Introductory article: Mind the gaps. A Whole-of-Society approach to peacebuilding and conflict prevention (original) (raw)
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The New Local: Reappraising Peacebuilding from the Grassroots
International Studies Review, 2016
Recent scholarship on civil war has identified that conflict is waged on multiple levels: what if we thought about building peace in a similar, multi-level way? This article reviews three recent additions to the literature on peacebuilding and argues that in distinguishing between local and national conflict dynamics they mark a useful departure from the dominant treatment of the local in relation to 'top-down' peacebuilding. Particular attention is paid to Odendaal's thoughtful work on local peace committees and Anderson and Wallace's compelling survey of communities that chose to 'opt out' of war. By exploring situations of disjuncture, in which there is consensus for peace on either the local or national level but not both, these authors emphasise the importance of creating cross-level linkages. They also underscore the distinctive capability for peacebuilding, yet also violence and instability, that resides in the local level.
LOCAL PEACEBUILDING -CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Peacebuilding has turned into a collective concern, touching on both global security and global development, involving major actors and institutions. The peacebuilding agenda has evolved from achieving ceasefires, as in the cold war era, to today’s extensive peacebuilding operations aiming at liberal peace- and statebuilding, and further into global anti-terrorism strategies. Despite good intentions, extensive critique has emerged towards the liberal peace agenda, opening up for a "local turn" of peacebuilding to remedy its flaws. This paper first presents developments of global cooperation on peacebuilding and theoretical evolvements in the peacebuilding field travelling towards a local turn of peacebuilding. Second, the paper assesses the actual practices of peacebuilding in a number of central cases such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Somaliland and Liberia in relation to five core analytical aspects of local peacebuilding. The results of the case studies highlight how peacebuilding processes have evolved and puts focus on obstacles between the local and international that have surfaced during these processes. Finally, the paper considers the potential of the local turn of peacebuilding to contribute to global peacebuilding practices as well as presents a number of policy implications of such a development.
With civilian deaths estimated to account for approximately 75 percent of war-related casualties, ordinary people are increasingly mobilising to respond to the challenge of conflict. While some of these responses originate in “global civil society”, many of the most creative and effective attempts to address the causes of conflict and to help resolve it peacefully are undertaken by people from the conflict affected communities themselves. As largely home grown initiatives – albeit sometimes receiving various forms of external support – they are not a product of the security-development nexus of Western directed international peace operations. Yet their roles are poorly understood by international policymakers and these operations too often undermine them. Civil society can play roles at every point in the development of conflict and its resolution: from bringing situations of injustice to the surface to preventing violence, from creating conditions conducive to peace talks to mediating a settlement and working to ensure it is consolidated, from setting a policy agenda to healing war-scarred psyches. After briefly situating civil society peacebuilding roles in the policy context and highlighting several critiques, this article concentrates on exploring why they can be key to these tasks and charts the specific functions they can play, focusing on initiatives by civil society from a conflict zone and their external supporters. It concludes identifying several recommendations and areas in need of further research.
Advancing Peacebuilding from the Ground up
For many years, scholars and practitioners have been struggling with problems of local ownership in IO-led peacebuilding. Despite the discourse surrounding giving ownership to local communities, top-down approaches prevail in practice and often lead to counterproductive outcomes. Ethnographic fieldwork has proven that IOs could achieve a better understanding of local experiential perspectives on conflict and peace. Here, we point to key features of local peace and suggest how IOs could better incorporate peaceful local agency, cope with power imbalances and advance strategies for peacebuilding from the ground up.
Peacebuilding: assumptions, practices and critiques
Journal of International Relations, 2017
Peacebuilding has become a guiding principle of international intervention in the periphery since its inclusion in the United Nations’ (UN) Agenda for Peace in 1992.1 With the objective of creating the conditions for a selfsustaining peace in order to prevent a return to armed conflict, peacebuild ing is directed towards the eradication of the root causes of violence and is necessar ily a multifaceted project that involves political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions and security practices, which are understood as complementary and mu tually reinforcing. However, the transition from armed violence to lasting peace has not been easy or consensual. The conception of liberal peace proved particularly limited, and inevi tably controversial, and the reality of war-torn societies far more complex than an ticipated by international actors that assume activities in the promotion of peace in post-conflict contexts today. With a career full of contested successes and some...
FROM Practical Approaches to Peacebuilding : Putting Theory to Work
2016
Peacebuilding is a term that spans a wide array of activities influencing sustainable peace in different phases of conflict. It can be found at all points on the war to peace continuum, but it attends primarily to the requirements of conflict-affected communities. This includes concerns related to development, security, legal and institutional reform, peace education, and indigenous peacemaking efforts. Because the term is so broad, it can also be easily co-opted and used by local and international actors to promote programs that do not build peace. In this regard, there are examples, such as the Iraq war, where conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes have been used to win over factions in violent conflicts in an attempt to build a bigger coalition to militarily defeat a targeted enemy. In instances like these, conflict resolution and peacebuilding knowledge and skills can be nefariously coopted into functions of warfare, transforming them into instruments of war efforts and skewing their original intentions to work for sustainable peace. Yet, many communities have benefited from international peacebuilding efforts and studies have found that multilateral, United Nations peace operations have made a positive difference on sustainable peace (Doyle and Sambanis 2000), but many others have become political pawns or, worse, have borne the brunt of harmful policies that were carried out thoughtlessly or, worse yet, imposed on communities without their inclusion. With these communities in mind, we developed this book about peacebuilding. We believe that the path to peace is paved with good intentions, but can be perilous to maneuver. Therefore, reflection on experience and the rigorous study of the components of peace must be a fundamental part of any discussions on peacebuilding. Most conflicts around the world share some similar general features. Scholars in peace and conflict studies have studied the dynamics of conflict escalation and the ensuing alienation between rival parties that result in the construction of divergent narratives, which often portray mutually exclusive worldviews and become a part of the collective memory, precipitating
Peacebuilding: Problems and Prospects
Efforts to build or rebuild institutions of the State from the outside have often run into three types of contradictions: the means available are inconsistent with the ends, the resources at hand are inadequate to the task, and the implicit model of a State may simply be inappropriate to the circumstances on the ground. Resolving these contradictions requires clarity in three areas: (i) the strategic aims of the action; (ii) the necessary institutional coordination to put all actors — especially security and development actors — on the same page; and (iii) a realistic basis for evaluating the success or failure of the action.