Resource Center Categories & Subcategories

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Categories

Conflict Prevention

Conflict Prevention is the resolution, management, and containment of disputes before the escalation or recurrence of violence. Prevention often has an emphasis on addressing root causes of conflict as well as on supporting the capabilities of potential parties to violent conflict in order to resolve disputes peacefully. 

 

The Field of Women, Peace and Security

This is a “meta-category.” This category should be used for articles that are about the field of WPS itself, not any of the specific elements under WPS. The field of women, peace and security was founded through the international framework of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and incorporates four pillars: Prevention, Protection, Participation, and Relief and Recovery. Additional resolutions have contributed to expanding the women, peace and security field: 1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106, 2122, and 2242. The field emphasizes the importance of the equal and full participation of women in all aspects of peace and security processes, whether via subnational, national, or international mechanisms. 

 

Human Rights

Human Rights refers to the rights inherent to all human beings as enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This category may include any infringements of economic, social, and cultural rights, and may be individual or communal, systematic, or sporadic, or the result of state action or private action. 

 

Humanitarian Emergencies

Humanitarian Emergencies are events or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security, or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area.  

 

National Action Plans

National Action Plans for Women, Peace and Security for different national governments. This topic is reserved for the official plans themselves, not for assessments or monitoring of plans. Those entries should be categorized under “The Field of Women, Peace and Security.” This topic has no associated subtopics.

 

Peace Support Operations

Peace Processes are multipurpose processes –– often organized through international organizations –– usually involving a combination of military, diplomatic, and humanitarian functions. Peace Processes may include short-term goals, such as civilian protection, and long-term goals, such as political stability. 

 

Statebuilding

Statebuilding is the development of the legitimacy and the capacity of state institutions. 

 

Violent Conflict

Violent Conflict describes a situation in which parties perceive they possess mutually incompatible goals, and pursue those goals through the use of force. 

 

Violent Extremism

Violent Extremism is the use of and psychological, financial, and material support of violence as a tactic to further social, economic, and political objectives. This term is commonly used to describe non-state actors who use violence, often perpetrated against civilians, in pursuit of ideological goals. 

 

Subcategories

 

Climate and Environment

Climate refers to a region’s long-term weather patterns, and Environment is the set of living and non-living things on Earth which exist in a state largely not influenced by humans, such as plants, animals, rocks and magma, water bodies, and others. Climate and Environment shape human communities and social interactions.

 

Countering Violent Extremism

Countering Violent Extremism commonly places an emphasis on dialogue, inclusion, and the promoting of understanding in reaction to individuals or groups who support or use ideologically motivated violence to achieve radical ideological, religious, or political views.

 

De-escalation and Preventive Diplomacy

De-escalation is the mitigation, reduction, or lessening of tensions associated with violent conflict. Preventive Diplomacy is action to prevent disputes from arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts, and to limit the spread of conflict when it occurs.

 

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR)

Disarmament is the collection, documentation, control, and disposal of small arms, ammunition, explosives, and light and heavy weapons from ex-combatants and often from the civilian population. Demobilization is the formal and controlled discharge of active combatants from armed forces and groups, along with non-combatants and civilians associated with armed groups, including a phase of “reinsertion” which provides short-term assistance to ex-combatants, non-combatants, and civilians. Reintegration is the process by which ex-combatants acquire civilian status and gain sustainable employment and income.

 

Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (DRRR)

Disaster Risk Reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyze and reduce the causal factors of disasters. Resilience is the ability of a system, community, or society exposed to hazards or disasters to resist, absorb, accommodate to, and recover from the effects of a hazard or disaster in a timely and efficient manner (note citation). In working to create resilient communities, DRR policies include disciplines as diverse as agriculture and food systems, land tenure and building construction, governmental risk mitigation, and financial and education systems.

 

Democratization and Political Participation

Democratization is the movement toward broad citizenship, equal citizenship, binding consultation of citizens, and protection of citizens from arbitrary state action. (note citation). Participation derives from the freedom to speak out, assemble and associate; the ability to take part in the conduct of public affairs; and the opportunity to register as a candidate, to campaign, to be elected and to hold office at all levels of government.

 

Early Warning

Early Warning is the collection, analysis, and communication of evidence related to natural hazards, conflict, or economic conditions, which policy-makers and communities at risk may use in making strategic choices to respond to risk factors and threats. Early Warning contains four components: risk knowledge, monitoring and warning services, dissemination and communication, and response capacity.

 

Economic Participation

Economic Participation is access to and involvement with capital, markets, gainful employment, networks, and property rights and other basic legal protections.

 

Economic Recovery

Economic Recovery is a process of economic activities, macroeconomic and microeconomic, that contributes to the overall stability of a conflict or disaster-affected area and may be part of an integrated reconstruction strategy.

 

Human Development

Human Development is based on the principle that each person should be able to live a healthy and creative life, to be knowledgeable, and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living. Human Development prioritizes building human capacities and and capabilities rather than relying on economic growth to provide the fullest range of choices for human life.

 

International Agreements

International Agreements include conventions, charters, acts, protocols, constitutions for international organizations, and other agreements between or among parties in the international system. These may be bilateral or multilateral and may or may not be binding on the parties to the agreement.

 

International Law

International Law is the body of rules that are binding on states and other subjects of international law, in particular international organizations, in their relations with each other and with individuals.

 

Mass Atrocities

Mass Atrocities are the deliberate and large-scale use of violence by state or non-state actors against populations, often targeting civilians. Mass atrocities may vary in terms of perpetrators, targeted groups, means, motives and scale. In international law, mass atrocities are defined through the terms genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

 

Migration

Migration describes the phenomenon in which any person moves, usually across an international border. This movement may happen for social, political, or economic reasons and may last for any amount of time. Migration may be voluntary or forced.

 

National Security Forces and Armed Groups

National Security Forces constitute the armed forces and police forces of a nation-state. They execute the state’s legitimate use of force. Armed Groups are organized non-state actors acting as a collective to engage in political violence. They include terrorists, guerrillas, insurgents, rebels, and other violent non-state actors.

 

Nonviolent Resistance

Nonviolent Resistance is a method used to create change through social, psychological, economic, and political means, without the threat or use of violence.

 

Peace Accords

Peace Accords are agreements between parties to a conflict that often result in the cessation of hostilities. Peace Accords can include provisions regarding the framework for the post-conflict society, such as the redistribution of resources, reconstruction programs, and issues of constitutional, territorial, and security reform.

 

Peacekeeping

Peacekeeping is a peace support operation in which international actors support realization of peace by creating the political space necessary for parties to the conflict to negotiate a settlement. Traditional peacekeeping missions typically involve lightly armed military units alongside unarmed monitors and use force only in self-defense. Multidimensional peacekeeping missions usually entail the processes involved in traditional peacekeeping as well as additional tasks, such as the provision of humanitarian relief, in the context of ongoing conflict.

 

Peacemaking

Peacemaking is a set of activities to end ongoing conflict and to bring parties to the conflict to agreement, often through negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and involvement of international and regional organizations and agreements.

 

Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Post-Conflict Reconstruction refers to the transition from conflict to sustainable peace. It may include provisions of basic security; physical, economic, and governmental reconstruction; fostering sustainability to prevent a resurgence of conflict.

 

Political Transitions

Political Transitions represent processes of change in governance and structures of the state, often associated with periods of conflict.

 

Sexual and Reproductive Health

Sexual and Reproductive Health pertains to all reproductive processes, functions, and systems at all stages of life. This includes, but is not limited to, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, pregnancy and childbirth, health care services and maternal health, and female genital mutilation.

 

Security Sector Reform

Security Sector Reform is a set of policies, plans, programs, and activities that aim to enhance effective and accountable security for a State and its populations. Security Sector Reform seeks to reform institutions to make them more professional and accountable in order to provide effective and legitimate public service that is transparent and responsive to the needs of the public.

 

Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Gender-Based Violence is considered to be any harmful act directed against individuals or groups of individuals on the basis of their gender. It may include sexual violence, domestic violence, trafficking, or forced/early marriage and other harmful traditional practices. Sexual Violence is a form of gender-based violence and encompasses any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or acts otherwise directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting.

 

Transitional Justice

Transitional Justice is the set of legal, social, and political processes by which actors provide accountability for mass human rights violations and mass atrocities that occur during violent conflict, political repression, or periods of political violence. Transitional Justice is part of a set of mechanisms intended to aid the transition from violence to peace, such as trials, truth-telling, reparations, institutional reform, memorialization, and dialogue.

 

UN Resolutions

UN Resolutions are any resolutions passed by the United Nations.