U.S. and Non-U.S. Scholars

Fulbright New Century Scholars Program
Overview • Previous NCS Programs • NCS Scholar List • NCS Brochure • 2002-2003

Beatrice Pouligny

Senior Research Fellow
Center for International Studies and Research Sciences, Po
Building Peace in Situations of Post-Mass Crime: A Trans-disciplinary and Comparative Research (Guatemala, Sierra Leone/Liberia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia)
France

Dr Béatrice Pouligny is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies and Research (CERI / Sciences-Po) and professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris where she currently teaches international relations (international organisations and conflict resolution) for graduate and post-graduate students. She also regularly leads training sessions on peace operations for diplomats, militaries and humanitarian workers, in different countries, and has taught in various foreign universities as well as diplomatic schools. She acts as a consultant for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the French Ministry of Defense and International NGOs.

Dr. Pouligny has had previous field experience with the U.N. and NGOs in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

There are two main avenues to her research:

-Global governance, the development of the forms of multilateralism and the role of NGOs in different sectors of activities (with a critical analysis of the 'international civil society' concept).

- Conflict resolution, peacebuilding and the different dimensions of rebuilding wartorn societies.

Dr Pouligny is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) and member of the executive committee of the Section for International Studies of theFrench Association of Political Science (AFSP).

Selected Publications:

Peace Viewed from Below: UN Peace Operations and Local Populations. London: Hurst & Co. (Forthcoming) / La paix vue "d'en bas": Opérations de paix de l'ONU et populations locales, Paris: PUF. (Forthcoming).

With Simon Chesterman & Albrecht Schnabel (eds), Mass Crime and Post-conflict Peace Building, United Nations University Press (Forthcoming, 2004).

"UN Peace Operations and Promoting the Rule of Law: Exploring The Intersection of International and Local Norms in Different Post-War Contexts", Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 2, N° 3, September 2003, pp. 359-377.

"Are Sanctions Meant to Work? The Politics of Creating and Implementing Sanctions Through the United Nations, Global Governance, Vol. 9, No 4, 2003.

"Le state building au secours de la sécurité internationale ?", RAMSES 2004, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, September 2003.

"Building Peace in Situations of Post-Mass Crime," in Edward Newman, Albrecht Schnabel (eds), Recovering from Civil Conflict, London: Frank Cass, 2002: 202-221.

"Ethics of Responsibility in Practice," International Social Science Journal (UNESCO), special issue on Extreme Violence, 174, December 2002: 529-538.

"Promoting Democratic Institutions in Post-Conflict Societies: Giving Diversity a Chance," International Peacekeeping, Vol. 7, N° 3, Autumn 2000: 17-35.

"Peacekeepers and Local Social Actors: The Need for Dynamic, Cross-cultural Analysis," Global Governance, vol. 5, n° 4, October - December 1999: 403-424.

Building Peace in Situations of Post-Mass Crime: A Trans-Disciplinary and Comparative Research

The key issue addressed by this project is the development of a model for how best to intervene to help re-establish functioning societies in areas that have experienced horrific acts of widespread killings and related atrocities such as mutilation, rapes, destruction of villages and deportations. I am working with four international as well as local interdisciplinary teams that are based in Guatemala, the Kivus/Ituri (DRC), Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cambodia (with support teams based in France, Switzerland, Italy and Australia).

My work focuses on developing a model for how best to deal with three critical areas for the reintegration and rehabilitation of post-mass crime societies. (1) On the family and community, where gender and inter-generational roles as well as values and codes of conduct need to be re-defined. (2) On the public and private rituals and narratives that sustain collective and individual memories of the history, causes, and course of mass crimes. (3) And, on the ways in which people identify themselves vis-à-vis society and state, because to build peace in post-mass crime societies requires that people redefine both their understanding of 'us' and of the 'them' in relation to the environment.

In addition to standard medical and psychological variables, work in post-mass crime settings requires understanding and taking account of a variety of factors that affect the meanings and significance that individuals and groups assign to these events. These factors are tied to the culture of the areas, and require attention to the symbolic and social worlds within which people in post-mass crime settings operate.

In connection with scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, I have developed models of these factors in the first phases of this project. An international meeting was held in New York, in June 2003, in collaboration with of the International Peace Academy and the United Nations University. We dealt with different aspects of how best to approach rehabilitation of post-mass crime societies. We are currently completing the editing of a selection of papers into a book (as well as a policy brief) to be published by the United Nations University Press. These papers provide a good basis for moving to the fieldwork-based phase of the project described above.

I have also devoted the past year to traveling to each of the countries in the project during which time I developed local research teams and set up participatory processes to take local knowledge seriously. This project is therefore an action research effort through which we will simultaneously seek to learn about the dynamics of peace building in post-mass crime situations and to offer immediate help to those processes as the project develops. In addition, this project will also build local capacity to respond to mass-crime situations by supporting the work and training of local researchers and practitioners. We plan to carry out this project during a three-year period, beginning in 2004 and ending in 2006.