Globalization has supported trends of both cultural integration and disintegration. There are many challenges to identity in the modern world, including religious fundamentalism, conflict, civil war, and ethnic cleansing, and state failure. All of these challenges are exacerbated by migration, which creates opportunities for both the dissemination of culture and its breakdown. However, there are ways to overcome these challenges.

Religion has been at the heart of many conflicts for all of history. Today, for many people religion can serve as a reiteration of identity as they resist the forces of globalization. How religion is understood and applied is key to the way in which the potential for conflict has developed. For example, Islam is generally divided into two sects—Sunni and Shi’a—who have ideological differences. Political conflict in the Islamic world since the 1980s has fallen along Sunni-Shi’a lines. However, despite their differences, Islamic sects are united in their opposition to Western influence. Many countries practice some form of Sharia law, for example. This opposition can give rise to security issues, such as terrorism. Al Qaeda, for instance, was formed to directly combat the increasing role of the West in Muslim countries and return those nations to more fundamental Islamic regimes.

Ethnicity is another factor that may create opportunities for conflict. Ethnicity is a defining principle of identity and the extent to which ethnic groups will go to assure their identity can be radical. The most extreme action is genocide, a type of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic conflict is often attributed to the colonial experience due to the artificial nature of geographic borders, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. For example, during their colonial rule the Belgians favored the Tutsi people of Rwanda, creating tension between that ethnic group and the majority Hutu. In 1994, tensions came to a head and the Hutu, who had gained political and military power, instigated genocide against the Tutsi.

Additionally, failed states are a source of conflict around the world. The Fund for Peace estimates that about two billion people live in countries that cannot survive tensions. The Fund for Peace has developed the Fragile States Index to rank states on 12 indicators for stability. State failure results in governments that have no legitimacy and cannot provide public services or safety to their people. Sometimes, failed states respond to these tensions by dividing into separate states. Such was the case in Sudan when South Sudan declared its independence in 2011.

There are several critical means of ending these types of conflict. Notably, transitional justice offers a way to overcome crimes that have ripped countries apart due to ethnic and religious conflicts. An informal way that ethnic conflicts are moving towards resolution is the development of truth and reconciliation commissions, which bring together those who have suffered under ethnic conflict to resolve their differences and move forward. One such example of this type of effort is gacaca, or “justice in the grass,” in Rwanda, which dates back to pre-colonial times when differences were addressed informally through these meetings to bring healing.