International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding may not have the punch and the means of national security, but they are receiving an increasing amount of attention in education, research, and politics. There are a growing number of Master and PhD programs, new publications, and more research at universities and think tanks. The number of peer-reviewed journals covering different facets of peacebuilding has doubled since 1992. Peacebuilding has become embedded in the organizational theory and praxis of national governments, nongovernmental organizations, and regional and global intergovernmental organizations. It became part of the official discourse when the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992) introduced the concept of postconflict peacebuilding in the Agenda for Peace. The agenda specified four areas of action, which taken together, were presented as a coherent contribution towards securing peace: (1) preventive diplomacy is action to prevent disputes from arising between the parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur, (2) peacemaking is action to bring hostile parties to agreement, essentially through such peaceful means as those foreseen in Chapter VI of the Charter, (3) peacekeeping is the deployment of a United Nations military and civilian presence in the ... log in or subscribe to read full text