David A. Hamburg, Cochair
President
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Cyrus R. Vance, Cochair
Partner
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Prime Minister of Norway
Virendra Dayal
Member
Human Rights Commission of India
Gareth Evans
Deputy Leader of the Opposition
and Shadow Treasurer
Australia
Alexander L. George
Graham H. Stuart, Professor Emeritus
of International Relations
Stanford University
Flora MacDonald
Chairperson
International Development
Research Centre
Donald F. McHenry
University Research Professor of Diplomacy
and International Affairs
Georgetown University
Olara A. Otunnu
President
International Peace Academy
David Owen
Chairman
Humanitas
Shridath Ramphal
Cochairman
Commission on Global Governance
Roald Z. Sagdeev
Distinguished Professor
Department of Physics
University of Maryland
John D. Steinbruner
Director
Foreign Policy Studies Program
The Brookings Institution
Brian Urquhart
Former Under-Secretary-General
for Special Political Affairs
United Nations
John C. Whitehead
Chairman
AEA Investors Inc.
Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan
Special Representative of the
United Nations Secretary-General
for the Western Sahara
Special Advisor to the Commission
Herbert S. Okun
Executive Director
Financial Services Volunteer Corps
Jane E. Holl, Executive Director
THE NATURE AND SOURCES of human conflict deserve the most careful and searching attention. Until quite recently, they have not been a major focus of systematic analysis, and even today these subjects are largely marginalized in the world's great research and educational institutions. Scientists and scholars heavily engaged in such inquiry have largely lacked support. Furthermore, the field of ethnic conflict resolution is relatively new and weakly institutionalized. The international community has nothing like an effective system for preventing the deadliest conflicts.
Scholars and policymakers are beginning to change this situation, stimulated by deep concerns about the dangers of contemporary conflict, and by the belated recognition of the ubiquity of killing and maiming in human experience. Conflicts have become everyone's business. The idea that states and peoples are free to conduct their quarrels--no matter how deadly--is outdated in the nuclear age and in a shrinking world where local hostilities can rapidly become international ones with devastating consequences. Similarly, the notion that tyrants are free to commit atrocities against their citizens is rapidly becoming obsolete.
A substantial body of careful empirical research has begun to emerge on conflict resolution and international peacemaking, which details the historical use of forms of negotiation, mediation, arbitration, recognition, and power sharing. The results are providing new insights and guidelines useful to practitioners. It is apparent that there is no single approach to conflict resolution that offers overriding promise. Just as the sources and manifestations of human conflict are immensely varied, so too are the approaches to understanding, preventing, and resolving conflicts.
Since its founding in 1994 the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict has worked to deepen understanding of human conflict and conflict prevention. Through sponsored research, the Commission has encouraged fresh thinking about these problems that are so crucial to the future of humanity. Workshops and international forums have promoted dialogue that has heightened appreciation of the complexity of the task and suggested avenues for further investigation. The Commission has contributed to a new interest in conflict prevention among scholars and policymakers at the highest level throughout the world.
This second progress report delineates the preliminary results of the Commission's activities and its collaboration with other centers working on conflict prevention. The first progress report, issued in July 1995, described the ideas and projects that the Commission intended to pursue. A year later, most of these projects are moving rapidly toward completion. Several have been finished and their results published by the Commission, and several new projects have been initiated.
As the Commission enters its third and final year, it will begin to formulate comprehensive and pragmatic recommendations to prevent mass violence. The recommendations will be addressed to the many constituents of the broad international community, among them, the democracies, the UN, regional organizations, the business community, the global scientific community, religious leaders, and the media. Only with the active support of all these groups can we approach the vision of an international system for preventing deadly conflict.
Such a system could foster a common humanity in which decent human relations prevail. A body of knowledge and trained and experienced practitioners striving to prevent mass violence could help improve the lives of millions in the same way that medical knowledge and health care practitioners help prevent diseases that have killed millions.
As our children learn, incredulous and appalled, about the horrifying mass violence through the ages, we hope to be able to say that at the beginning of the third millennium, the communities of the world planted seeds of cooperation and reconciliation that grew into a system in which mass violence became rare or nonexistent. Perhaps this Commission can envision, however dimly, such a precious legacy for future generations.
DAVID A. HAMBURG
CYRUS R. VANCE
Cochairs