Peace with/out Justice?

Experts from a wide range of peace building organizations attended today an IDEA seminar titled "Peace With/Out Justice? Challenges of Democracy Building and Conflict Management" (see agenda) to look into the current challenges of conflict management, reconciliation and post-conflict democratization. The Sri Lankan Peace process and the post-conflict transition of the Ivory Coast were the focus of this seminar. Key speakers and their subjects included:

• Democracy’s Role in Managing Conflict – Vidar Helgesen, IDEA’s Secretary-General
• The Sri Lankan Peace Process – Jehan Perera, Executive Director of the National Peace Council in Sri Lanka
• Côte d’Ivoire: transitional challenged in a regional context – Jacob Eben, Coordinator of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) in Ghana

The seminar was held back-to-back with a meeting of IDEA-sponsored Asia Reconciliation Expert Network (Asia–REN), a group of practitioners with specific expertise in understanding the dynamics of Asia’s regional conflicts.

In 2003 IDEA published the Handbook Reconciliation After Violent Conflict. To date, regionalised versions or policy summaries of the Handbook have been published in French, Spanish, Burmese, Sinhalese and Tamil. Read more about IDEA’s reconciliation programme.  

Contact: Mark Salter, Senior Programme Officer, Democracy Building and Conflict Management Programme