Peace and Right to Resist: Exploring New Dimension of Rights for Peace in Asia
-2^nd International Workshop on Peace as Human Rights in Asia --

16-17 May 2009, Gwangju, Korea

Organized by ARENA
Hosted by May 18^th Memorial Foundation

Background and Objectives

Intra state conflicts make for Ninety per cent of armed conflicts in recent times and conflict sites are civilian arenas. Here mostly civilian casualties occur; rape is a weapon of war; militias represent ethnic and religious groups and the state is party to a conflict with a section of its own people. The lines between the period of conflict and post conflict blur, since conflict ends for some and continues for others in different forms- like increased violence against women; violence to keep refugees from returning; increased marginalization for most. In these circumstances there is urgent need to re-think peacebuilding.

There has been a debate between differing paradigms of peace and security and a choice between these is made by states, policy makers and institutions. The paradigm of national security has dominated the practice of states while an alternate is the human rights and human security approach. This conference proposes that both these models offer radically different conceptualizations of peace, security, democracy, and development. The two paradigms offer different explanations on the root causes of conflicts and on how peace has to be negotiated. Both paradigms propose different methodologies and envisage different processes and end results. This conference will examine the human rights approach to peace both by taking up case studies from countries as well as looking at different discourses for peace, peacekeeping and conflict resolution.