In working with various agencies to build peace around the world, Rob Ricigliano has traveled to the most dangerous countries on the planet — and experienced some decidedly unpeaceful situations.

"I was in Iraq in March of 2006," Ricigliano recalls. "The Golden Dome mosque, a holy site for Shiites, had just been bombed by Sunni extremists.

"I traveled in a three-SUV convoy, wearing bullet proof vests. You could hear car bombs and mortars go off in the Green Zone where I was staying, but in a few days, you got accustomed to it."

Ricigliano, who has made multiple trips to Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, the Congo and Colombia, is executive director of UW-Milwaukee’s Institute of World Affairs and a former associate director of the Harvard Negotiation project. He has seen both successful and unsuccessful approaches to resolving conflict. He shares his insight in his new book, "Making Peace Last: A Toolbox for Sustainable Peacebuilding."

Achieving world peace is certainly among mankind’s loftiest goals but Ricigliano says reaching that goal is closer than you might think.

"It is important to redefine peace as something that is not a Utopian ideal that no one can ever succeed in delivering," he says. "Peace is a state of human existence characterized by sustainable levels of human development and a healthy process of societal change. The problem is less that we are unable to achieve peace, at least on a limited scale, but that we lack the ability to make peace last."

Ricigliano outlines a path to "Peace Writ Large" (PWL), a state of sustainable peace. The key is for peacebuilders to see "wholes instead of isolated parts" in the process, and employ a systems approach known as the "SAT model," which includes the structural (systems in place to meet people’s needs), attitudinal (shared norms or beliefs of a culture) and transactional (processes by which key people manage critical issues) elements in any society.

The solution is as simple and as complicated as getting people on opposing sides to talk to each other, find common ground, be willing to agree on a plan, and understand an ongoing need to adapt and compromise as the new system evolves.

"I was helping to mediate a border dispute between Peru and Ecuador," Ricigliano recalls. "There were delegates from each country at the session. We had one delegate from each country interview a delegate from the other country. It turned out that one delegate from Peru and one delegate from Ecuador both had daughters who were mentally disabled."

This established a common bond between the two men and opened the pathways for communication. "It’s important for both parties to see their similarities and establish a desire to work together for the common good," he says.

Ricigliano says there is enough money being allocated for global peacebuilding but the funds are often wasted when different agencies working in the same country don’t communicate, duplicating or eradicating each other’s efforts. Those agencies frequently don’t listen to the local residents and proceed with their own agendas, slapping together instant infrastructure improvements which will satisfy organizations who give out grants with quick, tangible evidence of what the grant money is accomplishing, but often not lead to the lasting peace by establishing a dialogue between opposing parties.

Ricigliano says the communication strategies in "Making Peace Last" can also be employed to break the partisan gridlock in Washington and in state legislatures across America.

Ricigliano, a Fox Point resident and three-term member of the Maple Dale Indian Hill School Board, says it’s hard to be away from his wife and family (they stay in touch via Skype) but he will continue to travel when called upon to resolve conflict wherever it arises, using his methodology in which he has great confidence and in which others in the halls of power are beginning to take notice.

"Modern day peacebuilders look at certain scenarios and say ‘hand me the manual,’" Ricigliano says. "But there has been no manual. ‘Making Peace Last’ is the manual."