Powerful State,Powerless Mediator: The United States and the Peace Efforts of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, 1949–51

The Arab–Israeli War of 1948 produced complex questions that needed to be solved to obtain peace. Whereas the Arab states suffered humiliating defeats, Israel was the undisputed winner, expanding and solidifying its power. For the Palestinians, the outcome was catastrophic. Between 600,000 and 760,000 Palestinians fled, becoming refugees on the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in surrounding Arab states. Palestinian society collapsed and Palestine became divided between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, leaving the borders undecided. The Palestinians’ dreams of statehood were crushed. After the war, Israel used diplomacy to achieve its goals, defending the post-war status quo to preserve its expanded territory and resisting the return of Palestinian refugees. Through its membership in the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), established by the United Nations (UN) in 1948 to solve these problems, the United States was deeply involved in the negotiations. The United States became the informal, yet undisputed leader of the PCC, thus, it would seem, empowering it with the muscles of a superpower. After three years of struggling for peace the PCC had toadmit failure. Knowledge about these negotiations gives important insights into how mediators approached the conflict and shows that power asymmetry may explain why the belligerents could not obtain peace.     

The Women,Peace and Security agenda: Australia and the agency of girls

This article argues that young women and girls are significant stakeholders in peace and security efforts. Understanding their roles, views and capacity is essential to an adequate perspective on peace and security. Yet girls remain the most marginalised group when it comes to peace and security efforts globally. Gender- and age-based hierarchies often leave their interests ignored. Excluding girls hinders prospects for sustainable peace by denying their rights, entrenching inequity and affecting future chances for increasing women's participation. Australian government statements on Women, Peace and Security are evaluated on how they relate to young women and girls. The article presents a series of cases to analyse how young women are impacted by security factors, how they are actively working to create peace and security, and how to better include girls in seeking peace. Options for action by Australian policymakers are discussed.

本文指出,青少年女性是和平与安全努力的重要相关方。正确的和平安全观需要理解这些青少年女性的角色、观点和能力。但全世界但凡涉及和平安全,女孩都是一个最边缘化的群体。性别及年龄的等级制忽视了她们的利益。对女孩的排斥拒绝了她们的权利,强化了不平等,妨碍了妇女未来的参与,这都不利于未来的持久和平。作者评估了澳大利亚政府关于妇女、和平及安全的宣示与青少年女性有多大关系。本文分析了安全因素如何影响年轻女性,青年女性右如何积极致力于创建和平及安全,和平事业该如何吸收女孩等等。作者还讨论了澳大利亚政策制定者的行动选择。     

Estado de Graça: A Utopia Teológico-Política do Padre António Vieira

This essay discusses Jesuit Priest António Vieira's (1608–1697) Messianic writings, specifically the texts in which he comments on the impending arrival of the Kingdom of Christ, described as a most happy state suffused with divine grace. This Kingdom would be perfect and complete, and it would take place on earth, not in the purely spiritual sphere of heaven. I argue that the earthly dimension of Vieira's conception of the Kingdom of Christ opens his Messianism to a political dimension. It will lead him to consider the coexistence of nations during this Millenarian Kingdom in terms of “perpetual peace,” a notion later secularized by the thinkers of the Enlightenment.     

Peace through the lens of human rights: Mapping spaces of peace in the advocacy of Colombian human rights defenders

What kinds of peace do human rights defenders advocate? This question has become controversial in light of heavy criticisms raised against the scholarly paradigm that peace and human rights are co-constitutive universals. In this article, I explore how Colombian human rights defenders navigate potential tensions, erasures, and vested politics in their peace advocacy during the current peace process with the FARC-EP. I follow the trend in the geographies of peace literature to study the articulation of peace with human rights as situated and constitutive practices. My analysis of published activist statements maps out the discursivity of peace advocacy, that is, how human rights defenders articulate different political demands as interconnected conditions for peace and maintain a common activist space that cuts across the uneven geographies of violence in Colombia. The visualization of my results as discursive networks shows how activist practices open social and discursive spaces that integrate multiple understandings of peace, instead of obliterating differences in a single and homogenized, ‘local’ representation of peace. I further submit that elucidating how human rights defenders address peace beyond the end of guerrilla insurgency, the ambiguous role of the state, societal discrimination, and structural transformations helps us nuancing conceptual debates. We can learn from Colombian activists to move beyond rigid conceptual juxtapositions of human rights as either panacea or liberal fuel for conflict and to pay attention to how concepts are animated in political struggles to end violence.     

Enacting a Local Reform in the Age of Reform: A Salary for the Chairman of Middlesex Sessions

This article examines the unsuccessful attempts made from 1833 to 1842 by Middlesex's justices of the peace to obtain a local statute allowing them to pay a salary to their chairman. Instead of securing such an act, they had to settle for a statute enacted by the government, a statute authorising the government to appoint their chairman for judicial proceedings. The article uses the story of Middlesex's attempt to obtain a salary for the chairman to examine: justices' attempts to reform the office of chairman of county Sessions; the limited powers of justices in their county Sessions; and the centralising aspirations of central government. The statute that the government produced in 1844 originated as a public bill. In contrast, the statute that Middlesex had attempted to obtain originated as private bills. The statute enacted by the government contained defects that probably would not have marred a statute enacted under the rules governing private bills. So, this article uses the legislative misadventures of the government's bill to compare the procedures for enactment of public and private bills. The article therefore provides a case study of mid‐19th‐century legislative procedures governing enactment of local legislation, while arguing that, as of the mid 19th century, parliament had not developed procedures appropriate to both representative government and a centralising central government using public bills for local matters.     

胡适对苏联外交的评判——以对华政策为中心

胡适对苏联外交的评判大体是求是的.他高度评价苏俄初期的对华宣言,希望中国政府承认苏联,赞赏苏联在30年代中期的和平努力,认为苏联是维持世界和平的重要力量,充分肯定苏联对中国抗战的无私援助.胡适也谴责了苏联外交所表现出的民族利己主义和大国沙文主义.二战后,胡适以冷战思维判定苏联外交是侵略、扩张性的.     

周恩来与池田大作友情的基础

周恩来与池田大作的会见,是1974年12月5日在北京305医院进行的。这时的周恩来已重病在身,不是他想见的朋友是难以安排会见的。这之前,池田大作对周恩来心仪已久;而周恩来早在60年代初就已开始关心创价学会和担任创价学会会长的池田大作,他指示:一定要想办法建立同创价学会之间的渠道,一定要和他们交朋友。这之后,在池田大作的关心下,创价大学校园内先后植下了周樱、周夫妇樱。周恩来逝世后,池田大作成为在日本乃至     

Everyday peace capture: Nationalism and the dynamics of peace after violent conflict

Nationalism is arguably one of the most detrimental peace‐breaking factors in conflict‐affected societies. This article examines how ethno‐nationalist elites, subterranean movements, and ordinary people can become blockages to sustainable peace and reconciliation after violent conflict. It argues that peacebuilding and state‐building imposed from outside as conflict transformation approaches without acceptable peace settlement and resolute solution of the disputes among parties in conflict risk enabling the co‐optation of power‐sharing arrangements by ethno‐nationalist elites, contestation of peace and reconciliation by subterranean mono‐ethnic movements, and the occurrence of vernacular peace‐breaking acts. This negative mutation of nationalism not only harms peace, justice, and development but also undermines the rights and needs of distinct identity groups. Under these conditions, escaping the nationalism trap in conflict‐affected societies requires seeking political change through post‐ethnic politics and reconciliation through everyday pacifist acts undertaken by the affected communities themselves. The article draws on Kosovo to illustrate empirically the dynamics of peace‐breaking and practices of everyday nationalism. It seeks to bridge debates on nationalism and post‐conflict peacebuilding and offer alternative pathways for rethinking strategies of peace in divided societies.