Quality Peace in an Age of Discord: Global Challenges and the Case of Nagorno-Karabakh

The Department of International Relations invites you to the online event titled "Quality Peace in an Age of Discord: Global Challenges and the Case of Nagorno-Karabakh." Prof. Peter Wallensteen from Uppsala University will join us as the speaker, together with Prof. Bahar Rumelili from Koç University as the discussant in our first event in the online series called "Talks on a World in Crisis." The event will take place online via Zoom on the 17th of December between 18:30-19:45. 

Please click here for the event registration form. The online Zoom link will be shared half an hour before the event with participants who filled out the registration form via the e-mail addresses they provided on the form.

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Abstract

The year of the pandemic has not reduced the challenge of war. What seemed to be “frozen” conflicts have warmed up. New conflicts have emerged and older ones have remained unsolved. The international efforts of mediation and negotiations have been stalled, with devastating effects for the populations. Thus, there is a need to look for new possibilities for the 2020s: can these challenges to peace be rephrased to become more interesting and more successful? There are (at least) two such possible avenues. One is provided by the SDG 16, and another by the notion of quality peace. This presentation looks at these approaches and attempts to apply them to one case that long have withstood any attempts at resolution: the conflict over the Nagorno Karabakh region.

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Prof. Peter Wallensteen

Prof. Peter Wallensteen is the first holder of the Dag Hammarskjöld Chair in Peace and Conflict Research (1985-2012). He is the author of the widely used Understanding Conflict Resolution: Peace, War, and the Global System, now in its fourth edition and published in English, Arabic, and Korean. He is also the author of Peace Research: Theory and Practice (Routledge), published in English and Chinese. In 2016, Wallensteen and Isak Svensson published The Diplomats of Peace: Nordic Mediation from Bernadotte to Ahtisaari, Stockholm (Santérus), which analyzed the work of over 40 mediators. The book serves as a follow-up text to Wallensteen and Svensson’s The Go-Between: Jan Eliasson and the Styles of Mediation (U.S.Institute of Peace, 2010). Wallensteen’s monograph Quality Peace: Peacebuilding, Victory and World Order (Oxford University Press, 2015) constitutes part of a multi-volume series on strategic peacebuilding developed by the Kroc Institute and Oxford University Press. Wallensteen is co-editor of Regional Organizations and Peacemaking: Challengers to the UN? (with Anders Bjurner, Routledge). His interest in targeted sanctions led him to publish the edited volume International Sanctions: Between Wars and Words in 2005 (with Carina Staibano, with contributions by Kroc Institute researchers). The report “Making Targeted Sanctions Effective” was the outcome of a large international process for improving sanctions and was presented to the UN Security Council in February 2003. The same year, Wallensteen’s edited book on Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Alva Myrdal, Alva Myrdal in International Affairs (Coronet), was published.

Prof. Bahar Rumelili 

Prof. Bahar Rumelili is Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at the Department of International Relations, Koc University, Istanbul. Her research has focused on international relations theory, processes of European identity construction, conflict resolution, and the interaction between the EU and Turkish politics and civil society. She is the author of Constructing Regional Community and Order in Europe and Southeast Asia (Palgrave, 2007) and the editor of Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security: Peace Anxieties (Routledge 2015). Her articles have appeared in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Journal of International Relations and Development among others. She is the 2009 recipient of Turkish Academy of Sciences’ Distinguished Young Scientist Award and the 2014 recipient of the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council’s Incentive Award.