The concept of Conflict Prevention emerged in the theoretical literature of the early 1990s, but initially without significant practical application. The idea of Conflict Prevention was presented as an official policy of the UN by Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali in 1992 in his An Agenda for Peace. He emphasized "fact-finding and analysis-to identify at the earliest possible stage the circumstances that could produce serious conflict-and the need for Preventive Diplomacy to resolve the most immediate problems with attention to underlying causes of conflict." The focus was on punctual preventive interventions. The end of the Cold War gave the impression that the international community could intervene more flexibly and effectively to prevent the explosion of conflicts. This impression was reinvigorated by the negative experiences of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. A different behavior of neighboring countries, in the case of Yugoslavia, and a limited but robust military intervention in Rwanda, was commonly believed, could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. A successful UN deployment in Macedonia confirmed this idea.

Since then, the concept of Conflict Prevention has developed further and moved its focus from "Preventive Diplomacy," including a limited set of diplomatic or military initiatives, to more structural interventions. Academics and practitioners have since stretched the concept to include, in addition to diplomacy and military operations, institution building, economic development, and grass roots community building. In the 2001 Report of the Secretary General on Prevention of Armed Conflict, "an effective preventive strategy" is said to require "a comprehensive approach that encompasses both short-term and long-term political, diplomatic, humanitarian, human rights, developmental, institutional, and other measures taken by the international community, in cooperation with national and regional actors".

Structural Prevention lays its conceptual roots in part of International Relations Theory. Concepts of Security Community, and Johan Galtung’s "Warm Peace," as well as theories of integration and international regimes, identify the structural foundations of a peaceful international community. The structure of these communities, it must be noticed, is composed not of elements of pure power but rather of norms, values and shared interests. Similarly, the peaceful interaction among different groups inside a state can be fostered through structural initiatives of constitutional engineering, economic development, institution building, and education.

Steven Burg divides interventions of Structural Prevention into two different approaches. These approaches refer specifically to the prevention of inter-communal conflicts:

Some authors do not agree with the inclusion of Structural Prevention as part of Conflict Prevention. Michael Lund, for example, focuses his attention on prompt, short-term, interventions to avoid the potential escalation of a dispute to violent conflict. His definition is more focused on Preventive Diplomacy, and considers what we define as Structural Prevention as too broad of a concept, difficult to distinguish from more general processes of democratization or economic development, eventually closer to the concept of Peacebuilding.

In Michael Lund’s Preventing Violent Conflict, the distinction between different types of preventive intervention is based on the scope and duration of the actions, and on the stage of the conflict at which the action occurs. If violence is occurring, then “damage-control” initiatives must be taken. If violence is impending, then preemptive measures must be implemented to reduce the tension between parties. If violence has not yet taken place, but there are tensions in the society, peacebuilding measures should be put into place.

Subtypes within Preventive Diplomacy

Source: Michael Lund, Preventing Deadly Conflicts