Peace-Keeping, Peace-Making, or Peace-Building Image A first step in peacebuilding education is to recognize the conflict problems that may cause or escalate violence, and to choose to handle those conflicts in nonviolent ways. Once we choose to try peace, there are many options. It helps to distinguish among three distinct ways of handling conflicts, before or after they might escalate into violence: peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building Peacekeeping means security control measures such as monitoring, regulating, and separating parties. It is an effort to stop or limit the harmful symptoms of escalated conflict—direct violence (such as abuse or attack) or potential violence—and to establish sufficient safety to enable efforts toward preventing further violence. Peacekeeping is a limited goal, used at a particular time and place: it does not right wrongs or address the conflicts causing the violence. Peacekeeping controls are frequently over-used, which maintains hierarchies without solving or healing the conflicts causing the violence. The peacekeeping circle is smallest in this diagram: in a peacebuilding system, less peacekeeping would be needed, as peacemaking and peacebuilding would transform the roots of violence into roots of durable peace. Peacemaking involves dialogue, deliberation, and dispute resolution after episodes of conflict or violence arise, such as negotiation, mediation, and democratic decision-making processes. It is an effort for each party to understand and address the perceptions and interests (needs and desires) of the other parties with whom they are in conflict, and to engage those parties in jointly co-creating a decision about how to repair the presenting situation. Like peacekeeping, peacemaking is an intervention in direct (visible) conflict episodes. Unlike peacekeeping, peacemaking uses mutual dialogue to achieve fair agreement about how to solve the immediate problem, thereby removing the parties’ incentives to use violence. Peacebuilding is transformation of social relations: repairing the systemic factors that were causing and exacerbating harmful conflict. A peacebuilding system means comprehensive ongoing preparation for durable just peace: (1) by teaching and implementing peacemaking processes (to enable nonviolent participation in self-determination and mutual decision-making), and (2) through democratic processes to alleviate the causes of indirect violence (that is, to work toward eliminating systemic injustice) such as oppression, inequitable access to resources (rich-poor gap), and identity-based hatred or cultural exclusion. The peacebuilding circle is largest in this diagram, because it is the most comprehensive system for preparing for and handling conflicts. Summary In sum, peacekeeping aims to control behaviour, to stop or limit violence that is occurring in a particular place and time, without addressing its causes. So, peacekeeping temporarily controls violent barriers to democratic justice. Peacemaking and peacebuilding are efforts to understand and resolve the problems motivating violent episodes, in ways that take care of the concerns, needs, and relationships of various parties. Peacemaking works to resolve escalated conflicts after they erupt, through mutual dialogue and deliberation to jointly make fair decisions. Peacemaking dialogue is a necessary (though not sufficient) aspect of comprehensive peacebuilding. Peacebuilding means co-developing healthy inclusive relationships and democratically negotiating fair processes, agreements, and institutions to repair and transform fundamental social-systemic injustices. Peacebuilding citizenship is participation in processes for making peace (resolving conflicts) and building peace (transforming social relationships). Often, a peace effort may address each of these peace goals in sequence (peace-keeping, peace-making, then peace-building), or on multiple tracks in overlapping time frames. Temporary safety (through peacekeeping containment) may enable parties to negotiate a solution to a dispute episode (through peacemaking dialogue). Successful resolution of conflicts together can build confidence, creativity, and democratic systems for further conflict transformation toward just peace that heals and alleviates the causes of harm.