Comment: Interactive Problem-Solving Interventions as Instrument of Conflict Transformation: Prospects and Challenges

Abstract

Even though wars between states were historically the major forms of conflict, civil strife based on questions of identity, ethnicity, religion and other similar grounds has become the order of the day after the end of the Second World War. The complexity of mostly overlapping, social, economic, cultural, political and religious factors in these conflicts makes them difficult to deal with. This structural and conceptual metamorphosis in the international conflict paradigm has required the international community to rethink the traditional and formal conflict management and third party intervention techniques and instruments such as negotiation and mediation. In the course of achieving these goals, conflict scholars have focused on multiple but concurrent multi-track diplomacy instruments. Track II of this multi-track diplomacy and its conflict transformation instruments are based on the concerted efforts of unofficial actors to establish unofficial communication channels and...