The Ethics of Peacebuilding

Outlines the need for effective and sustainable peacebuilding in order to restore the conditions for co-existence in fractured communities around the world.

This book explores the ethical dimension of peacebuilding. In the aftermath of the Cold War the hope for a more stable and just international order was rapidly dissolved by the internecine conflicts that plagued all continents. The Rwanda and Srebrenica genocides demonstrated the challenge of promoting peace in a world increasingly defined by intra-state conflict and sub-national groups confronting nation-states. Murithi interrogates the role that ethics plays in promoting and consolidating peacebuilding and presents a synthesis of moral philosophy and international relations and an analysis of the ethics of negotiation, mediation, forgiveness and reconciliation. In its attempt to explore the extent to which ethical concerns influence and inform peacebuilding this book contributes to a growing body of literature on ethics and international relations which will enable students, scholars and practitioners to ground their understanding of a principled peacebuilding.