Conflict Resolution: Addressing Root Causes for Lasting Peace

When a ceasefire is announced or two rival parties sign a settlement, we often assume the conflict is over. Yet history shows that violence frequently returns once the ink dries. The reason is simple: stopping the fighting is not the same as removing the reasons people fight. Conflict resolution is the approach that tries to dig deeper. Instead of merely halting hostilities, it works to identify and address the root causes of a dispute so that a settlement actually holds. This post explains what conflict resolution really means, how it differs from related ideas like management and settlement, and why thinkers such as Johan Galtung, John Burton, and Mahatma Gandhi argued that lasting peace depends on satisfying genuine human needs and upholding values like justice and rights.

What conflict resolution actually means 🔗

Conflict resolution is best understood as a problem-solving process that goes to the source of a dispute rather than its surface. It requires identifying the causal factors behind a conflict and finding ways to deal with them, rather than simply ending the immediate quarrel as quickly as possible. The goal is an outcome that is mutually acceptable to all sides, addresses the deeper grievances, and removes the conditions that produced the conflict in the first place.

This is a more demanding task than it sounds. Resolution means going beyond bargaining over competing interests to meet all sides’ basic needs while respecting their underlying values and identities. Because of this, true resolution typically requires an analytical, collaborative approach: parties must communicate openly, understand what is genuinely driving the other side, and search for solutions that leave neither party feeling defeated.

Why root causes matter more than symptoms 🔗

Most conflicts have visible symptoms, such as protests, arguments, or violence, and hidden causes, such as discrimination, exclusion from power, or denial of dignity. Treating only the symptoms is like taking a painkiller for an infection. The pain stops temporarily, but the underlying problem remains and eventually flares up again. Conflict resolution insists on treating the infection itself. This is why scholars stress that resolution seeks to establish enduring principles, rather than producing a quick truce that can collapse at any moment.

Resolution, management, and settlement: three different goals 🔗

These three terms are often used as if they mean the same thing, but they describe very different objectives. Understanding the distinction is essential to grasping why resolution stands apart.

Conflict settlement 🔗

Settlement aims to end a dispute as quickly and amicably as possible. It is possible to settle a dispute within a larger conflict without resolving the overall conflict, which happens whenever a specific quarrel is patched up but its underlying causes are left untouched. A settlement may produce a signed agreement or a court verdict, yet the grievance that fuelled the conflict can persist beneath the surface.

Conflict management 🔗

Management takes a different view. It accepts that some conflicts, especially those rooted in deeply held and rarely changing values, may never be fully resolved. Conflict management does not attempt to resolve conflicts but provides tools to mitigate their destructive potential, and it is most useful when the chance of complete resolution is low. Think of two communities or political groups who fundamentally disagree but must continue to coexist. Management gives them rules and channels to keep their interactions constructive rather than violent.

Conflict resolution 🔗

Resolution is more ambitious than both. It seeks to eliminate the conflict by addressing the core issues, finding creative solutions, and fostering long-term harmony among the parties. Where management emphasises the method of coping and settlement emphasises ending the immediate dispute, resolution underscores the definitive end of the conflict itself. The aim is to build a foundation that prevents future flare-ups, not merely to declare a temporary peace.

A simple way to remember the difference: settlement stops the dispute, management contains the conflict, and resolution removes its causes.

Johan Galtung and the idea of positive peace 🔗

No scholar shaped the modern understanding of conflict resolution more than Johan Galtung, the Norwegian thinker often called the founder of peace studies. His central insight was that there are two very different kinds of peace. Galtung described negative peace as the mere absence of war, and positive peace as the presence of social justice and the integration of human society.

This distinction transforms how we evaluate any settlement. A ceasefire produces negative peace because something undesirable, the violence, has stopped. But Galtung argued this is only the minimum condition. Positive peace is filled with positive content such as restored relationships, social systems that serve the needs of the whole population, and the constructive resolution of conflict. In other words, peace does not mean a total absence of conflict; it means handling conflict in a way that builds justice rather than merely suppressing tension.

Structural and cultural violence 🔗

Galtung’s most influential contribution was the idea that violence is not only physical. His model of structural violence highlighted how social structures can harm individuals by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Poverty, caste discrimination, unequal access to education or healthcare, and exclusion from political power are all forms of structural violence, even when no one is being physically attacked.

He added a third dimension: cultural violence, the beliefs and narratives that legitimise the other two. Together these form Galtung’s famous violence triangle of direct, structural, and cultural violence. Crucially, he believed the cycle could be reversed. The vicious spiral of violence can be broken by a virtuous spiral flowing from cultural peace through structural peace to direct peace, producing positive peace. For conflict resolution, this means that lasting peace requires dismantling unjust structures, not just stopping the shooting.

John Burton and the human needs theory 🔗

If Galtung explained why structures matter, John Burton explained what people are ultimately fighting for. Burton’s basic human needs theory argues that all human beings share certain vital needs, and that unfulfilled needs are the root cause of conflict, so that when human needs are denied or obstructed, conflict becomes inevitable.

These are not the same as interests. A dispute over money or land is an interest that can be bargained and compromised. Needs such as identity, security, and recognition are different. According to Burton, whenever these needs are absent or threatened, people will fight to attain them and will continue doing so until the needs are met. You cannot negotiate someone out of their need for dignity or recognition; you can only satisfy it.

This is why Burton drew a sharp line between resolution and temporary fixes. He argued that conflict resolution, as opposed to temporary dispute settlement, requires a process that helps parties identify their unsatisfied needs and adjust social arrangements to meet them. The radical implication, in Burton’s words, is that societies must adjust to the needs of people, not the other way around. When a settlement ignores these deep needs, the conflict simply goes underground and resurfaces later.

Mahatma Gandhi and resolution through Satyagraha 🔗

Long before peace studies became an academic field, Gandhi developed a practical philosophy of conflict resolution rooted in the same instinct: transform the conflict at its source rather than defeat the opponent. His method, Satyagraha, literally meaning truth-force or soul-force, was built on truth, nonviolence, faith in human goodness, and a willingness to undergo self-suffering rather than inflict it.

What makes Gandhi’s approach a form of resolution rather than mere victory is its goal. Unlike conventional approaches that produce winners and losers, Satyagraha aims to eliminate the root causes of conflict while transforming relationships between opponents. The famous instruction to “hate the sin and not the sinner” captures this. The opponent is not an enemy to be crushed but a person to be won over.

Why Gandhi’s method aligns with lasting peace 🔗

Gandhi distinguished between several outcomes of nonviolent action, of which conversion, where the opponent genuinely changes their perspective from within, was the ideal. He valued conversion as the most effective and morally correct method because it creates lasting change without leaving behind resentment or a desire for revenge. A solution imposed by force breeds the next conflict; a solution reached through changed hearts does not.

This connects directly to the human needs idea. Gandhi believed that through nonviolent action, truth, judged by the fulfilment of human needs, would emerge as a mutually satisfactory and agreed-upon solution. His insistence on dialogue over coercion exists precisely because violence clouds the real issues, while nonviolent action invites both parties to talk about the issues themselves. The result is what he called a greater peace, a resolution that proves durable because both parties were respected throughout.

Bringing the threads together: resolution as the foundation of lasting peace 🔗

Place these thinkers side by side and a consistent picture emerges. Galtung tells us that real peace requires removing structural and cultural violence, not just direct violence. Burton tells us that conflicts persist because basic human needs go unmet. Gandhi tells us that durable resolution comes through transforming relationships and converting opponents rather than defeating them. All three converge on a single principle: a settlement that ignores root causes, denies justice, or leaves human needs unsatisfied is not resolution at all. It is a pause.

This explains why conflict resolution is closely tied to universal values such as rights, justice, and democracy. A resolution that secures a quiet peace by suppressing a group’s rights, as happened during periods when civil liberties were curtailed, does not resolve anything. It merely converts open conflict into hidden structural violence. Genuine resolution requires that the principles underpinning the agreement are fair enough, and inclusive enough, that the parties have no reason to return to conflict. When justice and recognition are built into the outcome, the agreement sustains itself.

What this means in practice 🔗

Practically, a resolution-oriented approach asks a few searching questions of any peace effort. Does the solution address why the conflict began, or only that it is happening now? Are the basic needs and dignity of every party satisfied, or only the interests of the stronger side? Does the outcome rest on shared principles that both sides accept as just? And does it transform the relationship between the parties, or merely freeze it? When the answer to these is yes, a society moves from negative peace toward the positive peace that Galtung described, and from a fragile settlement toward genuine resolution.

What do you think? If two communities have fundamentally different values that may never fully align, is true resolution even possible, or is skilful conflict management the more honest goal? And in a conflict you have witnessed, would addressing the root causes have produced a more durable peace than the settlement that was actually reached?

References

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4. https://www.visionofhumanity.org/johan-galtung-1930-2024/
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7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390255255_Assessing_Human_Needs_Theory_An_Approach_to_Conflict_Resolution
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