This paper examines the capacity of intercultural youth digital media as a tool for inclusive peace education. Building on scholarship in media-based pedagogy and digital communities as a site for participatory discourse, this paper considers how fictional digital narratives may be disentangled to illustrate nuanced concepts in peace building. A selected case example of Shingeki no Kyojin is selected for analysis baked on: global-scale engagement to cultivate empathy; multimodal immersion, which presents abstract ethical issues more accessible to younger audiences; in addition to its generation of massive intercultural and intergenerational discourse, amplified by social media participation and youth-produced derivative content. The divergent interpretations youth-animation inspires simulate real-world peacebuilding challenges, positioning online youth discourse as a form of experiential learning. Rather than dismissing emotionally charged debates as toxicity, the paper reframes them as opportunities to cultivate dialogue, critical reflection, and empathy within peace education contexts. The resulting analysis focuses on three key principles in trauma-informed pedagogy, Freirean critical revelation, and the dignity of life in conflict. By guiding youth to critically assess their own self-selected popular culture engagements, there exists the possibility that peace educators can leverage new opportunities to foster dialogue and peacebuilding practices. A preliminary four-part framework of peace-pedagogy based on youth digital media concludes the study.
Over half a decade after India abrogated Article 370, Kashmir has undergone unprecedented changes through what this article terms Comprehensive Coercive Integration (CCI). Situating CCI within the paradigms of authoritarian conflict management (ACM) and illiberal peacebuilding, the article argues that India's post-2019 approach represents a specific variant of ACM, one that moves beyond conflict management toward comprehensive territorial absorption. This framework examines how New Delhi systematically restructured the region through legal, demographic, administrative, and symbolic measures. The analysis explores a shift from accommodation to absorption. Political space has contracted with mainstream parties navigating reduced influence and political newcomers, with little established credibility, being cultivated. Demographic engineering proceeds through domicile certificates for nonresidents and property purchases by outsiders, while administrative control has intensified through direct governance and narrative management. While militant violence has decreased, the legitimacy of the new arrangement remains disputed. Drawing on H & ouml;glund and Kovacs's (2010) typology of negative peace, the article characterizes the current situation as a form of fearful and contested peace, in which the absence of political unrest and violence coexists with unresolved political incompatibilities and repression. This article offers a preliminary assessment suggesting that durable peace requires reversing this trajectory toward genuine autonomy, political pluralism, and inclusive dialogue addressing and harmonizing political aspirations of the people of the region.
This essay examines how young Moro women navigate political authority within post-accord governance in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. While youth and women are increasingly included in peace processes, less is known about how political influence is exercised in everyday institutional practice. Drawing on qualitative research conducted between 2023 and 2025 with young women engaged in or working closely with the Bangsamoro Transition Authority, the study explores culturally embedded strategies of political engagement. The analysis highlights lambing as a form of vernacular diplomacy through which young women cultivate relational access, moral legitimacy, and communicative space within intergenerational and patriarchal governance structures. This essay contributes to debates on diplomacy, representation, and political agency by theorizing lambing as a culturally grounded mode of relational power. It shows that political inclusion is negotiated not only through formal participation but through everyday practices of care, trust, and relational navigation in post-accord settings.
This essay looks at the viability of United Nations peacekeeping in an era of remote, technologically-driven warfare through the case of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). We argue that Israel's employment of technology in the pursuit of warfare has severely weakened the core logic of interposition upon which peacekeeping rests, rendering UNIFIL's ground presence a constrained buffer that can be bypassed by aerial and remote forms of force. Drawing on UN resolutions and reports, media sources, and academic literature, the analysis traces how technological warfare has bypassed and endangered peacekeepers and the civilians they are meant to protect. It also explores the erosion of local trust in international peacekeeping, the perceptions that surround UNIFIL's presence, and the broader normative implications of sustaining a perception gap between the promise associated with peacekeeping presence and the protection that can credibly be delivered under technological asymmetry. It concludes by outlining three pathways for rethinking peacekeeping under technological asymmetry: adapting mandates and rules of engagement to address technological developments, embracing strategic honesty and prioritizing political solutions, and confronting the ethical costs of maintaining missions whose protective promise can no longer be credibly fulfilled.
The existence of protracted insurgency movements motivated by religious zeal and indoctrination is not an exception in contemporary world. Political, economic and cultural grievances may give rise to insurgency movement which sustains itself in the long run by relying primarily on religious passion and motivation of its members. This paper seeks to uncover the complex and mutually beneficial relationship that may develop between religion and protracted insurgencies by examining the case of Naga self-determination movement under the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN). The paper tries to penetrate the core ideological principles of the organization and examine the interplay between religious beliefs, identity consciousness and role of religion in shaping such identity and sustaining the insurgency movement. There is also an attempt in looking at the relationship of Christianity with Naga nationalism and the dynamics of NSCN's articulation of the idea of Naga homeland based on core beliefs of Naga nationalism.
We report a classroom pilot that translated Encounter Theory into three structured activities, namely Privilege Walk, Sleepyville, and Believers, implemented in a culturally diverse international school in eastern Germany. Using brief pre/post surveys and ethnographic observation, we reflect on what promoted inclusion, empathy, and nonviolent engagement, and what generated resistance. Embodied exercises appeared to open empathic perspectives; role-play sometimes amplified identity tensions without careful framing. Across sessions, we observed more cross-group conversation and stronger endorsement of nonviolent civic engagement. We argue for peace education that is empirically informed yet context-sensitive: designed, sequenced, and mediated to avoid backfire while cultivating "everyday peace" through small, relational shifts.
Achieving peace is an essential step in promoting health, ending the devastating direct and indirect effects of conflict, and building functional health systems. Furthermore, health can be used as a tool to promote peacebuilding in conflict and post-conflict settings. Using a literature review and key informant interviews, this paper explores how health systems and health frameworks historically and currently are being used for peacebuilding. In addition, this paper highlights key lessons learned and recommendations on how health can be used as a tool to promote and sustain peacebuilding efforts, specifically for the Eastern Mediterranean Region which contains the highest prevalence of conflict in the world.
Following the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the geopolitical dynamics of South Asia have shifted dramatically, prompting new challenges and opportunities for regional actors, particularly Pakistan. This paper explores Pakistan's role in shaping post-withdrawal stability in Afghanistan, focusing on its diplomatic, strategic, and security contributions. Pakistan's historical ties with Afghanistan, its influence over the Taliban, and its vested interest in preventing civil conflict position it as a critical stakeholder in regional peace. The paper examines Pakistan's mediation efforts in the intra-Afghan dialogue, its strategic depth policy, and its balancing act between regional and global powers such as India, China, and the United States. Despite internal challenges and international skepticism, Pakistan continues to promote a peaceful resolution through regional cooperation and economic integration. However, the durability of peace hinges on inclusive governance in Afghanistan, trust-building among stakeholders, and the neutralization of cross-border terrorism threats to ensure long-term security across South and Central Asia.
This essay examines the Naga Mothers' Association (NMA) as a pioneering indigenous feminist organization whose activism spans maternal mourning, grassroots peacebuilding, and political advocacy. Emerging in the 1980s amid armed conflict between Naga insurgents and the Indian state, the NMA's appeal "Shed No More Blood" began as a mourning ritual and evolved into a sustained political discourse. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with NMA leaders, the essay explores how maternal identity became both a source of moral authority and a tool for challenging militarized patriarchy. Through culturally rooted yet subversive forms of negotiated activism, the NMA bridged informal diplomacy and formal political participation. Its decades-long campaign for 33% reservation in local governance culminated in a landmark electoral breakthrough in 2024. This essay argues that "Shed No More Blood" is a generative feminist praxis that turns grief into grassroots power rather than just a humanitarian appeal. By providing a framework for indigenous women's agency in militarized, culturally complex societies, the NMA challenges prevailing models of feminism and peace.
This essay critically examines the commemorations of the Win-Win policy, a strategy developed by former Prime Minister Hun Sen in the 1990s to bring an end to Cambodia's civil war through the dissolution of the Khmer Rouge movement and reintegration of its members into society. Through the construction of Win-Win memorials, museums, slogan campaigns, and curated media naratives the Cambodian government, led by the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), has institutionalized a narrative that casts Hun Sen as the architect of peace, stability, and development. This essay analyzes how these commemorative practices are used as instruments of political legitimation, embedding selective memories into public space while obscuring the alternative narratives and the lived experiences of those directly affected by decades of conflict and mass violence. In doing so, the Win-Win commemorations reveal less about Cambodia's transition from war to peace and more about the politics of memory, in which the past is selectively reshaped to consolidate political power, maintain legitimacy, and suppress alternative voices or contested histories.
Environmental protests have become very common in recent years. Historically, most environmental protests have been peaceful, but in recent years, some of the protests have turned violent. This paper explores how peaceful environmental protests escalate into more extreme forms of action, including disruptive and, in some cases, violent tactics. The paper uses psychological, social, and environmental factors that can contribute to escalation toward extreme measures and violence. Psychological frameworks such as Social Identity Theory, Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis, and Moral Disengagement are able to explain how emotions like anger, fear, and frustration can build up among protestors and can act as motivators for violence. Apart from this, societal and environmental pressures also play a big role. The paper also discusses recent examples, such as the Gadwal ethanol plant protest and the Mona Lisa soup incident, to show how these elements can contribute to escalation from conventional peaceful protest to more extreme and disruptive tactics, some of which become violent, while others remain nonviolent but highly confrontational. Finally, the paper suggests de-escalation strategies. The findings of the paper can be useful for psychologists and policymakers in helping to keep environmental protests focused on tangible and positive outcomes that are helpful and prevent violence.
This paper explores the leadership journeys of Christian women peacebuilders in Myanmar amid ongoing conflict and political instability. Employing qualitative life story analysis, it examines how these women navigate entrenched gendered and religious barriers while advancing inclusive peacebuilding. Their leadership is deeply rooted in Christian faith, drawing strength from values such as compassion, resilience, humility, and service, and challenging male-dominated and patriarchal peace paradigms. Beyond descriptive accounts, the study critically engages with the ethical, spiritual, and relational dimensions of women's leadership, highlighting the tensions, contradictions, and agency strategies they employ in conflict-affected contexts. The findings underscore the essential and enduring role of faith-driven women in fostering sustainable peace and social cohesion, demonstrating the broader significance of women's leadership in conflict resolution and community healing. By illuminating the intersection of gender, faith, and peacebuilding, this study affirms the vital contribution of Christian women to inclusive and sustainable peace in Myanmar.
