Introduction: Peace Research and Peacebuilding

Abstract

I spent 1966–1967 doing first-hand research on the UN system, at UN Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. While there I made personal contact with European scholars who informed me about the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). It then had its headquarters in the Netherlands. In the summer of 1967 I attended an IPRA conference held in Sweden and listened to presentations from peace research scholars from around the world. Here I learned that people tend to define peace as a condition that exists when they overcome the most significant conditions that prevent them from having a normal human life. Thus, people around the world attempting to develop peace have different agendas. This means that achieving world peace requires cooperation among peoples having different peace agendas. This experience stimulated me to add peace research to my agenda, because it had a significant impact on my earlier research on the UN system and on the world relations of local communities.