Peacebuilding as Statebuilding		Regional Conflict Formations: Processes of Development and Challenges for Conflict Management Project Aim: To assist policy practitioners by developing a general framework for managing and approaching regional conflicts, by examining the process of regional conflict formation in South Central Asia and the Great Lakes regions and through relevant comparisons to West Africa and the Andean regions. Project Objectives: To organize two regional consultations (Great Lakes and South Central Asia regions) involving local, regional, and international policy practitioners and scholars. To produce a series of policy and background papers, which establish a framework for addressing regional conflicts and reconstruction. To foster the development of a collaborative, inclusive and informed group of policy practitioners and scholars, which exchanges ideas and activities relating to regional conflict. Project Duration: Two years (January 2001-December 2002) : - November 11-13, 2001 - Nairobi consultation - June 3-5, 2002 - S. Central Asian consultation - Autumn 2002 - NY conference and presentation of final results. Project Summary: "Regional conflict formations" (RCFs) are sets of transnational conflicts that form mutually reinforcing linkages with each other throughout a region, making for more protracted and obdurate conflicts. This research will deal with both the processes through which such RCFs develop and the challenges they pose to conflict management. RCFs present formidable obstacles to peace efforts by the international community, but though a few studies have noted their prevalence, few have analyzed their dynamics and challenges for policy. Conventional approaches to human rights, based on the responsibility of states or state-territorial jurisdictions, may also encounter obstacles. Regional strategies are unavoidable, as regional powers are likely to be involved, and global powers may have little interest in devoting resources to distant problems. But regional parties to the conflict may be ill suited to take on the lead role in a peace process (due to lack of capacity or impartiality), and regional organizations may be paralyzed by dissension among their members. This conundrum is reflected in differences between the perspectives of analysts and actors living in these regions and those in global organizations or dominant states outside the region. The latter tend to focus on sources of conflict within the states or regions themselves and (if they are globalist liberals rather than nationalist unilateralists) propose ameliorative interventions by external actors. Those in the regions often attribute their problems in large measure to the policies of more powerful states and institutions and focus on the capacities of their own regions to confront these problems. Regional actors may lack economic or military capacity, but they possess knowledge and political skills that more distant actors may lack. Furthermore they have no "exit strategy" and are thus key to sustainability. RCFs include some of the most protracted conflicts in the world, and the problem of how to mitigate or manage them requires the integration of actions at various levels, from the local to the global. While regional networks of actors can link originally separate conflicts into RCFs, they can also underpin positive economic integration and peace building. Effective action to prevent such conflicts and mitigate their effects requires understanding of these processes and development of policy mechanisms and frameworks that might, for instance, provide incentives or opportunities to commercial or ethnic networks/diasporas to use their social capital for peaceful regional development. Plan of Work: The project aims to take a concept that already exists, RCFs, test and develop it in regional consultations, and disseminate the results of these discussions to both analysts and policymakers engaged in conflict prevention and management. The process of research and writing will include collaboration with scholars, practitioners and institutions in the regions, and will involve local actors through collaborative consultations in the SCA and GL regions. These two consultations (and revised papers incorporating their findings) will inform a subsequent conference in New York, where the general framework and recommendations will be discussed with policy practitioners and scholars from the local, regional, and international levels. The principal products will be a report of the regional and New York consultations and a final policy paper, which will be published as part of CICs Policy Paper Series. All reports will be disseminated broadly via meetings in international and regional organizations, via the internet and e-mail, as well as through the regional partner institutions. CIC's work on this project will complement and link to that being done by the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum in improving communication between UN policy makers and analysts working on a number of these same regions. Organization: The work will be carried out by the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University, in partnership with the Africa Peace Forum in Nairobi. The principal director of this project will be Barnett R. Rubin, who joined the Center on International Cooperation as Director of Studies on July 1, 2000. Rubin is an internationally known scholar and practitioner of conflict prevention and analysis. A noted expert on Afghanistan and Central Asia, Rubin was formerly the Director of the Center for Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed projects on the South Balkans, the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, Nigeria, and Central Asia (the Ferghana Valley).