Why Peace Fails:The Causes and Prevention of Civil War Recurrence
On 17th January 2012, the Stabilisation Unit launched the start of its lessons seminar series with an engaging presentation from Professor Charles Call of the American University in Washington D.C. He predominantly works in the areas on post-conflict peacebuilding, democratisation, human rights and policing and justice reform, sharing his vast experience and knowledge base. This experience has included working at the UN Department of Political Affairs as their peacebuilding consultant, as well as being an Assistant Professor for Research at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, where he coordinated the Governance in War-Torn Societies Project.
Professor Call’s talk that he provided for a Cross-Whitehall audience was on 'Why Peace Fails - The Causes and Prevention of Civil War Recurrence', which looks at countries where there has been the recurrence of civil war. He focused on the reasons why some countries which show every sign of having successfully emerged from civil war fall once again into armed conflict.
With the use of conflict datasets he gave explanations of why peace "sticks" after some wars but not others and examined the factors behind fifteen cases of civil war recurrence in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Latin America. He argued that widely touted explanations of civil war such as poverty, conflict over natural resources and weak states are far less important than political exclusion, accordingly inclusion of former opponents in post-war governance plays a decisive role in sustained peace.
Listen to the full podcast of the event here.
You will need Windows Media Player to listen to this interview. If you do not have Windows Media Player, download it here.
If you’d like to know what it’s like on the ground, where we work or what we do, send in your questions to our Communications team. They may be included in our next interview.
