Conflict transformation is a relatively unfamiliar and less accepted concept in our society and political field. Moreover, it can often invoke ambivalent attitudes due to the fear that it prevents, hinders, or delays conflict resolution. However, the analysis of the scholarship studying this concept and its practical application reveals that conflict transformation is a peacebuilding process that approaches conflict resolution through systemic and sustainable methods. This process is of critical relevance with respect to serious social conflicts where simple solutions to conflict resolution are absent and the parties to the conflict maintain radically antagonistic attitudes for an extended period. Conflict transformation is a crucial process when human relationships, political agenda, institutions, safe spaces, and peaceful coexistence need to be rebuilt due to painful experiences of the conflict. This is a multi-layered process that entails the building of a common agenda among the parties to the conflict based on security, welfare, and shared interest of the cooperation in different fields. Conflict transformation aims to structurally change perceptions and attitudes among the parties and, as a result, creates the prerequisites for peacebuilding and a long-term resolution of the conflict. Human rights have a critical role in this process, especially while analyzing the close links of their protection to the origins and the results of a continuous conflict.

In Georgia, the absence of a long-term vision and policy for conflict transformation and peacebuilding is accompanied by a regressive situation in terms of security and human rights protection. Particularly, as conflicts have acquired an international dimension and fall under the political and legal scope of non-recognition, visions and strategies of peacebuilding appear to have disappeared from the agenda. Superficially created Strategy on Engagement and its Action Plan did not prove to be an effective instrument for achieving its actual goals and enhancing humane and humanitarian dimensions in the process of conflict resolution. In light of the existing critical crises which exacerbate daily lives and human rights conditions on the occupied territories and surrounding areas, effective incorporation of human rights into peace politics is of critical importance. The situation in the regions affected by conflict points primarily to the necessity of using emancipatory ideas of human rights as a catalyst for peacebuilding and positive transformation of conflicts. This article aims to briefly analyse the role of human rights in conflict transformation, their multidimensional importance, and diverse areas of their practical application. It is an attempt to explore the potential of human rights in the context of peaceful conflict transformation.

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