DESIGNING TRANSNATIONAL
DISPUTE RESOLUTION CENTERS

Although there are extensive intelligence and space travel technologies and billion dollar military industries worldwide, there are few resources or avenues for long term strategized peace planning and virtually no standardized institutional means for engaging in early dispute resolution on a global basis. Moreover, most resources for peace planning are used for peacekeeping, which is principally a police function used for containment, rather than for peacemaking or peacebuilding.

Institutionalization of conflict resolution technologies has not been a serious component of international foreign policy and there is no global structure in place for early preventive diplomacy in transnational or even civil disputes. There is little consistency in global problem solving relating to security issues other than military and defense planning.

This paper asserts that the imbalance of resources for strategic peace planning is unspeakably costly to the collectivity of nations, and that conflict resolution should not and need not be haphazard, accidental, or mobilized on a reactive crisis-by-crisis basis.

This paper proposes setting up international dispute resolution venues in every geopolitical region, in which dispute resolution processes such as mediation can be utilized early in disputes and tensions, before they reach crisis points.

These centers could be designated as "neutral territory" zones, could be placed in already existing regional institutions, judicial organs, or universities, could be affiliated with NGO's or other international organizations, or might be completely autonomous. They could even be localized satellites of the United Nations. But they should have a presence throughout the world and should be in a loose affiliation with each other in a network which is computer linked, so that state of the art information on strategic peace planning and conflict resolution can be shared and exchanged.

To the extent that such centers already exist, such as those being developed in South Africa and Macedonia, these centers could be part of this network and can be models for other dispute resolution efforts.

In this century the community of nations has shown itself to be a repository of technological innovation and genius. Yet, in an area as essential and fundamental as our own collective security, we have no long term blueprint.

The network of dispute resolution centers envisioned here could be implemented as a goal within the framework of the United Nations Decade on International Law, which has peaceful settlement of disputes as one of its four stated principles, and could be part of the construction of a new and vital design that would make peace planning purposeful and consistent instead of accidental, left to chance or addressed reactively on a crisis-by-crisis basis. This type of proactive inquiry, planning and widespread preventative diplomacy could help to make peace a possibility that can be charted and strategized rather than a futuristic ideal.

With the costs in lives, grief, resources, and displacement that attaches to every case of armed conflict, we can no longer conscionably argue that spending billions of dollars for speculative military programs is acceptable, but that peace planning and conflict resolution networks are too costly. We cannot collectively, continue to afford the luxury of such a poor investment.