Week: Our Perspectives

Posts from the ISN, CSS and guest writers

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Mediation Perspectives: “Infrastructures for Peace” – Useful Jargon?

The Peace Bridge in Calgary AB, Canada
Peace infrastructure? The Peace Bridge in Calgary AB, Canada. Photo: /Wikimedia Commons.

Every academic and professional field has its jargon. While often criticized, jargon has its uses. It serves as a kind of shorthand, allowing us to communicate complex or multiple concepts in short phrases or single words. But it does have its downsides. Excessive use of jargon renders meaning incomprehensible to non-specialists. Even between specialists it may lead to misunderstandings when users and audiences have different conceptions of what the term refers to. Worse, it can be used as a kind of tick-box or name check, allowing users to communicate the sense that they are engaging with the concepts underlying the jargon without necessarily genuinely doing so. We are therefore rightly wary when a new term comes along; asking ourselves whether there is a need for it in our vocabulary.

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Mediation Perspectives: The Roman Catholic Church in Dialogue with the World

St. Francis and the Sultan
Sultan Malik al-Kamil and St. Francis of Assisi, © 2006 Br. Robert Lentz, OFM.

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the oldest religious institutions in existence, with more than a billion members, in almost every country of the world. With the election of Pope Francis, it is timely to ask: how does the Roman Catholic Church enter into dialogue with the world? How the Catholic Church uses dialogue to deal with differences is not only significant for its members, but also for inter-religious and world peace. The Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, Mark Patrick Hederman, has some intriguing answers to this question. Two points from his recent book “Dancing with Dinosaurs” are summarized below:

Why do we need religious institutions?

We have to understand the nature of large institutions – be these multinational companies, the United Nations or the Roman Catholic Church – if we are to avoid harming others and ourselves. Seeking to change them rapidly, to revolutionize them, is a recipe for failure.  Their very size and cumbersome plodding through the course of history is their guarantee of sustainability. In Hederman’s words: “Unless any organization becomes a dinosaur it will not survive the vicissitudes of history.” But why do religions need such institutional structures?

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Realism and Retrenchment

The Pentagon
The Pentagon. Photo:mindfrieze/flickr.

In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, historian Elizabeth Hoffman added her voice to those calling for sharp reductions in American military commitments abroad. In the current climate, her argument is a familiar one: the Pentagon-heavy grand strategy that the US has pursued for the last sixty years has become an unnecessary drain on its resources. It now diminishes America’s security rather than enhancing it. But like many others, Hoffman’s call was not limited to the more controversial commitments that have been incurred in the decade since 9/11.  With the Soviet Union long-defeated and fiscal disaster seemingly imminent, Hoffman’s call is more dramatic. “Everyone talks about getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan,” she writes, “but what about Germany and Japan?”

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Is the New DRC Peace Deal a Cause for Hope?

Prayers in Congo
Prayers in Congo. Photo: Steve Evans/flickr.

Though the Second Congo War formally ended in 2003 the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) Eastern regions have remained embroiled in violence. The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has become the UN’s largest peacekeeping obligation with 19,134 uniformed personnel as of January 2013.

Despite the conclusion of formal hostilities almost a decade ago, violence has continued unabated with the most recent crisis occurring when the March 23rd Movement (M23) occupied the city of Goma. In response to the continuing violence and the new threat posed by M23 the UN mediated the signing of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Region on 24 February 2013. The Framework was signed by the leaders of the DRC and ten other African countries. While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has argued that the signing of the Framework represents a “historic opportunity”, the DRC has had a long history of failed peace agreements and there is little to differentiate the recently signed Framework from past attempts. This makes it hard to argue that the Framework represents a real step forward in the Congolese peace process.

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After the Arab Spring: Creating Economic Commons

Oil Fields.
Oil Fields. Photo:Jingletown/flickr.

If the latest Arab awakening was about jobs and justice, then political reforms, unless accompanied with a levelling of the economic playing field, are unlikely to be sufficient on their own. The latent demographic pressures across the Arab world and the resulting youth unemployment have created an employment challenge that is both real and urgent. During the next decade an estimated 100 million jobs need to be created in the Middle East. The public sector, already bloated and inefficient, is unprepared to meet this employment challenge. Sooner or later, Arab policymakers will have to return to addressing a longstanding development challenge facing the region: economic diversification. In fact, the challenges of demography and diversification are intertwined. Without developing a robust private sector and without reducing the region’s dependence on natural resources, the gains that the Arab world has made in literacy and health cannot be translated into lasting economic prosperity.

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