Conflict Resolution Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Military intervention is not a method of pacific settlement.

Pacific (peaceful) settlement of disputes, set out in Article 33 of the UN Charter, includes negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement and resort to regional agencies. All of them resolve a dispute without force.

Arbitration, negotiation and mediation are all listed in Article 33, so they are pacific methods. Military intervention is a coercive measure, which is why it is the odd one out.

Answer: A

The centre-periphery concept is associated with John Galtung (Johan Galtung).

In "A Structural Theory of Imperialism" (1971) Galtung divided the world into Centre and Periphery nations, each with its own centre and periphery, and argued that imperialism works through a harmony of interests between the centres of the two, at the expense of the periphery.

Barry Buzan is known for regional security complexes and securitisation, Stephen Cohen for his work on South Asian security, and Henry Kissinger for balance-of-power diplomacy.

Answer: A

Peace education aims to cultivate a culture of peace based on human rights.

As promoted by UNESCO, it develops the knowledge, attitudes and skills that help people prevent conflict, resolve disputes non-violently and respect human rights, tolerance and diversity.

Negotiation processes may be one topic within it, but option B narrows it to a history lesson. Military tactics and the history of warfare are the subject matter of military studies, not of peace education.

Answer: B

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948.

The UN General Assembly adopted it in Paris on 10 December 1948, a date now observed as Human Rights Day. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the drafting commission.

1776 is the year of the American Declaration of Independence, an earlier statement of rights, and 1795 is that of a French constitution with its own declaration of rights. 1947 is the year the drafting began, not the year of adoption.

Answer: D

Malnutrition is an example of Structural violence.

Galtung used structural violence for harm built into social and economic structures, such as unequal access to food, health care and income, so that people die or suffer avoidably although no individual strikes a blow. Hunger and malnutrition amid adequate food supplies are his standard examples.

Physical and personal (direct) violence have an identifiable actor who inflicts the harm, and cultural violence is the justification of violence through ideas, not a condition such as malnutrition.

Answer: C

The service provider group is the Red Cross.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent movement delivers services directly: emergency relief, medical care, tracing of missing persons, and protection of prisoners and the wounded in war under the Geneva Conventions.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are advocacy and monitoring groups that investigate and publicise abuses, and Greenpeace is an environmental campaign group. They influence policy rather than provide services to people in need.

Answer: C

The method that is not Gandhian is Sabotage.

Gandhi's methods of struggle were non-violent: satyagraha (holding on to truth through civil resistance), non-cooperation, boycott of foreign goods and institutions, and peaceful picketing. Sabotage, the deliberate destruction of property or obstruction by covert damage, involves violence and deceit and was rejected by Gandhi.

Satyagraha, picketing and boycott were all used in the national movement under his leadership.

Answer: C

The central teaching is Truth and non-violence.

Gandhi called truth (satya) God and non-violence (ahimsa) the means to reach it; satyagraha, his method of struggle, combines the two. Everything else in his thought, from swaraj to sarvodaya, follows from them.

Spirituality and brotherhood were part of his outlook but rest on truth and non-violence, and a classless society through class struggle is Marxist, not Gandhian. Gandhi himself wrote that truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.

Answer: C

Peace means the absence of conflict plus the existence of dialogue, understanding and cooperation.

Peace studies, following Johan Galtung, distinguish negative peace, the mere absence of violent conflict, from positive peace, the presence of justice, dialogue, understanding and cooperation. The fuller definition includes both.

'The absence of conflict' alone is only negative peace, and banning weapons of mass destruction or military cooperation are measures or arrangements, not definitions of peace.

Answer: A

The father of International Humanitarian Law is Henry Durant (Henry Dunant).

The Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the suffering of wounded soldiers after the battle of Solferino in 1859 and wrote A Memory of Solferino. His proposals led to the founding of the Red Cross in 1863 and the first Geneva Convention of 1864, the starting point of modern international humanitarian law. He shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

Will Durant was an American historian, and Kissinger and Acheson were US Secretaries of State.