Negotiation
When parties negotiate, they usually expect give and take. While they have interlocking goals that they cannot accomplish independently, they usually do not want or need exactly the same thing.
The Core Causes of Intractable Conflicts
They typically involve many parties and concern an intricate set of historical, religious, cultural, political, and economic issues.
Moral or Value Conflicts
Parties may have different standards of rightness and goodness and give fundamentally different answers to serious moral questions.
Interests, Positions, Needs, and Values
Politics is very often fought over positions more than interests. Everyone in the U.S. shares the same interests: we want to have good jobs and we want those jobs to be safe; we want our families to be healthy, safe, and have opportunities to thrive
John Paul Lederach’s Peacebuilding Pyramid
First published in 1997 in his seminl book Building Peace, this “pyramid” or “triangle,” as it is called is referred to and used by many peacebuilding scholars and practitioners. It also is one of the early examples of looking at peacebuilders as being parts of a complex system.
Conflict Transformation
Conflict transformation is accurate because the core of my work is indeed about engaging myself in constructive change initiatives that include and go beyond the resolution of particular problems.
Principles of Justice and Fairness
Some maintain that justice stems from God’s will or command, while others believe that justice is inherent in nature itself. Still others believe that justice consists of rules common to all humanity that emerge out of some sort of consensus.
Levels of Action
Should peace be built from the top down, or from the bottom up? What roles should the different actors play? John Paul Lederach has answered this question with a diagram…a “peacebuilding pyramid.”
Capacity Building
“Capacity building, capacity development, empowerment and strengthening-all describe an increase in the ability of a social organization to achieve the goals that are set by that organization.”