War does not respect political or territorial boundaries but forms part of regional conflict systems through dynamics that cross borders: refugee flows, nomadic armed groups like the LRA, narcotic or criminal networks, blood diamonds, or psycho-social ties.
But there is a policy gap across borders and in borderlands where statehood and diplomacy can struggle to reach, as international responses to conflict focus on states for analysis and intervention.
Accord 22 looks at how peacebuilding strategies and capacity can ‘think outside the state’: beyond it, through regional engagement, and below it, through cross-border community or trade networks.
Edited by
Alexander Ramsbotham and
I William Zartman, the Issue includes 20 case studies from Asia, Europe, the Caucasus, East, Central and West Africa, Central America and the Middle East. Articles explore cross-border peacebuilding from global, systems analysis and legal perspectives, and focus on themes ranging from politics, governance and security, social and community relations, and trade and natural resources.
In many of today's wars, violence is driven in part by cross- border regional conflict dynamics. And, as this important new publication from Conciliation Resources makes clear, failure to take the regional dimension of civil wars into account increases the risk that peacebuilding strategies will fail. What is needed, in addition to the statebuilding policies that are now de rigeur in post-conflict environments, are strategies that address cross- border conflict dynamics with the relevant regional states and cross-border communal engagement.
Andrew Mack, Director of the Human Security Report Project (HSRP) at Simon Fraser University and a faculty member of the university's School for International Studies.
