 Some of you may be familiar with the US Institute of Peace Conflict Curve that you're seeing on the screen at the moment. Much of what we do in this course and much of our dialogue will have to do with what you see on the right hand descending part of that curve. The curve itself is kind of a heuristic device that is something we use as a good discussion springboard which may not in itself reflect reality. In fact, my friend and colleague Andre Bartoli has critiqued my use of it before by saying this thing is upside down. In fact, if you take this parabola and make it much more the way real conflict operates, it ought to illustrate that coming out of intense violent conflict what we have is a very uphill journey through peace enforcement, peace keeping, peace building, ultimately. What I want to do is to start at the apex of this and move down the right hand side and draw attention to some very, very discrete categories ultimately landing on the one which occupies the most of our time, strategic peace building. The first, peace enforcement has come to mean how we engage that process often without the will of the parties. That is that the violence has gotten so bad on the ground that an interposition of military force is often considered necessary. Peace keeping is the process of cooperating with the outcomes of a signed peace accord in which military forces or the forces of the combatants themselves have found ways to separate and create a new demilitarized space where the fighting is dramatically curtailed if not stopped. That's both an outcome of a political dialogue but also creates space for greater political and societal dialogue and potential success for peace building. Then lastly, as you come to the bottom of the curve, you see the conditions for strategic what we'll call peace building and that of course will occupy the bulk of our time.