Did the United Nations successfully help to build a just, peaceful state and society in postconflict East Timor? Has transitional justice satisfied local demands for accountability and/or reconciliation? What lessons can be learned from the UN’s efforts? Drawing on extensive field work, James DeShaw Rae offers a grassroots perspective on the relationship between peacebuilding and    More >

Although the idea of postconflict peacebuilding appeared to hold great promise after the end of the Cold War, within a very few years the opportunities for peacebuilding seemed to pale beside the obstacles to it. This volume examines the successes and failures of large-scale interventions to build peace in El Salvador, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The authors shed light    More >

This integrative discussion of the multiple dimensions of peacebuilding in postconflict societies offers a systematic approach to strategies and processes for long-term social, political, and economic transformation. Ho-Won Jeong links short-term crisis-intervention efforts to a sustained process that encompasses the entire complex environment of a conflict. His broad analytic framework and    More >

Max Stephenson and Laura Zanotti explore the contested, but increasingly relevant, role that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play in resolving conflict and bringing about peace and security in the global arena. The authors draw on case studies from Haiti, Serbia, and Northern Ireland to highlight the range of ways that NGOs are involved in postconflict reconstruction efforts. In the    More >

A milestone in the search for sustainable peace, this handbook highlights the invaluable contributions of people working in the field. The authors clarify how fieldworkers "fit" in the overall peacebuilding process; provide details of the most effective practices; and offer guidelines for preparing for the field. Part 1 of the book introduces concepts and tools for sustainable    More >

The UN intervention in East Timor amply illustrates the type of complex operation that the United Nations increasingly is being asked to undertake. Michael Smith analyzes the successes and failures of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which was designed to work in partnership with the East Timorese in guiding the country to independence following the 1999 vote to secede    More >

The first in a series of "inside" histories, Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone relates how a small country—one insignificant in the strategic considerations of the world powers—propelled the United Nations to center stage in a crisis that called the UN's very authority into serious question; and how the UN mission in Sierra Leone was transformed from its nadir into what is now    More >

Challenging the literatures on war termination, civil war, and revolution—which typically dismiss the possibility of negotiated settlement—Stephen Stedman examines the problem of negotiations during civil wars and demonstrates that third party mediation can help resolve such conflicts. Stedman analyzes four international attempts to mediate a settlement to the Zimbabwean civil war of    More >

Bruce Jones investigates why the wide-ranging efforts to forestall genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994 failed so miserably. Jones traces the individual and collective impact of both official and unofficial mediation efforts, peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian aid. Providing theoretical and empirical evidence, he shows that the failure of the peace process was not the result of lack of    More >

Seb, the protagonist of this Goan-Indian novel, is a member of the Indian “lost generation” caught between cultures, religions, and epochs. Struggling against the Western-style materialism and spiritual corruption he sees everywhere in the postimperial era, he becomes a teacher at a Gandhian-inspired school in the interior. There, both he and his “slow” students embark on a    More >