | Trusted local leaders, courts, cross-community organizations, professional media, inclusive schools, functioning local government |
A trigger should not be confused with a root cause. If a riot follows a disputed election, the election may be the immediate trigger while deeper causes lie in institutions, inequalities, historical grievances, or competition for power.
Actors, Interests, Positions, and Relationships
A conflict map identifies relevant actors and examines what each actor says it wants, what interests may lie behind those positions, what resources and forms of power it has, and how it relates to other actors. Analysts should include not only political and military leaders but also local authorities, civil society, women’s organizations, youth groups, displaced people, businesses, journalists, religious communities, and external actors where relevant.
Positions are stated demands. Interests are the concerns or benefits behind those demands. Needs may involve safety, recognition, political voice, livelihood, or identity. Negotiations often become more flexible when parties can move from fixed positions toward underlying interests, but some conflicts also involve rights and legal obligations that cannot simply be traded away.
Escalation, De-escalation, and the Security Dilemma
Conflict can escalate through fear, retaliation, rumor, arms accumulation, exclusion, dehumanizing language, or the collapse of communication. A security dilemma occurs when one actor takes measures it sees as defensive, while another interprets those measures as threatening and responds in kind. This can produce a spiral even when neither side originally wanted a larger confrontation.
De-escalation may involve reliable communication, monitoring, confidence-building measures, humanitarian arrangements, ceasefires, third-party mediation, or political reforms. Good analysis asks which mechanism fits the specific conflict rather than assuming that one tool works everywhere.
This United Nations video introduces key ideas in conflict prevention and shows why early, political action matters before violence becomes harder to contain.
Security: From States to People
State Security, Collective Security, and Human Security
State security focuses on sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, and the ability of public institutions to protect society. Collective security refers to arrangements in which states respond through common institutions to threats to international peace and security. The United Nations Security Council is central to the UN system for this purpose.
Human security shifts attention toward people’s survival, livelihood, and dignity. The United Nations describes it as people-centred, comprehensive, context-specific, and prevention-oriented. It does not replace state security. Instead, it asks whether security policy protects people in practice and whether different risks are connected.
The Security Council chamber is a reminder that international security decisions are made through political institutions. Council decisions can authorize peace operations, sanctions, or other measures, but the Council is also shaped by state interests, voting rules, and disagreement among its members.
Security Is Multidimensional
Security risks may be military, political, economic, social, environmental, digital, or health-related. These dimensions can interact. For example, drought does not mechanically cause armed conflict, but environmental stress can increase pressure when institutions are weak, livelihoods are insecure, or groups already distrust each other. Likewise, disinformation can intensify fear, but its effects depend on social networks, media systems, and political context.
A careful analysis avoids determinism. It asks what mechanisms connect a pressure to violence, which groups are affected, which institutions can reduce risk, and what evidence would show whether the proposed relationship is real.
Security, Rights, and Legitimacy
Security policies can fail when they protect institutions while alienating the people they are meant to serve. Effective security therefore involves legal limits, oversight, accountability, and public trust. Measures that reduce one risk can create another if they discriminate, suppress lawful participation, or produce new grievances.
This is why rule of law, human rights, civilian oversight, and transparent public institutions are not separate from security. They can be part of the conditions that make security legitimate and sustainable.
International Law and the Protection of Civilians
The UN Charter and the Use of Force
The Charter of the United Nations establishes a general prohibition on the threat or use of force by states against the territorial integrity or political independence of other states. The Charter also recognizes the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs and gives the Security Council responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security.
The law governing whether force may lawfully be used is different from the law governing how an armed conflict is conducted. This distinction matters: even when parties disagree about the legality of resorting to force, the rules of international humanitarian law still apply when the legal conditions for an armed conflict are met.
International Humanitarian Law
International humanitarian law, often called IHL or the law of armed conflict, seeks to limit suffering during armed conflict. Three central rules for the conduct of hostilities are distinction, proportionality, and precautions.
| Principle | Core idea |
|---|---|
| Distinction | Parties must distinguish civilians and civilian objects from combatants and military objectives. |
| Proportionality | An attack is prohibited when expected incidental civilian harm would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. |
| Precautions | Parties must take feasible measures to avoid or minimize incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects. |
IHL also protects people who are not, or are no longer, taking part in hostilities, including the wounded, sick, detainees, and civilians under the power of a party to the conflict. It prohibits torture, hostage-taking, and other serious abuses. Humanitarian rules apply to all parties to an armed conflict as required by the relevant law.
This video from the International Committee of the Red Cross explains core rules of armed conflict and the protection of civilians.
Courts, Accountability, and Different Legal Roles
International institutions have different legal functions. The International Court of Justice settles legal disputes between states that fall within its jurisdiction and gives advisory opinions when authorized. It sits in the Peace Palace in The Hague.
The International Criminal Court is a separate institution. It prosecutes individuals for crimes within its jurisdiction when legal requirements are met. National courts remain central to accountability, and many transitional justice processes combine criminal justice with truth-seeking, reparations, institutional reform, and measures intended to prevent recurrence.
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Do not confuse these two courts: one principally decides disputes between states, while the other may prosecute individuals for international crimes within its jurisdiction.
The Peace and Security Toolkit
Conflict Prevention
Conflict prevention aims to stop disputes from becoming violent, limit escalation, or prevent renewed violence. It can include diplomacy, mediation, early warning, inclusive political reform, electoral support, local dialogue, arms-control measures, development policies, and protection of rights.
Early warning is useful only when it leads to responsible early action. Data systems can also produce bias or invade privacy, so warning mechanisms need transparent methods, human judgment, and safeguards.
Negotiation and Mediation
Negotiation is direct communication between parties seeking an agreement. Mediation adds a third party that helps the parties communicate, clarify issues, generate options, or structure a process. A mediator does not automatically impose a solution.
Good mediation depends on timing, credibility, process design, knowledge of the conflict, inclusion, and attention to implementation. A quick agreement among elites can reduce violence, but if affected communities are excluded it may lack legitimacy or ignore important needs.
Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, and Peace Enforcement
Peacemaking usually refers to diplomatic efforts to bring parties toward a negotiated settlement. Peacekeeping involves international personnel helping create conditions for lasting peace under a specific mandate. United Nations peacekeeping is guided by three basic principles: consent of the main parties, impartiality, and non-use of force except in self-defence and defence of the mandate.
The blue helmet is widely associated with United Nations peacekeeping. Peacekeepers can include military, police, and civilian personnel.
Peacekeeping should not be confused with peace enforcement. UN peacekeeping normally depends on consent and is not designed as an enforcement tool. Peace enforcement can involve coercive measures and, when authorized, military force without the consent of the main parties. The legal basis, mandate, political context, and rules for the use of force therefore matter greatly.
Humanitarian Action
Humanitarian action seeks to save lives, reduce suffering, and protect human dignity during crises. Humanitarian organizations may provide food, water, shelter, health care, family tracing, or protection services. Their work is different from political peacebuilding, even when both operate in the same place.
Humanitarian principles such as humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence are designed to enable assistance and protection. Political and military actors should understand these distinctions so that humanitarian access and trust are not casually undermined.
Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace
What Peacebuilding Tries to Do
Peacebuilding is long-term work that aims to reduce the risk of violent conflict and help societies build institutions, relationships, and capacities for sustaining peace. It may begin before violence, continue during a peace process, and remain necessary long after a formal agreement.
Peacebuilding can involve local communities, governments, civil society, regional organizations, international institutions, businesses, educators, religious leaders, and many other actors. It is not a single programme and it cannot be reduced to reconstruction alone.
The following map is a historical 2012 snapshot of locations connected at that time with the UN Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Fund. It is useful for studying the institutional geography of peacebuilding, but it should not be treated as a current operational map.
Local Ownership and Conflict Sensitivity
Peacebuilding is more likely to be legitimate when people affected by conflict participate meaningfully in defining problems, priorities, and measures of success. Local ownership does not mean that every local actor agrees, or that outside support is always harmful. It means that external actors should avoid treating communities as passive recipients and should pay attention to local institutions, knowledge, inequalities, and power relations.
Conflict sensitivity means understanding the conflict context, understanding how an intervention interacts with that context, and adapting the intervention to reduce the risk of making tensions worse. Even a well-funded project can unintentionally create resentment if benefits are distributed unfairly or if one group controls access.
Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration
Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration, often abbreviated as DDR, can help former combatants leave armed structures and build civilian lives. Disarmament addresses weapons, demobilization concerns the formal process of leaving armed groups or forces, and reintegration focuses on social and economic participation in civilian communities.
DDR is not simply a technical operation. It interacts with community security, jobs, trauma, political trust, justice, and the needs of people who suffered during conflict. Programmes must avoid rewarding violence while neglecting affected communities.
Security Sector Reform
Security sector reform, often abbreviated as SSR, seeks to make security institutions effective, accountable, lawful, and responsive to the population. It can involve police, armed forces, border agencies, justice institutions, civilian ministries, parliaments, and oversight bodies.
SSR may address professional standards, civilian control, representative recruitment, human rights training, anti-corruption safeguards, complaint mechanisms, and public accountability. Reform is difficult when institutions themselves were parties to abuse or when political leaders use security agencies for partisan goals.
Transitional Justice and Reconciliation
Transitional justice describes ways societies respond to legacies of large-scale or systematic abuse. Depending on the context, this can include criminal prosecutions, truth-seeking, reparations, institutional reform, memorialization, and guarantees of non-recurrence.
Reconciliation is not the same as forgetting. It may involve acknowledgment, accountability, repair, renewed relationships, and institutions that make coexistence safer. Different societies disagree about timing and priorities, so there is no universal sequence. Justice, peace, and reconciliation should be analyzed as interacting goals rather than as simple opposites.
Inclusion in Peace and Security
Women, Peace, and Security
UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, established a landmark international agenda on Women, Peace and Security. It emphasized women’s participation in conflict prevention and peace processes, protection of women and girls, prevention of violence, and attention to gendered needs in relief and recovery.
Women are not only victims of conflict. They may be political leaders, negotiators, peacebuilders, security professionals, activists, caregivers, combatants, journalists, educators, or community organizers. Analysis should avoid stereotypes and examine how gender interacts with age, class, ethnicity, disability, displacement, and other factors.
This photograph shows a peacebuilding discussion focused on how women contribute to transforming war into peacebuilding.
The following 2024 map is a historical snapshot of national action plans connected with the Women, Peace and Security agenda. It should be read as a dated document rather than a current count.
Youth, Peace, and Security
UN Security Council Resolution 2250, adopted in 2015, recognized the positive role of young people in preventing and resolving conflict and in making peacebuilding more inclusive and sustainable. The Youth, Peace and Security agenda highlights participation, protection, prevention, partnerships, and disengagement and reintegration.
Young people should not be framed only as a security risk. In many places they organize dialogue, monitor elections, create media, support displaced communities, build social enterprises, and connect groups across political or social divisions. Meaningful participation requires influence over decisions, not only symbolic invitations.
Institutions, Development, and Sustainable Peace
Rule of Law and Accountable Institutions
Peace is difficult to sustain when people expect that rules will be applied arbitrarily. Courts, police, public administration, legislatures, local government, and oversight bodies can reduce conflict when they are accessible, accountable, and seen as legitimate.
This does not mean that stronger institutions are always better in the abstract. Institutions also need lawful mandates, checks and balances, fair procedures, and meaningful access for groups that have previously been excluded.
Development and Peace
Poverty alone does not automatically cause war, and wealthy societies can also experience political violence. However, severe inequality, exclusion, unemployment, corruption, land disputes, or weak public services can interact with political competition and identity-based mobilization.
Peacebuilding therefore often works across development and governance. Projects should be designed with conflict sensitivity so that schools, roads, jobs, or aid do not unintentionally reinforce exclusion.
Sustainable Development Goal 16
Sustainable Development Goal 16 focuses on peaceful and inclusive societies, access to justice, and effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions. It provides a useful bridge between peacebuilding and sustainable development.
Indicators are important because broad goals such as trust, inclusion, safety, and justice are hard to measure. Good monitoring combines quantitative evidence, such as violence rates or service access, with qualitative evidence, such as interviews, perceptions, and local explanations.
Evaluating Peacebuilding
What Counts as Success?
A peace agreement is an important event, but it is not the same as sustainable peace. Evaluation can examine whether violence declines, displaced people can return safely, institutions become more trusted, political participation widens, rights are protected, former combatants reintegrate, and disputes are settled through lawful or nonviolent mechanisms.
Short-term indicators can be misleading. A society may experience low visible violence because people fear repression. Conversely, more reported complaints may reflect growing trust in institutions rather than worsening conditions. Measurement therefore requires interpretation.
The Implementation Gap
Peace agreements often contain ambitious commitments whose implementation takes years. Obstacles may include lack of resources, spoilers, weak institutions, corruption, mistrust, political turnover, organized crime, regional pressures, or disagreement over sequencing.
A strong peacebuilding plan therefore identifies who is responsible, what resources are needed, what milestones can be observed, how affected communities will participate, and how the plan will adapt when conditions change.
Unintended Consequences
Interventions can produce harmful side effects. Aid may strengthen gatekeepers, security assistance may empower abusive institutions, rapid elections may intensify winner-takes-all competition, or reconstruction may increase land disputes.
Evaluation should therefore ask not only whether a project achieved its intended output, but also who benefited, who lost, what incentives changed, and whether new grievances emerged.
Case Snapshots
Northern Ireland and the 1998 Agreement
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, is an important example of a negotiated political settlement. It combined arrangements for devolved government and power-sharing with cross-border and British-Irish institutions, commitments to rights and equality, and a principle of consent concerning Northern Ireland’s constitutional status.
Its implementation illustrates that peace agreements are processes rather than single moments. Institutions, policing, decommissioning, political participation, and public confidence all required further work. The case also shows why constitutional design and relationships across communities and governments can matter at the same time.
Sierra Leone after Civil War
Sierra Leone’s transition after its civil war involved a combination of a peace agreement, UN peacekeeping, disarmament and reintegration, elections, truth-seeking, and criminal accountability. Different mechanisms addressed different problems: security, political legitimacy, reintegration, recognition of victims, and accountability.
The case shows why post-conflict peacebuilding is multidimensional. It also raises questions about how national priorities, international assistance, local communities, and justice mechanisms can be coordinated without assuming that one institution can solve every problem.
Colombia and Long-Term Implementation
The 2016 peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP addressed rural reform, political participation, the end of the armed conflict, illicit drugs, victims’ rights, and implementation and verification. Its implementation has been complex and uneven.
This case is useful for studying the difference between signing an agreement and transforming the conditions around conflict. It also demonstrates the importance of territorial inequalities, security for former combatants and communities, victims’ rights, political participation, and long-term institutional capacity.
Key Analytical Questions
When you analyze any conflict, avoid beginning with the question “Who is good and who is bad?” Begin with evidence-based questions about actors, interests, rights, institutions, power, history, and incentives. Ask what changed, what mechanisms connect causes to outcomes, who is missing from the analysis, and what evidence would challenge your interpretation.
When you evaluate a peace initiative, distinguish intentions from effects. Ask whether it reduces violence, protects rights, improves legitimate institutions, includes affected groups, supports nonviolent dispute resolution, and avoids creating new grievances.
Interactive Tasks
Quiz: Test Your Knowledge
What is the best description of conflict? (A perceived incompatibility of goals interests needs or values) (!The automatic presence of physical violence) (!A situation that can only occur between states) (!Any disagreement that has already become a war)
What does human security place at the centre of analysis? (People and their survival livelihood and dignity) (!Only military borders and weapons) (!Only the stability of financial markets) (!Only the power of international organizations)
Which item is one of the three basic principles of UN peacekeeping? (Impartiality) (!Permanent occupation) (!Automatic regime change) (!Unlimited use of force)
What does the IHL principle of distinction require? (Distinguishing civilians and civilian objects from military targets) (!Treating every object in a war zone as a target) (!Ignoring the status of civilian infrastructure) (!Using the same rule for every peacetime dispute)
What is mediation? (Third party support for parties trying to manage or resolve a conflict) (!A military operation that automatically ends a conflict) (!A court judgment that replaces all negotiation) (!A media campaign designed to defeat an opponent)
What is a central aim of peacebuilding? (Reducing the risk of violent conflict and supporting sustainable peace) (!Ending every political disagreement) (!Replacing all national institutions with international bodies) (!Focusing only on physical reconstruction)
What does conflict sensitivity require? (Understanding how an intervention interacts with a conflict context) (!Assuming that all aid is automatically neutral) (!Avoiding any contact with local communities) (!Giving identical support to every actor regardless of context)
What is reintegration in DDR mainly concerned with? (Supporting former combatants in sustainable civilian participation) (!Collecting weapons at a checkpoint) (!Writing a new constitution) (!Authorizing a peacekeeping mandate)
What did UN Security Council Resolution 1325 emphasize? (Participation protection prevention and relief and recovery for women) (!A ban on all international mediation) (!The replacement of civilian institutions by military forces) (!A rule that only states may participate in peacebuilding)
Why can a peace agreement be an incomplete measure of success? (Implementation and social change can take years after an agreement) (!Agreements always end every grievance immediately) (!Only military victories can reduce violence) (!Peacebuilding stops on the day an agreement is signed)
Memory Game
| Human security | A people-centred approach focused on survival livelihood and dignity |
| Mediation | Third-party assistance that helps disputing actors communicate and seek agreement |
| Peacekeeping | International support intended to help create conditions for lasting peace under a mandate |
| Reintegration | Support for sustainable civilian participation after leaving an armed structure |
| Transitional justice | Approaches for addressing legacies of serious abuse during political transition |
| Conflict sensitivity | Practice of adapting interventions so they do not worsen tensions |
Drag and Drop
| Match the correct terms. | Topic |
|---|---|
| Root cause | Long-term condition that helps produce a conflict |
| Trigger | Event that rapidly accelerates an existing tension |
| Mediator | Third party that supports communication and negotiation |
| Ceasefire | Agreement to suspend fighting under stated conditions |
| Reconciliation | Process of rebuilding relationships trust and coexistence after harm |
Crossword Puzzle
| Mediation | What process uses a third party to help disputing actors seek agreement? |
| Peacekeeping | What activity helps create conditions for lasting peace under an international mandate? |
| Impartiality | What principle requires fair implementation of a peacekeeping mandate without favoring a party? |
| Reintegration | What process supports former combatants in returning to sustainable civilian life? |
| Reconciliation | What process aims to rebuild relationships and coexistence after serious conflict? |
| Proportionality | What IHL rule prohibits expected incidental civilian harm that would be excessive compared with anticipated military advantage? |
LearningApps
Cloze Text
Open-Ended Tasks
Easy
- Conflict map: Choose a fictional or historical conflict and create a one-page map of the main actors, their stated positions, their possible interests, and important relationships.
- Security perspectives: Write a short comparison showing how a state-security approach and a human-security approach might define the same crisis differently.
- Peace vocabulary poster: Design an image or poster that clearly distinguishes prevention, mediation, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding with one example for each.
- Media analysis: Select a news image about conflict or peace, identify what it shows and leaves out, and explain how framing can shape a viewer’s understanding.
Standard
- Ceasefire design: Draft a fictional ceasefire outline that addresses monitoring, communication, civilian protection, violations, and a process for resolving disputes.
- Peacebuilding interview: Interview a teacher, community mediator, social worker, local official, or NGO worker about how conflicts are managed without violence, then summarize the methods and limits described.
- Institution visit: Visit or research a court, local council, mediation service, parliament, police oversight body, or civic organization and explain how its work can contribute to legitimate conflict management.
- Conflict-sensitive project: Design a small school or community project and identify possible dividers, connectors, unequal benefits, unintended consequences, and adaptations that would reduce conflict risks.
Advanced
- Peace agreement evaluation: Choose a historical peace agreement and assess its design, implementation institutions, inclusion, security arrangements, justice provisions, and evidence of long-term outcomes.
- Transitional justice policy brief: Write a policy brief comparing at least three mechanisms such as trials, truth-seeking, reparations, institutional reform, or memorialization and recommend a context-sensitive combination.
- Peacebuilding documentary: Produce a short video that explains one peacebuilding challenge through interviews, maps, primary sources, and a transparent distinction between evidence and interpretation.
- Early warning ethics review: Design an early-warning model for a fictional conflict and evaluate its indicators, data quality, privacy risks, potential bias, decision rules, and safeguards against harmful use.
Learning Assessment
- Multi-causal conflict analysis: Analyze a chosen case by separating structural conditions, proximate pressures, triggers, actors, resilience factors, and evidence that could challenge your explanation.
- Security dilemma application: Explain how two actors could enter an escalation spiral even if both describe their actions as defensive, then propose two realistic confidence-building measures.
- Peacekeeping mandate critique: Evaluate a fictional mandate using consent, impartiality, civilian protection, political strategy, resources, and risks created by the use or non-use of force.
- IHL reasoning task: Given a fictional armed-conflict scenario, identify the legal relevance of distinction, proportionality, and precautions without making assumptions that the facts do not support.
- Peacebuilding programme design: Develop a three-year plan with local participation, conflict sensitivity, measurable outcomes, accountability, and a strategy for adapting when conditions change.
- Inclusion audit: Assess whether a fictional peace process provides meaningful participation for women, young people, displaced communities, minorities, and other affected groups, and propose specific improvements.
Evidence of Learning
Knowledge: You can accurately distinguish conflict, violence, security, human security, mediation, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, DDR, SSR, transitional justice, and reconciliation.
Analytical skills: You can identify multiple causes, map actors and interests, distinguish root causes from triggers, evaluate evidence, and recognize uncertainty or competing interpretations.
Legal and ethical reasoning: You can apply basic IHL concepts carefully, distinguish legal institutions, and identify rights, accountability, proportionality, privacy, and inclusion concerns.
Products: Strong evidence can include a conflict map, policy brief, interview report, peacebuilding design, presentation, documentary, research poster, or evaluated case study.
Transfer: You can use the course concepts to analyze a new conflict or peace process without assuming that tools from one case will automatically work in another.
Reflection: You can explain how your own sources, assumptions, and framing choices influence an analysis and revise your conclusions when better evidence appears.
OERs on the Topic
The following open or freely accessible resources support further study:
- United Nations Human Security Unit: An introduction to the people-centred and prevention-oriented human security approach.
- UN Peacekeeping: The official explanation of consent, impartiality, and the rules governing the use of force in UN peacekeeping.
- International Committee of the Red Cross: An overview of the conduct of hostilities and protection of civilians under international humanitarian law.
- UN Peacemaker: The normative framework for Women, Peace and Security, including Security Council Resolution 1325.
- UN Peacekeeping on Youth, Peace and Security: An introduction to Resolution 2250 and the role of young people in sustainable peace.
- United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16: Official material on peace, justice, and strong institutions.
- Charter of the United Nations: The full text of the UN Charter.
- United Nations Peacebuilding: An overview of peacebuilding as long-term investment in prevention and recovery.
Linked Learning Areas
