User talk:Boud/Draft:WikiProject Peace

Project coverage

Thanks, Boud, for making a start on this. I have a few suggestions regarding scope:

• I would extend the "modern-day" emphasis to cover all peace processes with no restriction in time.
• People should be a key component of the project. It should include all men and women who have been involved in peace work (activists, researchers, historians, commentators, writers) with no restriction in time.

Furthermore, I think it would be useful for you to address the topics and subcategories included under Category:Peace and the people included under Category:Anti-war activists and all its sub-categories.--Ipigott (talk) 09:32, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

• I've made it clearer that pre-modern peace processes are not excluded, and in any case, it's not me alone who defines this - evolution of the scope is quite likely.
• People are definitely a key component - peace institutions are groups of people organised together. But you seem to be using the word "people" to mean individuals. There's no exclusion of individuals, and that's something that is likely to attract editing attention, but peace processes are the results of groups of people organised according to norms, with varying levels of formality or informality. With nearly 8 billion of us, it's the groups (on many scales, including networks) that mostly affect reality. As an example, Vienna Document may not attract editors and readers as much as an article on an individual, but it represents many people having made many discussions and decisions together, and making many visits to other people running military activities, and building trust that the other people are not faking their data. After all, this possible WikiProject will not become a WikiProject if there's only one active individual, no matter how charismatic I am ;) (or am not)... I'm not convinced that the great woman model of peace processes is much more realistic than the great man version of human history. Boud (talk) 13:09, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Relationship with Women in Red

As you believe WikiProject Women in Red and its members might be able to contribute, I would draw your attention to the Inter-Allied Women's Conference in 1919 which brought together a considerable number of women from various countries who strove to reinforce the peace process following the end of World War I. Over the years, we have organized events such as Women in peace to attract appropriate interest.

If the project can provide adequate incentives to improve coverage of women's involvement in the struggle for peace, I think you could rely on significant support from Women in Red.--Ipigott (talk) 09:32, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I guess we'll find out if/when another 5 to 11 people join me... Boud (talk) 13:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Quid WikiProject Anti-war?

Maybe rather than creating a new project, it would be more effective to provide additional support to wp:WikiProject Anti-war, perhaps changing its name to WikiProject Peace.--Ipigott (talk) 09:45, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

I did think of that, but it would seem a pity to shift the Anti-war project from the current scope, which is (as I understand it) mainly for coverage of grassroots anti-war movements. It doesn't aim to cover long-term state-funded institutions with long-term stable salaried employees who do things like monitoring/inspecting weapons and military exercises, or do long-term research with university/research institute type tenured positions. Also, peace processes are not strictly anti-war, for example, there are some rare cases where a military intervention is accepted as justified; the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 is generally seen as supporting the self-determination of what is now Bangladesh, and the Cambodian–Vietnamese War is generally seen as stopping the Cambodian genocide. I'm not an expert on the many, many agreements like the Vienna Document and so on, but I don't think that they completely exclude military interventions.

My feeling is that these are complementary projects. I see this project as something like 'Peace processes, institutions and people', where the anti-war movement(s) is (are) a part of this, but also go beyond peace processes in the sense of contributing to broader sociopolitical change. Boud (talk) 13:34, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to be another exception to the rule: not a case where military intervention is widely accepted as justified, but as a case where providing military resources for the Ukrainian state to defend itself against the Russian invasion is generally seen as justified and in favour of peace, where peace is interpreted as a broad range of human rights, democracy and justice, with actions and institutions being in place in reality, not just an absence of war. Currently we seem to be at least another month or two, if not a year or many years, from a viable peace settlement to end the invasion. In any case, the new European security architecture that will quite likely be reconstructed afterwards seems likely to include more "rights of military defence" and more military defence spending, with the aim of encouraging peace (given the evidence of the Putin government being willing to carry out a crime of aggression, and possibly progressing to genocide), but it's very unlikely to be strictly anti-war, at least in the way that WP:RS generally define "anti-war". Boud (talk) 00:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

About this draft

Greetings @Boud:

I do have article Draft:Civil life in conflict zones and Draft:Women, conflict and conflict zones. Idk if those would fit in your project and if it fits where to enlist on the project page.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 15:21, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Bookku: The study of peace processes overlaps with the study of conflict processes, so research and documentation on women's lives and civilian life in general during those conflict processes does seem on-topic to me. There's a "Participants" section where you can edit to insert your name - and there's a suggestion in the wikisource on how to add your name and interest. I noticed your interest in South Asia - which has a huge and rich variety of case studies that peace and conflict researchers can use, and I'm sure, have already published about. Boud (talk) 00:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Helsinki 2.0

Michael McFaul's Helsinki 2.0 proposal looks extremely interesting. If it attracts enough attention to become notable independent of McFaul, it could make a good article. For the moment it could probably only be added as a part of the McFaul article. Boud (talk) 22:33, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Peace-promoting anti-war art

Is there any article which takes note of 'peace-promoting anti-war art'.

I came across this The Apotheosis of War interesting one.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:55, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I think you mean peace-promoting anti-war art (the hyphens make it clear that the art is promoting peace, rather than peace promoting the art). There's a Category:Anti-war paintings. If someone has done research about the effects of anti-war art on peace processes (did the art lead to voting pro-war politicians out of power? did the art lead to creating new peacebuilding institutions?), then that could be worth an article. Boud (talk) 00:26, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Peace-promoting anti-war art and literature

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 02:07, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine/peace research institutions

@Bookku and 511KeV: While peace processes are not hitting the media headlines in relation to the 2022 fullscale Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are currently several Wikipedia articles on the topic, though calling them elements of peace processes would need the use of some of the sources such as those at https://wagingnonviolence.org/archives/?terms=294 . The two recent George Lakey articles are interesting: 25 Feb, 26 Feb and one by Maria Stephan, Take inspiration and have quite a bit of material that could be usable. An interesting quote to bypass people who misunderstand is in Lakey's 26 Feb article: I am not arguing that the threat or use of violence never achieves a positive result. The point of peace researchers is that non-violence tactics and strategy should be based on solid research, not just idealism. Boud (talk) 23:49, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks bringing attention. I am a bit slow but steady fellow will return back to this topic, Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 02:34, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

My feeling is that the Reactions/Public/Protests section of {{2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine}} covers a lot more aspects of peace processes, in the sense of nonviolent resistance, than the article 2022 Russia–Ukraine peace negotiations, but if we wanted to provide a broader overview of the peace process in this invasion than in the peace negotiations article alone, we would need external sources, such as Maria Stephan, to state that overview. Boud (talk) 18:34, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

@Bookku, 511KeV, and Thriley: I see two weak points for an article on the broader topic of peace prospects for the end of the invasion of Ukraine: (1) we need external sources to give an overview; (2) the overviews need to show how the authors see (predict) what they see as realistic possibilities of a broader return to stable peace+democracy+human-rights processes. Timothy Snyder's analysis How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end? is one source for academic views on this sort of topic, but a single academic's opinion is not enough. Trying to search for academic sources on this topic is not easy - we don't have much quality Wikipedia content on the actual research institutes. Here are some of the places I've tried looking (feel free to add/improve missing articles/info/article quality):

• Category:Peace and conflict studies
  • Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford - generally needs updating; at the subsite on research, no hint of any recent academic papers on prospects for a Russian withdrawal and overall peace process in Ukraine
  • Peace Research Institute Oslo - Nobel Peace Prize Honors Courage and Dignity might be usable, with a clear reference to a broader peace process - "Dividing the prize into three parts signifies that, only together, can Ukraine, Belarus and Russia build a truly stable peace in Europe. ... Andrei Sakharov (the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate and first chair of Memorial), and Arseny Roginsky (the late co-founder of Memorial), will not be there to lead this endeavor, but their names will inspire new generations of peace activists."
  • Peace Research Institute Frankfurt - PRIF Ukraine page has a list of PRIF blog items, mostly in German, described as "In the series on the PRIF blog on Ukraine PRIF researchers analyze the escalation of military violence in Ukraine and describe the consequences for the international security and peace architecture."
    • not directly an overview on the peace process, but related: The Continuing Relevance of the 'Women, Peace and Security' Agenda in the Context of Russia's War on Ukraine
  • United States Institute of Peace - Nobel Peace Prize: Documenting Rights Abuses is Vital in Ukraine and Beyond - the role of "documenters" of human rights violations is interesting, though not quite on-topic
  • University for Peace - seems mostly only to show teaching programs, not much research
  • United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace - seems to have transformed into UNU IAS, without "peace"
  • Journal of Conflict Resolution - has some open-access research papers, but I didn't see any on Ukraine

Some easy (moderate amount of work :P), useful editing to do would be to go through and fix some of these peace research institute pages for their obvious problems - e.g. does the institute still exist? can we shift the dominance of sources to third-party rather than self-sources?

Boud (talk) 12:38, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

In the interests of a future sub-category Category:peace research institutes, to be a sub-category of Category:Peace and conflict studies, we could add:

• Department of Peace and Conflict Research (Uppsala University) that runs the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, if the Dept is considered Wikipedia-notable on its own;
• Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

We could also add a WP:STANDALONE list page - these are independent of Category pages.

Boud (talk) 01:09, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Another institute whose page critically needs independent WP:RS is the

• Institute for Economics and Peace

run by rich guy Steve Killelea. This profile of Killelea is rather hagiographic - it claims that Killelea himself has laid the foundations to develop an entirely new understanding of peace (archive). It's possible that the IEP's role is useful, but it seems rather secretive and suspiciously like whitewashing the role of opaquely run corporations as opposed to academic research done by identifiable people, using defined methods and data sources. In any case, Global Peace Index is a stable article, and currently seems to be accepted as information rather than misinformation. So work on it would be welcome. Boud (talk) 09:29, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Search terms

@Boud Whenever you search sources @ say google scholar google books or Wikipedia library which search terms usually you use, if you can keep this section updated about useful search terms, I can help out in updating bibliographic info in related articles once in a while.

Thanks Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 02:32, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

I generally avoid the Google search engine, since it's better to avoid supporting authoritarian, secretive, centralised power structures that violate privacy if we can, and instead use search engines better protecting user privacy like one of the servers running https://searx.space , or https://startpage.com ; DuckDuckGo is less bad than Google but does do some privacy violation if I remember right. Some time we need to complain to whoever set up the default search engine recommendations for en.Wikipedia - it's embarrassing that we encourage Wikipedians to become raw materials for Google to sell to advertisers. Google has also made some directly negative contributions in terms of workers' rights and Criticism of Google#Censorship, for example. After all, we don't recommend cooperation with services run by the Putin government.

The terms I use depend on the particular topic or question. Boud (talk) 03:11, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Ethiopia–TPLF peace agreement

@Bookku, 511KeV, and Thriley: Given scepticism by Alex de Waal a few weeks ago, it seems that a serious peace agreement has actually been signed: the Ethiopia–Tigray peace agreement. Someone interested in the WP:DYK process might wish to go to WP:DYK and put that article through the DYK process there if you're quick (few days). This helps bring attention to new articles that are of sufficient quality per the DYK criteria.

Analyses by peace researchers such as de Waal and Kjetil Tronvoll will be useful to add to the peace agreement article. One serious flaw: the agreement itself is currently secret. Editing welcome! Boud (talk) 22:43, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I am comfortable with dyks so will study and give a try. Bookku (talk) 03:36, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I think it should pass DYK review - though that could take anything from a few days to a month or so given the usually long queues ... (By "few days" above I meant that an article only qualifies if it's newer than 7 days.)

XTheBedrockX - welcome to de facto participating in this draft WikiProject! I don't think there's any hurry to try to get our numbers up above critical mass - if other people see that we're serious and start realising that peace research and peace processes are real things, and that the Ethiopia-Tigray agreement didn't just suddenly turn up out of thin air as a fortuitous event, then maybe more will turn up and start handling priority tasks that others are too busy to do. My understanding of a "WikiProject" is that it's both about structuring lists and other information about priorities, but also about the human relations between editors - I think we can see that each other has certain editing styles and strengths/weaknesses in editing. There's no need to try to name these - just accepting these and complementing each others' efforts is enough. Boud (talk) 22:49, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Sounds fair enough to me! XTheBedrockX (talk) 23:13, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Syrian peace process

Geir Otto Pedersen is showing incredible patience in facilitating the Syrian Constitutional Committee process. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Mahsa Amini protests are obviously having side effects on this process; my personal guess is that these could make it more likely for the pro-Assad side to accept concessions now rather than collapse when it's too late - when support from the current Russian and Iranian governments disappears... This might be why Russia is making an excuse to delay the next session: to delay Syrian democracy as long as possible. In any case, the encyclopedic goal is to add analyses from peace researchers on this process if anyone can find some; my personal guesses don't count. More RS'd knowledge would be useful to everybody interested in this peace process - from all sides, without waiting for January 2023. Boud (talk) 00:52, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Climate emergency relations to peace and conflict research

The Future of Environmental Peace and Conflict by Tobias Ide+2022 (archive) is an interesting open-access research paper that should be worth integrating somewhere relevant. Boud (talk) 11:52, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Economical benefits of peace

@Boud I did came across a peace related paragraph in NY times. The para starts ".. The economic rewards reaped by not being at war can be hard to quantify. .." ends ".. Countries where peacefulness deteriorated saw an increase of just 0.4 percent per year. .."

Idk if similar info has been used in an article, if not then may be useful hence sharing here.

Bookku (talk) 05:00, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

@Bookku: Nice ref. I've taken the liberty of renaming the section title, to make it easier to collect sources/Wikipedia articles on the topic. Related articles include:

• Peace dividend
• Guns versus butter model

There doesn't seem to be an overall article on research on the debate about the economic benefits of peace compared to war. Claims about it have been probably made throughout history; what matters is proper research on the issue, associated with definitions (depending on how peace, war and economics are defined, the answers to specific questions will differ).

Boud (talk) 09:08, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think my words "nice ref" are quite right - "useful ref" is probably OK. The author of the article fails to distinguish necessary defence from generic things like "wag[ing] war" and "our will to fight" and "victory". Successful defence against an attack is not "victory". The end point of the invasion will be many 100s of thousands of people killed, many more seriously injured, and many millions of people having been displaced, lost their homes, and so on. That's not victory. In the context of the climate emergency and the arguments in favour of degrowth, looking at formal economic indicators alone is looking at only a small part of the real world. Anyway, it's good to note the source here so that someone can collect related sources together sooner or later. Boud (talk) 09:44, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Can some one adopt this draft?

• Draft:Women's Participation in Peacekeeping

Bookku (talk) 06:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

It finally got into mainspace after Moxy did a big cleanup. :) Boud (talk) 16:27, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Red links

@Gaia Octavia Agrippa: Since you got rid of one red link on User:Boud/Draft:WikiProject Peace, you might be interested in handling some other red links there :). There must be heaps of sources on 1986 Stockholm Document, just as an example. So far we're nowhere near the critical mass for a WikiProject Peace, but arms control in Europe, arms control in Africa, arms control in the Americas and arms control in Asia are critically important topics that deserve solid, well-sourced, NPOVed, articles. As overview articles, these would require a lot more work than 1986 Stockholm Document, I think. There are plenty of other red links, too, of course. Boud (talk) 01:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

invasion of Ukraine

June 2024 Ukraine peace conference - article created. Seems like a broad semi-informal international consensus process might have some realistic chances. Boud (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration

I just discovered an extremely interesting WikiProject: Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration. I suspect that people here are mostly not the sort with the time, energy and patience to get involved in editing there, and people motivated to edit over there are probably more motivated to edit on that particular concrete situation than on peace processes in general - the goals are quite complementary.

Sooner or later wiki researchers may publish peer-reviewed papers about how Wikipedia in general and particular WikiProjects contribute to real-world peace processes. But that's not the case yet as far as I know ... Boud (talk) 11:45, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I wish some one adopts this draft

WP has articles on cosmopolitanism, religious pluralism, secularism etc. But in last some years academic scholarship seem to have focused on Draft:Religious cosmopolitanism. I wish some one adopts this draft. Bookku (talk) 06:57, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

CBMs, complex dynamical systems approach

@Jimmacintosh100: although your expertise is on confidence-building measures, you're welcome to check complex system approach to peace and armed conflict, which I've used to do a minimal tidying up one of the bits of confidence-building measures that was acceptable in Wikipedia around 2005-ish as a stub, but doesn't satisfy the standards of 2024.

To other people who haven't noticed Jim's edits - we now have open access versions of his major works - James Macintosh (August 1985), Confidence (and Security) Building Measures in the Arms Control Process: a Canadian Perspective (PDF), Global Affairs Canada, ISSN 0828-3672, Wikidata Q126443813, archived from the original on 9 June 2024 and James Macintosh (October 1996). Confidence building in the arms control process : a transformation view (PDF). Global Affairs Canada. ISBN 978-0-662-25029-6. OCLC 433939801. Wikidata Q126464216. Archived from the original on 9 June 2024. So there's a lot of solid material available that can be summarised and including in peace-process-related Wikipedia articles. One of Jim's key points there (from my very rapid browse) is to object to the confusion between hoped-for effects of confidence-building measures (CBMs) and actual effects. The authors of the complex system approach to peace and armed conflict papers that I've found so far also point out that understanding social systems as dynamical systems helps to see why interventions in systems of armed conflict may be ineffective or countereffective in the long term despite immediate effects that appear to "solve" the conflicts. I'm sure there's a lot more solid, open access literature like these. Boud (talk) 15:45, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Peace navbar

MartinPoulter created the navigation template peace just a month ago. I was wondering why I hadn't noticed it before. There has even been the very first minor :) edit battle there (sufficiently mild that the talk page doesn't even exist yet). Good to see more editors interested in the long-term topic rather than just what's hitting the news headlines. Martin: this is just to let you know that this is the talk page of a draft WikiProject - I don't expect the critical mass for a project to evolve any time soon, but it can't hurt to prepare the ground (an attractor state of the system). Boud (talk) 12:20, 23 June 2024 (UTC)