Download State of Peace Conference: Governance During Conflict 25

State of Peace Conference: Governance During Conflict
25-27 November 2015
at the Vienna Diplomatic Academy
Core question: How can Europe better help its neighbors to construct viable democratic
states, while resolving internal and external security dilemmas?
Format of the conference:
1. Public High Level Panel (followed by a Reception) to discuss some core concepts
and issues linked to the core question
26 November 2015, 18:30-20:00 at the Vienna Diplomatic Academy
2. Seminar of academics, policy-makers and practitioners to bridge the concepts of conflict
management, post-conflict rehabilitation and development. Open by invitation.
25-27 November at the Vienna Diplomatic Academy
High level panel
On 26 November, the Conference participants will be joined by an experienced and
distinguished panel featuring:
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Guenther Baechler, Swiss Ambassador, former special envoy for Peace Building and
Mediation in Sudan/Darfur and Special Adviser for Peacebuilding in Nepal
Stefan Füle, former EU Enlargement Commissioner;
Edita Tahiri, Kosovo's Minister for Dialogue and Chief Negotiator at the Brussels
Technical Dialogue with neighboring country Serbia; and
Eka Tkeshelashvili, former Foreign Minister of Georgia
The panel will be opened by Peter Kostelka, President of the Austrian Study Center for Peace
and Conflict Resolution.
We expect about 100 international participants, including Ambassadors, diplomats,
representatives of international organisations, policy makers and academics.
Purpose of the Conference
This conference gathers scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to discuss the linkages
between governance and conflict. The topic of governance during conflict remained over the
past decades under-researched and under-conceptualized. It is hoped, that through this
dialogue, a unique field and scope of additional research can be identified. This will lead to
policy suggestions for adapting and advancing the European institutions’ (EU, OSCE)
understanding of the internal workings of the states in Eastern Neighborhood and –
ultimately – providing impetus to a more effective, adjusted assistance in governance
reforms. This is especially significant in the context of today’s search for effective measures to
address migration and its root causes.
The Ukraine crisis has triggered new interest in Europe’s eastern neighborhood and
highlighted the vulnerability of the Ukrainian state to external destabilization due to its
failure to reform and establish effective mechanisms of governance. In this sense, the
Ukraine crisis has shown the importance of the internal workings for a lasting stability and
development of states. Many EU eastern neighbouring countries underwent a tumultuous
period in 1990s and early 2000s, accompanied by fierce internal conflicts: be it ethnic
separatism, violent political contestation or conflicts between various groups with economic
interests. Western aid agencies, as well as the political fora as the EU and the OSCE, often
saw the very same processes through the prism of “transition” or “reforms”.
It has become increasingly obvious to both the practitioners and in the academia that violent
conflicts - and the deficit of security they entail - affect governance models in often counterintuitive ways. The systems of governance emerging out of reforms in the conflict context
might institutionally resemble the democratic blueprint, yet in they often engender and
entrench the interests of actors involved in conflicts.
Corruption, organized crime integrated into political institutions, privatization of and contest
between the law enforcement and security services, unofficial systems of regional
government that supersede the constitutional models – all of these phenomena have their
roots in the history and context of conflicts. They are instruments for balancing the
conflicting interests of the actors. It follows that these actors then resist the attempts at
reform. International efforts in most instances do not manage to transform and address the
underlying interests.
Organisers and Partners
Austrian Study Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution (ASPR), lead
Conflict, Peace, and Democracy Cluster (CPDC)
Partners: University of Graz, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, City of Vienna