Cooperation Partners: Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Macedonia, Initiative for Peace-building and Democracy

The Conference focused on the changes in the international debate about security and the consequences deriving from this change. After the confrontation between the East and West ended, new kind of conflicts emerged where the traditional pattern of inter-state-conflict was no more a sufficient model for explanation of its causes. For this reason the understanding of threats to security has been extended from a pure focus on states and inter-state conflicts to a broader view of contributors to insecurity.

“Human security” thus is a lesson learned from the change in conflict patterns. It is taking into consideration that regional or global security is depending on more than the stability of borders and exclusive state interests. The security of human beings can be threatened by a list of different factors. Major threats to human security can be for example the lack of nutrition and water, poverty, unemployment, corruption, drug- and weapon-smuggling. These factors contribute to the exclusion of individuals from their basic human rights.

The aim of the Conference was
- To promote dialogue between different conflict prevention actors and governmental and parliamentary representatives as well as between them and civil society representatives.
- To raise the public awareness about the role, capacity and strategies of different international and regional conflict prevention actors;
- To raise the awareness of decision-makers about the complexity and utility of conflict prevention;
- To raise the awareness of national and local actors about the necessity for considering their role in conflict prevention;
- To assess the opportunities for building partnerships in conflict prevention,
- To develop recommendations for taking ownership over the process of conflict prevention.

“Human Security” taken as a norm, leads those who are politically responsible for the direction, a country takes, to a policy that tries to avoid exclusion, is it economic, political, religious or ethnical. Human security thus is asking for an inclusive approach to build a stable and developing country, region or world.

As it is formulated in the report of the UN-Commission on Human Security from 2003: “Human security focuses on shielding people from critical and pervasive threats and empowering them to take charge of their lives. It demands creating genuine opportunities for people to live in safety and dignity and earn their livelihood. (…)”

Most of the conflicts that happened after 1990 have been inner-state conflicts, civil wars, often along ethnical, racial or sectarian lines. In analyzing this fact, the internal situation of states has become the field of interest of researchers. International policy makers tried to find instruments to influence positively the internal situation of states.

One of the remedies that have been recommended is the democratization of states. Pluralism and democratic institutions should serve as a basis to overcome the internal conflicts and create stability. But as was realized, most contemporary conflict happened within states undergoing political transition. As Timothy Sisk put it “Democratic institutions or practices, such as free speech, political parties and elections, can be used in ways that might pacify – but that might also intensify and further entrench – deeply rooted differences along [ethnic or racial] lines.”

So, it depends 1) very much on the institutional settings that have been found and implemented to overcome inner-state conflicts 2) on the will of the acting institutions and persons to overcome the conflictive patterns and issues and 3) on the willingness to create a broad consensus that is covering a huge majority of the society, and which does not depend on ethnic belonging.

The participants present were Politicians from the region of Southeastern Europe, Ministry representatives, Civil Society representatives, Journalists and Academics.