Sustainable peace is more than lack of violence

In a world of conflict and violence new knowledge on how to build sustainable peace is urgently needed. In his dissertation PhD candidate Florian Krampe emphasizes the need for helping countries to reset their internal relations on a peaceful path.

“To build peace we need to understand the long-term interplay of social, political, economic, and ecological processes in post-war countries”, says Florian Krampe, PhD candidate at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, who will defend his thesis at Uppsala University on September 10. “It is essential to build a peace that is ecologically sensitive, while equally socially and politically relevant and desirable. I call this sustainable peace.”

Krampe’s dissertation shows the difficult challenges that post-war countries are facing and how these challenges build one of the most difficult policy arenas for international and local actors. In these situations the challenge is not only to stop violence and prevent violence from rekindling, but moreover to help countries reset their internal relations on a peaceful path. The indirect, long-term effects of wars further exaggerate this challenge. Many of these relate to political and social aspects of post-war countries. Lasting impressions of human rights abuses committed during wars continue to shape the relations among members of societies for decades to come. Both, socio-economic impacts and political impacts challenge the stability of post-war countries for many years. The challenges to public health have been found to be especially severe and affect disproportionately the civilian population of post-war countries. Environmental and climate change exposes post-war populations further to new risks, exaggerating the human costs of war long after active combat has ceased.

These challenges are of course not new, argues Krampe. The problem, however, is that in practice all these elements are simultaneously happening in today’s peacebuilding interventions. “Yet, practitioners as well as researchers remain settled in a silo mentality, focusing only on one aspect at a time. As such they are unaware of the unintended consequences that their focus has on other important processes.”

The four essays that lie at the heart of this dissertation provide new insight into the linkages between the social, political and ecological processes in post-war societies and how the interactions of different groups of actors are shaping the prospects for peace.

Florian Krampe will defend his dissertation “Building Sustainable Peace” on Saturday, 10 September at 13:00 in Auditorium Minus, Museum Gustavianum, Akademigatan 3, Uppsala.

Contact information:
Florian Krampe, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, mobile: +46 (0)73 - 585 52 87, Email: Florian.Krampe@pcr.uu.se

Official webpage: www.pcr.uu.se/about/staff/krampe_f/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/floriankrampe
LinkedIn: se.linkedin.com/in/krampe