Governing Board Chair Discusses Peacebuilding and Human Rights Synergies on UN Chronicle

In her latest article “Conflict Resolution and Human Rights in Peacebuilding: Exploring the Tensions,” Dr. Eileen Babbitt, Chair of the BEFORE Governing Board, makes a strong case for designing and implementing peacebuilding with an additional requirement: the active consideration and participation of the human rights community.

Published in the July 2011 issue of the United Nations Chronicle, the quarterly publication of the United Nations Department of Public Information, Dr. Babbitt points out that the peacebuilding community cannot assume human rights are “not our issue.” Human rights, she argues, are key components of parties’ interests and concerns, significant indicators of power asymmetry and sometimes power abuses, and often both a cause and a consequence of the conflicts we are trying to settle or transform.

Though the two communities have similar goals of assisting societies in taking steps to prevent future violence and ensuring that rights are respected, conflict resolution practitioners and human rights advocates have differing methods and underlying assumptions. Examining cases from Colombia, Sierra Leone and Northern Ireland, Dr. Babbitt shows how the two practices have conflicted and developed contradictory and even mutually exclusive approaches to the same problem.

Dr. Babbitt also depicts two crucial dilemmas that need to be addressed for better synergy between human rights and conflict resolution in peacebuilding efforts: 1) the tension between establishing sustainable non-violent relations between contending groups within a country, and prosecuting the members of such groups for human rights abuses and/or war crimes; and 2) the role that the international community plays in supporting or undermining norms that would help to integrate human rights and conflict resolution practices.

To read the entire article, visit the United National Chronicle online.