The survey for practical consideration is crucial in social and policy science inquiries. Several systematic reviews in the post-conflict peacebuilding literature have thus far ignored its efficaciousness. This knowledge gap motivated in developing ConflictAffected Population Survey technique to survey the conflict-ravaged Chittagong Hill Tracts indigenous peoples for the purpose of examining peace hybridity in Bangladesh, as the quantitative part of the study. This article outlines guidelines for designing probabilistic sampling and survey procedures for a robust sequential explanatory mixed-methods case study research in a terrain where an accurate sample frame is difficult to define. The systematic methodological strategy adopted herein enabled the compilation of a comprehensive cross-sectional case study where findings are generalizable, especially the concept and model central to our thesis on indigeneity dilution.

This article surveys the trajectory of peace and conflict studies in Myanmar—from its early focus on civil war and insurgency, to state institutions and ethnic armed actors, and later broadening into relational and networked approaches covering formal peace processes, regional geopolitics, conflict economies, and everyday peacebuilding. It suggests that the widening of peace and conflict studies was brought about by the opening of the country from the early 2010s, which both granted scholars and researchers more access to the country and introduced new foreign specialists, discourses, and developmental actors into the political sphere. The peace agenda and directions of peace studies have been upended by the military coup of 2021; how reconciliation, justice, and federal democratic reform will look like in the future remains to be seen.

Japan is a world leader in peace education, and Hiroshima is one of the world’s centers for peace. While the peer-reviewed literature on Japanese peace education is growing, few studies address how present-day peace educators in Hiroshima conceptualize peace education. This study aims to better understand how peace educators in Hiroshima (re)conceptualize, adapt, and apply their work. Using a grounded theory approach, we answer the following research questions: (a) How do contemporary peace educators in Hiroshima conceptualize their work? (b) How has this conceptualization changed or evolved over time? Interviewees presented convergent and divergent insights around three main themes: definitions of peace as a collective identity and constructivist process, metaphors for peace as informing pedagogy, and efforts to challenge taboos through a social justice lens.

This article explores the prospect of theorizing unarmed civilian peacekeeping as a transformative justice concept. Utilizing the principles of transformative justice theory as a framework of analysis, it finds that unarmed civilian peacekeeping produces an environment of everyday justice, thereby contributing to transformative peacebuilding. Crucial to this proposed concept of everyday justice is the ability of an unarmed civilian peacekeeping approach to form a link between the elite-level negotiating panels in a peace process and the grassroots constituency in a postconflict society. The case of voluntary and mandated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the Bangsamoro peace process in Mindanao is used to corroborate these conceptual suggestions.

Human security should not be considered as a mere academic rhetoric-it is, in fact, a political tool aimed at transforming individuals from conditions of exploitation and domination to that of political participation and accountability. This paper adopts political governance perspectives to analyze human security in Africa. It argues that without accountable democratic governance, the expressed objectives of human security would be difficult to achieve in Africa. By this focus, the paper adopts a broader view of human security, satisfying both the governance and development prerequisites of the concept, which has underpinned [in] security in Africa. The overall estimation of human security in Africa is that only a marginal improvement has been made in the region, especially over the last decade.

Successfully reintegrating former rebels into civil society is a crucial task in postconflict countries. In the aftermath of a decade-long conflict (1996-2006) in Nepal, management of arms and armies became a major issue in the domain of post-conflict peacebuilding. “From Combatants to Peacemakers” was an initiative to promote peace and harmony among the former ex-combatants and host communities. In this context, this article highlights the role of social dialogue, which proved effective in promoting social harmony, peace, and reconciliation among ex-combatants and community members in Nepal. Also, the article explicates the worth of social dialogue that may be used in other parts of the world to successfully reconcile former antagonist groups into the same communities.

This article examines how truth commissions (TCs) contribute to promoting accountability, and argues TCs generate two horizontal accountability relationships. First, TCs hold state agencies accountable. Second, recommendations made by TCs can generate a relationship of horizontal accountability between the governing regime and the state agencies towards which the recommendations are directed. Next, I present the case of the 1994 Zonal Commissions in Sri Lanka, and to assess their contribution to accountability, I compare the evidence collected against evaluative criteria. The results show that while the commissions produced answerability, recommendations compiled in the final report were not implemented. The findings show long-term effectiveness of TCs may depend on senior officers within the state apparatus in addition to political leaders.

Post-war reconstruction in Sri Lanka, which is aided by many countries, is aimed at consolidating the unitary state structure as part of a geo-strategic security complex in the Indian Ocean Region. In this process, discourses of democratization and human rights have been reconfigured to contain or totally remove any threat to the unitary state emerging from the Tamils in the North and East whose claim to self-determination is seen as a major challenge to the geo-strategic complex in South Asia. In such a context, the bio-politics of the development-security nexus and neo-liberal governmentality operates by strengthening the hegemony of the Sinhala state against the Tamils and weakening or destroying the essential foundations of Tamil nationhood. Without recognizing these local and global dynamics every peacebuilding attempt will fail.

This article seeks to add to the existing literature on Japan’s peacebuilding by examining its involvement in the psychosocial reconstruction of children in conflictaffected regions. It demonstrates that to this end Japan has implemented creative, recreational activities, and, to a lesser extent, community-building strategies. This article argues that there are three important implications of Japan’s involvement in psychosocial reconstruction for its own foreign policy: (1) psychological reconstruction can enhance its non-military approach to peacebuilding; (2) this field can potentially be another area of expertise in its own peacebuilding policy; and (3) in so doing, Japan may be able to carve out a niche in the field of international peacebuilding. This article concludes by identifying some limitations that can be developed into areas for future research.

Truth commissions (TCs) have become a recurrent mechanism for states to deal with and address past human rights violations. This article argues that TCs generate accountability relationships at three different stages. Before their establishment, TCs generate vertical accountability relationships between civil society and the state. During the period between their establishment and the release of the final report, TCs hold state agencies horizontally accountable. In their final reports, TCs put forward recommendations capable of generating horizontal accountability between the governing regime and the state agencies towards which the recommendations are directed, and vertical accountability as civil society pushes the governing regime to implement these recommendations. This article suggests criteria for evaluating how truth commissions contribute to promoting accountability.

This article examines the impact of a natural disaster on the political dynamics of an ethno-nationalist conflict. The humanitarian space generated by the 2004 tsunami could have revived the peace process between the Sri Lankan state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as evidenced by the joint mechanism that was formed for rehabilitation and reconstruction. However, the impact of the tsunami carried a potential for both peacebuilding and escalation of the conflict. The growing securitization of South Asia, led by the United States, upheld a militaristic approach and strengthened the Sri Lankan state against the LTTE. The militaristic approach to the decades-long conflict was advanced and eventually resulted in a massive war which claimed thousands of lives. The tsunami was a missed political opportunity.