What Violence Prevention Can Learn from Public Health Campaigns

Leaders found that mixing outreach with education can create the critical mass of support needed to drive a social change.
Much of the best social science research—work that could lead to good policy—never leaves the academy. We’re here to make sure it does.
ThinkPeace explores the causes of conflict and the elements of good governance that make sustainable peace possible. Our monthly series has focused on topics such as how to improve UN peacekeeping, why dictators hold elections, and understanding the dynamics of migration throughout Africa. ThinkPeace also highlights One Earth Future's latest research on political violence; coup d’etat; the role of the private sector in peacebuilding; and women, peace, and security.
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Leaders found that mixing outreach with education can create the critical mass of support needed to drive a social change.
Networks of non-state actors have proved to be a more sustainable force in countering piracy than military boots and warships.
There are competing perspectives about the role of civil society in weakly institutionalized democracies. At times, the destabilization caused by mass mobilization can seem challenging to democratic governance.
The study of individual beliefs and belief systems may have the potential to provide valuable insights into the drivers of many conflicts. But conflict prevention that is not systematic, self-critical and acknowledging of all of the other elements that may spawn conflict, has the potential to devolve into a demonization of belief systems.
Promoting peace and human security on our planet will require us to overcome a multitude of obstacles, maintaining environmental sustainability not least among them.
The adoption of the “Responsibility to Protect” (RtoP) by the UN General Assembly marked what many people hoped would be a turning point in support for international action to stop mass atrocity crimes...but it has encountered many hurdles.
If we allow our reaction to barbarism to be dictated on the fly and by the perpetrators themselves, we condemn the global community to ongoing terror. We need to think differently.
Knowing what we know, the answer to further reducing conflict seems to lie at the intersection of development and conflict.