“His ideas will help anyone who has the courage to understand that a real education must go beyond filling in circles on a standardized test form.” —Rafe Esquith, New York Times-bestselling author of Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire Can playing a game lead to world peace? If it’s John Hunter’s World Peace Game, it just might. In Hunter’s classroom, students take on the roles of presidents, tribal leaders, diplomats, and military commanders. Through battles and negotiations, standoffs and summits, they strive to resolve a sequence of many-layered, interconnected scenarios, from nuclear proliferation to tribal warfare. Now, Hunter shares inspiring stories from over thirty years of teaching the World Peace Game, revealing the principles of successful collaboration that people of any age can apply. He offers not only a forward-thinking report from the frontlines of American education, but also a generous blueprint for a world that bends toward cooperation rather than conflict. In this deeply hopeful book, a visionary educator shows us what the future of education can be. “The World Peace Game devised by fourth-grade teacher Hunter has spread from a classroom in 1978 to a documentary, a TED Talk, the Pentagon, and now finally a book, in which he describes the ways his students have solved political and ecological crises that still loom large in the world of adults . . . Hunter’s optimism is infectious.” —Publishers Weekly “Inspired, breath-of-fresh-air reading.” — Kirkus Reviews “Hunter proves the value of ‘slow teaching’ in this important, fascinating, highly readable resource for educators and parents alike.” — Booklist

Examines the economic, social, cultural, as well as purely political threats to democracy in the light of current knowledge.

Sex and World Peace is a groundbreaking demonstration that the security of women is a vital factor in the occurrence of conflict and war, unsettling a wide range of assumptions in political and security discourse. Harnessing an immense amount of data, it relates microlevel violence against women and macrolevel state peacefulness across global settings. The authors find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. They call attention to the adverse effects on state security of sex-based inequities such as sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and lax enforcement of national laws protecting women. Their research challenges conventional definitions of security and democracy and common understandings of the causes of world events. The book considers a range of ways to remedy these injustices, including top-down and bottom-up approaches to redressing violence against women and the lack of sex parity in decision-making. Advocating a state responsibility to protect women, the authors campaign against women’s systemic insecurity, which threatens the security of all. Sex and World Peace has been a go-to book for instructors, advocates, and policy makers since its publication in 2012. Since then, there have been major changes in world affairs, including the #MeToo movement, as well as advances in both theoretical and empirical literature surrounding the subject. This second edition, which adds coauthors Rose McDermott and Donna Lee Bowen alongside Valerie M. Hudson and Mary Caprioli, revises and updates the book for a new generation. The book retains its foundational overview of the relationship between women’s oppression and war, enhanced by fresh data and new material covering recent developments for global women’s rights and analysis of additional examples of gender and conflict throughout the world.

For as long as there has been war, there have been demands for its elimination. The quest for world peace has excited and eluded political leaders, philosophers, religious elders, activists, and artists for millennia. With war on the rise once again, we rarely reflect on what world peace might look like; much less on how it might be achieved. World Peace aims to change all that and show that world peace is possible. Because the motives, rationales, and impulses that give rise to war - the quest for survival, enrichment, solidarity, and glory - are now better satisfied through peaceful means, war is an increasingly anachronistic practice, more likely to impoverish and harm us humans than satisfy and protect us. This book shows that we already have many of the institutions and practices needed to make peace possible and sets out an agenda for building world peace. In the immediate term, it shows how steps to strengthen compliance with international law, improve collective action such as international peacekeeping and peacebuilding, better regulate the flow of arms, and hold individuals legally accountable for acts of aggression or atrocity crimes can make our world more peaceful. It also shows how in the long term, building strong and legitimate states that protect the rights and secure the livelihoods of their people, gender equal societies, and protecting the right of individuals to opt-out of wars has the potential to establish and sustain world peace. But it will only happen, if individuals organize to make it happen.

Peacekeeping has been the technique most frequently used by, and associated with, the United Nations to end conflicts and to preserve peace. In addition, international and regional organizations have also performed peacekeeping functions. Since the establishment of the first UN peacekeeping mission, UNEF I, in 1956, international lawyers have raised questions about the legal aspects of these operations. Traditionally, they analyzed the constitutional basis for peacekeeping and tried to allocate the authority under the UN Charter for peacekeeping among the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretary General. They discussed the use of force by peacekeepers, the applicability of international humanitarian law, as well as the responsibilities and liabilities of peacekeepers. Since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping operations have become more complex. In the first forty years, peacekeepers functioned mainly as buffer zones between warring parties and monitored cease-fires. Nowadays, they are increasingly engaged in internal rather than international conflicts and perform a multitude of tasks. Among others, they act as civilian administrators, oversee elections and monitor human rights. These changes have raised new legal problems. Which human rights obligations exist for peacekeepers? Do peacekeepers have to intervene if they witness war crimes and acts of genocide? How are they protected under international law? What is the legal framework of UN administrations like in Kosovo and East Timor? In order to enhance a better understanding of these legal issues arising from peacekeeping operations, a collection of articles written by the leading experts in the field have been compiled in the volume, International Peacekeeping.

Violent conflicts today are complex and increasingly protracted, involving more nonstate groups and regional and international actors. It is estimated that by 2030—the horizon set by the international community for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals—more than half of the world’s poor will be living in countries affected by high levels of violence. Information and communication technology, population movements, and climate change are also creating shared risks that must be managed at both national and international levels. Pathways for Peace is a joint United Nations†“World Bank Group study that originates from the conviction that the international community’s attention must urgently be refocused on prevention. A scaled-up system for preventive action would save between US$5 billion and US$70 billion per year, which could be reinvested in reducing poverty and improving the well-being of populations. The study aims to improve the way in which domestic development processes interact with security, diplomacy, mediation, and other efforts to prevent conflicts from becoming violent. It stresses the importance of grievances related to exclusion—from access to power, natural resources, security and justice, for example—that are at the root of many violent conflicts today. Based on a review of cases in which prevention has been successful, the study makes recommendations for countries facing emerging risks of violent conflict as well as for the international community. Development policies and programs must be a core part of preventive efforts; when risks are high or building up, inclusive solutions through dialogue, adapted macroeconomic policies, institutional reform, and redistributive policies are required. Inclusion is key, and preventive action needs to adopt a more people-centered approach that includes mainstreaming citizen engagement. Enhancing the participation of women and youth in decision making is fundamental to sustaining peace, as well as long-term policies to address the aspirations of women and young people.

This encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive overview of major theories and approaches to the study of peace and conflict across different humanities and social sciences disciplines. Peace and conflict studies (PCS) is one of the major sub-disciplines of international studies (including political science and international relations), and has emerged from a need to understand war, related systems and concepts and how to respond to it afterward. As a living reference work, easily discoverable and searchable, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies offers solid material for understanding the foundational, historical, and contemporary themes, concepts, theories, events, organisations, and frameworks concerning peace, conflict, security, rights, institutions and development. The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies brings together leading and emerging scholars from different disciplines to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on peace and conflict studies ever produced.

This book suggests a new explanation for why international peace interventions often fail to reach their full potential. Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation - strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These common attitudes and actions enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they also result in unintended consequences that thwart international efforts. Certain expatriates follow alternative modes of thinking and acting, often with notable results, but they remain in the minority. Through an in-depth analysis of the interveners' everyday life and work, this book proposes innovative ways to better help host populations build a sustainable peace.

This book challenges the current thinking and strategies in the field of global peace and security. It is clear that current global public and private institutions are inadequate for the challenges we face today. These challenges cut across borders and require a more coordinated and concerted effort to find workable solutions. This book therefore begins with the question of global leadership and works its way back to the interconnected dynamics of global modernity and conflict. It is divided into four parts, each addressing a fundamental challenge to global peace and security. By exploring how we break out of the current framework, in which we understand global activities and the distribution of resources, and this book provides new ways of understanding the material, cultural, political, and spiritual relations that form the basis of international society. Hoda Mahmoudi is Research Professor and Chair, The Bahá'í Chair for World Peace, University of Maryland, USA. Michael Allen is Chair and Professor of Political Science on the Harvey Wexler Chair in Political Science, and Co-Director of International Studies, Bryn Mawr College, USA. Kate Seaman is Assistant Director, The Bahá'í Chair for World Peace, University of Maryland, USA. .