Reconciliation and Post-Conflict Support

Abstract

The experience of recent years has led the United Nations to focus as never before on peacebuilding – efforts to reduce a country's risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development.Building lasting peace in war-torn societies is among the most daunting of challenges for global peace and security. Peacebuilding requires sustained international support for national efforts across the broadest range of activities – monitoring ceasefires; demobilizing and reintegrating combatants; assisting the return of refugees and displaced persons; helping organize and monitor elections of a new government; supporting justice and security sector reform; enhancing human rights protections and fostering reconciliation after past atrocities. This panel is concerned with various models, case studies and approaches that address post-conflict situations. The papers in this panel highlight in particular strategies of power sharing, gendered mechanisms of violence, support combination schemes and peacekeeping.