Transdisciplinarity for Conflict Prevention: Legal Logics, Institutional Design, and Actionable Pathways

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Paul Shrivastava*
Cristina Elena Popa Tache*

Abstract

To address challenges of our polycrisis and resulting increase in conflicts, the article proposes a collaboration between law, society and transdisciplinarity, for the benefit of solving major problems of the planet. It offers a promising direction for normative evolution, and outlines four gaps that contribute to fragmented governance underlying human conflicts—the structural reasons why the combined knowledge of the social sciences and humanities has a limited impact on conflict prevention; the extent to which transdisciplinarity is capable of dismantling the belief in the inevitability of conflicts; the concrete actions needed, including normative directions; and identifying the responsible entities, implementation intervals and measurable results in conflict prevention. From a legal perspective, the current gap stems from fragmented governance, the lack of connection between epistemic communities and the decision-making process, the state-centered security paradigm, and insufficiently developed anticipatory capabilities. Modern transdisciplinarity, based on the integration of levels of reality, represents the normative structure that connects human security, positive peace, and international legal obligations. The article suggests some institutional reforms such as the mandatory introduction of peace impact assessments (PIAs) and the creation of anticipatory innovation units alongside transdisciplinary peace laboratories. The analysis concludes that transdisciplinarity, once legally established and institutionally supported, can transform conflict prevention from a reactive to a proactive field, changing the global narrative from inevitability to preventability.

1. Introduction

Peace means life, and separated, both become meaningless. Law, in its truest sense, is an expression of our common responsibility towards life. It arises from the fragile space where human vulnerability meets the aspiration for order, dignity and meaning. Peace, in turn, is not simply the absence of conflict, but the presence of a justice system capable of listening to people, the place, the time and the silent demands of future generations. Life shows us that both law without peace and peace without law risk becoming an illusion. Between the two, lies a path that requires holistic understanding, humility, ethical courage and the awareness that every legal decision is also a moral gesture towards the world we leave behind.

While life needs peace as an existential precondition, the world is currently embarked on a path of more frequent wars and armed conflicts, with more sophisticated and AI-enabled armament. Now humanity is simultaneously at war with nature and at war with itself. This is a result of the polycrisis conditions of modernity. Complexity theorists have argued for over two decades that the world faces not a single vital problem, but many vital problems that are in complex intersolidarity, antagonisms, and uncontrolled processes. The resulting general “polycrisis” has engulfed the whole planet and its constitutive sub-systems.¹ This nested set of globally interactive socio-economic, cultural-institutional and ecological crises, defy reduction to a single cause. Climate change, rising inequality, and financial crises interact in complex ways that multiply their overall impacts, and cumulate into existential risk for human security.² The intractability of polycrises and our inability to bring them under control motivated the Trump Administration to increase US defense budget to over $1 trillion for 2026. In response China and India increased their budgets by 7% and 6.5% respectively, NATO countries were pushed into spending 5% of their GDP for defense. The global expenditures on armaments and defense are likely to double its present value by 2030. This will spawn ever expanding conflicts.

The need for new thinking on peace and preventing conflicts is urgent. The response needs to reimagine peace holistically and from a systems perspective. Enduring peace cannot be accomplished in the siloed and fragmented thinking of the past. The Club of Rome proposed the notion of ‘planetary peace’ as a response to emerging existential risks.³ Peace is an active, systems-based process that centers the wellbeing of people, planet and future generations. It requires long-term global commitment to prioritizing economic regeneration over extraction and depletion, equity over domination, and collective flourishing over individual gain. Systems of peace must encompass peace within oneself, peace with others and peace with nature. Current peace architecture is fragmented by sectoral and disciplinary divisions, shaped by a few dominant powers, imbued with colonial legacies and is no longer fit for purpose. A holistic, post-hegemonic, transdisciplinary, pluriversal future is needed, one that embraces diverse worldviews, rebalances global power structures and cultivates harmony between humanity and nature.

Planetary peace has implications for transforming all systems undergirding life, including economic, social, political, cultural, educational, healthcare, food, energy, etc. The limited space of this paper cannot provide in-depth analysis of all these areas.This study pays special attention to cultural and educational initiatives, including the introduction of peace-building disciplines into legal curricula and the implementation of UNESCO programs for intercultural dialogue and ethical governance of technology. Implementation is proposed to be phased in over a five-year roadmap, from the establishment of legal mandates to the progressive increase in the international adoption of standardized prevention protocols. Examples from environmental law or international humanitarian law are offered, to illustrate the natural and necessary connections among these normative developments. Measurable results include improving the resilience of public policies, reducing factors that generate violence, and integrating positive peace indicators into governance systems.

Our vision of a transdisciplinary planetary peace acknowledges Nicolescu’s (2008) emphasis that the main difficulties stem not so much from a lack of knowledge as from a lack of institutional possibilities of integration ‘across, between and beyond’ sectors, functions, and disciplines and realities.⁴ To achieve integration across fragmented understandings of peace and conflict prevention, law and governance must be unified with social sciences and humanities , and with the natural sciences, all within specific social and cultural realities. Therefore, transdisciplinarity denotes an epistemological and institutional mechanism that goes beyond mere collaboration among disciplines and seeks the integration of knowledge “across, between, and beyond” disciplinary, sectoral, and functional boundaries. As Nicolescu emphasizes, the major obstacle lies not in a lack of information or expertise, but in the inability of institutional structures to create genuine possibilities of convergence between distinct domains of knowledge and between different levels of reality. It functions here as a condition of possibility for integration, inasmuch as it builds bridges between knowledge and decision-making, between the normative and the empirical, between the global and the local, allowing solutions for peace to be simultaneously legally coherent, socially legitimate, culturally sensitive, and ecologically sustainable. It is not limited to coordinating parallel disciplinary perspectives, but rather aims at the constitution of a common language, convergent methods, and shared purposes.

In contemporary international law, conflict prevention is enshrined both in the UN Charter (Articles1 and 55) and in policy documents adopted by the General Assembly, such as the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (UNGA Res. 53/243, 1999).⁵ Even if some documents are identified, the transposition of conflict prevention principles into integrated public policies remains incomplete. The lack of impact of combined and holistic scientific knowledge on international law and global governance, stems from four interdependent structural blockages discussed below.⁶

1.1. Methodology

For the preparation of this article, a transdisciplinary legal methodology was employed, grounded in doctrinal and normative analysis of international law, complemented by a systemic and prospective approach specific to global governance and conflict prevention studies. International legal sources, policy documents developed by relevant international organisations, as well as recent literature on peacebuilding, anticipatory governance, and transdisciplinarity were used in order to construct a conceptual and institutional framework oriented towards the anticipatory prevention of conflicts. From a methodological perspective, the research falls within the sphere of normative legal theory and policy-oriented legal analysis, aiming to identify the mechanisms through which the integration of transdisciplinary knowledge may contribute to strengthening proactive and adaptive legal models in the context of contemporary polycrises.

1.2. Limitations of the Study

This article is predominantly conceptual and normative in nature and does not seek to provide a quantitative empirical assessment of the effectiveness of transdisciplinary mechanisms in conflict prevention. Its primary objective is to develop a theoretical and institutional solution capable of supporting future legal and public policy developments in the field of anticipatory governance and peacebuilding. It should also be noted that the very field of peace itself is inherently inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary. Consequently, the analysis does not include extensive comparative case studies or statistical measurements regarding the concrete impact of the proposed mechanisms on conflict prevention. Furthermore, given the novel character of concepts such as anticipatory law and transdisciplinary planetary peace within international legal scholarship, the available literature remains relatively limited. Therefore, the proposed models should be understood as exploratory and prospective instruments intended to stimulate further research, institutional experimentation, and normative developments adaptable to different geopolitical and cultural contexts.

2. Barriers to Leveraging Transdisciplinarity for Global Conflict Prevention: A Legal and International Law Perspective

Fragmented governance and epistemic isolation outline the first obstacle in that the international legal regime of peace and security is fragmented into specialized regimes that rarely work together on conflict prevention. International humanitarian law, environmental law, trade law, technological regulations, each operates with its own frameworks, logics, institutions and mechanisms. However, since the determinants of conflict are systemic (climate, resources, digitalization, inequality), this means that fragmentation reduces the capacity of international law to facilitate mandatory transdisciplinary approaches. Even UN mechanisms for conflict prevention, such as the Agenda for Peace and A New Agenda for Peace, have evolved more rapidly in the development of hard-law instruments in specific areas than in the institutionalization of transdisciplinary bridges.⁷ Yet, the need to build a stronger collective security machinery is widely recognized as the New Agenda for Peace shown in Figure 1 below. It indicates collective human security that is the core of planetary peace is by definition a transdisciplinary act that goes beyond geopolitical divisions, embraces global sustainable development, addresses interlinkages between climate and security, prevents weaponization of new domains, strengthens peace enforcement and encourages responsible innovation.

A second obstacle is the distance between epistemic communities and international decision-making processes. According to Haas’s theory (1992), epistemic communities influence international norms only when they have direct access to negotiating forums and normative drafting processes.⁹ In practice, the short cycles of diplomatic agendas and procedural inertia in multilateral bodies favor quick sectoral solutions that manage the symptoms of conflict rather than its structural causes. An example of such a short circuit is provided by the UNESCO CIRET projects, which could have had amazing results if they had been kept at the forefront of international norm-setting. They were not, and that created a vacuum of discontinuity between 1997 and the present. Transdisciplinary logic was reinforced by the Methodological Guidelines of the 1997 Locarno Declaration, particularly with regard to the relationship between transdisciplinarity and cyberspace (Article12).¹⁰ The document recommends encouraging and developing all available technical means to give transdisciplinary education a universal dimension, as well as promoting the public domain of information, including the virtual memory of the world, information produced by government organizations and copyleft regulations. Here, the role of UNESCO and interested states in supporting pilot experiments such as OEUF (Observatoire pour l’Étude de l’Université du Futur) is notable.‡ This initiative sought to capitalize on the expansion of digital networks, particularly the Internet, and created global interactions through continuous feedback mechanisms, anticipating future transformations in education and knowledge. The link between peace and transdisciplinarity is explicitly enshrined in Article13 of the Locarno Declaration, which recommended encouraging, supporting and disseminating experiences and projects that demonstrate the contribution of transdisciplinarity to the development of the spirit and requirements of peace. Methodologically, this approach involved combining different visions for conflict prevention and reconciliation support, collaboration between international and local actors, the creation of platforms for intercultural dialogue, and the strengthening of legal mechanisms that support the rule of law. Through education and community involvement, transdisciplinarity could help to build a culture of sustainable peace, both nationally and internationally as depicted in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 expresses the importance of justice in contexts of conflict, post-conflict or violence and goes beyond the strictly punitive and formalistic paradigm of law. The starting point is the premise of legal responsibility. Although central to the rule of law, legal responsibility alone is insufficient in the absence of complementary processes of individual and collective healing. Justice and healing are particularly interesting when viewed from the perspective of war because it involves harmonizing legal mechanisms such as criminal justice, transitional justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition with social, psychological and community processes aimed at recognizing suffering, repairing social relations and rebuilding trust. In this logic, restorative justice, truth and reconciliation commissions, reparation programs and collective memory initiatives function as the necessary link between the norm and lived reality, contributing to the prevention of conflict recurrence and the consolidation of sustainable peace. Justice and healing reflect a transdisciplinary view of law, in which normative efficiency is inseparable from the human, relational and cultural dimensions of peace.¹¹

Related to this social and cultural healing, the “planetary peace” concept further extends the sphere of healing beyond human groups to include nature and other life forms. Peace with nature implies economic processes that make sustainable use of natural resources and contribute to earth systems’ resilience. In light of the fact that natural disasters and extreme weather events, are now causing more death and damage and displacement of people than traditional armed conflicts, it is important to reimagine peace with nature as an essential aspect of peace.

The third obstacle is the state-centered security ecology versus human security. The concept of human security, also adopted by the UN General Assembly, has expanded the understanding of security beyond territorial defense to include human rights, sustainable development and environmental protection.¹² Even under these conditions, treaties and state practices continue to prioritize classical national security. This orientation translates into an underfunding of structural prevention, which Galtung (1969) calls the unfulfilled transition from negative peace to positive peace.¹³ The concept of planetary peace expands the transdisciplinary domain of peace to include inner peace within individual agents. This innovation is novel to the discourse on peace and it gives space to human conscience and freedom of thought. Even state-centered security ecology has to be enacted by people as agents of states. They come to peace-making processes as individuals representing states. As embodied individuals they bring their own psychological and social personas into peace discussions. So it is meaningful to include peace within self as a potentially vital element of peace outcomes.

Finally, the last obstacle identified is the absence of legally codified anticipatory governance. International law does not yet contain clear obligations for states to integrate foresight, multidimensional impact assessments or normative experimentation into the legislative and treaty-making process. Anticipatory Innovation Governance initiatives demonstrate the viability of these instruments, but they remain voluntary and fragmented.¹⁴ On the other hand, legal literature is timid when it comes to anticipatory law, and only a few recent works directly address this key concept. A Transdisciplinary Legal Methodology Guide and Lexicon for Crisis Response introduces the first formal definition of “anticipatory law”.¹⁵ According to this guide, anticipatory law, in its transdisciplinary conception, is a new mode of future-oriented normativity that transcends the reactive framework of positive law to project possible legal scenarios in the face of global transformations (technological, ecological, social and ethical). It should be noted that there is a fundamental difference between future law and anticipatory law, even though the two concepts can co-exist and intersect in contemporary discourses on global legal governance.

The former explores possible normative scenarios in hypothetical and medium futures, based on futurology and normative design, while the latter functions as a preventive tool, oriented towards imminent risks, based on the ethics of responsibility and transdisciplinary epistemology. Future law should not be confused with anticipatory law. As a reaction to the slow pace of adaptation of existing legal rules, this type of law is based on, but is not limited to, knowledge derived from the exact sciences, biotechnology, philosophy, applied ethics, AI and systems theory, articulating a forward-looking normative vision. Also, anticipatory law differs from proactive law by focusing not only on preventing legal risk, but also on shaping future legal frameworks in response to emerging societal, technological and ecological transformations.¹⁶ Anticipatory law does not regulate what is, but what is likely to become, prefiguring legal solutions applicable to emerging realities, such as algorithmic entities, non-human ecosystems, cosmic jurisdictions or genetic transformations. It is also based on ontological responsibility and the duty of legal systems to construct the present with an eye to its consequences for future generations and emerging entities. Born of a transdisciplinary ‘DNA’, anticipatory law becomes a space of synthesis between multiple levels of reality (the visible juridical, the invisible ethical and the virtual possible) by proposing a legal methodology anchored in epistemological hybridity, systemic thinking and axiological dialogue. In essence, it is a normative paradigm that reflects the law’s capacity to act as a co-author of future worlds, functioning both as a mechanism of anticipatory governance and as a vector of societal innovation. This approach is currently in its infancy in international literature, appearing under various expressions, such as anticipatory self-defense, anticipatory breaches, anticipatory governance or the rights of future generations, working on theoretical foundations for a profound reconstruction of the legal function in the post humanist era.

Inspired by Hans Jonas’ ethics of the future (Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation, 1979; translated into English as The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, University of Chicago Press, 1984), transdisciplinary anticipatory law embodies responsibility towards future generations and towards what does not yet exist, but is likely to emerge. In this vision, anticipatory law does not belong exclusively to the legal domain, but to a transnormative space of thought and action.¹⁷

The lack of binding international standards in this area perpetuates a post-factum reaction, rather than ex-ante prevention. At first glance, this appears to be an oversight that affects humanity’s most precious asset, planetary peace. It is precisely in the field of peace that impact assessments are not a universal legal obligation comparable, say, to environmental impact assessments (EIA), human rights impact assessments (HRIA), or, more recently, social or gender impact assessments. There is no treaty, regulation or established customary norm in positive international law that requires states or non-state actors to carry out such assessments.

It appears that it is not a lack of knowledge that limits conflict prevention, but rather the absence of international and national legal and institutional mechanisms capable of transdisciplinary public decision-making and multilateral cooperation. Overcoming these obstacles requires regulatory and institutional reforms, through which transdisciplinary decision-making can move beyond being merely a cultural and scientific concept, and be reborn as an obligation under international law with direct applicability in conflict prevention processes.

It is noteworthy the absence of consolidated empirical models, which once again demonstrates the still very incipient nature of anticipatory transdisciplinary governance in the field of conflict prevention.

3. The Stereotype of the Inevitability of Global Conflicts through the Institutionalisation of Transdisciplinarity

Over the past three years, legal and public policy literature has increasingly revealed that the perception of the inevitability of global conflicts is not the result of historical destiny or fatalism, but rather an institutional product perpetuated by limiting normative and cultural mechanisms.¹⁸ Overcoming this stereotype can transform transdisciplinarity from academic rhetoric into an institutionalised obligation, with direct effects on normative design, decision-making processes and mechanisms of international cooperation.¹⁹

3.1. On the Integration of Levels of Reality into Legal Architecture

According to Nicolescu’s paradigm, conflicts emerge from the interaction and collision of distinct levels of reality, whether biological, social, technological, ecological or even spiritual, each governed by its own logic. In recent years, normative experiments such as multilayered ex-ante assessments have begun to be used in the EU and the UN to correlate human rights standards with climate regulations, technological risks and cultural heritage protection.²⁰ The aim is to enable the reformulation of norms to respond simultaneously to multiple types of vulnerabilities.

With regard to the operationalization of peace by peaceful means, recent research in the field of positive peace shows that reducing structural violence through education, redistribution, inclusive governance and transitional justice has sustainable effects only when it is enshrined in binding legal instruments and multi-annual budgetary mechanisms.²¹ This shifts the focus from coercion to strengthening social and institutional resilience. From this point, the discussion leads to re-anchoring in multilateral prevention agendas. Recent documents, such as A New Agenda for Peace (United Nations, 2023) and the OECD guidelines for anticipatory governance (2025), emphasize that the shift from reaction to prevention cannot take place without a transdisciplinary methodology. Today, law means mixed deliberative processes, strategic foresight and the integration of evidence from the social sciences, culture and ethics, especially in the formulation of international norms.

The inevitability of conflicts is still a rigid legal-institutional concept that can be deconstructed by introducing transdisciplinarity as a normative obligation. Once states and international organizations adopt this methodology through legal instruments, public policies and decision-making practices, the likelihood of escalation would be reduced, and prevention would be not only possible but also systemically distributed.

3.2. Political Feasibility and Institutional Resistance

The implementation of transdisciplinary mechanisms for conflict prevention at the international level inevitably encounters political and institutional obstacles. States continue to prioritise traditional security solutions and the logic of sovereignty, which generates reluctance towards the integration of anticipatory preventive obligations or towards extending deliberative processes to non-state actors and epistemic communities. These challenges are compounded by institutional inertia, the fragmentation of international legal regimes, and geopolitical competition, all of which reduce the capacity of international organisations to rapidly adopt integrated governance models. At the same time, differences in technological and administrative development among states create evident asymmetries in the implementation of mechanisms such as Peace Impact Assessment (PIA) or Anticipatory Innovation Governance (AIG). Even against this background, recent experiences regarding the integration of impact assessments in the fields of environmental protection, human rights, and digital governance demonstrate that instruments initially developed within the logic of soft law gradually evolve into consolidated normative standards when institutional convergence, international pressure, and progressive practical validation exist.

4. Soft Law and Hard Law in Contemporary International Law: Dynamics, Functions and Transitions

In the international legal order of the 21st century, the relationship between soft law and hard law reflects the tension between the rapid pace of socio-technological change and the inertia of traditional regulatory processes. Soft law, or documents such as declarations, guidelines, codes of conduct, technical standards and voluntary principles, has become a strategic tool for testing and validating solutions before they are formalized in binding treaties (hard law). This phenomenon is recognised both in doctrine and in the practice of international organizations.²² It can be said that soft law is an incubator for hard law.

4.1. Defining and Differentiating the Phases

Hard law comprises legally binding norms such as treaties and binding resolutions, which can be invoked before international and national courts. They provide clarity, predictability and sanctions in case of violation. Soft law, by contrast, refers to non-binding rules, without formal sanctioning mechanisms, but with political, moral and interpretative relevance in the practice of states and international organizations.²³

Today, against the backdrop of accelerating technological, climatic and geopolitical changes, soft law has morphed into a platform for normative experimentation. Its flexible nature allows for the rapid integration of scientific and cultural innovations, avoiding the lengthy negotiation periods characteristic of treaties. This is the case, for example, with the non-binding UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which are used to test models of corporate responsibility prior to the negotiations of the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights.²⁴

A significant part of soft law is deliberately designed as a preparatory stage for possible binding instruments. This process of ‘normative incubation’ allows for testing legal and political feasibility; identifying key actors and the degree of voluntary compliance; adjusting technical standards and terminology; and reducing the risk of deadlock in negotiations by clarifying areas of consensus and points of conflict. Among the many examples is the transformation of the Basel Principles on Banking Supervision from voluntary guidelines into quasi-binding standards through their integration into national and European financial regulations.

Although useful as an instrument of innovation, soft law cannot replace the legal protection offered by hard law. The lack of binding force and legal enforceability create the risk of selective application and avoidance of international responsibility. It should also be borne in mind that the transition from soft law to hard law is not guaranteed, with many instruments remaining at the recommendation stage for political or economic reasons. In such situations, soft law remains only an opportunity that a particular set of regulations had at a given moment. Legal analysis shows that soft law fulfils a dual function in contemporary international law, serving both as an experimental response to the accelerated dynamics of global society and as an incubator for binding norms. The successful transformation of a soft law instrument into hard law is entirely dependent on its practical validation, the degree of international consensus and its compatibility with the existing legal order. Consequently, soft law should not be perceived as an inferior alternative, but as a strategic stage in the process of global legal innovation.

5. Concrete Actions for Conflict Prevention through a TD Scientific and Cultural Approach

For contemporary international law, conflict prevention can no longer be treated as a reactive exercise, but as a proactive possibility, ready to be found in public policies and multilateral cooperation mechanisms.²⁵ A transdisciplinary legal approach with a cultural imprint requires a coherent set of actions structured along four dimensions.

The first dimension is the institutionalization of Anticipatory Innovation Governance (AIG) units within government structures at the level of chancelleries, ministries of justice, foreign affairs and defense, which creates the legal framework for strategic scenario planning, policy testing and evidence brokerage prior to the adoption of regulations. Alternatively, institutionalization should encompass trade and economic partnerships that strengthen business contacts and people-to-people connections. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos (January 2026), Mark Carney stated that we are living in a “rupture” of traditional security arrangement.²⁶ Big Power rivalries and economic integration into global markets have gridlocked smaller countries and ecological and human security, and he suggested we need “middle powers” to build regional (may be bioregional) coalitions with like-valued and like-minded nations to build alternative global order of planetary peace. In this context, transdisciplinary thinking seeks to embed legal frameworks within broader economic, security, and peace-oriented governance structures.

In light of Mark Carney’s above observations regarding a rupture in traditional security arrangements, the observation attributed to Nicolae Titulescu, according to which “the force of law gives way to the law of force,” acquires renewed relevance.²⁷ This finding does not imply that international law is condemned to irrelevance. Although law has failed to prevent recent conflicts, it has paradoxically remained the common language of condemnation, as well as the framework through which mechanisms of accountability, however imperfect, have been articulated.

Certainly, we may be witnessing a period marked by contestation, fragmentation, and forum shopping, in which states select those forums and legal instruments most convenient to their strategic interests. In the medium and long term, challenges such as climate change, pandemics, the proliferation of weapons, or the digital revolution cannot be effectively managed except through common rules and institutionalized legal cooperation. Even great powers appear to recognize the need for a minimum stable regime, however revised it may be, in order to avoid a descent into international chaos.

From this perspective, initiatives such as the Board of Peace within the Trump administration can be read less as genuine mechanisms for strengthening the “force of law” and more as expressions of a unilateral and instrumentalized logic of peace, subordinated to the “law of force.” By contrast, a transdisciplinary approach to global governance, aligned with calls for revitalizing the rules-based international order, presupposes bringing new centers of power to the negotiating table and adapting legal norms to the realities of the twenty-first century, including in areas such as cyberspace and artificial intelligence.

For these added reasons, the introduction of mandatory Peace Impact Assessment (PIA) clauses in legislative projects, trade treaties and technological regulations (AI, digital platforms) aims to correlate security with human rights and environmental protection (United Nations, 2023). At the same time, the UN/UNESCO standardization of transdisciplinary legal education, already underway in the Culture of Peace Program, would certainly produce generations of lawyers capable of operating in integrative paradigms.²⁸

The second dimension is creation of Transdisciplinary Peace Labs in the form of partnerships between universities, ministries, civil society and the private sector would facilitate interventions in critical areas, such as disinformation, hate speech, forced migration, energy security, climate risk and technological governance. Consortia of epistemic communities, with a formal advisory role in UN processes, would produce standardized white papers, thematic hearings and normative co-drafting, just as open databases containing positive indicators of peace (education, inclusion) alongside negative ones (victimization) would allow for complex monitoring of risk factors. Even if the names of such laboratories do not explicitly contain the word transdisciplinarity, here can be listed: Peace Labs hosted by Leaders for Peace or Transboundary Water Governance Lab.²⁹

The third dimension concerns the development of a compulsory law and peacebuilding curriculum within law schools, grounded in conflict theory, transitional justice, international humanitarian law, mediation, environmental and climate law, as well as the regulation of artificial intelligence in the field of security. If one were to envisage an example, such a curriculum would be characterised by a foundational module, delivered in the early years of study, dedicated to conflict analysis and international humanitarian law, followed by advanced courses on transitional justice and post-conflict accountability mechanisms, security risks generated by climate change, and a capstone seminar focused on the legal governance of emerging technologies—particularly artificial intelligence—in contemporary security and peacebuilding operations. Cultural forums for memory and reconciliation, such as dynamic museums, art, and public media, would beautifully complement these efforts by integrating them into restorative justice processes.³⁰ Expanding the UNESCO Education for a Culture of Peace program with modules on digital literacy, technology ethics, and intercultural dialogue strengthens social cohesion.

The fourth dimension is naturally added through the Peace-by-Design Challenge funds, competitively awarded to legal-technical projects with ex-ante PIA assessment, as they stimulate regulatory innovation. Logically, the introduction of performance clauses in public funding, whereby budget tranches are released only when prevention targets are met, makes conflict prevention a verifiable and measurable condition. It is therefore possible to see how declarative ambition is practically reborn as an operational pillar of international law and global public policy.

5.1. Practical Aspects

Conflict prevention and achieving planetary peace viewed from the perspective of international law, are undoubtedly challenging undertakings, requiring clear distribution of responsibilities among multilateral organizations, states, academic institutions, civil society and the private sector, all of which are seen as partners in this challenging process. According to the UN Charter (Articles1 and 55) and recent policy documents, such as A New Agenda for Peace (United Nations, 2023), the success of this process cannot be imagined without multi-level governance and temporal coherence in implementation.

At the multilateral level, the United Nations, which is facing special challenges under the current Trump era disruption of global order, would be well served with an expanded transdisciplinary understanding of its Secretariat functions. The Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), the UN Peacebuilding Commission and specialized agencies such as UNESCO (culture/education) and UNDP (human security), have mandates to coordinate standards, provide technical assistance and certify good practices.³¹ They would greatly benefit by reflecting on needs of planetary peace and human security in a pluriversal new world order. At the national level, states can expand the mobilization of key ministries, such as foreign affairs, justice, defense, education and parliaments, economic and finance agencies, through joint committees, to incorporate international standards into legislation and public policies, in particular through mandatory Peace Impact Assessment (PIA) mechanisms.

On the other hand, universities and academies function as hubs of transdisciplinarity and legal peace clinics, developing the necessary expertise, while civil society and the public media must focus on remaining platforms for dialogue, monitoring and countering disinformation, contributing to the accountability of actors. They are joined by the private sector, including digital platforms, which should adopt codes of conduct with mandatory PIA, in line with UN principles on business and human rights.

5.2. Roadmap for Implementation

The proposals in this study are realistic in that they can be implemented within a given time frame. In the first 0-12 months, the central objective is institutionalization through the adoption of a government resolution or joint order establishing AIG units and imposing PIA for strategic normative acts; the signing of a UN – UNESCO – UNDP memorandum with pilot states for the establishment of Transdisciplinary Peace Labs; and the launch of a competitive fund for peace-by-design projects.

Between 12 and 36 months^§, the focus shifts to implementation and learning: integrating PIA into at least five major policies, including artificial intelligence, migration, energy transition, two annual policy sprint cycles in each lab, with ethical and legal assessment protocols, and the introduction of a law and peacebuilding curriculum in at least ten pilot universities. In 36–60 months, the aim is to scale up and standardize through international accreditation for PIA (UNESCO/UN standard), formal recognition of the network of epistemic communities as a regular advisory body in multilateral processes, and the integration of positive peace indicators into government budgets and annual reports.

This figure allows for extended interpretations, one of which would involve its reconfiguration from the perspective of the concept of “positive planetary peace,” by broadening its focus to encompass, on the one hand, environmental dimensions such as environmental education, climate treaties, and biodiversity policies, and, on the other hand, elements of human wellbeing, including mindfulness, emotional security, and psychosocial resilience, thereby constituting an additional contribution to the conceptual framework of the Triple Nexus. Immediate results (output) include the number of PIAs carried out, the number of policies amended prior to adoption, educational programmes implemented and projects funded. Intermediate results (outcomes) are reflected in a reduction in incidents of political violence and hate speech online, increased inclusive participation in public consultations, and improved indicators of positive peace, such as education, inclusion, and social trust.³² Long-term results (impact), assessed after five or more years, aim to reduce the risk of conflict escalation in pilot areas and strengthen institutional resilience to climate, economic and information shocks.

This entire sequencing of responsibilities and stages, integrated into the international legal system, operationalizes conflict prevention and transforms it into an increasingly powerful legal standard. By synchronising actions at all levels and linking them to measurable indicators, transdisciplinarity functions as a practical, not just conceptual, tool for global security.

6. Conclusion

Transdisciplinarity is in itself an institutional prevention technology because it connects levels of reality, anchors policies in social and cultural science, and operationalizes prevention through AIG, PIA and peace labs. In alliance with the UN agendas for peace, education for a culture of peace, and the human security paradigm, and the Club of Rome Planetary Peace initiative, the stereotype of the inevitability of conflict is dismantled legally and practically.

Through its ability to connect distinct levels of reality, from the biological, social and technological to the ecological and spiritual, within a coherent framework of analysis and intervention, transdisciplinarity also means operational mechanisms for integrating complex knowledge into public and international decision-making processes. Emerging tools such as Anticipatory Innovation Governance (AIG), Peace Impact Assessment (PIA) and transdisciplinary peace laboratories primarily mean communication between the legal, political, technological and cultural fields, transforming conflict prevention from a declarative intention into a testable, iterative and adaptive process. In this equation, it is observed that there already exists a methodological infrastructure to translate the results of social and humanistic research into robust legal standards and public policies.

The alliance of these mechanisms with the UN’s multilateral peace agendas (A New Agenda for Peace), UNESCO’s initiatives in education for a culture of peace, and the human security paradigm (UNDP) produce the necessary change in the way the international community deals with conflict prevention. Instead of accepting the escalation of tensions as inevitable, the model creates the conditions for a legal and practical dismantling of the stereotype of the inevitability of global conflicts. Ultimately, avoidability does not deny the existence of conflicts, but challenges their alleged inevitability, affirming the capacity of law, institutions and human responsibility to intervene before tensions become destiny. Thus, transdisciplinary planetary peace, through its function as a vector of normative innovations, is capable of harmonizing soft law and hard law instruments, accelerating the circulation of knowledge between fields and ensuring that conflict prevention becomes an operationalized, measurable and replicable norm in different regional and cultural contexts, rather than an ethical desideratum. In this formula, prevention takes the form of a structural function of contemporary international law, and transdisciplinarity continues its metamorphosis into a new standard of global governance.

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3. Centre International de Recherches et Études Transdisciplinaires (CIRET), and UNESCO. Projet CIRET–UNESCO : Évolution transdisciplinaire de l’Université. Paris: CIRET–UNESCO, 1996.
4. Chetail, Vincent. “The Politics of Soft Law: Progress and Pitfall of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration.” Frontiers in Human Dynamics 5 (2023): 1243774. https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2023.1243774.
5. Déclaration de Locarno. Quelle université pour demain ? Vers une évolution transdisciplinaire de l’université. Locarno: International Congress, 1997.
6. Díaz-Cruces, Eliana, María Méndez Rocasolano, and Camilo Zamora-Ledezma. “Human Rights at the Climate Crossroads: Analysis of the Interconnection between Human Rights, Right to Climate, and Intensification of Extreme Climate Events.” Laws 13, no. 5 (2024): 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws13050063.
7. Dunoff, Jeffrey L., and Mark A. Pollack, eds. “Traditional Approaches to International Law.” In International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers, 37–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
8. Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/422690.
9. Ginty, Roger Mac. “Hybrid Peace: The Interaction between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Peace.” Security Dialogue 41, no. 4 (2010): 391–412. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010610374312.
10. Haas, Peter M. “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination.” International Organization 46, no. 1 (1992): 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300001442.
11. Jobbins, Mike. “Humanitarian Assistance and Peacebuilding.” In Integrated Peacebuilding. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2013.
12. Kobayashi, Kazushige, Keith Krause, and Xinyu Yuan. “(Re)Setting the Boundaries of Peacebuilding in a Changing Global Order.” Contemporary Security Policy 46, no. 2 (2025): 226–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2025.2466287.
13. Lederach, John Paul. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997.
14. Mayembe, Rose, Nicholas Philip Simpson, Olivia Rumble, and Marieke Norton. “Integrating Climate Change in Environmental Impact Assessment: A Review of Requirements across 19 EIA Regimes.” Science of the Total Environment 869 (2023): 161850. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.161850.
15. Morin, Edgar, and Anne Brigitte Kern. Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1999.
16. Nicolescu, Basarab. Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity. Translated by Karen-Claire Voss. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
17. Nicolescu, Basarab. Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2008.
18. Nowotny, Helga, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons. Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001.
19. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Updated Draft Legally Binding Instrument to Regulate, in International Human Rights Law, the Activities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises. Geneva: OHCHR, 2023. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session9/igwg-9th-updated-draft-lbi-clean.pdf.
20. Paffenholz, Thania. “Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15, no. 3 (2021): 367–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2021.1925423.
21. Popa Tache, Cristina Elena, Cătălin-Silviu Săraru, Florent Pasquier, Mirella Tarmure-Vădean, and Sergio de Souza Salles. A Transdisciplinary Legal Methodology Guide and Lexicon for Crisis Response. Cham: Springer/Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-04653-6.
22. Schmeidl, Susanne, Anthony Ware, and Claudio Alberti. “Conflict Sensitivity/Do No Harm (DNH) in Development, Humanitarian, and Peacebuilding Practice – Reflections and Emerging Trends.” Development in Practice 33, no. 5 (2023): 517–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2023.2215970.
23. Shaffer, Gregory C., and Mark A. Pollack. “Hard vs. Soft Law: Alternatives, Complements, and Antagonists in International Governance.” Minnesota Law Review 94 (2010): 706–799. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/491/.
24. Shrivastava, Paul, Carlos Álvarez Pereira, and Laetitia Mairlot. Planetary Peace for Human Security: Responses to Existential Risks in the Anthropocene. Club of Rome Paper, August 2025. https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CoR-Planetary_Peace_Paper_CLEAN.pdf.
25. Swilling, Mark. “Economic Crisis, Long Waves and the Sustainability Transition: An African Perspective.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 6 (2013): 96–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2012.11.001.
26. Tõnurist, Piret, and Jack Orlik. Towards Anticipatory Governance Guidelines for Public Sector Organisations. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1787/a5203d0b-en.
27. United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA). Multi-Year Appeal: Annual Report 2024. New York: United Nations, 2025.
28. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security. New York: UNDP, 1994. https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-1994.
29. United Nations General Assembly. Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. UN Doc. A/RES/53/243. New York: United Nations, 1999.
30. United Nations Human Rights Council. Human Rights and a Culture of Peace. Resolution 55/17. Geneva: United Nations, 2024.
31. United Nations. A New Agenda for Peace. New York: Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, 2023. https://dppa.un.org/en/a-new-agenda-for-peace.
32. United Nations. Peacebuilding Fund: Consolidated Annual Financial Report 2024. New York: United Nations, 2025.
33. Volkdal, Christina Plesner. “Integrating Peacebuilding into the Triple Nexus: Insights from UNICEF’s Dual Mandate.” Development in Practice (2025): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2025.2544902.
34. Walliser, Gerlinde, Paul Shrivastava, and Adam Sulkowski. “Using Proactive Legal Strategies for Corporate Environmental Sustainability.” Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law 6, no. 1 (2016): 1–38. http://repository.law.umich.edu/mjeal/vol6/iss1/1.
35. World Bank. World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020–2025. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020.

Notes

1. Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern, Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Millennium (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1999).
2. Mark Swilling, “Economic Crisis, Long Waves and the Sustainability Transition: An African Perspective,” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 6 (2013): 96–115, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2012.11.001.
3. Paul Shrivastava, Carlos Álvarez Pereira, and Laetitia Mairlot, Planetary Peace for Human Security: Responses to Existential Risks in the Anthropocene, Club of Rome Paper (August 2025), https://www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CoR-Planetary_Peace_Paper_CLEAN.pdf.
4. Basarab Nicolescu, Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2008); Basarab Nicolescu, Manifesto of Transdisciplinarity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons, Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
5. United Nations General Assembly, Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, UN Doc. A/RES/53/243 (October 6, 1999).
6. Cristina Elena Popa Tache et al., A Transdisciplinary Legal Methodology Guide and Lexicon for Crisis Response (Cham: Springer/Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-04653-6.
7. United Nations, A New Agenda for Peace, Policy Brief, Our Common Agenda (New York: United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, 2023), accessed December 27, 2025, https://dppa.un.org/en/a-new-agenda-for-peace.
8. Ibid.
9. Peter M. Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” International Organization 46, no. 1 (1992): 1–35, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300001442.
10. Locarno Declaration. What Kind of University for Tomorrow? Towards a Transdisciplinary Evolution of the University, Text of the declaration and recommendations adopted at the international congress held at Monte Verità, Locarno, Switzerland, 30 April–2 May 1997 (Locarno: International Congress, 1997); see also Centre International de Recherches et Études Transdisciplinaires (CIRET) and UNESCO, CIRET–UNESCO Project: Transdisciplinary Evolution of the University, Working document presented at the international congress “What University for Tomorrow? Towards a Transdisciplinary Evolution of the University,” Locarno, Switzerland, 30 April–2 May 1997 (Paris: CIRET–UNESCO, 1996).
11. United Nations, Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. S/2004/616 (New York: United Nations, 2004); United Nations, Guidance Note of the Secretary-General: United Nations Approach to Transitional Justice (New York: United Nations, 2010); see also United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Strengthening the Rule of Law in Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations (New York: UNDP, 2013). Today, justice and healing serve as the focal point for various non-governmental organizations, a prominent example concerning structural inequities being the Institute for Healing & Justice in Medicine (https://www.instituteforhealingandjustice.org/).
12. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 1994: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 1994), accessed December 27, 2025, https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-1994.
13. Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/422690; see also Thania Paffenholz, “Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15, no. 3 (2021): 367–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2021.1925423.
14. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Foresight and Anticipatory Governance in Practice, OECD Strategic Foresight Unit (Paris: OECD, 2021), https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/about/programmes/strategic-foresight/foresight-and-anticipatory-governance-2021.pdf; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Towards Anticipatory Governance Guidelines for Public Sector Organisations, OECD Public Governance Directorate (Paris: OECD, 2025), https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/05/towards-anticipatory-governance-guidelines-for-public-sector-organisations_c1a40090/a5203d0b-en.pdf.
15. Popa Tache et al., “Annex: Explanatory Dictionary of Legal Transdisciplinarity: Basic Terms,” in A Transdisciplinary Legal Methodology Guide and Lexicon for Crisis Response, 199–254.
16. Gerlinde Walliser, Paul Shrivastava, and Adam Sulkowski, “Using Proactive Legal Strategies for Corporate Environmental Sustainability,” Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law 6, no. 1 (2016): 1–38, http://repository.law.umich.edu/mjeal/vol6/iss1/1.
17. Gerlinde Berger-Walliser and Paul Shrivastava, “Beyond Compliance: Sustainable Development, Business, and Proactive Law,” Georgetown Journal of International Law 46 (2015): 417–54.
18. United Nations, A New Agenda for Peace.
19. Kazushige Kobayashi, Keith Krause, and Xinyu Yuan, “(Re)Setting the Boundaries of Peacebuilding in a Changing Global Order,” Contemporary Security Policy 46, no. 2 (2025): 226–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2025.2466287.
20. Rose Mayembe et al., “Integrating Climate Change in Environmental Impact Assessment: A Review of Requirements across 19 EIA Regimes,” Science of the Total Environment 869 (April 15, 2023): 161850, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.161850; Eliana Díaz-Cruces, María Méndez Rocasolano, and Camilo Zamora-Ledezma, “Human Rights at the Climate Crossroads: Analysis of the Interconnection between Human Rights, Right to Climate, and Intensification of Extreme Climate Events,” Laws 13, no. 5 (2024): 63, https://doi.org/10.3390/laws13050063.
21. United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), Multi-Year Appeal: Annual Report 2024 (New York: United Nations, 2025); United Nations, Peacebuilding Fund: Consolidated Annual Financial Report 2024 (covering the period through 31 December 2024) (New York: United Nations, 2025); World Bank, World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020–2025 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020).
22. Deirdre Ahern, “The New Anticipatory Governance Culture for Innovation: Regulatory Foresight, Regulatory Experimentation and Regulatory Learning,” European Business Organization Law Review 26 (2025): 241–83, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40804-025-00348-7; Piret Tõnurist and Jack Orlik, Towards Anticipatory Governance Guidelines for Public Sector Organisations (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2025), https://doi.org/10.1787/a5203d0b-en; Vincent Chetail, “The Politics of Soft Law: Progress and Pitfall of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration,” Frontiers in Human Dynamics 5 (2023): 1243774, https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2023.1243774.
23. Jeffrey L. Dunoff and Mark A. Pollack, eds., “Traditional Approaches to International Law,” in International Legal Theory: Foundations and Frontiers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 37–130; Gregory C. Shaffer and Mark A. Pollack, “Hard vs. Soft Law: Alternatives, Complements, and Antagonists in International Governance,” Minnesota Law Review 94 (2010): 706–799, University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository, https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/491/.
24. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Updated Draft Legally Binding Instrument to Regulate, in International Human Rights Law, the Activities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises (Geneva: OHCHR, July 2023), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session9/igwg-9th-updated-draft-lbi-clean.pdf.
25. Christina Plesner Volkdal, “Integrating Peacebuilding into the Triple Nexus: Insights from UNICEF’s Dual Mandate,” Development in Practice (August 2025): 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2025.2544902.
26. Mark Carney, “Principled and Pragmatic: Canada’s Path” (speech, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2026), Government of Canada, https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2026/01/20/principled-and-pragmatic-canadas-path-prime-minister-carney-addresses.
27. Nicolae Titulescu, Discours à la Société des Nations (Geneva: Société des Nations, 1936).
28. United Nations, Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, Resolution A/RES/53/243, adopted October 6, 1999 (New York: United Nations, 1999); United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights and a Culture of Peace, Res. 55/17 (Geneva: United Nations, 2024).
29. Leaders pour la Paix, “The Peace Labs,” accessed January 30, 2026, https://leaderspourlapaix.org/en/the-peace-labs; Water, Peace and Security Partnership, “Water, Peace and Security Partnership,” World Resources Institute, accessed January 30, 2026, https://www.wri.org/initiatives/water-peace-security-partnership.
30. J. P. Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997).
31. Roger Mac Ginty, “Hybrid Peace: The Interaction between Top-down and Bottom-up Peace,” Security Dialogue 41, no. 4 (2010): 391–412, https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010610374312, Organizations must recognize the dynamic nature of conflicts, especially in fragile contexts, where political or economic changes can create discrepancies between policy intentions and realities on the ground.
32. Susanne Schmeidl, Anthony Ware, and Claudio Alberti, “Conflict Sensitivity/Do No Harm (DNH) in Development, Humanitarian, and Peacebuilding Practice—Reflections and Emerging Trends (Special Issue Editorial),” Development in Practice 33, no. 5 (2023): 517–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2023.2215970; Mike Jobbins, “Humanitarian Assistance and Peacebuilding,” in Integrated Peacebuilding, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2013).