ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses conflict prevention with specific reference to civil conflict. Many states are unable to prevent civil conflict and the significant harm it causes. Advocates of conflict prevention have suggested numerous measures designed to reinforce the existing international preventive architecture. The primary responsibility for the prevention of civil conflict is a domestic one. It resides with states themselves, assisted if required by international society. As expected, civil conflict is a particularly sensitive area of involvement for both domestic and international parties given the challenge it poses to the state power. Although communities of prevention exist at the domestic level and amongst some state groupings, these formations have failed to energize those states most capable of carrying out conflict prevention in a timely manner and have not arrived in those states most vulnerable to civil conflict. Whenever civil conflict threatens, a degree of domestic and international action usually takes place to try to prevent it breaking out.
