The original objective of Dr. Short’s calling attention to 101 peacebuilding successes was to provide evidence that peacebuilding can in fact be effective in order to encourage more support for such work. The cases in this report clearly confirm that peacebuilders can not only prevent wars, but also actually stop political violence that has already erupted. But it also raises the question of what more the peacebuilding community can do to reduce armed conflict.
The review of the cases in the Annex shows that intervention by governmental organizations was cited more than 7 times as often as activities by INGOs or local organizations. In many of them, hundreds or thousands of international personnel were required to stabilize the situations after peace was established. In some cases, violence recurred and further interventions were required.
This report suggests a number of lines of inquiry that can contribute to further successes by governmental peacebuilding organizations and can be useful to the broader peacebuilding community as well. An obvious question is how to get governmental organizations to intervene to stop political violence more often, as they have done recently in the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Many other actual or potential violent disputes call for intervention.
What new studies could help intervening governmental organizations to become more effective? How have local organizations and local leaders contributed to successful interventions by outsiders? How much has theoretical knowledge contributed to these interventions? For example, has research on root causes of war or social coherence contributed significantly to some or all of them? Can studies of failed attempts to establish sustainable peace help to identify reasons for their failure and thus to avoid making them in the future?
What else can the peacebuilding community do to reduce armed conflict? How can wars be stopped or prevented without intervention by governmental bodies? What methods and organizations have
been most successful? Which have failed to demonstrate effectiveness in practice?
In many cases, local organizations have resolved local conflicts, with or without help and encouragement from outsiders. How many of these situations have had the potential to escalate into more serious violence? Is the total contribution of this local activity to peace in the world
significant?
A number of organizations are collecting data which shed light on the effectiveness of different kinds of peacebuilding work. This study adds a bit to that body of knowledge. Further research both on iii Stopping War: 101 Successful Efforts to Reduce Armed Conflict actual results achieved by peacebuilders and on studies of the contributions of theory to these successes can provide critical information that can help donors and practitioners to allocate their resources more effectively. What research has the potential to contribute most to making peacebuilding work more effective? Is that question being adequately addressed?
The Better Evidence Project at George Mason University is sponsoring and encouraging such research. More importantly, in collaboration with other organizations, it plans to collect, organize, and make easily available useful information resulting from the research in the field to help the peacebuilding community to reverse the trend toward increasing political violence in the world.
As the peacebuilding community develops and uses more hard evidence about how it can reduce armed conflict most effectively, it will contribute more to the establishment of a more peaceful
world.
