Vol. 6 No. 2 (2022): Challenges to Peace in Ethnically Diverse Societies: Security, Memory and Language

This issue of JASS is released at a time when the world holds its breath over major, almost cataclysmic confrontations taking place between and within a few countries. While we recognise the urgency of immediate threat and suffering, we consider it to be this Journal´s mandate to offer analysis and insight into the more subtle expressions of peace work and conflict management – even resolution.

With such a point of departure, we shall be grateful for the many mechanisms and legal structures that within and between states create not only order but equality, ownership, and ways of expressing views and defending interests. It is not sufficient to stay with the concept of democracy as a general solution to all the possible problems that arise when states organise their affairs - even if it is a sine qua non for any long-term peace-building. The rights of groups and individuals may require more sophisticated systems of organisation - from international agreements to national constitutions to local level applications - if a decent level of welfare, protection and development shall be obtained. 

Major wars should not cast shade over the myriad of peace-building efforts that people and their institutions carry out on a daily basis. Each country has its own conditions under which such things happen.

In this Issue of Journal of Autonomy and Security Studies, we will be acquainted with a few quite different political contexts and how they manage their pasts in light of ambitions for the future under the conditions framed by their constitutional contexts of self-rule and security challenges. It is exciting reading. 

Welcome!

Kjell-Åke Nordquist

Editor-in-Chief