This paper provides a mid-term assessment of externally-led Security Sector Reform (SSR) during the United Nations (UN) led peacebuilding intervention in Timor- Leste. Despite initial difficulties, several core institutions, introduced by the UN, remain effective and were integrated into local practices. These initial security problems of the new-born Timor-Leste state, included the radical reconfiguration of the power balances within elites and an unfamiliarity with new approaches to security governance by the indigenous actors themselves. The lack of contextual knowledge and insensitivity to local political dynamics by external actors exacerbated these issues. Nonetheless, Timor-Leste has found ways to achieve some measure of political stability and physical security, both of which were always overarching goals of SSR.

The transitional justice policies employed in Timor-Leste are among the most multifaceted and comprehensive ever attempted. However, what these mechanisms have collectively accomplished has not been adequately evaluated. The long-term effectiveness of transitional justice should be judged in terms of the multidimensional relationships between the many policies and programs relevant to redressing the legacy of the past. The impunity of those most responsible for human rights violations casts a sizable shadow over the transitional justice efforts; however, analysis of the establishment of the Chega! National Centre (CNC) shows that the gradual development of transitional justice in Timor-Leste has broken through a structural bottleneck. This is due to persistent calls for transitional justice from civil society and the slow but steady implementation of relevant programs.

This research article explains why Cambodia’s dual transition of peacebuilding and democratization after the civil war led to peace but not democracy. The research finds that democratization often threatened peacebuilding in Cambodia. Particularly elections led to political instability, mass protests, and renewed violence, and thus also blocked reforms to democratize Cambodia’s government institutions. By applying the war-to-democracy transition theory and theories of political reconciliation to Cambodia’s dual transition, the following research article finds that a lack of political reconciliation between Cambodia’s former civil war parties is the main reason why the dual transition failed. This article argues that peace-building and democratization are only complementary processes in post-civil war states when preceded by political reconciliation between the former civil war parties.

In the present article, I discuss current and past peace and reconciliation educational efforts conducted between Palestinians and Israelis. I concentrate on the educational initiatives conducted for Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli citizens and not on those less common taking place between Israelis and Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority. In the first section of this article I describe the Israeli sociopolitical and educational context. I then review the main theoretical perspectives which underwrite the educational work undertaken. The third section is dedicated to reviewing the main existing programs and offering information regarding research results where research has been conducted, and in the fourth and last section I offer critical insights on the educational initiatives portrayed.

Using the framework of centripetal and centrifugal force, this article analyzes alternating periods of peace and conflict in South Korea-Japan mutual perceptions since 1998 when the two nations took unprecedented conciliatory actions. Centripetal force is comprised of political leaders’ reconciliation initiatives, restrained historical/territorial disputes, and common security threats. Centrifugal force incorporates heated historical/territorial disputes, political leaders’ use of those disputes for their political purposes, and divergent security priorities. This article suggests that top political leaders in both nations can play a significant role in improving or aggravating mutual perceptions between the two neighbors. However, political leaders’ conciliatory initiatives are a necessary but insufficient condition in reconciling the two former adversary states.

The processes of making foreign policy decisions and forming assumptions about the nature of the “other” comprise major challenges to the transformation of conflictual relationships and construction of an enduring peace in Northeast Asia. In this article, in order to make progress towards these goals, methodologies for unpacking the “black box of decision,” understanding the “other,” deconstructing the relationship between positions and interests, and increasing the role played by non-state and substate actors are explored. The paper first assesses theoretical and practical tools used for addressing the problems. It then considers other conflictual relationships that have faced similar obstacles, and the processes which were employed in an attempt to ameliorate them. It concludes with a policy prescription for breaking the vicious cycle of hurt, blame, and rising nationalism in the region.

Although Southeast Asia was brutally occupied by Imperial Japan during World War II, the region has reconciled with postwar Japan. That Southeast Asia is not hostile to Japan today is due to several reasons: the relatively short duration of the Japanese occupation, the pragmatic needs of the Southeast Asian states to deal with immediate security and economic problems rather than to dwell on the past, and the efforts of Japan to be a good neighbor to Southeast Asia since the enunciation of the 1977 Fukuda Doctrine. Public opinion surveys of Southeast Asians towards Japan today and the content analysis of the history textbooks of various ASEAN states show little hostility towards Japan.

reconciliation between the Japanese people and those of China and Korea may have better prospects for advancement through a new cultural approach that is experience-based, starting at individuals’ levels and interests, rather than focusing solely on victimization and confining activism to more conventional organizationbuilding and public protests. The peace movement opposed to nuclear weapons has continued to center around the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but in the past has not fully dealt with Korean and Chinese forced labor by Imperial Japan. However, the alternative experience-based cultural approach by a number of individuals and relatively small organizations has combined these two historical issues. This article highlights examples of two Japanese who directly witnessed Chinese and Korean forced labor in wartime Japan, but who also opposed the atomic bombings. They became activists themselves in the postwar era and utilized traditional cultural forms (tanka poetry and sumi drawing) to help create awareness of the full dimension of Japan’s wartime history. There is strong potential for extending this alternative social movement model, which may be more effective in achieving reconciliation of unresolved historical injustices, to younger generations.