CIAO DATE: 12/2008
Volume: 3, Issue: 12
Winter 2006-2007
Editorial
Islamic/Middle Eastern Conflict Resolution for Interpersonal and Intergroup Conflict: Wisata, Sulha, and Third Party
Sezai Özçelik
In the post-September 11 world, Islamic /Middle Eastern conflict resolution has become a focus of the study in social sciences. In this article, international and inter-group conflict resolution concepts, processes, and methods will be analyzed within the Middle Eastern/Islamic context. After explaining the relations between culture and conflict resolution, three basic Islamic/Middle Eastern conflict (dispute) resolution techniques namely the Islamic/Middle Eastern arbitration (tahkim), the Islamic/Middle Eastern mediation ( wisata ), and the Islamic/Middle Eastern peace-making ( sulha ) will be examined. The role of third-party will be analyzed by comparing the Middle Eastern/Islamic and the Western models. Although the Islamic/Middle Eastern conflict (dispute) resolution techniques are mostly used to resolve intra-Muslims conflicts, the paper suggests that they may have applications and effects on the resolution of conflicts among different religious and cultural groups.
Contending Approaches To Water Disputes In Transboundary River Basins: What Can The Discipline Of International Relations Offer?
Aysegül Kibaroglu, Vakur Sümer
The vital role of water for human beings and development has received worldwide attention. Through activities of intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations since the beginning of the 1970s, much emphasis was placed on the global status of water, namely water scarcity in absolute terms, and a lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Later on, some specific regions of the world were identified as the scarcest regions with shared surface and groundwater resources between two or more countries, which received much more attention than other parts of the globe. Under such striking developments, there has arisen an ongoing debate among scholars on the issue of management and utilization of water resources, as well as on the likelihood of a conflict that would be a result of the worsening situation of water supply and demand. In the debate one can delineate basically three groups of scholars and experts whose views can be associated with the leading schools of thought in international relations (IR) theory, namely realism and liberal institutionalism, and the leading sub-branch of the IR discipline, namely international (liberal) political economy. The paper will discuss the contending approaches to water disputes in transboundary river basins with particular references to the international relations discipline.
Humanitarian Intervention: The Situation After the 1999 Kosovo and the 2003 Iraqi Cases
Funda Keskin
Humanitarian intervention entered into the agenda of the international community once again after the Kosovo intervention of 1999. It is not one of the exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force brought by the United Nations Charter. Despite all efforts to describe it as one of the justifiable causes of using force against another state in 1970s and 1990s, both states' attitudes and writers' elaborations show clearly that it is not accepted as a legal exception even by intervening states in Kosovo. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, debates of humanitarian intervention first dropped from the agenda, but later it became a hot topic once again as one of the reasons of the invasion. Nevertheless, there is a small minority considers the invasion as an example of humanitarian intervention and their argument is not persuasive because of the still insecure conditions in Iraq.
The Bush Doctrine: A Search For Global Hegemonic Stability?
Bülent Sarper Agir
The Magic Circle Of Madness: How Europe Lost Its Soul
Eddie J. Girdner
Damien Kingsbury (Ed.), Violence In Between Conflict And Security In Archipelagic Southeast
Jewellord Nem Singh
Bibliography of International Relations (September-November 2006)