Peter Wallensteen

In January 1990 I received a phone call from the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. The island was experiencing an intensive armed conflict, a war that was small by international standards, but which we included in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). The caller had seen an article on conflict resolution based on our database and assumed that we had information that might play a role in the settlement of the conflict.

When the call came, it was possible for me to relate immediately to the issues. The parties in Bougainville listened with interest to the autonomy settlement for the Åland islands situated between Sweden and Norway and the demilitarization that preceded it. Today, Bougainville has autonomous status within Papua New Guinea. Perhaps what the local parties learned from academia was helpful. Read the rest of this entry »

Celebrating the anniversary of peace in Mozambique. The General Peace Agreement for Mozambique (1992) is one of 29 comprehensive peace agreements featured on the Peace Accords Matrix. (Photo courtesy of Community of Sant’Egidio)

Madhav Joshi and John Darby

Peacebuilding scholars and practitioners often emphasize the importance of achieving sustainable peace accords, but few have attempted to examine comprehensively the provisions of peace accords and how they are implemented. The Kroc Institute established the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) to serve as a gateway for scholars and practitioners into the vast and often confusing materials on recent comprehensive peace accords. Read the rest of this entry »

Kristen Wall and David Cortright 

Conflict data sets enable peace scholars to identify key practices that make a difference in peacebuilding.

Take, for example, the practice of peacekeeping. One of the strongest findings to emerge from empirical research is that impartial peacekeeping forces make a significant difference for sustaining peace in post-conflict societies. A peace settlement alone does not guarantee an end to armed conflict in societies that are still highly armed and fractured. Fighting often resumes unless a third party steps in to verify or enforce a ceasefire and post-conflict agreement.

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