ABSTRACT
The prevention of violent conflicts became important early after the end of the Cold War. Cases such as the genocides in Rwanda, ethnic wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and state failure in Somalia pointed to the necessity of finding means to avert conflicts from escalating into war, human disasters, and regional instability. The purpose of international action to deal with such situation was to curtail the spread of violence and find a solution at an early stage. It is these ambitions that oftentimes are described as conflict prevention (Lund 2002; Wallensteen 2002, 2007, 2011). Experiences have shown that it is not enough merely to take any preventive action and get some response. It is now time to be more nuanced and ask which actions by whom are more likely to get an effective response. A problem is that we cannot know how a particular conflict would have developed without such a response, the preventive measures, in the event that there were some actions. This is unknown, but necessary to know if we can say that prevention actually succeeds. This chapter is devoted to find possible solutions to this quandary.
