Conflict Transformation & Strategic Peacebuilding

Welcome to EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding’s conflict transformation website. Conflict transformation as taught at EMU and practiced by the EMU professors and staff is focused on reducing violence, promoting justice, and increasing the ability of parties to manage their present and future conflicts nonviolently.

Dr. Jayne Seminare Docherty, Professor of Conflict Studies

What is conflict transformation?

Conflict transformation is the art and science of harnessing the positiveenergy of conflict while minimizing its negative effects. This starts with the assumption that conflict is a form of energy created when groups or individuals have or perceive that they have incompatible goals and they attempt to achieve their own goals without consideration for the goals of others. As with any form of energy, conflict can be used for positive or negative purposes. Used positively, conflict can help identify issues of injustice or oppression that need to be addressed. Used negatively, conflict can lead to violence and destruction.

Put another way, conflict transformation encourages parties to pursue truth, justice, and mercy simultaneously with peace.

The science of conflict transformation is grounded in a research-informed understanding of the stages of conflict and the ways conflict both changes and is changed as a result of the perceptions and actions of individuals and groups. The art of conflict transformation involves matching specific interventions — including nonviolent advocacy, peacemaking, mediation, facilitation, and negotiation — to a particular conflict at a specific time in order to alter the perceptions, relationships, and behaviors of the parties involved in the conflict.

When applied to large-scale social conflicts, conflict transformation requires a focus on structural issues such as the allocation of resources, the creation of just and inclusive systems of governance, and the reform of institutions that have benefitted some groups while harming others. When we apply conflict transformation to these larger conflicts, we are engaged in strategic peacebuilding.

What is the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding?

The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) was one of the first programs at a North American university to offer an M.A. in the conflict and peacebuilding field and is regarded as one of the best peacebuilding programs in the world. CJP offers graduate studies as well as many professional development opportunities.