The Project on Ethnic Conflicts and Peace Processes aims to map the rise and spread of ethnic conflicts within a comparative framework; and to formulate viable strategies for dealing with post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization issues, including the hostile legacies of partition.

It looks, in particular, at the pros and cons of partition as a solution to conflicts over ethnic or religious self-determination; and asks whether the emerging formula of combining devolution with open borders and regional union can help resolve recent and more long-standing partition conflicts. Versions of this formula are being applied in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, are sought in the Balkans, and have begun to be considered in South Asia.

The first goal of this site is to draw pointers for strategies of negotiation and prevention in ongoing ethnic conflicts. The second goal is to extrapolate whether and under what conditions it is possible to overcome or bypass the hostilities of partition altogether.

We hope that the site will serve as a cross-border resource for policy makers, analysts and civil society organizations dealing with situations of ethnic partition, post-conflict reconstruction and a durable peace.

About the Authors

Radha Kumar
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Peace and Conflict Studies

Radha Kumar is an expert on ethnic partitions and peace processes, and is currently finishing a book on self-determination conflicts after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Dr. Kumar has on the ground experience of peace negotiations in the Balkans and South Asia, and has followed the peace processes in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Cyprus since the end of the Cold War.

Dr. Kumar’s books include Divide and Fall? Bosnia in the Annals of Partition (1997); Bosnia-Herzegovina: Between War and Peace (editor Vol. I, 1993); and A History of Doing: Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1990 (1993).

Her recent articles include “What Happened to Self Determination in Iraq,” Baghdad Bulletin, July 2003; “India’s Divided House,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 2002; “Untying the Kashmir Knot”, World Policy Journal, Spring 2002; “A Roadmap for Afghanistan,”; “Ethnic Partitions and Peace Processes: Lessons Learnt, the Options Ahead”, TransEuropeean, Summer 2001; “Women’s Peacekeeping During Ethnic Conflicts and Post-Conflict Reconstruction,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Summer 2001; “The Partition Debate: Colonialism Revisited or New Policies?” Brown Journal of World Affairs, Winter/Spring 2000.

Dr. Kumar is a regular OpEd contributor to the Indian newspapers, and is now writing a column for the Indian Express.

Her work experience includes positions as Weaver Fellow, The Rockefeller Foundation, New York (1996-97); Associate Fellow, Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University (1994-96); and Executive Director, Helsinki’s Citizen’s Assembly, Prague (1992-94). Dr. Kumar is a trustee of the Delhi Policy Group, and a member of the U.S. Committee, Index on Censorship.

Yogesh Chandrani

Yogesh Chandrani is a student in the doctoral program in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Columbia University. His research interests are in political identity formation in South Asia and in social theory. He has a Master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and was the Associate Director of the Five College Program in Peace & World Security Studies, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1993-2000). He is coeditor with Michael Klare of World Security: Challenges for a New Century (St. Martin's Press, 3rd Edition, 1998).