European Network for reasearch on nonviolent conflict transformation
Expression of interest for a Network of Excellence integrated project – VI Framework Program –
Thematic priority 1.1.7 Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based society
Proponent: Centro Studi Difesa Civile, Roma – Italy.
Tel.+39068419672, Fax +39065012897, e-mail: pacedifesa-roma@mediazioni.org,
web: www.pacedifesa.org, www.mediazioni.org
Contact person: Alessandro Rossi.
Partners:

Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, Berlin,
Website: www.berghof-center.org
Contact person: Giovanni Scotto. E-mail: giovanni.scotto@berghof-center.org

Field Diplomacy Initiative (vzw - NDI), Leuven - Belgium
tel/fax +32.16.48.76.54
E-mail: initiative@fieldiplomacy.be
Website : www.fielddiplomacy.be
Contact person Jos De la Haye (jos.delahaye@fielddiplomacy.be)

Saferworld, London – UK
Contact person: Paul Eavis, director.
E-mail: peavis@saferworld.demon.co.uk
 Swisspeace, Swisspeace Foundation, Sonnenbergst. 17 3000 Bern 7 Switzerland, Tel. +41 31
330 12 12 www.swisspeace.ch
Contact person: Tanja Paffenholz
 Servizio Progetto Mezzogiorno - DAST – CNR (National Research Centre)
P.le A. Moro 7, Roma, 00185, Italy
Tel.+390649933562 e-mail: mezzogiorno@pm.rm.cnr.it ; web: www.cnr.it
Contact person: Chiara Cavallaro

University of Pavia – Dipartimento di Studi Politici e Sociali , Pavia - Italy
Tel.+390382504433. E-mail: cngp@unipv.it
Contact person: Prof.Gian Paolo Calchi Novati (director).

Centro Studi Sereno Regis, Torino – Italy
Tel.+39.011.532824, E-mail: regis@arpnet.it, website: www.arpnet.it/regis.
Contact persons: Erika Grasso, Nanni Salio.
 Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies (CNR), Rome - Italy
email: a.gigli@irp.rm.cnr.it, website: www.irp.rm.cnr.it
tel. +39 06 4993 2805, fax +39 06 8583 4506
Contact person: Anna Gigli
 Dipartimento di Studi Sociali, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università di Firenze,
Florence - Italy, email: labate@unifi.it.
Contact person: Alberto L'Abate.
 Dipartimento di Istituzioni Politiche e Scienze Sociali. – “University Roma Tre”
Via Corrado Segre 4, 00146- Roma – tel. 0655176411
http://www.uniroma3.it/politiche/peacekeeping
Contact person: Prof. Maria Luisa Maniscalco
 Dip. Architettura e Urbanistica per l'Ingegneria -Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
Via Eudossiana 18 - 00184 ROMA
tel. 06-44585917 fax 06-44585186
Contact Person: Silvia Macchi
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 CE.S.I.E Onlus - Centro Studi ed Iniziative Europeo
Address: Via B. Leto n. 1 - 90040 Trappeto PA, Italaly
Tel: 0039 338 5928 156
Fax: 0039 091 8788 679
e-mail: vitofata@inwind.it - cesie@inwind.it
[Other Institutions (Universities, NGOs, etc.) have manifested their interest but did not send an
official subscription till now.]
1. INTRODUCTION
In the last years, the topics of Violence Prevention and Nonviolent Conflict Transformation have
rapidly gained importance in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies.
Facing an increasing number of intra-state ethnopolitical conflicts in the 1990es, state and civil
society actors were challenged to develop innovative approaches to deal with phenomena such as
escalation of violence, interethnic tension, civil war and the breakdown of state structures. After
hostilities cease, the international community has to find appropriate ways to deal with the scars of
war and with the challenges of restoring a peaceful order.
Preventing violent conflict and building peace have thus become key challenges in the development
of a common foreign policy of the European Union. The challenge of addressing these issues in a
coherent and thus more constructive manner, is a key challenge for the European Union.
The events on September 11th, 2001 and the subsequent developments have further underlined the
need for deepening our understanding of conflicts and enhancing the capacity of dealing with them
in a constructive way.
The main goal of the proposed integrated project is to foster a culture and practice of nonviolent
conflict transformation in the field of EU Common Foreign Policy as well as at the level of single
States, including associated States and accession candidates. Research in this field can therefore
directly contribute to better address these challenges.
2. MAPPING OUT THE FIELD: RESEARCH PRIORITIES IN VIOLENCE PREVENTION
AND NONVIOLENT CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION
It is useful to distinguish different perspectives in analysing conflicts, their causes and dynamics, as
well as strategies for their nonviolent transformation: involved actors, social structures and political
institutions, processes of conflict transformation. Within each perspective a number of foci for
research interest will be sketched.
2.1 Actors
Internal Actors: the notion of peace constituencies can be regarded as a key for peacebuilding and
nonviolent conflict transformation, meaning persons and groups within the conflict-torn society that
are willing to promote de-escalation, dialogue and peaceful transformation of the conflict at
different levels of society. Here the research should aim at identifying and clustering different peace
constituencies, developing criteria and conditions for success of peace constituencies, identify
strategies of capacity building and empowerment to strengthen their role in politics and society;
identifying different societal potentials for peace – including in the religious, cultural and attitudinal
dimensions - out of which peace constituencies can develop.
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External actors: the roles and functions of external, intervening actors with tasks such as
peacekeeping, peacemaking, peacebuilding, has long been the focus on research on conflict
transformation. However, what is missing in current research is:
- research evaluating the impact of external interventions
- research focussing on coherence of different politics
- research with regard to specific instruments of violence prevention and nonviolent conflict
transformation.
Examples for specific research topics are :
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Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA): Analytical tools for "Peace and conflict
Impact Assessemnt" of policies and programes are currently being developed and first
tested. Aim of the research in this field will be an evaluation in the use of PCIA techniques,
a further development of the concept, particularly moving from project assessment to PCIA
in whole sectors and to overall assessment of external intervention in conflicts as a
contribution to general policy impact assessment.
Fostering a culture of peace and conflict impact assessment is an important precondition to place
violence prevention at centre stage in the common European foreign policy. On the other hand
disseminating PCIA among internal actors in conflict situations might strengthen their awareness
and their role as equal partners in cooperating with external agencies.
-
civilian peace service, an innovative instrument for grass-root civilian intervention in
conflict situations, currently developed in several European countries (notably in Germany).
Aim of the research will be to identify sinergies and possible areas of tension between
peacemaking efforts with top level political leaders, work with middle-range leaderships and
civilian peace service actitivies at grassroot level.
2.2 Social structures and political institutions
Social and political structures in conflict-torn societies: in recent years several European
researchers have analysed the mechanisms that are responsible for a perpetuation of violence in
long-standing conflicts. This has led to a better understaindg of the "political economy of civil
wars" and of the way the influence peace processes. Aim of the research will be to identify and
analyse counter-strategies to weaken social and economics mechanisms that help perpetuate high
levels of violence.
Furthermore, a major focus of research will be that of designing institutions for transition:
experiences in Southeast Europe show that, in order to govern peace processes, a dilemma between
effectiveness of the external intervention and ownership by local society has to be resolved: here
the attention will paid to the diverse experiences in Southeast Europe: Stability Pact for Southeast
Europe; High Representatives of the United Nations and OSCE in Bosnia-Herzegovina, UNMIK
and OSCE in Kosovo. Particular attention will be paid to the experience of the European Union
transitional Administration of Mostar (EUAM).
Mechanisms and institutions of transitional justice in the context of peacebuilding are an additional
important element to be studied. In the field of traditional justice (i.e. courts), the International
Court for Former Yugoslavia plays a special role. But also examples of restorative justice, such as
commissions for peace and reconciliation, will be focused on.
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2.3 Transformation processes
Escalation processes, violence prevention and early warning systems: central for the development
of a common foreign policy based on violence prevention are early warning systems grounded on
knowledge of escalation processes.
Research will focus on analysis of existing qualitative and quantitative early warning systems and
look specifically into their lessons learned and applicability as a precondition for external
intervention strategies.
De-escalation: the phenomena of conflict escalation has attracted great scholarly attention. Less
studied and understood are processes and mechanisms of de-escalation, defusing tension and
reducing propensity to violence among conflicting parties. An important topic in this respect is the
relationship between political leadership and societal forces. Peacebuilding as a strategy often
focuses on societal actors such as middle-range leaderships or grass-roots social movements and
NGOs. However, there has been little understanding of the complex relationship between these
actors and political leaders who, in several cases, see their main interest in blocking the road
towards peace. Research should fill this gap by comparing different conflict situations and peace
processes, and by drawing general conclusions in form of recommendations, "best practices" as
well as training packages.
Re-escalation: as the example of Palestina-Israel, and earlier Angola, show, ill-conceived peace
processes bear the risk of producing a situation in which resort to violence is more likely, attitudes
towards peace are undermined by scepticism and desperation, and the overall political situation
experiences a "re-escalation" of the conflict. Aim of the research on this topic should be to identify
ways to minimise the risk of re-escalation in peace processes, drawing lessons, among others, from
the above mentioned examples.
3. Excellence
Research centers, universities departments interested in the field as well as NGOs involved in
related activities are all well represented in many European countries, but they lack of a common
European framework giving them enough visibility and concrete help to European Institutions and
public.
Experiences are there to demonstrate chances of excellent outputs, which have been partly obtained
by the already contacted partners. Some examples are: SaferWorld’s activities on global
desarmement and security problems, NDI’s studies, CSDC’s researches both with Defence and
Foreign Affairs Ministries and cooperation NGOs, Beghof Institute’s Handbook for Conflcit
Transformation.
4. Integration and structuring effect
Integration of different kind of institutions is essential towards mainstreaming of violence
prevention and nonviolent conflict transformation in public policies and in the society as a whole.
The establishing of several summer schools, decentralised in a first phase within the participating
countries and then in the rest of Europe, will help the development of a larger number of researchers
and specialists in the field. This will be a resource for public and private actors dealing with conflict
situation both in international crisis areas (such as economic actors in post-war re-building
activities) and internal conflicts (social tensions, minorities’ areas, etc.).
Furthermore, these activities could be “training for trainers” in several professional areas with
conflict transformation is relevant for efficience (industrial relationships, social assistance, public
services, etc.).
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