Resources

Below is a list of outside resources that we have found to be factual, reliable, and informative. We are not partnered with any of the organizations listed, nor do we receive any compensation for promoting them here. We cannot guarantee that any resources below are free of bias, in fact, there may be a few resources below which are pretty heavily biased one way or the other. We want to make this page exhaustive so as to give you as much knowledge at your fingertips as possible, so we won’t turn down good information just because we don’t always agree with everything about the source. However, If you’re not sure about the truthfulness or bias of any site fact, story, or issue, check out our “Fact-checking and Bias Recognition” section, and hopefully we can get things sorted out!

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)

ADR is an umbrella term for a number of formalized processes to handle civil disputes without taking them to court. Doing so often helps the involved parties have greater control over the process outcomes, or at least save them the financial costs of duking it out in court. If you want to learn more about ADR, the American Bar Association has an excellent overview, as well as a related resource page, slickly titled: “links of interest”

Basics of Conflict

For some people, conflict is exciting, for some people it’s absolutely terrifying; but regardless of how we feel about conflict or how much some of us might avoid it, conflict will inevitably enter our lives. Since this is the case, it might be good for all of us to learn a little more about how we handle conflict in our lives and what we could do to handle it a little better.

An excellent point to start this journey is by learning about your preferred conflict style! We have found the following assessments to be insightful, and best of all free to use! Here’s one assessment from education giant McGraw Hill, one from the University of Maryland, and one from Psychologia!

Next you can learn about positions, interests, needs, and how they can help you steady the ropes in managing conflicts in your life! This short article from Michigan State University’s Ann Chastain goes over the basics of positions and interests in the context of conflict resolution! The Conflict Expert also has tons of cool content relating to the basics of conflict management, including this article on positions and interests

Civic Engagement

Here at Conflict for Peace, we value the rule of law and the stability it provides our communities. Because of this, If you have an issue which you believe can be solved by policy changes, we recommend that you start your activism in the commonly accepted channels and institutions of your community at the local, province/state, or national level. This means engaging in activities like talking to your neighbors, reaching out to representatives, and making your case in front of one or more public officials with jurisdiction over your case. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any nifty tools to help you with this process; but if you’re at square one, this wiki-how article may be helpful in planning your path forward!

Communication and Listening

You have conversations with people every day, so you must be an expert on listening and communication right? Maybe, but most of us are relatively poor in these areas at the best of times. Add a little bit of conflict to the mix, and we may choose to throw what little we do know out the window without a second thought.

In case you want to challenge your perceived expertise, check out MindTools! Mindtools is a website geared towards life-skill development. For the most committed of us, they provide a paid training membership. However, they also have plenty of free resources; including a simple quiz to get a rough gauge on your listening skills, and another to help you determine your preferred communication style!

If you’re totally new to the concept of active/reflective listening, check out this overview by Niel Katz and Kevin McNulty for Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs!

If normal communication isn’t extreme enough for you, it may be time to enter the world of Non-Violent Communication (NVC)! The magical place where you focus on identifying and addressing the needs of the speaker and the weather is nice this time of year. If that sounds like your gig, there’s no better place to start than the Center for Nonviolent Communication! There you can learn the basics, find book recommendations, and even search your area for NVC workshops!

Fact-Checking and Bias Recognition

AllSides provides its users with coverage of individual news stories from multiple sources, varying in political bias. They also have a tool that allows you to measure your own political bias!

Fact Check allows us to review the truthfulness of statements made by politicians and political entities.

If you want to learn more about your biases outside of the policy realm, check out any of Harvard’s Implicit Bias Tests!

Media Bias/Fact Check has an extensive list of profiles on news sources from all sides of the political spectrum, daily fact check updates, as well as original news content.

Snopes is allegedly the internet’s oldest fact-checker, with information on topics from bigfoot to watergate, including current events.

Global Data and Informational Tools

For short summaries of the latest and greatest conflict studies journal articles, look through the Peace Science Digest’s recent publications, as well as their complete archive!

If you want to get more familiar with how to use data to answer questions and solve our important problems, check out Our World In Data. A generalized resource that brings research and in-depth data analysis to a wild variety of topics!

The CIA World Factbook is an excellent one-stop-shop for generalized country reports! They include information about each country’s demographics, economics, governance, and much much more!

InternationalAffairsResources is a great place to find any information related to International affairs! The site may look a little bit outdated, but it is still being updated and Maintained by Dr. Wayne A. Selcher of Elizabethtown College!

Interested in learning more about global human development efforts? Check out the UN’s Human Development Reports! There you can find out about the Human Development Index and even read through reports both on a country by country basis, as well as an overarching report

For anyone that wants to understand more about the freedoms available in their countries, or in other countries throughout the world, We recommend looking through the Freedom House Interactive Map! Users may compare freedom scores between countries, and even read individual country reports with the click of a button. If you don’t think you have enough freedom and you want to do something about it, Freedom House also provides a page of policy recommendations to create and reinforce free societies!

If you want to expand your understanding of human rights, figuring out what they are is the first step! Check out the UN’s 1948 Declaration of Universal Human Rights.

Want to know more about human rights abuses? Dive into any number of reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International!

Negotiation

Are you tired of always getting what you want? Oh, you don’t have that problem? Us either, but if we can improve our negotiation skills, we might get more of the things we want. First, we have to get comfortable with having our asks rejected and hearing the word “no.” If you’d rather run barefoot in an abandoned lightbulb factory, or if you want to increase your grace in this art form, there’s only one way to get better: practice. Take the 100-day rejection therapy challenge (They even have a nifty app called DareMe which allows you to record dares and catalog your notes!)

Probably one of the best sources for free resources on negotiation is the website for Harvard’s Project on Negotiation (HPON) You can browse their reports by topic or look through their free reports (you do have to give your email to access reports, but since they’re Harvard, we’re guessing they won’t scam you or spam you without consent).

The Association of Corporate Counsel is primarily geared toward the business world of ADR; as such, they have an extensive page on different applications of negotiation processes!

Nonviolent Action Theory, Application and Analysis

A Force More Powerful (Pt.1; Pt.2) is considered by some to be the unofficial documentary primer to successful nonviolent action movements in recent history. Being largely a historical documentary, the piece doesn’t delve much into the theories related to running strategic nonviolent action campaigns. But what it lacks in theory, it makes up for in richness of cultural and historical contexts throughout each chapter; giving the reader a deeper understanding of each case, so they may apply their theoretical knowledge to gain a fuller understanding of the similarities, differences, successes, failures, of each movement.Probably worth noting, some of the scenes in this documentary series may contain violent imagery

The Albert Einstein Institution exists to promote democracy and limit the use of violence to achieve political aims. As such they are one of the largest databases of free Strategic Nonviolent literature on the web! not only do they have an impressive library, but they also offer their literature in a ton of different languages!

The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) also has quite the selection of literature available, ranging from books to scholarly articles and more!

Swarthmore College does the world the service of hosting the global nonviolent action database, which is an amazing tool for finding and analyzing cases, as well as something about the list of nonviolent methods with links to historical examples and case studies

The Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) is one of the more well known and non-academic sources of training programs and material for running strategic nonviolent action campaigns. They have a small library of original nonviolence literature, as well as plenty of original videos, and a list of recommended documentaries

Seriously guys. We want you to be safe and we definitely don’t want you rioting or engaging in violence. However, if you are involved in a nonviolent action campaign, it’s not a bad idea to have first aid incorporated into your movement’s structure. A guide to riot medicine by Hakan Geijer (2020) 446pgs provides more information on street medicine than any person should or likely will ever need. Also, we know it was written by anarchists, but the medical information and techniques probably won’t vary much from those used by doctors/ first aid people of your preferred political alignment.

Peace Studies

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) researches peace, security, development, and disarmament (in Africa, Asia, and Europe).   They are gracious enough to share their findings in various places on their site including research, databases, and house publications!

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) was created by the US Congress in 1984 as an independent organization to promote peace and democracy throughout the world! They do this not only through their own research but also through peacebuilding projects in countries with high-conflict regions as well as funding outside work of similar types.

the International Peace Institute (IPI) was created by the UN in 1970 and has been independently researching, implementing, and educating folks on peace studies ever since! They have tons of publications, sharing their work, research, insights, and policy proposals!

Peace Research Institute of Olso (PRIO) is another peace studies research base that is committed to peace education by offering various courses and making its research data available to the public!

the European Institute for Peace (EIP) was founded by the European Union in 2014, likely to serve similar purposes as its counterparts from the US and the UN. Given their recent founding, they don’t have quite the breadth and depth of informational resources as the others; but check em out anyway, they’ll appreciate it!

Related Podcasts

If you’re chomping at the bit for more material in audio format, that’s great! We’ll be putting up a few of our recommendations just as soon as we make our own podcast trailers available for streaming (see media)