During the 1990s, optimism abounded because international violence was in decline. The number of armed conflicts decreased worldwide from more than fifty in the early 1990s to fewer than thirty a decade later. This drop resulted largely from negotiations leading to peace accords. However, in a disturbingly large number of places, war was actually succeeded not by peace but by a stalemate. Peace accords were plagued by problems, including economic hardship, burgeoning crime, postwar trauma, and persistent fear and suspicion. Too often, negotiated settlements merely opened another difficult chapter in the peace process, or worse, led to new phases of conflict. This disappointing record is the subject of a multiyear project conducted by the University of Notre Dame’s Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict (RIREC). Located at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, RIREC explored three significant challenges of the postwar landscape: the effects of violence in internal conflicts after peace agreements have been signed; the contributions of truth-telling mechanisms; and the multidimensional roles played by youth as activists, soldiers, criminals, and community-builders. The project led to the 2006 publication of three edited volumes by the University of Notre Dame Press: John Darby’s Violence and Reconstruction; Tristan Anne Borer’s Telling the Truths: Truth Telling and Peace Building in Post-Conflict Societies; and Siobhán McEvoy-Levy’s Troublemakers or Peacemakers? Youth and Post-Accord Peace Building. In Peacebuilding After Peace Accords, the three editors revisit the topics presented in their books. They examine the dilemmas each of the three challenges presents for postwar reconstruction and the difficulties in building a sustainable peace in societies recently destabilized by deadly violence. The authors argue that researchers and practitioners should pay greater attention to these challenges, especially how they relate to each other and to different post-accord problems. A foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu sets the context for this volume, and an afterword by Eileen Babbitt reflects on its findings.

What impact do mass media portrayals of atrocities have on activism? Why do these news stories sometimes mobilize people, while at other times they are met with indifference? Do different forms of media have greater or lesser impacts on mobilization? These are just some of the questions addressed in Media, Mobilization, and Human Rights, which investigates the assumption that exposure to human rights violations in countries far away causes people to respond with activism. Turning a critical eye on existing scholarship, which argues either that viewing and reading about violence can serve as a force for good (through increased activism) or as a source of evil (by objectifying and exploiting the victims of violence), the authors argue that reality is far more complex, and that there is nothing inherently positive or negative about exposure to the suffering of others. In exploring this, the book offers an array of case studies: from human rights reporting in Mexican newspapers to the impact of media imagery on humanitarian intervention in Somalia; from the influence of celebrity activism to the growing role of social media. By examining a variety of media forms, from television and radio to social networking, the interdisciplinary set of authors present radical new ways of thinking about the intersection of media portrayals of human suffering and activist responses to them.

During the 1990s, optimism abounded because international violence was in decline. The number of armed conflicts decreased worldwide from more than fifty in the early 1990s to fewer than thirty a decade later. This drop resulted largely from negotiations leading to peace accords. However, in a disturbingly large number of places, war was actually succeeded not by peace but by a stalemate. Peace accords were plagued by problems, including economic hardship, burgeoning crime, postwar trauma, and persistent fear and suspicion. Too often, negotiated settlements merely opened another difficult chapter in the peace process, or worse, led to new phases of conflict. This disappointing record is the subject of a multiyear project conducted by the University of Notre Dame's Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict (RIREC). Located at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, RIREC explored three significant challenges of the postwar landscape: the effects of violence in internal conflicts after peace agreements have been signed; the contributions of truth-telling mechanisms; and the multidimensional roles played by youth as activists, soldiers, criminals, and community-builders. The project led to the 2006 publication of three edited volumes by the University of Notre Dame Press: John Darby's Violence and Reconstruction; Tristan Anne Borer's Telling the Truths: Truth Telling and Peace Building in Post-Conflict Societies; and Siobhan McEvoy-Levy's Troublemakers or Peacemakers? Youth and Post-Accord Peace Building. In Peacebuilding After Peace Accords, the three editors revisit the topics presented in their books. They examine the dilemmas each of the three challenges presents for postwar reconstruction and the difficulties in building a sustainable peace in societies recently destabilized by deadly violence. The authors argue that researchers and practitioners should pay greater attention to these challenges, especially how they relate to each other and to different post-accord problems. A foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu sets the context for this volume, and an afterword by Eileen Babbitt reflects on its findings.

Confronting the past has become an established norm for countries undergoing transitions from violence to peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, or both. This book draws from two bodies of literature-peace building and transitional justice-to examine whether truth-telling mechanisms can contribute to sustainable peace and, if so, how and under what conditions. The authors approach these questions by examining whether truth telling contributes to the following elements, all of which are deemed to be constitutive of sustainable peace: reconciliation, human rights, gender equity, restorative justice, the rule of law, the mitigation of violence, and the healing of trauma. While the transitional-justice literature appears to have grasped the importance of truth telling for securing sustainable peace, few studies have undertaken empirical analysis and evaluations of the long-term impact of such mechanisms. Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume-from the fields of political science, law, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology-accomplish that by closely examining how societies emerging from violence must in some way examine, acknowledge, and account for violence committed in the past in order to move forward.

What impact do mass media portrayals of atrocities have on activism? Why do these news stories sometimes mobilize people, while at other times they are met with indifference? Do different forms of media have greater or lesser impacts on mobilization? These are just some of the questions addressed in Media, Mobilization, and Human Rights, which investigates the assumption that exposure to human rights violations in countries far away causes people to respond with activism. Turning a critical eye on existing scholarship, which argues either that viewing and reading about violence can serve as a force for good (through increased activism) or as a source of evil (by objectifying and exploiting the victims of violence), the authors argue that reality is far more complex, and that there is nothing inherently positive or negative about exposure to the suffering of others. In exploring this, the book offers an array of case studies: from human rights reporting in Mexican newspapers to the impact of media imagery on humanitarian intervention in Somalia; from the influence of celebrity activism to the growing role of social media. By examining a variety of media forms, from television and radio to social networking, the interdisciplinary set of authors present radical new ways of thinking about the intersection of media portrayals of human suffering and activist responses to them.

Confronting the past has become an established norm for countries undergoing transitions from violence to peace, from authoritarianism to democracy, or both. This book draws from two bodies of literature-peace building and transitional justice-to examine whether truth-telling mechanisms can contribute to sustainable peace and, if so, how and under what conditions. The authors approach these questions by examining whether truth telling contributes to the following elements, all of which are deemed to be constitutive of sustainable peace: reconciliation, human rights, gender equity, restorative justice, the rule of law, the mitigation of violence, and the healing of trauma. While the transitional-justice literature appears to have grasped the importance of truth telling for securing sustainable peace, few studies have undertaken empirical analysis and evaluations of the long-term impact of such mechanisms. Contributors to this interdisciplinary volume-from the fields of political science, law, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology-accomplish that by closely examining how societies emerging from violence must in some way examine, acknowledge, and account for violence committed in the past in order to move forward.