The Ethics of Peacebuilding

Tim Murithi

March, 2009
Paper, 208 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-2448-5
Edinburgh University Press
$32.50

Cloth, 208 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-7486-2447-8
$95.00

In the aftermath of the Cold War the hope for a more stable and just international order rapidly dissolved underneath the pressure of internecine conflicts raging on all continents.The Rwanda and Srebrenica genocides especially proved that promoting peace is a particularly fraught challenge in the face of intra-state conflict and sub-national groups that boldy confront nation-states.

Tim Murithi investigates the role that ethics plays in promoting and consolidating peacebuilding, synthesizing the fields of moral philosophy and international relations through an analysis of the ethics of negotiation, mediation, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In its exploration of the extent to which ethical concerns influence and inform peacebuilding, this book contributes to a growing body of literature on ethics and international relations that enable students, scholars, and practitioners to contextualize their understanding of a principled peacebuilding.

Related Subjects

• Ethics
• Political Theory

About the Author

Tim Murithi is a senior research fellow with the Centre for International Cooperation and Security (CICS) at the University of Bradford. Previously he was a senior researcher in the Conflict Prevention Programme at the Institute for Security Studies Office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. From 2005 to 2007 he was senior researcher at the Centre for Conflict Resolution at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. From 1999 to 2005 he was a programme officer at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in Geneva, Switzerland. Murithi has worked as a consultant to the African Union, the UN Development Programme in Sierra Leone, and the UK's Department for International Development, the International Peace Academy, UN Affiliated University for Peace, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, and the InterAfrica Group. He is the author of The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding, and Development, Towards a Union Government for Africa: Challenges and Opportunities, and coeditor of The African Union and its Institutions.

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