Emerging Issues Relating to Peace and Conflict Prevention in the Post COVID- 19 Era in the Global South

Abstract

Worldwide, COVID-19 has ravaged the once blooming economics and social fabrics of the world. This has led to a very fragile post COVID-19 era which is fraught with conflicts amongst states, particularly in the Global South. As a result, the dynamics related to peace and conflict prevention has had a number of emerging issues which are examined in this article. This article used the qualitative approach utilizing the desk review method to examine the emerging issues relating to peace and conflict prevention in the Global South in the post COVID-19 era. The researchers used the search engines such as PUBMED, EMBASE, EBSCOHOST and Web of Science as well as Open Grey, Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD), Google scholar, the websites of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organisations to search for emerging issues related to peace and conflict prevention in the Global South in the post COVID-19 era. The researchers used a comprehensive search strategy that utilized search terms that related to the key concepts of the study and combined search terms within a concept with the Boolean terms ‘OR,’ combined search terms between concepts with the Boolean term ‘AND,’ and was adapted to the syntax used by each database. The human security model was used to examine the emerging issues relating to peace and conflict prevention in the Global South. It was identified that the peace in the Global South was very fragile post COVID-19 era with a number of violent conflicts being reported. The issues reported included fragility of the economic, social, health, personal, community, food, environmental and political security. These all have detrimental effects on sustainable peace and security in the Global South. More robust approaches are thus needed to ensure human security needs are addressed in order to prevent conflicts and ensure sustainable peace is enjoyed in the Global South.