The Institute's Local Zones of Peace (ZoPs) project has been formally in existence since September 2001. Led by Dr. Christopher Mitchell, the ZoPs team includes faculty members Drs. Wallace Warfield and Kevin Avruch and doctoral students from a variety of countries (Colombia, Peru, India, China, the Philippines) with varied experience in civil conflicts and peace building efforts.

ICAR's original interest in local zones of peace stems from a field visit made by faculty and doctoral candidates to Armenia in 1993. At that time, a local zone of non-violence was being established (with difficulty) along the new international border with neighbouring Azerbaijan and this sparked of interest in the group about how such zones could contribute to peace building during intractable civil conflict. This led to the Institute organising a conference in April 1996 on the theme "Local Zones of Peace in Civil Strife". The participants included academics - interested in conflict resolution - and practitioners - having experience in running local zones of peace. One result of this conference was a special issue of Peace Review (Vol. 9 No. 2 June 1997) on "Zones of Peace", edited by Dr. Christopher Mitchell and Dr. Susan Allen-Nan. This issue included contributions from a wide variety of practitioners, academics, ICAR faculty members and students.

The current project comes from an interest in furthering understanding of local peaceful zones but is also an effort to help the peace building efforts of local communities in Colombia - an area on which the Institute has focused since the late 1990s. Through this project we hope to develop a better understanding of the strategies that help the successful creation, maintenance and promotion of areas declared or designated as peace territories. The research includes field visits and in-depth interviews with local communities in eight ZoPs in Colombia.

In addition, the project involves studies of local ZoPs in other countries that are torn by civil war including the Philippines, Indonesia, Peru, El Salvador and Zimbabwe.

A number of research papers that have arisen from our joint efforts in this project are currently available at this web-site. Please keep a look out for more papers that will be added.

This project is supported by a grant (USIP-119-01S) from the United States Institute of Peace, Washington D.C.

Susan Allen Nan and
Christopher Mitchell

• Local Zones of Peace as a Form of Institutionalized Conflict:
  Some Introductory Thought (PDF)

Pushpa Iyer

• Peace Zones in Aceh: A Prelude to Demilitarization (PDF)

Pushpa Iyer
Landon Hancock

• From Fear to Sanctuary: A Typology of Zones of Peace (PDF)