This year’s Peace Report (Friedensgutachten) reassesses the new Afghanistan strategy and formulates courses of action that mainly aim at improving security for the people in Afghanistan. The Report’s focus lies at how to involve insurgents worldwide in the constructive solution of domestic conflicts.
The Report experts demand that peace policy must adopt an increasing focus on intra-societal conflicts. Although the number of wars between states has decreased, the number of civil wars, insurgencies and other varieties of intra-state violent escalations has not. The Peace Report 2010 presents creative strategies with the help of which the actors of violence can be transformed into political opponents, competitors or even collaborators.
Additionally, the Peace Report 2010 once again takes up the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. This idea increasingly wins prominent advocates due to the growing risk that terrorists might reach for nuclear weapons or fissile material for the construction of bombs. Furthermore, the Report examines the nuclear conflict with Iran and suggests steps into a world free of nuclear weapons.
The Report also studies the consequences of the worldwide economic crisis for defense budgets as well as for poor and weak states. The Report experts warn against counteracting the global economic crisis with increasing arms exports, even if this helps our own industries to cushion the crisis. They demand a mandatory arms trade treaty which regulates the standards for the evaluation of any buying, selling and transit transactions under international law.
The Peace Report 2010 is issued on behalf of the five peace research institutes in the Federal Republic of Germany by the following editors:
Christiane Fröhlich of the Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft (FEST)
Margret Johannsen of the Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik an der Universität Hamburg (IFSH)
Bruno Schoch of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)
Andreas Heinemann-Grüder of the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC)
Jochen Hippler of the Institut für Entwicklung und Frieden (INEF)
LIT Verlag Münster,
ISBN: 978-3-643-10602-5
352 p., Paperback, 12,90 Euros
Please find further information about the Friedensgutachten at www.friedensgutachten.de