In: Oxford Scholarship Online
The interplay between peace and justice plays an important role in almost any contemporary conflict. Peace and conflict studies have generally devoted more attention to conflict than to peace. Peace is often described in adjectives, such as negative/positive peace, liberal peace or democratic peace. But what elements make a peace just? Just war theory, peacebuilding, or transitional justice provide different perspectives on the dialectic relation between peace and justice and the methods of establishing peace after conflict. Experiences such as the Colombian peace process show that peace is increasingly judicialized. This volume analyses some of the situational, normative, and relational elements of peace in processes of transition. It explores six core themes: conceptual approaches towards just peace, macro-principles, the nexus to security and stability, protection of persons and public goods, rule of law and economic reform and accountability. It engages with understudied issues, such as the pros and cons of robust UN mandates, the link between environment protection and indigenous peoples, the treatment of illegal settlements, the feasibility of vetting practices or the protection labour rights in post-conflict economies. It argues that just peace requires only not negotiation, agreement and compromise (e.g., moderation), but contextual understandings of law, multiple dimensions of justice and strategies of prevention. It complements the two earlier volumes on the legal contours of jus post bellum, namely Just Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations (2014) and Environmental Protection and Transitions from Conflict to Peace: Clarifying Norms, Principles and Practices (2017).
Opinions over the nature of a 'just peace' are divided. In this third output of a major research project on Jus Post Bellum, Stahn, Iverson, and Easterday bring together a team of experts to argue that a just peace is not only related to form and process, but involves 'substantive' justice: a just order, a secure peace, and societal acceptance.
Problem melden