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Unfortunately it is often hard to see and recognize these positive signs, perhaps also because they do not receive sufficient attention in the communications media. Yet, how many initiatives of help and support for people who are weak and defenceless have sprung up and continue to spring up in the Christian community and in civil society, at the local, national and international level, through the efforts of individuals, groups, movements and organizations of various kinds! There are still many married couples who, with a generous sense of responsibility, are ready to accept children as "the supreme gift of marriage".

Many centres in support of life, or similar institutions, are sponsored by individuals and groups which, with admirable dedication and sacrifice, offer moral and material support to mothers who are in difficulty and are tempted to have recourse to abortion. Increasingly, there are appearing in many places groups of volunteers prepared to offer hospitality to persons without a family, who find themselves in conditions of particular distress or who need a supportive environment to help them to overcome destructive habits and discover anew the meaning of life.

Medical science, thanks to the committed efforts of researchers and practitioners, continues in its efforts to discover ever more effective remedies: Various agencies and organizations are mobilizing their efforts to bring the benefits of the most advanced medicine to countries most afflicted by poverty and endemic diseases. In a similar way national and international associations of physicians are being organized to bring quick relief to peoples affected by natural disasters, epidemics or wars.

Even if a just international distribution of medical resources is still far from being a reality, how can we not recognize in the steps taken so far the sign of a growing solidarity among peoples, a praiseworthy human and moral sensitivity and a greater respect for life? In view of laws which permit abortion and in view of efforts, which here and there have been successful, to legalize euthanasia, movements and initiatives to raise social awareness in defence of life have sprung up in many parts of the world.

When, in accordance with their principles, such movements act resolutely, but without resorting to violence, they promote a wider and more profound consciousness of the value of life, and evoke and bring about a more determined commitment to its defence. Furthermore, how can we fail to mention all those daily gestures of openness, sacrifice and unselfish care which countless people lovingly make in families, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly and other centres or communities which defend life?

Allowing herself to be guided by the example of Jesus the "Good Samaritan" cf. These deeds strengthen the bases of the "civilization of love and life", without which the life of individuals and of society itself loses its most genuinely human quality. Even if they go unnoticed and remain hidden to most people, faith assures us that the Father "who sees in secret" Mt 6: Among the signs of hope we should also count the spread, at many levels of public opinion, of a new sensitivity ever more opposed to war as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts between peoples, and increasingly oriented to finding effective but "non-violent" means to counter the armed aggressor.

In the same perspective there is evidence of a growing public opposition to the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of "legitimate defence" on the part of society. Modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform.

Another welcome sign is the growing attention being paid to the quality of life and to ecology, especially in more developed societies, where people's expectations are no longer concentrated so much on problems of survival as on the search for an overall improvement of living conditions. Especially significant is the reawakening of an ethical reflection on issues affecting life. The emergence and ever more widespread development of bioethics is promoting more reflection and dialogue-between believers and non-believers, as well as between followers of different religions- on ethical problems, including fundamental issues pertaining to human life.

This situation, with its lights and shadows, ought to make us all fully aware that we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life". We find ourselves not only "faced with" but necessarily "in the midst of" this conflict: For us too Moses' invitation rings out loud and clear: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live" Dt This invitation is very appropriate for us who are called day by day to the duty of choosing between the "culture of life" and the "culture of death".

But the call of Deuteronomy goes even deeper, for it urges us to make a choice which is properly religious and moral. It is a question of giving our own existence a basic orientation and living the law of the Lord faithfully and consistently: The unconditional choice for life reaches its full religious and moral meaning when it flows from, is formed by and nourished by faith in Christ. Nothing helps us so much to face positively the conflict between death and life in which we are engaged as faith in the Son of God who became man and dwelt among men so "that they may have life, and have it abundantly" Jn It is a matter of faith in the Risen Lord, who has conquered death; faith in the blood of Christ "that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel" Heb With the light and strength of this faith, therefore, in facing the challenges of the present situation, the Church is becoming more aware of the grace and responsibility which come to her from her Lord of proclaiming, celebrating and serving the Gospel of life.

Faced with the countless grave threats to life present in the modern world, one could feel overwhelmed by sheer powerlessness: At such times the People of God, and this includes every believer, is called to profess with humility and courage its faith in Jesus Christ, "the Word of life" 1 Jn 1: The Gospel of life is not simply a reflection, however new and profound, on human life.

Nor is it merely a commandment aimed at raising awareness and bringing about significant changes in society. Still less is it an illusory promise of a better future. The Gospel of life is something concrete and personal, for it consists in the proclamation of the very person of Jesus. Jesus made himself known to the Apostle Thomas, and in him to every person, with the words: This is also how he spoke of himself to Martha, the sister of Lazarus: Jesus is the Son who from all eternity receives life from the Father cf. Through the words, the actions and the very person of Jesus, man is given the possibility of "knowing" the complete truth concerning the value of human life.

From this "source" he receives, in particular, the capacity to "accomplish" this truth perfectly cf. In Christ, the Gospel of life is definitively proclaimed and fully given. This is the Gospel which, already present in the Revelation of the Old Testament, and indeed written in the heart of every man and woman, has echoed in every conscience "from the beginning", from the time of creation itself, in such a way that, despite the negative consequences of sin, it can also be known in its essential traits by human reason.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches, Christ "perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making himself present and manifesting himself; through his words and deeds, his signs and wonders, but especially through his death and glorious Resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover, he confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed: Hence, with our attention fixed on the Lord Jesus, we wish to hear from him once again "the words of God" Jn 3: The deepest and most original meaning of this meditation on what revelation tells us about human life was taken up by the Apostle John in the opening words of his First Letter: In Jesus, the "Word of life", God's eternal life is thus proclaimed and given.

Thanks to this proclamation and gift, our physical and spiritual life, also in its earthly phase, acquires its full value and meaning, for God's eternal life is in fact the end to which our living in this world is directed and called. In this way the Gospel of life includes everything that human experience and reason tell us about the value of human life, accepting it, purifying it, exalting it and bringing it to fulfilment.

The fullness of the Gospel message about life was prepared for in the Old Testament. Especially in the events of the Exodus, the centre of the Old Testament faith experience, Israel discovered the preciousness of its life in the eyes of God. When it seemed doomed to extermination because of the threat of death hanging over all its newborn males cf.

Israel thus comes to know clearly that its existence is not at the mercy of a Pharaoh who can exploit it at his despotic whim. On the contrary, Israel's life is the object of God's gentle and intense love. Freedom from slavery meant the gift of an identity, the recognition of an indestructible dignity and the beginning of a new history, in which the discovery of God and discovery of self go hand in hand.

The Exodus was a foundational experience and a model for the future. Through it, Israel comes to learn that whenever its existence is threatened it need only turn to God with renewed trust in order to find in him effective help: Thus, in coming to know the value of its own existence as a people, Israel also grows in its perception of the meaning and value of life itself. This reflection is developed more specifically in the Wisdom Literature, on the basis of daily experience of the precariousness of life and awareness of the threats which assail it.

Faced with the contradictions of life, faith is challenged to respond. More than anything else, it is the problem of suffering which challenges faith and puts it to the test. How can we fail to appreciate the universal anguish of man when we meditate on the Book of Job? The innocent man overwhelmed by suffering is understandably led to wonder: But even when the darkness is deepest, faith points to a trusting and adoring acknowledgment of the "mystery": Revelation progressively allows the first notion of immortal life planted by the Creator in the human heart to be grasped with ever greater clarity: This first notion of totality and fullness is waiting to be manifested in love and brought to perfection, by God's free gift, through sharing in his eternal life.

The experience of the people of the Covenant is renewed in the experience of all the "poor" who meet Jesus of Nazareth. Just as God who "loves the living" cf. With these words of the Prophet Isaiah It is above all the "poor" to whom Jesus speaks in his preaching and actions.

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The crowds of the sick and the outcasts who follow him and seek him out cf. The same thing has taken place in the Church's mission from the beginning. When the Church proclaims Christ as the one who "went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him" Acts Peter cured the cripple who daily sought alms at the "Beautiful Gate" of the Temple in Jerusalem, saying: By faith in Jesus, "the Author of life" Acts 3: The words and deeds of Jesus and those of his Church are not meant only for those who are sick or suffering or in some way neglected by society.

On a deeper level they affect the very meaning of every person's life in its moral and spiritual dimensions. Only those who recognize that their life is marked by the evil of sin can discover in an encounter with Jesus the Saviour the truth and the authenticity of their own existence. Jesus himself says as much: But the person who, like the rich land-owner in the Gospel parable, thinks that he can make his life secure by the possession of material goods alone, is deluding himself.

Life is slipping away from him, and very soon he will find himself bereft of it without ever having appreciated its real meaning: This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? In Jesus' own life, from beginning to end, we find a singular "dialectic" between the experience of the uncertainty of human life and the affirmation of its value.

Jesus' life is marked by uncertainty from the very moment of his birth. He is certainly accepted by the righteous, who echo Mary's immediate and joyful "yes" cf. But there is also, from the start, rejection on the part of a world which grows hostile and looks for the child in order "to destroy him" Mt 2: In this contrast between threats and insecurity on the one hand and the power of God's gift on the other, there shines forth all the more clearly the glory which radiates from the house at Nazareth and from the manger at Bethlehem: Life's contradictions and risks were fully accepted by Jesus: The poverty of which Paul speaks is not only a stripping of divine privileges, but also a sharing in the lowliest and most vulnerable conditions of human life cf.

Jesus lived this poverty throughout his life, until the culminating moment of the Cross: Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name" Phil 2: It is precisely by his death that Jesus reveals all the splendour and value of life, inasmuch as his self-oblation on the Cross becomes the source of new life for all people cf. In his journeying amid contradictions and in the very loss of his life, Jesus is guided by the certainty that his life is in the hands of the Father.

Consequently, on the Cross, he can say to him: Truly great must be the value of human life if the Son of God has taken it up and made it the instrument of the salvation of all humanity! God's glory shines on the face of man. Life is always a good. This is an instinctive perception and a fact of experience, and man is called to grasp the profound reason why this is so. Why is life a good? This question is found everywhere in the Bible, and from the very first pages it receives a powerful and amazing answer.

The life which God gives man is quite different from the life of all other living creatures, inasmuch as man, although formed from the dust of the earth cf. This is what Saint Irenaeus of Lyons wanted to emphasize in his celebrated definition: The Book of Genesis affirms this when, in the first account of creation, it places man at the summit of God's creative activity, as its crown, at the culmination of a process which leads from indistinct chaos to the most perfect of creatures.

Everything in creation is ordered to man and everything is made subject to him: A similar message is found also in the other account of creation: We see here a clear affirmation of the primacy of man over things; these are made subject to him and entrusted to his responsible care, whereas for no reason can he be made subject to other men and almost reduced to the level of a thing.

In the biblical narrative, the difference between man and other creatures is shown above all by the fact that only the creation of man is presented as the result of a special decision on the part of God, a deliberation to establish a particular and specific bond with the Creator: The life which God offers to man is a gift by which God shares something of himself with his creature. Israel would ponder at length the meaning of this particular bond between man and God.

The Book of Sirach too recognizes that God, in creating human beings, "endowed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image" The biblical author sees as part of this image not only man's dominion over the world but also those spiritual faculties which are distinctively human, such as reason, discernment between good and evil, and free will: The ability to attain truth and freedom are human prerogatives inasmuch as man is created in the image of his Creator, God who is true and just cf.

Man alone, among all visible creatures, is "capable of knowing and loving his Creator". It is a drive towards fullness of life; it is the seed of an existence which transcends the very limits of time: The Yahwist account of creation expresses the same conviction. This ancient narrative speaks of a divine breath which is breathed into man so that he may come to life: The divine origin of this spirit of life explains the perennial dissatisfaction which man feels throughout his days on earth.

Because he is made by God and bears within himself an indelible imprint of God, man is naturally drawn to God. When he heeds the deepest yearnings of the heart, every man must make his own the words of truth expressed by Saint Augustine: How very significant is the dissatisfaction which marks man's life in Eden as long as his sole point of reference is the world of plants and animals cf.

Only the appearance of the woman, a being who is flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones cf. In the other, whether man or woman, there is a reflection of God himself, the definitive goal and fulfilment of every person. Compared to the immensity of the universe, man is very small, and yet this very contrast reveals his greatness: The glory of God shines on the face of man. In man the Creator finds his rest, as Saint Ambrose comments with a sense of awe: Truly we should maintain a reverential silence, since the Lord rested from every work he had undertaken in the world.

He rested then in the depths of man, he rested in man's mind and in his thought; after all, he had created man endowed with reason, capable of imitating him, of emulating his virtue, of hungering for heavenly graces. In these his gifts God reposes, who has said: Upon whom shall I rest, if not upon the one who is humble, contrite in spirit and trembles at my word? I thank the Lord our God who has created so wonderful a work in which to take his rest".

Unfortunately, God's marvellous plan was marred by the appearance of sin in history. Through sin, man rebels against his Creator and ends up by worshipping creatures: As a result man not only deforms the image of God in his own person, but is tempted to offences against it in others as well, replacing relationships of communion by attitudes of distrust, indifference, hostility and even murderous hatred.

When God is not acknowledged as God, the profound meaning of man is betrayed and communion between people is compromised. In the life of man, God's image shines forth anew and is again revealed in all its fullness at the coming of the Son of God in human flesh.

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He is the perfect image of the Father. The plan of life given to the first Adam finds at last its fulfilment in Christ. Whereas the disobedience of Adam had ruined and marred God's plan for human life and introduced death into the world, the redemptive obedience of Christ is the source of grace poured out upon the human race, opening wide to everyone the gates of the kingdom of life cf.

As the Apostle Paul states: All who commit themselves to following Christ are given the fullness of life: God's plan for human beings is this, that they should "be conformed to the image of his Son" Rom 8: Only thus, in the splendour of this image, can man be freed from the slavery of idolatry, rebuild lost fellowship and rediscover his true identity. The life which the Son of God came to give to human beings cannot be reduced to mere existence in time.

The life which was always "in him" and which is the "light of men" Jn 1: Sometimes Jesus refers to this life which he came to give simply as "life", and he presents being born of God as a necessary condition if man is to attain the end for which God has created him: To give this life is the real object of Jesus' mission: Thus can he truly say: At other times, Jesus speaks of "eternal life". Here the adjective does more than merely evoke a perspective which is beyond time. The life which Jesus promises and gives is "eternal" because it is a full participation in the life of the "Eternal One".

Whoever believes in Jesus and enters into communion with him has eternal life cf. These are the "words of eternal life" which Peter acknowledges in his confession of faith: You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God" Jn 6: Jesus himself, addressing the Father in the great priestly prayer, declares what eternal life consists in: To know God and his Son is to accept the mystery of the loving communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit into one's own life, which even now is open to eternal life because it shares in the life of God.

Eternal life is therefore the life of God himself and at the same time the life of the children of God. As they ponder this unexpected and inexpressible truth which comes to us from God in Christ, believers cannot fail to be filled with ever new wonder and unbounded gratitude. They can say in the words of the Apostle John: Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" 1 Jn 3: Here the Christian truth about life becomes most sublime.

The dignity of this life is linked not only to its beginning, to the fact that it comes from God, but also to its final end, to its destiny of fellowship with God in knowledge and love of him. In the light of this truth Saint Irenaeus qualifies and completes his praise of man: Immediate consequences arise from this for human life in its earthly state, in which, for that matter, eternal life already springs forth and begins to grow.

Although man instinctively loves life because it is a good, this love will find further inspiration and strength, and new breadth and depth, in the divine dimensions of this good. Similarly, the love which every human being has for life cannot be reduced simply to a desire to have sufficient space for self-expression and for entering into relationships with others; rather, it devel- ops in a joyous awareness that life can become the "place" where God manifests himself, where we meet him and enter into communion with him. The life which Jesus gives in no way lessens the value of our existence in time; it takes it and directs it to its final destiny: Man's life comes from God; it is his gift, his image and imprint, a sharing in his breath of life.

God therefore is the sole Lord of this life: God himself makes this clear to Noah after the Flood: The biblical text is concerned to emphasize how the sacredness of life has its foundation in God and in his creative activity: Human life and death are thus in the hands of God, in his power: He alone can say: But God does not exercise this power in an arbitrary and threatening way, but rather as part of his care and loving concern for his creatures.

If it is true that human life is in the hands of God, it is no less true that these are loving hands, like those of a mother who accepts, nurtures and takes care of her child: Thus Israel does not see in the history of peoples and in the destiny of individuals the outcome of mere chance or of blind fate, but rather the results of a loving plan by which God brings together all the possibilities of life and opposes the powers of death arising from sin: For he created all things that they might exist" Wis 1: The sacredness of life gives rise to its inviolability, written from the beginning in man's heart, in his conscience.

The commandment regarding the inviolability of human life reverberates at the heart of the "ten words" in the covenant of Sinai cf. In the first place that commandment prohibits murder: But, as is brought out in Israel's later legislation, it also prohibits all personal injury inflicted on another cf. Of course we must recognize that in the Old Testament this sense of the value of life, though already quite marked, does not yet reach the refinement found in the Sermon on the Mount. This is apparent in some aspects of the current penal legislation, which provided for severe forms of corporal punishment and even the death penalty.

But the overall message, which the New Testament will bring to perfection, is a forceful appeal for respect for the inviolability of physical life and the integrity of the person. It culminates in the positive commandment which obliges us to be responsible for our neighbour as for ourselves: The commandment "You shall not kill", included and more fully expressed in the positive command of love for one's neighbour, is reaffirmed in all its force by the Lord Jesus. To the rich young man who asks him: And he quotes, as the first of these: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus demands from his disciples a righteousness which surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, also with regard to respect for life: You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment'.

But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment" Mt 5: By his words and actions Jesus further unveils the positive requirements of the commandment regarding the inviolability of life. These requirements were already present in the Old Testament, where legislation dealt with protecting and defending life when it was weak and threatened: With Jesus these positive requirements assume new force and urgency, and are revealed in all their breadth and depth: A stranger is no longer a stranger for the person who mustbecome a neighbour to someone in need, to the point of accepting responsibility for his life, as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows so clearly cf.

Even an enemy ceases to be an enemy for the person who is obliged to love him cf. The height of this love is to pray for one's enemy. By so doing we achieve harmony with the providential love of God: Thus the deepest element of God's commandment to protect human life is the requirement to show reverence and love for every person and the life of every person. This is the teaching which the Apostle Paul, echoing the words of Jesus, address- es to the Christians in Rome: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet', and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence,?

You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law" Rom To defend and promote life, to show reverence and love for it, is a task which God entrusts to every man, calling him as his living image to share in his own lordship over the world: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth' " Gen 1: The biblical text clearly shows the breadth and depth of the lordship which God bestows on man.

It is a matter first of all of dominion over the earth and over every living creature, as the Book of Wisdom makes clear: The Psalmist too extols the dominion given to man as a sign of glory and honour from his Creator: As one called to till and look after the garden of the world cf. It is the ecological question-ranging from the preservation of the natural habitats of the different species of animals and of other forms of life to "human ecology" properly speaking 28 - which finds in the Bible clear and strong ethical direction, leading to a solution which respects the great good of life, of every life.

In fact, "the do- minion granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to? The limitation imposed from the beginning by the Creator himself and expressed symbolically by the prohibition not to? A certain sharing by man in God's lordship is also evident in the specific responsibility which he is given for human life as such. It is a responsibility which reaches its highest point in the giving of life through procreation by man and woman in marriage. As the Second Vatican Council teaches: It is not good for man to be alone' Gen 2: Thus he blessed male and female saying: Increase and multiply' Gen 1: By speaking of "a certain special participation" of man and woman in the "creative work" of God, the Council wishes to point out that having a child is an event which is deeply human and full of religious meaning, insofar as it involves both the spouses, who form "one flesh" Gen 2: As I wrote in my Letter to Families: In affirming that the spouses, as parents, cooperate with God the Creator in conceiving and giving birth to a new human being, we are not speaking merely with reference to the laws of biology.

Instead, we wish to emphasize that God himself is present in human fatherhood and motherhood quite differently than he is present in all other instances of begetting? Indeed, God alone is the source of that? Begetting is the continuation of Creation". This is what the Bible teaches in direct and eloquent language when it reports the joyful cry of the first woman, "the mother of all the living" Gen 3: Aware that God has intervened, Eve exclaims: In procreation therefore, through the communication of life from parents to child, God's own image and likeness is transmitted, thanks to the creation of the immortal soul.

Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and called them man when they were created. When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth" Gen 5: It is precisely in their role as co-workers with God who transmits his image to the new creature that we see the greatness of couples who are ready "to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Saviour, who through them will enlarge and enrich his own family day by day".

Thus, a man and woman joined in matrimony become partners in a divine undertaking: But over and above the specific mission of parents, the task of accepting and serving life involves everyone; and this task must be fulfilled above all towards life when it is at its weakest. It is Christ himself who reminds us of this when he asks to be loved and served in his brothers and sisters who are suffering in any way: Whatever is done to each of them is done to Christ himself cf. Human life finds itself most vulnerable when it enters the world and when it leaves the realm of time to embark upon eternity.

The word of God frequently repeats the call to show care and respect, above all where life is undermined by sickness and old age. Although there are no direct and explicit calls to protect human life at its very beginning, specifically life not yet born, and life nearing its end, this can easily be explained by the fact that the mere possibility of harming, attacking, or actually denying life in these circumstances is completely foreign to the religious and cultural way of thinking of the People of God.

In the Old Testament, sterility is dreaded as a curse, while numerous offspring are viewed as a blessing: This belief is also based on Israel's awareness of being the people of the Covenant, called to increase in accordance with the promise made to Abraham: But more than anything else, at work here is the certainty that the life which parents transmit has its origins in God. We see this attested in the many biblical passages which respectfully and lovingly speak of conception, of the forming of life in the mother's womb, of giving birth and of the intimate connection between the initial moment of life and the action of God the Creator.

Job, from the depth of his pain, stops to contemplate the work of God who miraculously formed his body in his mother's womb. Here he finds reason for trust, and he expresses his belief that there is a divine plan for his life: Remember that you have made me of clay; and will you turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.

You have granted me life and steadfast love; and your care has preserved my spirit" Job Expressions of awe and wonder at God's intervention in the life of a child in its mother's womb occur again and again in the Psalms. How can anyone think that even a single moment of this marvellous process of the unfolding of life could be separated from the wise and loving work of the Creator, and left prey to human caprice? Certainly the mother of the seven brothers did not think so; she professes her faith in God, both the source and guarantee of life from its very conception, and the foundation of the hope of new life beyond death: It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you.

Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws" 2 Mac 7: The New Testament revelation confirms the indisputable recognition of the value of life from its very beginning. The exaltation of fruitfulness and the eager expectation of life resound in the words with which Elizabeth rejoices in her pregnancy: And even more so, the value of the person from the moment of conception is celebrated in the meeting between the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth, and between the two children whom they are carrying in the womb.


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It is precisely the children who reveal the advent of the Messianic age: Elizabeth was the first to hear the voice; but John was the first to expe- rience grace. She heard according to the order of nature; he leaped because of the mystery. She recognized the arrival of Mary; he the arrival of the Lord. The woman recognized the woman's arrival; the child, that of the child. The women speak of grace; the babies make it effective from within to the advantage of their mothers who, by a double miracle, prophesy under the inspiration of their children.

The infant leaped, the mother was filled with the Spirit. The mother was not filled before the son, but after the son was filled with the Holy Spirit, he filled his mother too". I am greatly afflicted' " Ps With regard to the last moments of life too, it would be anachronistic to expect biblical revelation to make express reference to present-day issues concerning respect for elderly and sick persons, or to condemn explicitly attempts to hasten their end by force. The cultural and religious context of the Bible is in no way touched by such temptations; indeed, in that context the wisdom and experience of the elderly are recognized as a unique source of enrichment for the family and for society.

Old age is characterized by dignity and surrounded with reverence cf. The just man does not seek to be delivered from old age and its burden; on the contrary his prayer is this: The ideal of the Messianic age is presented as a time when "no more shall there be In old age, how should one face the inevitable decline of life?

How should one act in the face of death? The believer knows that his life is in the hands of God: Man is not the master of life, nor is he the master of death. In life and in death, he has to entrust himself completely to the "good pleasure of the Most High", to his loving plan. In moments of sickness too, man is called to have the same trust in the Lord and to renew his fundamental faith in the One who "heals all your diseases" cf. When every hope of good health seems to fade before a person's eyes-so as to make him cry out: Illness does not drive such a person to despair and to seek death, but makes him cry out in hope: O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the pit" Ps The mission of Jesus, with the many healings he performed, shows God's great concern even for man's bodily life.

Jesus, as "the physician of the body and of the spirit", 37 was sent by the Father to proclaim the good news to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted cf. Later, when he sends his disciples into the world, he gives them a mission, a mission in which healing the sick goes hand in hand with the proclamation of the Gospel: The kingdom of heaven is at hand'. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons" Mt Certainly the life of the body in its earthly state is not an absolute good for the believer, especially as he may be asked to give up his life for a greater good.

The New Testament gives many different examples of this. Jesus does not hesitate to sacrifice himself and he freely makes of his life an offering to the Father cf. The death of John the Baptist, precursor of the Saviour, also testifies that earthly existence is not an absolute good; what is more important is remaining faithful to the word of the Lord even at the risk of one's life cf.

Stephen, losing his earthly life because of his faithful witness to the Lord's Resurrection, follows in the Master's footsteps and meets those who are stoning him with words of forgiveness cf. No one, however, can arbitrarily choose whether to live or die; the absolute master of such a decision is the Creator alone, in whom "we live and move and have our being" Acts Life is indelibly marked by a truth of its own.

By accepting God's gift, man is obliged to maintain life in this truth which is essential to it. To detach oneself from this truth is to condemn oneself to meaninglessness and unhappiness, and possibly to become a threat to the existence of others, since the barriers guaranteeing respect for life and the defence of life, in every circumstance, have been broken down. The truth of life is revealed by God's commandment. The word of the Lord shows concretely the course which life must follow if it is to respect its own truth and to preserve its own dignity. The protection of life is not only ensured by the spe- cific commandment "You shall not kill" Ex It is not surprising, therefore, that God's Covenant with his people is so closely linked to the perspective of life, also in its bodily dimension.

In that Covenant, God's commandment is offered as the path of life: If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of" Dt What is at stake is not only the land of Canaan and the existence of the people of Israel, but also the world of today and of the future, and the existence of all humanity. In fact, it is altogether impossible for life to remain authentic and complete once it is detached from the good; and the good, in its turn, is essentially bound to the commandments of the Lord, that is, to the "law of life" Sir The good to be done is not added to life as a burden which weighs on it, since the very purpose of life is that good and only by doing it can life be built up.

It is thus the Law as a whole which fully protects human life. This explains why it is so hard to remain faithful to the commandment "You shall not kill" when the other "words of life" cf. Detached from this wider framework, the commandment is destined to become nothing more than an obligation imposed from without, and very soon we begin to look for its limits and try to find mitigating factors and exceptions.

Only when people are open to the fullness of the truth about God, man and history will the words "You shall not kill" shine forth once more as a good for man in himself and in his relations with others. In such a perspective we can grasp the full truth of the passage of the Book of Deuteronomy which Jesus repeats in reply to the first temptation: It is by listening to the word of the Lord that we are able to live in dignity and justice. It is by observing the Law of God that we are able to bring forth fruits of life and happiness: The history of Israel shows how difficult it is to remain faithful to the Law of life which God has inscribed in human hearts and which he gave on Sinai to the people of the Covenant.

When the people look for ways of living which ignore God's plan, it is the Prophets in particular who forcefully remind them that the Lord alone is the authentic source of life. The Prophets point an accusing finger at those who show contempt for life and violate people's rights: Among them, the Prophet Ezekiel frequently condemns the city of Jerusalem, calling it "the bloody city" But while the Prophets condemn offences against life, they are concerned above all to awaken hope for a new principle of life, capable of bringing about a renewed relationship with God and with others, and of opening up new and extraordinary possibilities for understanding and carrying out all the demands inherent in the Gospel of life.

This will only be possible thanks to the gift of God who purifies and renews: A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you" Ezek This "new heart" will make it possible to appreciate and achieve the deepest and most authentic meaning of life: This is the splendid message about the value of life which comes to us from the figure of the Servant of the Lord: It is in the coming of Jesus of Nazareth that the Law is fulfilled and that a new heart is given through his Spirit.

Jesus does not deny the Law but brings it to fulfilment cf. In Jesus the Law becomes once and for all the "gospel", the good news of God's lordship over the world, which brings all life back to its roots and its original purpose. This is the law of freedom, joy and blessedness. At the end of this chapter, in which we have reflected on the Christian message about life, I would like to pause with each one of you to contemplate the One who was pierced and who draws all people to himself cf.

Looking at "the spectacle" of the Cross cf. In the early afternoon of Good Friday, "there was darkness over the whole land This is the symbol of a great cosmic disturbance and a massive conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil, between life and death. Today we too find ourselves in the midst of a dramatic conflict between the "culture of death" and the "culture of life".

But the glory of the Cross is not overcome by this darkness; rather, it shines forth ever more radiantly and brightly, and is revealed as the centre, meaning and goal of all history and of every human life. Jesus is nailed to the Cross and is lifted up from the earth. He experiences the moment of his greatest "powerlessness", and his life seems completely delivered to the derision of his adversaries and into the hands of his executioners: And yet, precisely amid all this, having seen him breathe his last, the Roman centurion exclaims: It is thus, at the moment of his greatest weakness, that the the Son of God is revealed for who he is: By his death, Jesus sheds light on the meaning of the life and death of every human being.

Before he dies, Jesus prays to the Father, asking forgiveness for his persecutors cf. After his death "the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised" Mt The salvation wrought by Jesus is the bestowal of life and resurrection. Throughout his earthly life, Jesus had indeed bestowed salvation by healing and doing good to all cf.

But his miracles, healings and even his raising of the dead were signs of another salvation, a salvation which consists in the forgiveness of sins, that is, in setting man free from his greatest sickness and in raising him to the very life of God. On the Cross, the miracle of the serpent lifted up by Moses in the desert Jn 3: Today too, by looking upon the one who was pierced, every person whose life is threatened encounters the sure hope of finding freedom and redemption. But there is yet another particular event which moves me deeply when I consider it.

It is finished'; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" Jn Afterwards, the Roman soldier "pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water" Jn Everything has now reached its complete fulfilment. The "giving up" of the spirit describes Jesus' death, a death like that of every other human being, but it also seems to allude to the "gift of the Spirit", by which Jesus ransoms us from death and opens before us a new life.

It is the very life of God which is now shared with man. It is the life which through the Sacraments of the Church-symbolized by the blood and water flowing from Christ's side-is continually given to God's children, making them the people of the New Covenant. From the Cross, the source of life, the "people of life" is born and increases. The contemplation of the Cross thus brings us to the very heart of all that has taken place. Jesus, who upon entering into the world said: He who had come "not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" Mk And he died for us while we were yet sinners cf.

In this way Jesus proclaims that life finds its centre, its meaning and its fulfilment when it is given up. At this point our meditation becomes praise and thanksgiving, and at the same time urges us to imitate Christ and follow in his footsteps cf. We too are called to give our lives for our brothers and sisters, and thus to realize in the fullness of truth the meaning and destiny of our existence. We shall be able to do this because you, O Lord, have given us the example and have bestowed on us the power of your Spirit.

We shall be able to do this if every day, with you and like you, we are obedient to the Father and do his will. Grant, therefore, that we may listen with open and generous hearts to every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. Thus we shall learn not only to obey the commandment not to kill human life, but also to revere life, to love it and to foster it. Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?

Jesus replied, "If you would enter life, keep the commandments" Mt The Teacher is speaking about eternal life, that is, a sharing in the life of God himself. This life is attained through the observance of the Lord's commandments, including the commandment "You shall not kill". This is the first precept from the Decalogue which Jesus quotes to the young man who asks him what commandments he should observe: You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal God's commandment is never detached from his love: We identify the ways in which a careful and judicious examination of empirical evidence can be of use to conflict resolution practitioners and the limitations of generalizations from past experience.

Finally, we introduce the rest of the book, in which contributors address the above questions in the general case and in the context of a set of conflict resolution techniques that are likely to be important in the coming years. The major practices of international conflict management during the Cold War period—the practices of traditional diplomacy—reflected the state system dominant in world politics for centuries. It made sense to treat international conflict as occurring between nation states that acted in a unitary fashion on the basis of stable and discrete national interests rooted in geopolitics, natural resources, and other enduring features of countries.

If the behavior of states was dictated by such interests, it followed that conflict between states reflected conflicting interests. Such conflicts were often perceived as zero sum: In the world of national interests the chief methods of international conflict management were the traditional diplomatic, military, and economic means of influence, up to and including the threat or use of force. These tools of power politics —the same tools that states used to engage in international conflict—were the main ones employed in efforts to address conflict.

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States were also sensitive to the delicate balance of nuclear power that could be jeopardized by this kind of coercive diplomacy. For this reason, in particular, they sought security regimes see Jervis, that provided norms devised to reduce the risks of escalation. The implicit understandings gained through. Negotiation in the world of national interests meant balancing or trading the competing interests of states against one another or finding common interests that could be the basis for agreement even in the face of other conflicting interests.

A search for common interests was characteristic of Cold War-era negotiations aimed at preventing military confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union. For example, the negotiations to end the Cuban missile crisis and to develop confidence-building measures for avoiding accidental nuclear war were based on the common interest in reducing the risk of confrontations that might escalate to nuclear warfare. Such negotiations could proceed because it was possible to identify shared interests that cut across or partially overrode the conflicting ones.

The traditional diplomatic strategies of influence were refined and elaborated greatly during the Cold War period. They continue to be relevant in the post-Cold War world, although their application is sometimes a bit different now see Chapters 3 through 6. In deploying and threatening force to address and possibly resolve conflicts, there has been increased emphasis during the post-Cold War period on multilateral action e.

Thus, for example, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe CSCE , begun in the s, matured in the s into a formal organization—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE —that has intervened in various ways in conflicts across a broad region, although not by force see Chapter Military organizations are now increasingly being used in new ways and for new conflict resolution purposes. Armed force is infrequently used in direct interventions, even in Europe, where regional organizations are particularly strong exceptions are the NATO air campaign in Bosnia and the Russian interventions in Chechnya and Tajikistan.

Peacekeeping missions still sometimes physically separate adversaries to prevent further violence, but they also provide humanitarian relief, resettle refugees, and rebuild infrastructure. Another new development is that states and associations of states are no longer the only actors that can use techniques of influence like those of traditional diplomacy. For example, in the s, even before the end of the Cold War, transnational corporations, pressured by negative publicity about their investments, and even local governments used.

A striking development since the end of the Cold War has been the emergence from relative obscurity of three previously underutilized strategies for international conflict resolution. These strategies all deviate from the zero-sum logic of international conflict as a confrontation of interests see Table 1. The observation that these strategies are now more widely used is not meant to imply that they are always used effectively.

Also, the strategies are often used together, and sometimes the distinctions among them may be blurred. One strategy may be called conflict transformation. This is the effort to reach accommodation between parties in conflict through interactive processes that lead to reconciling tensions, redefining interests, or finding common ground. This strategy departs radically from the logic of enduring national interests by making two related presumptions: Certain intergroup conflicts, particularly those associated with the politics of identity, are seen as having significant perceptual and emotional elements that can be transformed by carefully organized intergroup processes so as to allow reconciliation and the recognition of new possibilities for solution.

These strategies and tools are often used in combination; moreover, the conceptual distinctions among them are sometimes blurred in use. The conflict transformation approach is seen in its purest form in a set of techniques pioneered in the s by academics and NGOs under such names as interactive conflict resolution, citizen diplomacy, and problem-solving workshops e. The intent is that over the course of the meetings the participants will come to reinterpret the relationship between their groups and the possible futures of that relationship and that this change in the perceptions of a small number of individuals will lead either directly through concrete peace proposals or indirectly e.

In recent years, conflict transformation strategies have also been promoted by NGOs that are spreading ideas such as alternative dispute resolution to emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The so-called truth commissions in South Africa and some Latin American countries use a strategy of conflict transformation when they work to construct a shared understanding of history that can be a basis for emotional reconciliation, tension reduction, and the creation of a more cooperative political climate see Chapter 9.

Structural prevention typically focuses on the problems of culturally divided states, especially those with weak democratic traditions, deep ethnic divisions, and histories of collective violence perpetrated by one group against another or by past governments against civilian populations. Various tools are available for structural prevention, including institutions for transitional justice, truth telling, and reconciliation Chapter 9 ; electoral and constitutional design see Chapter 11 ; autonomy arrangements within federal governance structures Chapter 12 ; laws and policies to accommodate linguistic and religious differences Chapter 13 ; training for law enforcement officials in following the rule of law; institutions assuring civilian control of military organizations; and the development and support of institutions of civil society.

The third strategy is normative change, defined as developing and institutionalizing formal principles and informal expectations that are intended to create a new context for the management of conflict. Norms may also define responsibilities for states to prevent violent conflict. Although norms were established to manage conflict between states during the Cold War, a notable feature of the post-Cold War period is the effort to use international norms to regulate or prevent conflict within states. In previous eras the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of sovereign states provided that sovereigns had license to control conflicts within their borders, free from outside influence.

Although this norm was often breached by great powers acting in their own national interest within their spheres of influence, it was rarely overturned in favor of universal principles that held all states responsible to common standards. This situation began to change in the later decades of the Cold War, when norms such as human rights, democratic control, and the self-determination of peoples were increasingly invoked against states that abused their citizens.

In Europe the Helsinki Final Act of was an historic watershed in this regard, permitting oversight by the 35 signatories of human rights conditions in each of their territories. Of course, we are a long way from a world in which what is good for humanity consistently outweighs the prerogatives of states. Nevertheless, there are signs that universal norms, many of which are stated in the United Nations Charter and other international documents, are becoming embodied in transnational institutions that can exert influence on states.

For example, human rights norms have, through the operations of the CSCE and OSCE, provided increasing leverage for the international community to curb organized state violence against minority groups. Continuing dialogue about the tension in international law between the norm of noninterference on the one hand and those of human rights and self-determination of peoples on the other may be leading toward a new international consensus on how to provide for the rights of minorities. And the growing international acceptance of norms of democratic decision making are making it more legitimate for states, international donors, and NGOs to support struc-.

It is too soon to be sure that the increased prominence of these new strategies of international conflict resolution is an enduring feature of a new world system. However, it seems likely that many of the forces that have made these strategies more attractive are themselves enduring. If intrastate conflicts continue to pose serious threats to global security, if nonstate interests remain important, and if global integration makes foreign policy increasingly difficult to organize exclusively around coherent and unitary notions of national interest, conflict resolution is likely to rely more than in the past on the transnational activities of nonstate actors and on techniques that do not depend on traditional definitions of national interest.

Nation states are likely to remain important actors in international relations for some time to come, however, and the possibility of violent interstate conflict remains a serious concern. But recent events presage a more complex multidimensional arena of international conflict in which both state interests and nonstate actors are important parts of the mix.

Under such conditions some recent trends are likely to stabilize. For example, NGOs with humanitarian and conflict resolution missions have a good chance to remain prominent players in world politics. Their comparative advantage lies in using conflict resolution tools that do not depend directly on power politics. Although NGOs can facilitate negotiations that trade off interests, states are probably better positioned to do this. NGOs are uniquely able to contribute by deploying the emerging tools of conflict resolution, as they have increasingly done in recent years. They have promoted conflict transformation by sponsoring interactive conflict resolution activities see Chapters 7 and 8 , providing training in informal dispute resolution techniques, and supporting various institutions of civil society that participate in democratic debate.

The roles for NGOs in structural prevention are sometimes more prominent than the roles for states. And they have contributed to the development and enforcement of new international norms by promoting and monitoring conditions of human rights, treatment of minorities, and democratic governance e. Their continued importance will depend not only on their usefulness to diplomats in the aid-donor states but also on their acceptance by the parties to the conflicts they want to resolve. Thus, to be effective, these NGOs must be accepted by their potential clients as democratic, accountable, and true to the humanistic principles they espouse.

They must also find ways to ensure that their activities do not make conflicts worse see Chapter If the post-Cold War world is qualitatively different from what came before, does it follow that what practitioners know about conflict resolution is no longer reliable? A provisional answer comes from the results of a previous investigation by a National Research Council committee that reviewed the state of knowledge relevant to preventing major international conflict, including nuclear war.

Between and this group commissioned 14 comprehensive review articles covering major areas of knowledge about international conflict National Research Council, , , Stern and Druckman identified propositions that the authors of the reviews judged to be supported by the evidence available at the time. Each proposition was coded in terms of how well it stood up against a list of five political surprises of the period. The Stern-Druckman investigation reached conclusions that may also apply to knowledge about conflict resolution techniques. First, the great majority of the propositions about 80 were not tested by the surprising events.

Thus, these conclusions from historical experience remained as well supported as before. Second, of the propositions that were tested by events, most were supported by the events that occurred. This knowledge was also unchanged by the shift in the world system. Third, however, some of the most critical events of were not addressed by any of the propositions. Available knowledge about the international system had virtually nothing to say about the conditions under which an international epidemic of democratization would break out, or a great empire would peacefully liquidate itself, or a new historical era would dawn without a great-power war.

So, although much of what passed as knowledge before was still reliable knowledge after that time, much of. The main lessons of the end of the Cold War were not that previous knowledge was wrong but that there was no knowledge about some of the most important phenomena of the new era. The results of that analysis suggest that, although it makes sense to look carefully and critically at what is known about the traditional strategies and tools of conflict resolution that have received considerable attention from scholars and practitioners, it is especially important to examine what is known about less familiar strategies and tools that received limited attention in the past and that may be of major importance under the new conditions.

This book does not attempt to comprehensively review knowledge about the effectiveness of the conflict resolution techniques based mainly on the influence of tools of traditional diplomacy.

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Instead, the contributors were asked to examine only a few of these techniques and only in some areas of their application: Generally, what the contributors find is that the new conditions in the world have not invalidated past knowledge about how and under what conditions these techniques work.

However, the new conditions do call for some modification and refinement of past knowledge and suggest that the old tools sometimes need to be thought of and used in new ways. Each of the above chapters includes a summary of the state of knowledge about the conditions favoring effective use of the techniques it examines.

Much closer attention is paid to the emerging strategies of conflict resolution and to the techniques that embody them, about which much less has been written. For most of the conflict resolution techniques that involve conflict transformation, structural prevention, and normative change, there is no systematic body of past knowledge from the previous era that is directly relevant to current needs.

Therefore, careful examination of what is known about the effectiveness of these techniques is particularly needed at this time. Fortunately, these techniques, though underutilized, are not new. For example, one type of structural prevention strategy is to offer autonomy—special status and governance rights—for certain culturally identified subunits in a unitary or federal state. There is a fairly long history of happy and unhappy examples of autonomy that may hold. But it is only very recently that scholars have looked to cases like Scotland, Puerto Rico, the Soviet republics and autonomous regions, Catalonia, Greenland, the Native American reservations of the United States and Canada, the French overseas territories and departments, and the like to find lessons that might be informative in places like Chechnya, Bosnia, and Hong Kong see Chapter In the past, when such structural arrangements were the subject of scholarly attention, it usually came from specialists in domestic politics e.

The same situation holds for constitutional design. The world is full of constitutions and electoral systems, and their consequences for conflict management in their home countries are available for historical examination. However, until recently, relatively little systematic attention was paid to the question of how electoral system design shapes the course of conflict in a society see Chapter 11 for a review and analysis of the evidence.

This book gives detailed attention to several nontraditional conflict resolution techniques in order to shed light on the potential for using techniques that employ the strategies of conflict transformation, structural prevention, and normative change as part of the toolbox of international conflict resolution. The intent is to draw out lessons—what George calls generic knowledge—about the conditions under which each type of intervention in fact reduces the likelihood of violent conflict and about the processes that lead to such outcomes. Our primary intent in conducting this exercise is to provide useful input to the decisions of conflict resolution practitioners—decision makers in national governments, international organizations, and NGOs— who must consider a wider-than-ever panoply of policy options, some of which they have not seriously considered before.

The contributors to this volume were asked to summarize available knowledge with an eye to informing these decisions. We also hope, of course, to advance knowledge among specialists about the functioning and effectiveness of the various techniques of international conflict resolution. But the rationale for developing this knowledge is more than the curiosity of science. It is also to help in efforts to reduce both organized and nonorganized violence in the world.

Conflict resolution practitioners need many kinds of knowledge to achieve their objectives. Some essential knowledge is highly situation specific and can come only from examining features of particular conflict situations in the present—the political forces currently affecting the parties in conflict, the personalities of the leaders, the contested terrain or resources, and so forth. Other kinds of essential knowledge apply across situations.

They tell what to expect in certain kinds of conflicts or with certain kinds of parties, leaders, or contested resources. These kinds of knowledge are generic, that is, cross-situational, and therefore subject to improvement by systematic examination of the past. The chapters in this book are organized around problems in conflict resolution and techniques or classes of techniques for addressing them.

Problems are situations encountered repeatedly, though in different contexts, in the conduct of the practice of diplomacy or conflict resolution, such as deterring aggression, mediating disputes, managing crises, achieving cooperation among allies, and so forth. Practitioners typically consider several specific policy instruments and strategies for dealing with each of these generic problems.

In this process they can benefit from several types of knowledge about them. First, general conceptual models identify the critical variables for dealing effectively with the phenomenon in question and the general logic associated with successful use of strategies or techniques to address a type of problem. For example, deterrence theory in its classical form e. It presumes that the target of a deterrent threat is rational and thus, if well informed, can make a reasonably accurate calculation of the costs and risks associated with each possible response to the threat, and it prescribes the characteristics of threats that are effective with rational actors.

A conceptual model is the starting point for constructing a strategy or response for dealing with a particular conflict situation. Second, practitioners need conditional generalizations about what favors the success of specific strategies they might use. This kind of knowledge normally takes the form of statements of association—that a strategy is effective under certain conditions but not others.

Although conditional generalizations are not sufficient to determine which action to take, they are useful for diagnostic purposes. A practitioner can examine a situation to see whether favorable conditions exist or can be created for using a. Good conditional generalizations enable a practitioner to increase the chances of making the right choice about whether and when to use a technique. Third, practitioners need knowledge about causal processes and mechanisms that link the use of each strategy to its outcomes.

For example, one indication that an electoral system in a culturally divided society is channeling conflict in nonviolent directions is that each major party is running candidates from several ethnic groups. When party conflicts are no longer reflections of raw ethnic conflict, future political conflicts are likely to be less highly charged.

Knowledge about such mechanisms is useful for monitoring the progress of a conflict resolution effort and for deciding whether additional efforts should be made to support previous ones. Fourth, in order to craft an appropriate strategy for a situation, practitioners need a correct general understanding of the actors whose behavior the strategy is designed to influence.

Only by doing so can a practitioner diagnose a developing situation accurately and select appropriate ways of communicating with and influencing others. Faulty images of others are a source of major misperceptions and miscalculations that have often led to major errors in policy, avoidable catastrophes, and missed opportunities. Area specialists in academia can make useful, indeed indispensable, contributions to developing and making available such knowledge, as can diplomats and other individuals on the scene of a conflict who have personal knowledge about the major actors.

All of these types of knowledge are generic in that they apply across specific situations. It is important to emphasize, however, that although such knowledge is useful, even indispensable to practice, a conflict resolution practitioner also needs accurate situation-specific knowledge in order to act effectively. Skilled practitioners use their judgment to combine generic and specific knowledge in order to act in what are always unique decision situations. The contributors to this volume have attempted to develop the first three kinds of knowledge described above: In doing this they have had to grapple with other important but difficult issues: Each contributor to this volume was asked to carefully define a technique or concept of conflict resolution and to evaluate the available historical and other evidence regarding the conditions for its success.

In Chapter 2 , Stern and Druckman discuss the challenges of making such evaluations. They identify the difficulties of making valid inferences about efforts to change the course of history and discuss strategies by which knowledge can be developed in the face of these challenges. The other contributors tried to meet the challenges, each by examining a particular technique, concept, institution, or problem. Most of the contributors used some form of structured case comparison to do their work. The results of their efforts have been sets of propositions or empirically based hypotheses about the conditions and mechanisms by which particular efforts at international conflict resolution yield results that can be considered successful.

It is our hope and expectation that the knowledge developed by the contributors will be of practical value. We do not expect that it will be prescriptive in the sense of providing a standard set of procedures that tell practitioners what to do in particular situations. However, it is intended to be useful to practitioners when they combine it with specific knowledge about what kind of situation is at hand.

Generic knowledge also has diagnostic value for practitioners because it describes the characteristics to look for in situations that make a difference in terms of which actions will be effective. After a practitioner has accurately diagnosed a. However, even with the perfect diagnosis of a situation, generic knowledge cannot be expected to provide prescriptions for action, for several reasons. First, this kind of knowledge will never be solidly established in the fashion of a law of physics.

For one thing, human actors can defy the laws said to govern their own behavior; for another, world conditions continually change in ways that may invalidate conclusions from past experience. Second, the many tradeoffs in any decision situation make general knowledge an imperfect guide to action. Sometimes, all the aspects of success cannot be achieved at once and choices must be made. Sometimes, conflict resolution outcomes are not the only ones relevant to practitioners, who must then weigh those outcomes against other desired outcomes e.

Despite such limitations, we believe the kinds of knowledge developed in this volume will prove useful to conflict resolution practitioners. They can help practitioners identify options for action they might not otherwise have considered, think through the implications of each course of action, and identify ways of checking to see if actions, once taken, remain on track.

However, one must recognize that practitioners may resist accepting conclusions developed by systematic analysis. Many practitioners mistrust such conclusions and prefer to trust their own experiential knowledge and that developed by other practitioners.

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Anticipating this possibility, we have involved current or former practitioners in discussion about each of the studies presented in Chapters 3 through 14 from the earliest phases and in the review of the chapters. We hope that this sort of interaction between researchers and practitioners will, over time, improve mutual respect for and understanding of the kinds of knowledge that direct experience and systematic analysis taken together can provide. Bridging the gap between scholarship and practice remains an overriding challenge for international conflict resolution George, We believe this volume will also be of value for scholars of international relations and conflict resolution.

For them it will collect useful knowledge, raise important issues for the future development of knowledge, and generate a variety of propositions to examine and hypotheses to test in future research in this area. The remainder of this book consists of 13 studies, one methodological and 12 substantive, concerned with particular techniques of conflict resolution. They identify the inherent difficulties of this task and show how progress can be made in the face of these obstacles. They conclude that a systematic approach based on social scientific concepts and techniques can produce useful generalizations about which techniques work under which conditions and thus raise the level of understanding available to conflict resolution practitioners.

The main challenges of evaluation defined in Chapter 2 concern developing analytical concepts, selecting cases for analysis, measuring outcomes and the factors affecting them, and making inferences about cause and effect. The conceptual challenges include defining and classifying interventions, defining success, and setting reasonable expectations for the effects of an intervention. The problems of case selection include delineating the relevant universe of cases and drawing a representative sample of them—for instance, the universe of known cases may not be representative of all actual cases.

Measurement problems include taking into account events that cannot be observed, such as closed negotiations or unpublicized mediation efforts. Key inference problems are raised by the lack of adequate comparison situations and the need to compare actual events with imagined, or counterfactual, ones; the need to take into account the effects of other events that occur at the same time as the intervention; the need to consider indirect effects of the interventions; and the need to sort out the overlapping and conflicting effects of the multiple efforts that are often made to resolve a conflict.

The authors then consider ways of meeting these challenges. With regard to the conceptual challenges, they emphasize the importance of clear definitions and taxonomies of intervention types and of conceptual frameworks that link concepts together and generate hypotheses about the conditions under which interventions have particular consequences over a short and longer span of time. With regard to sampling, suggestions are made to carefully develop purposive sampling frames guided by theory as an alternative to the sort of random sampling that only has meaning in the context of a specified universe of cases.

The chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the main available systematic methods of making inferences: The authors reach three important conclusions. First, they conclude that theory development, including taxonomies and hypotheses about. Second, a dialogue between theory and experience, with progress in each leading to refinements in the other, is the best route to improved understanding.

Many of the substantive studies in Chapters 3 through 14 take up the challenges defined in Chapter 2 , making new contributions to knowledge by clarifying concepts; defining types of interventions; stating explicit hypotheses about causes, effects, and causal mechanisms; defining outcome indicators; and so forth. In this respect these chapters may be previews of the directions that the field is likely to take during the first decade of the new millennium.

Below, we briefly summarize the topics and findings of the 12 substantive studies in this book. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the studies; rather, they are intended as a guide to the reader. We group the summaries under the four strategies of conflict resolution previously identified: This classification is artificial in some cases because some conflict resolution approaches employ more than one of these strategies. For example, truth commissions may promote conflict transformation while also recommending structural prevention measures.

These complexities are mentioned below and are more evident in the chapters that follow. Chapters 3 through 6 assess conflict resolution techniques strongly rooted in traditional diplomacy. Chapter 3 , for example, focuses on the use and threat of force. It examines the limited ability of the United States, despite its military dominance in the post-Cold War era, to achieve diplomatic objectives through threats of force and limited exemplary uses of force.

Barry Blechman and Tamara Cofman Wittes explain this paradox of power by identifying a number of conditions that, although neither necessary or sufficient for the success of a U. Blechman and Wittes examine eight major post-Cold War cases: Panama — , Iraq — , Somalia — , Macedonia — , Bosnia — , Haiti — , Korea — , and Taiwan To a large extent they find that the enabling conditions were present in those cases in which U.

The authors go beyond this correlation to suggest how the enabling conditions operated to produce the outcomes in the eight cases. The authors draw three noteworthy conclusions from their case analyses. First is the critical importance of how much is demanded of the target. The greater the demand made, the greater the reluctance to comply. Thus, in six of seven cases of success the demand made was a relatively modest one—compliance was relatively easy.

A second finding was that coupling threats with positive incentives for compliance increased success. Positive incentives were employed in six of seven success cases. A third important lesson concerned the degree of public support for the policy in the United States. Potent threats are harder to sustain because they imply greater risks, triggering the U.

This aversion, seen as a legacy of the Vietnam War, constrains American presidents from making threats that are sufficiently credible and potent to achieve ambitious objectives. The authors conclude that, as long as this situation continues, the targets of U. The findings of this study suggest these possible implications for U. In this situation the authors suggest that U. In Chapter 4 , Bruce Jentleson evaluates the success or failure of efforts. The chapter clarifies several conceptual and methodological issues and identifies lessons drawn from a comprehensive assessment of experience with economic sanctions.

His analysis reinforces the findings of previous writers on deterrence and coercive diplomacy, including Blechman and Wittes in Chapter 3 , that the task of deterrence is easier than the task of compellence and that the success of sanctions, either for deterrence or coercive diplomacy, depends on the threat being perceived by the target as sufficiently potent to induce it to accept the demands on it.

Again, as in earlier studies, Jentleson finds that the stronger the demand, the more credible and more potent the threat must be to achieve compliance. The crucial components of strategy design are the definition of objectives, the targeting strategy, measures for sanctions enforcement, and the broader policy of which sanctions are a part. Proceeding from this framework, Jentleson assesses whether and how the post-Cold War environment has affected the efficacy of sanctions.

In other respects it is more problematic to tap that efficacy. The threat of serious Western collective action in pursuing sanctions is vital to the sanctions being sufficiently credible and formidable to elicit compliance. Jentleson advocates that U. With regard to sanctions strategy, Jentleson emphasizes the greater potential efficacy of comprehensive and decisive sanctions over partial and incremental ones and the need to take enforcement more seriously, both to reduce leaks in sanctions and to buttress credibility.

Stedman examined the activities of spoilers in several recent conflicts and drew the lesson that it is important to distinguish between different types of spoilers. As noted above, it is important for policy makers in dealing with conflict situations to have a correct image of the adversary. Stedman presents an analysis of types of spoilers that can be used to classify spoilers and judge how best to interact with them in order to advance the peace processes they may try to derail. He provides practitioners with a framework that can assist them in classifying future spoilers and with propositions that lead to advice on how to proceed once the spoiler has been correctly classified.

Stedman also discusses the difficulty and uncertainty involved in correctly classifying spoilers. In Chapter 6 , I. Ripeness focuses attention on the timing rather than the substance of proposals for conflict settlement.

Georg [György] Lukács

Zartman maintains that more attention is needed to the timing question because those who focus on substantive aspects of negotiation have generally ignored or downplayed timing. Zartman reemphasizes that ripeness and the related notion of the mutually hurting stalemate are perceptual phenomena, necessary but not sufficient for the opening of productive negotiations.

Not all ripe moments are seized, and some kinds of negotiations can take place in the absence of ripeness. In addition to a perceived stalemate, a perceived possibility of a way out through negotiation or mediation is also necessary for productive negotiations to begin. Zartman summarizes references to ripeness in accounts by scholars and diplomatic practitioners and reviews the literature on the ripeness concept, presenting and analyzing a series of propositions about timing and ripeness. Zartman notes a number of problems with the emphasis on the need for ripeness.

One is that increased pain may increase resistance rather than reduce it. Zartman concludes that negotiations with true believers take longer to come to fruition because ripe moments are harder to find. He emphasizes that, when ripeness exists, practitioners need all their skills to turn it into a successful peacemaking process.

Ripeness, when created, only provides an opportunity for substantive knowledge and techniques of negotiation to come into play. Chapters 7 through 10 discuss conflict resolution techniques that rely heavily on the strategy of conflict transformation. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on unofficial efforts by citizens outside government who use organized processes of dialogue, analysis, and the like to change conflictual relationships.

Interactive conflict resolution is a well-defined and systematic approach used in small unofficial meetings of members of groups in tension or violent conflict to stimulate their talk together about the problems that divide them and the relationships that underlie these problems. The objective, as Harold Saunders argues in Chapter 7 , is different from official processes of conflict resolution. It is primarily to redefine problems and develop new frameworks of interaction. Interactive conflict resolution is especially useful for subjects that are taboo on official agendas and when formal contacts between official representatives are politically impossible.

It can help to pave the way for negotiation, address the obstacles to progress, and work in the larger society where peace will be made. The two chapters approach the same topic from quite different standpoints. Chapter 7 examines it from the standpoint of its practitioners, explaining what interactive conflict resolution activities try to do and providing the experience-based judgments of practitioners about how and why it succeeds or fails. It approaches the issue of evaluation theoretically and methodologically with a conceptual analysis of the ways that workshops might transform conflict and a set of hypotheses that can be tested in evaluations of the technique by future analysts.

In Chapter 7 , Harold Saunders points to the difficulty of using standard instruments to evaluate public peace processes and sets as the crite-. He sees processes as successful if they help to define and diagnose the problem, establish a strategic and operational framework, and design a tactical framework or possible course s of action.

Saunders and his collaborators present six case examples: The experience of 30 years has produced a significant track record for interactive conflict resolution. According to Saunders, the work of citizens outside government in a multilevel peace process is increasingly fruitful as one moves across a spectrum from quasi-official situations— those in which the primary task is to develop analysis of conflict not available to government, provide a channel of communication where none exists, or find a particular solution to a problem in negotiation—to those situations where the main task is to analyze the dynamics of relationships and design ways to work in the body politic to change them.

Saunders finds that the contribution of interactive conflict resolution increases as the capacities of government diminish. Governments, Saunders concludes, desperately need this added tool for peace making and peace building. As their skills increase, their sense of possibility increases. Saunders also concludes that policy makers working to resolve conflict in divided countries can extend the reach of peace making and peace building by consciously seeking ways of bringing both governmental and unofficial work under the same conceptual umbrella.

In Chapter 8 , Nadim Rouhana examines the major theoretical and methodological issues in analyzing and evaluating processes of interactive conflict resolution. He develops a conceptual framework that links the activities of problem-solving workshops to their microobjectives for the workshop participants and their macrogoals in terms of the larger conflict. Rouhana argues that it is important to develop taxonomies of practice in order to identify which methods work in what types of conflict, at what stage of conflict, and under what conditions.

In his view it is necessary to develop programs that provide training in intervention tech-. Problem-solving workshops, if they are to achieve their microobjectives, must generate new learning among the participants, who must retain part of that learning when they return to the conflict arena and demonstrate that learning in their political discourse and behavior.

Problem-solving workshops that are successful at the macro level tend to be those that create visions of peace before official processes begin, help to overcome obstacles during negotiations, and help to create supportive dynamics in the society that can sustain peaceful relations once formal negotiations have concluded. Rouhana suggests that workshops may contribute through their exploratory function, their innovative function, their capacity to legitimate discussion among adversaries, by accumulating public support over time, by clarifying what can and what cannot be agreed, and by preparing the terrain for political action.

Rouhana examines how the effects of interactive conflict resolution may relate to the dynamics of conflict, proposes ways to conceptualize these effects, and examines how the impact of these processes on the dynamics of conflict can be assessed. He offers three tentative conclusions about how to enhance the effect of interactive conflict resolution workshops on the larger conflict. First, third parties can take on a more active role in increasing the impact of the problem-solving workshop, provided that the role itself is carefully coordinated with participants and is part of the design of the problem-solving workshop.

Second, future workshops will have broader societal impact if conceived of as a joint learning opportunity for both participants and third party, on whom equal responsibility rests for transfer of insights into the broader societal context. And third, problem-solving workshops can be used as laboratories for conflict analysis. Understanding of the political needs of each party, their internal dynamics, their limitations and constraints, and the views of the other party of these constraints is important material to transmit to experts, publics, and decision makers.

In Chapter 9 , Priscilla Hayner considers official truth seeking—one of the available mechanisms for confronting past crimes of a prior regime or its armed opposition—as a mechanism for resolving and preventing violent conflict. Official truth-seeking efforts are sometimes advocated as a way to heal the wounds of past conflicts—to transform a conflictual atmosphere into one more conducive to peaceful intergroup relations. Hayner notes an irony in this expectation that official truth seeking has come to be seen as a peace-making tool, considering that the process of digging into.

This potential is sometimes seen in the fear felt by victims and witnesses when providing testimony to a truth commission. The chapter summarizes the experience of over 20 truth commissions and considers three ways they may help with conflict resolution. First, the proposal to establish a truth commission may represent one of the positive components of a peace accord that entices the parties to a conflict or perhaps one of the parties to agree to a peace. Nevertheless, the negotiation of a mandate for a truth commission is often very difficult.

Whether a truth commission is adopted, and what shape it takes, depends on the perceived interests of the parties, perceptions about whether truth seeking would spark new violence, and whether indigenous mechanisms are available to deal with past abuses. This positive effect of a truth commission happens, when it does, before the commission takes any action.