The Project on Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace works with a network of partners across the world, both within academia and from militaries and humanitarian and peace-building organisations.
The Project relies on interdisciplinary collaborations to treat complex and controversial ethical problems, and to provide rigorous studies on the relationships between military, political and religious dimensions of the making of war and peace today and in the past.
Research currently conducted by the Project team focuses on
* the effectiveness of military ethics education, and the relationship between secular and religious standards of ethics invoked in the military and by humanitarian organisations
• the scope for grassroots post-conflict reconciliation processes – using expertise developed in work on Bosnia-Herzegovina, it is now extending its reach to other parts of the Former Yugoslavia and to the Middle East
• public discussion of today’s burning ethical dilemmas – the ethical basis for humanitarian interventions, the breakdown of agreed rules in warfare, the death of civilians as a result of military campaigns, and the difficulty of engendering long-term peace through negotiation
• models for sustained cross-conflict interreligious dialogue about international law and illegitimate warfare, about the scope for common responses and about the role of religious actors in post-conflict periods
• lessons to be learnt from historical wars for today’s armed conflicts, moving beyond the generalizations which often cloud discussion of the involvement of Christians, Muslims and other cultures and ideologies in war and peace-making
Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace Project 