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Searching for World Peace: A Look at the Carter Center

© Joan Fumia

This being the season when thoughts turn to peace and forgiveness, I've decided to focus on a program that uses conflict resolution to promote harmony on a global scale. If anyone deserves the title of Mediator-in-Chief for his work in dispute resolution around the world, it would be President Jimmy Carter, the founder of the program.

Although President Carter's individual efforts at mediation are frequently reported in the media, less well known is the institute that provides the foundation for his work, The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter established the nonprofit center in 1982, and its programs include efforts to eradicate world hunger, disease, and poverty, as well as the use of conflict resolution to attack strife and oppression. The Center's affiliation with Emory University provides the theoretical and policy underpinnings of the programs.

The Conflict Resolution Program of The Carter Center includes an International Negotiation Network (INN), a group of experienced peacemakers, whose most famous member is, of course, President Carter himself. The INN monitors conflicts around the world, and when asked, will intervene to help settle disputes. The ultimate goal of the members is to resolve problems before the feuding parties actually wage war.

The Carter Center web site, http://www.emory.edu/CARTER_CENTER/demo.... lists the conflicts around the world that INN monitors on a weekly basis. At the present time, the INN lists North Korea, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Estonia, Liberia, and Bosnia as regions where serious conflicts exist.

In addition to providing information about its own programs, The Carter Center web site is searchable and offers links to other internet resources (go to http://www.emory.edu/CARTER_CENTER/netst... to access directly this area of the Center's web site). Under the heading of International Democratization and Development, I found more than 25 links ranging alphabetically, and ideologically, from Amnesty International to the World Bank. From those links, many also searchable, it is possible to find sites around the world devoted to every aspect of conflict resolution, from research and theory to social action.

A link that I found especially appealing was maintained by the International Affairs Network, http://www.pitt.edu/~ian/ianres.html. Its listed resources were arranged by Type, Source, and Topic. So, for example, one could click on "Area Studies," one of six entries under the Type heading; or on "Think Tanks," one of five entries under the Source heading; or on "Conflict Resolution, one of eleven entries under the Topic heading. Also, the site used icons with its entries to describe the kind of material included in each of the links, such as full text, public information, statistical data, abstracts, etc.

The copyright of the article Searching for World Peace: A Look at the Carter Center in Conflict Resolution is owned by Joan Fumia. Permission to republish Searching for World Peace: A Look at the Carter Center in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.