Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been confronted with an enormous new challenge of regional conflicts taking place among a variety of ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups. In dealing with such conflicts, the UN peacekeeping activities during the 1990s proved to be successful in some cases, but not so in other cases, revealing their limitations. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan questioned the validity of widely-held view that poverty causes conflicts. He pointed out that inequality among social groups and unequal access to political power, rather than poverty, were the critical factor. He also emphasized the need to deal with “ethnic, religious or nationalist myth mongering”, “hate-media” and “political demagogues”.
　　In order to prevent such regional conflicts from occurring and to forestall terrorist activities in the aftermath of the 9.11, a renewed stress is laid in recent years on the importance of conflict prevention. To this end, the international community has to adopt an integrated approach encompassing political, economic, environmental, social and developmental policies, based on the UN Charter, the rule of law, democracy, social justice and full respect for human rights. On the other hand, conflict prevention mechanism requires a variety of measures, depending on the evolving stages of conflict, — namely (1) the stage of conflict prevention in general, (2) the early warning stage, (3) the stage of breakout of conflicts, and (4) the peace agreement stage. In stages (1) and (4) the role to be played by NGOs is particularly important. Difference in living standards, social discrimination, political inequality, insufficient democracy, disregard of human rights etc. may be considered as long-term causes of conflicts. Civil society organizations, rather than governments, are in a better position to deal with such indirect causes of conflicts. The role to be played by NGOs is also important after a peace agreement has been reached in carrying out rehabilitation, reconstruction and free elections for the establishment of democratic government. In order to eradicate conflicts and terrorist activities, prolonged and sustainable efforts and cooperation are required among a wide range of actors such as states, inter-governmental organizations and NGOs. As one of non-governmental actors, the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention aspires to make its modest contribution.