A Handbook of International Peacebuilding: Into The Eye Of The Storm

John Paul Lederach and Janice Moomaw Jenner, Editors. Jossey-Bass, 2002.

This handbook offers conflict resolution professionals working in foreign countries a critical, step-by-step guide for dealing with difficult and potentially dangerous disputes in other nations. The editors have gathered a stellar panel of seasoned experts who illustrate how to approach international peacebuilding with effective actions and approaches gained through experience that will contribute ultimately to a more positive outcome. Based on the experience of the contributors' work as global peace brokers, the book includes a wide array of guidelines, pragmatic approaches, and models of constructive, culturally appropriate ways to respond to conflict.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787958794.html

A Manager's Guide to Resolving Conflicts in Collaborative Networks

Lisa B. Bingham and Rosemary O'Leary. IBM Center for the Business of Government. Networks, Collaboration, and Partnerships Series, 2008.

This 50-page report expands on previous Center reports by adding an important practical tool for managers in networks: how to manage and negotiate the conflicts that may occur among a network's members. The approach they describe - interest-based negotiation - has worked in other settings, such as bargaining with unions. Such negotiation techniques are becoming crucial in sustaining the effectiveness of networks, where successful performance is defined by how well people collaborate and not by hierarchical commands.

Resource Link: http://www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/OlearyBinghamReport.pdf

A Manual for Group Facilitators

Brian Auvine. Center for Conflict Resolution; reprinted by the Fellowship for Intentional Community, 1981.

The role of group facilitator is often pivotal to good results for groups making the transition to consensus. The Manual is a great introduction to the concept of approaching the role of facilitator as someone who welcomes both rational and emotional input. The staff of the Center for Conflict Resolution put their experience in working with groups into A Manual for Group Facilitators. This is an informal outline detailing useful and effective techniques to help groups work well. More than a simple 'how to,' the manual contains a discussion of the values, dynamics, and common sense behind group process that have been verified by our own experience.

Resource Link: http://store.ic.org

A Model for an Introductory Dialogue on Abortion

Public Conversations Project.

The model described here was developed for the single session introductory dialogues on abortion that Public Conversations Project conducted in 1990-1992 (eighteen sessions) and 1995-1998 (ten sessions). Most of these dialogues took place on weekday evenings between 6:00 and 9:30 and involved four to eight participants who did not know one another ahead of time. Several participants were activists but few were highly visible leaders. All groups were evenly balanced with people who described themselves as ?“prochoice?” or ?“prolife.?”

A Public Peace Process: Sustained Dialogue to Transform Racial and Ethnic Conflicts

Harold H. Saunders, International Institute for Sustained Dialogue. St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Harold Saunders, former Assistant Secretary of State and negotiator of the Camp David Accords and now Director of International Programs at the Kettering Foundation, distills over 35 years of experience working with conflicts across the globe. This book describes how sustained dialogue can help conflicting groups of citizens move toward resolution.

American University - Peacebuilding and Development Institute

The Peacebuilding and Development Institute provides knowledge, practical experience and skills for scholars and practitioners involved in conflict resolution, peacebuilding, humanitarian assistance and development. There are two components to the institute: one is the summer professional training program and the other is the year-round practical training, capacity building, and curriculum development programs in conflict areas.

Resource Link: http://www.american.edu/sis/peace/summer/

Arizona State University - Intergroup Relations Center

The IRC provides education and training opportunities to students, faculty, and staff as well as intergroup conflict prevention and mediation services. It sponsors retreats, workshops, seminars, and institutes for faculty, staff and students, and collects, develops, and disseminates educational resources and data on discrimination, hate crimes, and intergroup conflict incidents at ASU.

Resource Link: http://www.asu.edu/provost/intergroup/

Association for Conflict Resolution

ACR is a professional organization dedicated to enhancing the practice and public understanding of conflict resolution. ACR represents and serves over 7000 mediators, arbitrators, facilitators, educators, and others involved in the field of conflict resolution and collaborative decision-making. ACR was launched in 2001, when the Academy of Family Mediators (AFM), the Conflict Resolution Education Network (CREnet), and the Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR) merged into one organization.

Resource Link: http://www.acrnet.org

Best Practices for Government Agencies: Guidelines for Using Collaborative Agreement-Seeking Processes

The Society for Professionals in Dispute Resolution (now the Association for Conflict Resolution), 1997.

The recommendations in this report were developed through a joint effort of the SPIDR Environmental/Public Disputes Sector and the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in Atlanta, Georgia, supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This report focuses on best practices for government agencies and other users in the U.S. and Canada, reflecting the membership of the SPIDR Environmental/Public Disputes Sector. While potentially applicable to other countries, the recommendations will likely need to be tailored to the political frameworks, institutions and cultural norms in those societies.

Resource Link: http://acrnet.org/acrlibrary/more.php?id=13_0_1_0_M

Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base

Beyond Intractability is a free and comprehensive system for accessing the peace and conflict resolution field's cumulative body of knowledge on the nature of difficult and intractable conflicts, as well as strategies for reducing the destructiveness of these conflicts.

Resource Link: http://www.beyondintractability.org

Beyond Neutrality: Confronting the Crisis in Conflict Resolution

Bernard Mayer. Jossey-Bass, 2004.

In this thought-provoking, passionately written book, Mayer - an internationally acclaimed leader in the field - dares practitioners to ask the hard questions about alternative dispute resolution (ADR). What?’s wrong with conflict resolution? Why aren?’t more individuals and organizations using conflict resolution when they have a problem? Why doesn?’t the public know more about it? What are the limits of conflict resolution? When does conflict resolution work and when does it not? Offering a committed practitioner?’s critique of the profession of mediation, arbitration, and ADR, Beyond Neutrality focuses on the current crisis in the field of conflict resolution and offers a pragmatic response.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787968064.html

Boston Prochoice and Prolife Leaders Dialogue

The Public Conversations Project.

Read about PCP's groundbreaking 7-year abortion dialogue involving pro-choice and pro-life leaders in the Boston area. PCP has been doing dialogue work with Prochoice and Prolife activists and others since 1989.

Resource Link: http://www.publicconversations.org/pcp/resource_details.php?ref_id=97

Center for Collaborative Policy

The Center is a joint program of California State University, Sacramento and the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. The mission of the Center is to build the capacity of public agencies, stakeholder groups, and the public to use collaborative strategies to improve policy outcomes. The Center produces a quarterly newsletter called The Collaborative Edge.

Resource Link: http://www.csus.edu/ccp/

Community Based Collaboratives Research Consortium

CBCRC is a network of researchers, mediators and facilitators, government agencies, community groups and environmental groups which seek to understand and assess local collaborative efforts involving natural resources and community development. CBCRC provides a venue for the sharing of research, evaluation and case studies; emerging stewardship issues and practice; and policy outcomes concerning community based collaborative processes.

Resource Link: http://www.CBCRC.org

Community Relations Service

CRS, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, is a specialized Federal conciliation service available to State and local officials to help resolve and prevent racial and ethnic conflict, violence, and civil disorders. CRS helps local officials and residents tailor locally defined resolutions when conflict and violence threaten community stability and well-being.

Resource Link: http://www.usdoj.gov/crs

Compassionate Listening Method

Compassionate Listening is a process of "listening our way to wholeness." We believe that peace comes through the hard work of meeting one's enemy - the human being behind the stereotype, and acknowledging one another's suffering. Compassionate Listening as a tool for reconciliation is based on a simple yet profound formula for the resolution of conflict: adversaries giving the gift of listening. To help reconcile conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides.

Compassionate Listening Project

The Compassionate Listening Project is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering individuals to heal polarization and build bridges between people, communities, and nations in conflict. The Compassionate Listening Project teaches powerful skills for peacemaking in families, communities, on the job, and in social change work locally and globally. Their curriculum grew out of our many years of reconciliation work on the ground in Israel and Palestine. They adapted their trainings and began to teach in the U.S. in 1999, and now offer trainings and workshops worldwide for everyday peace-building.

Resource Link: http://www.compassionatelistening.org

Conflict Resolution Consortium of the University of Colorado

This is a gateway to the Consortium's various websites, including CRInfo (The Conflict Resolution Information Source), the Intractable Conflict Knowledge Base Project, the original Conflict Resolution Consortium website, and several other great resources.

Resource Link: http://conflict.colorado.edu/

Conflict Resolution Quarterly

Association for Conflict Resolution.

Conflict Resolution Quarterly (formerly Mediation Quarterly) is a publication of the Association for Conflict Resolution (ACR), a professional organization dedicated to enhancing the practice and public understanding of conflict resolution. The journal publishes quality scholarship on relationships between theory, research, and practice of third parties in the conflict management and dispute resolution field to promote more effective professional applications.

Resource Link: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/97519532

Conflict Resolution Services Center

Run by Bill Warters, Ph.D., of Wayne State University, this site is dedicated to supporting the development of mediation and conflict resolution services at colleges and universities. Includes searchable web links to more than 150 campus mediation projects, an extensive bibliography, program development resources, links to sample policies, and more.

Resource Link: http://www.campus-adr.org/CR_Services_Cntr/crservices.html