Lived experiences of conflict-affected locals are an important source of local knowledge that should be incorporated into peacebuilding. However, the national project of peacebuilding in post-war Sri Lanka has failed to consider local knowledge and voices. Utilizing a grassroots perspective, this study examines the experiences of grassroots activists in north and east Sri Lanka to understand the various challenges that have hindered their attempts to share experiences and narratives of war and cultural practices across communities. The findings show that a “context of denial,” identified variously as institutional denial, fear-based denial, and community denial, has prevented grassroots activists from engaging in a meaningful dialogue about peace, reconciliation, and justice. This study helps build an understanding of how grassroots activism functions and is challenged.

This introductory article illustrates the development of peace studies and then reviews the Asian context in it. Peace studies has developed through three approaches state-centered, human-centered, and structure-critical—the origins of which can be traced back to Kantian federalism and republicanism, Tolstoy’s criticism of institutionalized violence, and Marx’s critique of capitalism, respectively. In the post-Cold War era, the theories of security community, human security, and ecosocialism have developed separately. At the same time, the three approaches have competed and merged with one another in the face of increasingly complex global problems, resulting in the birth of “responsibility to protect” (R2P) and differing but simultaneous responses to climate change. Both ASEAN as a multifaceted community and development-based human security characterize the Asian context.

As contemporary armed conflicts become increasingly complex, peacebuilding actors have been unable to prevent or respond effectively to related crises. Considering the policy trends evoked by the United Nations sustaining peace agenda and contextspecific peacebuilding theories, this article examines peacebuilding initiatives amid complex contexts in Syria and Mozambique. It argues that the adaptive approaches of the National Agenda for the Future of Syria and the architecture of the negotiations surrounding the new peace process in Mozambique represent examples of contextspecific, innovative, and non-linear peacebuilding methods that foster the selforganization capabilities of the respective conflict-affected societies. It concludes by asserting that through pragmatism, local and national ownership, and process facilitation, there is an increased potential for the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions in complex conflict-affect situations.

This article examines Iran-Uzbekistan relations within the regional security context, and the new efforts undertaken in 2019 to solve the security problems via bilateral and regional multinational institutions. It argues that the aggravation of the existing security situation, including geopolitical tensions in the region, contributes to the consolidation of the Iran-Uzbekistan partnership. The anti-Iran measures facilitate the process of reintegrating the region along the historical lines as part of the response to the growing global challenges. There are signs of positive regional dynamics, which can further boost Iran-Uzbekistan cooperation, and presuppose future regional connectivity among all pacified neighbors.

This article addresses the underexplored question of why some state violence cases in Asia are not followed by transitional justice even during a democratic transition. It explicates the two factors that obstruct or delay seeking truth and accountability and thus bring impunity for perpetrators. One is the context in which the violence took place, and the other is longevity of the violent regime. If the violence occurs during a period of conflation of state construction and regime building, and if the perpetrators’ power persists long enough to be institutionalized, transitional justice is least likely to take place. Five cases of violence violence which were committed by anticommunist regimes during the Cold War in four Asian countries are explored.

The introduction of civic education in Serbia in 2001 marked a beginning of an allencompassing reform that set the tone for future changes designed to support the country’s democratization. This article draws on documentary and elite interview data to unpack the conceptualization of this policy, revealing it to be a multi-level positioning exercise in the national and international political space. It argues that, by using favorable political and international policy conditions, Serbian policymakers created a version of civic education that significantly drew on grassroots peace education programs developed during the 1990s, recognizing the priority of needs in building a democratic society. The latter offered Serbian policymakers agency in the context of what critical literature perceives as a transfer/imposition of policies in societies facing “Westernization.”