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This paper aims to explain how peace research has influenced a re-conceptualization of the international relations (IR) notion of security and conflict, the nature of the global arena, how to effectively negotiate conflict resolution and strategies for peacebuilding. The paper argues that – although peace research had contributed to reducing the threat of interstate conflict – IR scholars have failed to recognize the need for a more inclusive theoretical strategy for dealing with the new challenge imposed by intrastate conflict.

The paper uses Cyprus as a case to compare the conflict management strategies of the liberal peace agenda and the integrative, multi-level, multi-dimensional approach to peacebuilding that is proposed by peace research. The Cyprus case is also used as an example of how the alternative approach to participatory political communication has moved the Cyprus situation off deadlock and in the direction of more promising outcomes.

The research reveals that although the liberal peace agenda (i.e. the state-centric and established diplomatic approach to conflict management) is effective in getting the two sides of the conflict to the negotiating table, it is inadequate in addressing the underlying cause of conflict; thus, in many instances, there is a reoccurrence of conflict and violence.

The paper is limited in its ability to place peace research within the context of theoretical developments in the field of IR (e.g. this is even more-so true in regard to researching international politics). Although peace research has made enormous contributions in reducing the threat of interstate conflict (e.g. it is acknowledged that peace research contributed to ending the Cold War, thus bringing about new perspectives on how the global arena is defined, the nature of conflict and the role of communicative action in global relations), there has not been a corresponding development in the theory and practice of IR.

The paper explains how recent developments in communication theory and information communication technology have altered the nature of the global arena and the factors impacting global social movements. Thus, the paper indicates factors that are vital to cross-border interactions, cross-border social movements and alternative approaches to interstate social-political activities that deserve further research.

The research analyzes the contribution to participatory political communication in conflict management, reconciliation and peacebuilding processes. The paper also highlights the role of alternative media as a component of the infrastructure for peace (e.g. in the Cyprus context, it provides a forum in which agents from an otherwise divided community can participate in establishing shared values and common objectives).

Cyprus represents one of the longest running conflicts and, in addition, one of the longest running peacekeeping missions of the UN. This paper explains how unique features of the peace research approach to peacebuilding contributes to producing more positive results in what has heretofore been a deadlock in the divided community of Cyprus. Thus, this paper provides an indication of how the lessons learned by peace researchers in the Cyprus micro context contribute to addressing macro-level IR challenges (e.g. north-south and east-west challenges that occur because of outlooks in the proverbial other).

Capacity development in fragile environments in Africa has often proven to be a complex undertaking. This has largely been because of existing knowledge gaps on what exactly causes fragility of states, the economy and society. The liberal peace development model that generally informs post‐conflict reconstruction and capacity development has a limited conception of fragility by narrowly focusing on the national dimensions of the problem, promoting donor‐driven solutions, emphasizing minimal participation of beneficiary actors in the identification and prioritization of capacity development needs, and by subcontracting the design and management of projects and programs. The resulting capacity development impact has generally been disappointing. In the absence of homegrown strategic plans, stakeholder participation and ownership, international development partners have all too often addressed capacity gaps by financing training, supply of equipment and professional exchanges of parliamentarians and parliamentary staffers. These efforts usually achieved their presumed number targets but tended to ignore addressing the larger issues of political economy within which capacity development take place. However, the recent re‐conceptualization of parliamentary capacity development as a development of nationally owned, coordinated, harmonized, and aligned development activities seems to be gaining growing attention in Africa. As the experience of Rwanda eloquently demonstrates, capacity development is essentially about politics, economics and power, institutions and incentives, habits and attitudes – factors that are only partly susceptible to technical fixes and quantitative specifications. These structural factors have to be negotiated carefully and tactfully.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the existing research on the intersection between war and international business (IB) and to map out a future research agenda.

Drawing on corporate examples and extant literature within IB, political science and international relations, the paper provides an introduction to the main concepts of war, a review of the IB research on war and provides a critical future research agenda.

The review of the multiple strands of war-related research in IB generally reveals an understudied area. Among other biases, prior research has focused on inter-state wars and has relatively unexplored foreign direct investment (FDI) and non-FDI within civil wars. Furthermore, previous studies offer little attention to how IB and multinational companies contribute to the emergence and development of wars.

The paper develops an analytical and critical research agenda for future research to examine the relationship between war and IB. This includes a set of questions for each of the three major phases of war: pre-conflict, armed violence and post-conflict. To the best of my knowledge, this has not been done before in the context of IB research.

On 1 April 1978, the Israeli peace movement burst into world consciousness when an estimated 25,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv to urge the administration of Prime Minister Menachem Begin to continue peace negotiations with Egypt. A grassroots group called Peace Now is credited with organizing and leading that demonstration. Today, the “peace camp” refers to left‐wing political parties and organizations that hold dovish positions on the Arab‐Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue. While some figures in the Labor Party view themselves as the peace movement's natural leader, political parties further to the left like the Citizens Rights Movement (CRM) and Mapam are more dovish. In the last 10 years, many grassroots peace organizations have, like Peace Now, formed outside the political party system, with the goal of influencing public opinion and eventually having an impact on policy makers. Peace Now is still the largest, most visible and influential of those organizations.

This paper aims to analyze a decolonized peace with gender perspective. Liberal democracies had consolidated on conquest, slavery, racism, sexism, colonialism, raw material extraction and female exploitation. Additional burdens came from neoliberal globalization with the massive burning of fossil oil, changing the Earth's history from the Holocene toward the Anthropocene. Multiple nexus between the human and environmental system requires an epistemology from the Global South. The paper explores alternative peace paradigms enabling poor and exploited people to overcome the destructive outcomes of patriarchal violence and extractivism. Regionally and locally, they are experimenting with just, safe, equal and sustainable alternatives of free societies.

The nexus approach focuses on system efficiency, internal and external feedbacks and allows decision-making processes with stronger cross-sectoral coordination and multi-level governance. It includes the understanding of the policy agenda and the political actors at different levels, explaining the discrimination of gender from local to global. The analysis establishes complex relations between theory and political actions, due that all actions are inherently mediated by gender. A key focus is a relationship and the outcomes of policies, where communication and collaboration at the local level grant efficient peaceful resource management with gender equity.

An engendered-sustainable peace approach is culturally decentralized and may offer alternatives to the ongoing destruction process of neoliberal corporatism and violence. Drastic systemic change requires massive changes from bottom-up and top-down before 2030–2050. Global solidarity among all excluded people, especially women and girls, promotes from childhood an engendered-sustainable peace-building process, where positive feedbacks may reduce the tipping points on Earth and among humankind. Engendered-sustainable peace can mitigate the upcoming conflicts and catastrophes, limiting the negative feedbacks from abusive, selfish and destructive corporations. A greater self-regulating sustainable system with a HUGE-security could promote a decolonized, engendered and sustainable peace for everybody.

The interconnected risks are cascading across different domains, where systemic challenges have intensified conflicts and violence, due to uncertainty, instability and fragility. Cascading effects not only demand prevention for sudden disruptions (hurricanes, floods) but also for slow-ongoing processes (drought, sea-level rise, lack of water availability, etc.), which are equally or more disruptive. Women suffer differently from disasters and are prone to greater impacts on their life and livelihood. An engendered peace is limited by the deep engrained patriarchal system. Only a culture of peace with gender recognition may grant future peace and also the sustainable care of ecosystems.

The Global South is exploring alternative ways to overcome the present violent and destructive globalization by promoting deep engrained indigenous values of Aymaras’ living well, the shell model of commanding by obeying of the Zapatistas or Bhutan’s Happiness Index. Globally, critical women and men are promoting subsistence agriculture, solidarity or gift economy, where local efforts are restoring the equilibrium between humans and nature. An engendered-sustainable peace is limiting the destructive impacts of the Anthropocene, climate change and ongoing pandemics.

An engendered-sustainable peace is culturally decentralized and offers alternatives to the ongoing destruction process of neoliberal corporatism, climate change and violence. The text explores how to overcome the present hybrid warfare with alternative HUGE security and peace from the bottom-up. Regional reinforcement of food security, safe water management, local jobs and a concordian economy for the most vulnerable may change the present exploitation of nature and humankind. Growing solidarity with people affected by disasters is empowering women and girls and dismantling from the bottom-up, the dominant structures of violence and exploitation.

The military-industrial-scientific corporate complex and the exploitation of women, men and natural resources, based on patriarchy, has produced climate change, poverty and global pandemics with millions of unnecessary deaths and suffering. A doughnut engendered peace looking from the outside and inside of the system of globalization and environmental destruction proposes to overcome the growth addiction by a growth agnostic society. Engendered peace explores alternative and sustainable values that go beyond the dominant technological changes. It includes a culturally, politically and institutionally ingrained model where everybody is a participant, reinforcing an engendered-sustainable peace and security for everybody.

Issues of women’s education and empowerment of women have been incorporated in the framing of the role of women in international development from the 1970s, primarily as a response to the liberal feminist movement agenda of the time. This analysis examines the degree to which liberal feminism and liberal feminist theory is reflected in comparative education scholarship in the lead up to and beyond the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The analysis first explores the underpinnings of liberal feminism, which constitutes the ideal embedded in development education for girls and women. It follows up with a reflection on the literature in the field of comparative education that reference liberal feminism framework and feminist theory in exploring educational issues and ways in which the theory is located in the research. Illustration of examples that demonstrate the limits of liberal feminism as a theoretical framework and barriers to the use of liberal feminist theory as an ideological guide are captured in the findings. The search is limited to the six dominant scholarly outlets in the field of comparative education; namely Comparative Education Review (CER), Comparative Education (CE), Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education (Compare), Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education (Prospects), International Review of Education (IRE), and the International Journal of Educational Development (IJED). Only works that explicitly mention liberal feminism/liberal feminist perspectives are included in the analysis. This research contributes to the acknowledgement of the liberal feminist theory in development education and for the field of comparative education. It will also help with understanding the politics of ideology and representation in scholarship and development interventions.

As of November 2021, six out of the 12 United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are in Sub-Saharan Africa, spread between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Western Sahara, Mali, Central African Republic, Abyei, South Sudan and Darfur. When considered alongside other recent conflicts in Liberia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire and Mozambique, many of these conflicts are driven and sustained by resource looting of oil, minerals, timber, gas and fertile land and sand. Although other factors, particularly colonialism, the creation of poorly governed states, ethnic polarization, greed and extremism contribute to violence, the author argues that resource looting is central. Taking the DRC as the case study, the purpose of this paper is to examine why traditional UN peacekeeping, grounded in the international liberal order, has failed to efficiently deescalate wars and armed conflicts that are driven by resource looting and how alternative homegrown peace strategies can be more effective.

Deploying peacekeeping, peacebuilding and resource governance and theories, this paper examines the current UN peacekeeping efforts to increase our understanding of how alternative peacekeeping strategies found in African cultures, particularly indigenous epistemologies can be used to engender sustainable peace and security. The second argument is that sustainable peace and security cannot be solely exogenous, without integrating African cultural heritage, specifically African indigenous knowledge systems or epistemologies, a factor that is consistent with people’s right to self-determination and agency.

Peacekeeping that is exogenously enforced has failed to create sustainable peace and security in the DRC.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is original, based on the research conducted in the DRC. Following the academic writing norms, the data is backed up by literature.