Title: Peacemaking in the Shadow of War
Speaker: Keith Krause (Geneva Graduate Institute)
Date: October 16
Time: 12:30
Venue: H-232 Seminar Room, Faculty of Humanities and Letters.
Abstract: The multilateral “international peace and security” architecture is in crisis, at all levels and in all regions. The United Nations has been sidelined in major conflicts and conflict resolution efforts no new UN peace operations have been authorized since 2014, and the resources devoted to post-conflict peacebuilding have shrunk. Conversely, military spending and the number of conflicts worldwide have reached new heights, multilateral institutions are sidelined or irrelevant, and leaders in Europe (and elsewhere) are preparing for war. Is there a credible path for peacemaking in the current geopolitically turbulent times that is both principled and pragmatic, or are peacemakers caught in the utopian trap that characterized the early 20th century?
Bio: Keith Krause was Professor of International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute from 1994-2025, and is Director of its Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP). From 2000 until 2016, he was also Programme Director of the Small Arms Survey, an internationally recognized research NGO he founded in 2000. An international expert on conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and armed violence, Keith has more than 30 years of experience in designing and conducting research projects for academic and policy-oriented purposes. His research interests include the changing character of contemporary armed violence, post-conflict peace-building and state-building, security sector reform, and multilateral security cooperation. He has published Arms and the State, edited or co-edited Critical Security Studies, Culture and Security, and Armed Groups and Contemporary Conflicts, as well as having authored dozens of journal articles and book chapters, and consulted for governments and NGOs. He is Swiss-Canadian, and received his D.Phil in International Relations from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.