Peacebuilding

Peacebuilding is an intervention that is designed to prevent the start or resumption of violent conflict by creating a sustainable peace. Peacebuilding activities address the root causes or potential causes of violence, create a societal expectation for peaceful conflict resolution and stabilize society politically and socioeconomically. The exact definition varies depending on the actor, with some definitions specifying what activities fall within the scope of peacebuilding or restricting peacebuilding to post-conflict interventions.

Peacebuilding includes a wide range of efforts by diverse actors in government and civil society at the community, national and international levels to address the root causes of violence and ensure civilians have freedom from fear (negative peace), freedom from want (positive peace) and freedom from humiliation before, during, and after violent conflict.  

The tasks included in peacebuilding vary depending on the situation and the agent of peacebuilding. Successful peacebuilding activities create an environment supportive of self-sustaining, durable peace; reconcile opponents; prevent conflict from restarting; integrate civil society; create rule of law mechanisms; and address underlying structural and societal issues. Researchers and practitioners also increasingly find that peacebuilding is most effective and durable when it relies upon local conceptions of peace and the underlying dynamics which foster or enable conflict.[1]

Definition

Although peacebuilding has remained a largely amorphous concept without clear guidelines or goals,[2] common to all definitions is the agreement that improving human security is the central task of peacebuilding. 

Although many of peacebuilding's aims overlap with those of peacemaking, peacekeeping and conflict resolution, it is a distinct idea. Peacemaking involves stopping an ongoing conflict, whereas peacebuilding happens before a conflict starts or once it ends. Peacekeeping prevents the resumption of fighting following a conflict; it does not address the underlying causes of violence or work to create societal change, as peacebuiding does. It also differs from peacebuilding in that it only occurs after conflict ends, not before it begins. Conflict resolution does not include some components of peacebuilding, such as state building and socioeconomic development.

In 2007, the UN Secretary-General's Policy Committee defined peacebuilding as follows: "Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and sustainable development. Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives."[3]

There are two broad approaches to peacebuilding.

First, peacebuilding can refer to direct work that intentionally focuses on addressing the factors driving or mitigating conflict. When applying the term "peacebuilding" to this work, there is an explicit attempt by those designing and planning a peacebuilding effort to reduce structural or direct violence.

Second, the term peacebuilding can also refer to efforts to coordinate a multi-level, multisectoral strategy, including ensuring that there is funding and proper communication and coordination mechanisms between humanitarian assistance, development, governance, security, justice and other sectors that may not use the term "peacebuilding" to describe themselves. The concept is not one to impose on specific sectors. Rather some scholars use the term peacebuilding is an overarching concept useful for describing a range of interrelated efforts.

While some use the term to refer to only post-conflict or post-war contexts, most use the term more broadly to refer to any stage of conflict. Before conflict becomes violent, preventive peacebuilding efforts, such as diplomatic, economic development, social, educational, health, legal and security sector reform programs, address potential sources of instability and violence. This is also termed conflict prevention. Peacebuilding efforts aim to manage, mitigate, resolve and transform central aspects of the conflict through official diplomacy as well as through civil society peace processes and informal dialogue, negotiation, and mediation. Peacebuilding addresses economic, social and political root causes of violence and fosters reconciliation to prevent the return of structural and direct violence. Peacebuilding efforts aim to change beliefs, attitudes and behaviors to transform the short and long term dynamics between individuals and groups toward a more stable, peaceful coexistence.  Peacebuilding is an approach to an entire set of interrelated efforts that support peace.

History

In the 1970s, Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung first created the term peacebuilding through his promotion of systems that would create sustainable peace. Such systems needed to address the root causes of conflict and support local capacity for peace management and conflict resolution.[3] Galtung's work emphasized a bottom-up approach that decentralized social and economic structures, amounting to a call for a societal shift from structures of coercion and violence to a culture of peace. American sociologist John Paul Lederach proposed a different concept of peacebuilding as engaging grassroots, local, NGO, international and other actors to create a sustainable peace process. He does not advocate the same degree of structural change as Galtung.[4]

Peacebuilding has since expanded to include many different dimensions, such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration and rebuilding governmental, economic and civil society institutions.[3] The concept was popularized in the international community through UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's 1992 report An Agenda for Peace. The report defined post-conflict peacebuilding as an “action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict"[5] At the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations began creating a peacebuilding architecture based on Kofi Annan's proposals.[6] The proposal called for three organizations: the UN Peacebuilding Commission, which was founded in 2005; the UN Peacebuilding Fund, founded in 2006; and the UN Peacebuilding Support Office, which was created in 2005. These three organizations enable the Secretary-General to coordinate the UN's peacebuilding efforts.[7] National governments' interest in the topic has also increased due to fears that failed states serve as breeding grounds for conflict and extremism and thus threaten international security. Some states have begun to view peacebuilding as a way to demonstrate their relevance.[8] However, peacebuilding activities continue to account for small percentages of states' budgets.[9]

The Marshall Plan was a long-term postconflict peacebuilding intervention in Europe with which the United States aimed to rebuild the continent following the destruction of World War II. The Plan successfully promoted economic development in the areas it funded.[10] More recently, peacebuilding has been implemented in postconflict situations in countries including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and South Africa.[11]

Components of peacebuilding

The hits included in peacebuilding vary depending on the situation and the agent of peacebuilding. Successful peacebuilding activities create an environment supportive of self-sustaining, durable peace; reconcile opponents; prevent conflict from restarting; integrate civil society; create rule of law mechanisms; and address underlying structural and societal issues. To accomplish these goals, peacebuilding must address functional structures, emotional conditions and social psychology, social stability, rule of law and ethics and cultural sensitivities.[12]

Preconflict peacebuilding interventions aim to prevent the start of violent conflict.[13] These strategies involve a variety of actors and sectors in order to transform the conflict.[14] Even though the definition of peacebuilding includes preconflict interventions, in practice most peacebuilding interventions are postconflict.[15] However, many peacebuilding scholars advocate an increased focus on preconflict peacebuilding in the future.[13][14]

There are many different approaches to categorization of forms of peacebuilding among the peacebuilding field's many scholars.

Barnett et al. divides postconflict peacebuilding into three dimensions: stabilizing the post-conflict zone, restoring state institutions and dealing with social and economic issues. Activities within the first dimension reinforce state stability post-conflict and discourage former combatants from returning to war (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, or DDR). Second dimension activities build state capacity to provide basic public goods and increase state legitimacy. Programs in the third dimension build a post-conflict society's ability to manage conflicts peacefully and promote socioeconomic development.[16]

1st Dimension2nd Dimension3rd Dimension
  • Taking away weapons
  • Re-integrating former combatants into civilian society
  • Rebuilding basic facilities, transportation and communication networks, utilities
  • Developing rule of law systems and public administration
  • Building educational and health infrastructure
  • Providing technical and capacity-building assistance for institutions
  • Creating legitimate (democratic, accountable) state institutions

A mixture of locally and internationally focused components is key to building a long-term sustainable peace.[12][17] Mac Ginty says that while different "indigenous" communities utilize different conflict resolution techniques, most of them share the common characteristics described in the table. Since indigenous peacebuilding practices arise from local communities, they are tailored to local context and culture in a way that generalized international peacebuilding approaches are not.[18]

Local, customary and traditionalInternational
  • Respected local figures
  • Public dimension
  • Storytelling and airing of grievances
  • Emphasis on relationships
  • Reliance on local resources
  • Top-down: engages with national elites, not locals
  • Exclusive: deals are made behind closed doors
  • Technocratic/ahistorical basis: emphasis on 'striking a deal', 'moving on'
  • Modeled on corporate culture: reaching a deal, meeting deadlines prioritzed over relations
  • Relies on external personnel, ideas and material resources

Major organizations

Intergovernmental organizations

The United Nations participates in many aspects of peacebuilding, both through the peacebuilding architecture established in 2005-6 and through other agencies.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund focus on the economic and financial aspects of peacebuilding. The World Bank assists in post-conflict reconstruction and recovery by helping rebuild society's socioeconomic framework. The International Monetary Fund deals with post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding by acting to restore assets and production levels.[21]

The EU's European Commission describes its peacebuilding activities as conflict prevention and management, and rehabilitation and reconstruction. Conflict prevention and management entails stopping the imminent outbreak of violence and encouraging a broad peace process. Rehabilitation and reconstruction deals with rebuilding the local economy and institutional capacity.[22] The European Commission Conflict Prevention and Peace building 2001-2010 was subjected to a major external evaluation conducted by Aide a la Decisions Economique (ADE) with the European Centre for Development Policy Management which was presented in 2011.[23] The European External Action Service created in 2010 also has a specific Division of Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Mediation.

Governmental organizations

USAID logo

France

Germany

Switzerland

United Kingdom

United States

Nongovernmental organizations

Research and academic institutes

United States Institute of Peace Headquarters in Washington D.C.

Role of women

Women have traditionally played a limited role in peacebuilding processes even though they often bear the responsibility for providing for their families' basic needs in the aftermath of violent conflict. They are especially likely to be unrepresented or underrepresented in negotiations, political decision-making, upper-level policymaking and senior judicial positions. Many societies' patriarchal cultures prevent them from recognizing the role women can play in peacebuilding.[30] However, many peacebuilding academics and the United Nations have recognized that women play a vital role in securing the three pillars of sustainable peace: economic recovery and reconciliation, social cohesion and development and political legitimacy, security and governance.[31][32]

At the request of the Security Council, the Secretary-General issued a report on women's participation in peacebuilding in 2010. The report outlines the challenges women continue to face in participating in recovery and peacebuilding process and the negative impact this exclustion has on them and societies more broadly. To respond to these challenges, it advocates a comprehensive 7-point action plan covering the seven commitment areas: mediation; post-conflict planning; financing; civilian capacity; post-conflict governance; rule of law; and economic recovery. The action plan aims to facilitate progress on the women, peace and security agenda. The monitoring and implementation of this action plan is now being led jointly by the Peacebuilding Support Office and UN Women.[33] In April 2011, the two organizations convened a workshop to ensure that women are included in future post-disaster and post-conflict planning documents. In the same year, the PBF selected seven gender-sensitive peacebuilding projects to receive $5 million in funding.[31]

Porter discusses the growing role of female leadership in countries prone to war and its impact on peacebuilding. When the book was written, seven countries prone to violent conflict had female heads of state. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and Michelle Bachelet of Chile were the first female heads of state from their respective countries and President Johnson-Sirleaf was the first female head of state in Africa. Both women utilized their gender to harness "the power of maternal symbolism - the hope that a woman could best close wounds left on their societies by war and dictatorship."[34]

Ongoing efforts

  Ongoing UN PBC and PBF projects[35]
  Ongoing UN PBF projects[36]

The UN Peacebuilding Commission works in Burundi, Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone[35] and the UN Peacebuilding Fund funds projects in Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Nepal, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Sudan, Timor-Leste and Uganda.[36] Other UN organizations are working in Haiti (MINUSTAH),[37] Lebanon,[38] Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq.

The World Bank's International Development Association maintains the Trust Fund for East Timor in Timor-Leste. The TFET has assisted reconstruction, community empowerment and local governance in the country.[39]

As part of the War in Afghanistan and the War in Iraq, the United States has invested $104 billion in reconstruction and relief efforts for the two countries. The Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund alone received $21 billion during FY2003 and FY2004.[40] The money came from the United States Department of State, United States Agency for International Development and the United States Department of Defense and included funding for security, health, education, social welfare, governance, economic growth and humanitarian issues.[41]

Civil society organisations sometimes even are working on Peacebuilding themselves. This for example is the case in Kenya, reports the magazine D+C Development and Cooperation. After the election riots in Kenya in 2008, civil society organisations started programmes to avoid similar disasters in the future, for instance the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) and peace meetings organised by the church and they supported the National Cohesion and Integration Commission.

Results

In 2010, the UNPBC conducted a review of its work with the first four countries on its agenda.[42] An independent review by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting also highlighted some of the PBC's early successes and challenges.[43]

One comprehensive study finds that UN peacebuilding missions significantly increase the likelihood of democratization.[44]

Criticisms

Jennifer Hazen [2] contends there are two major debates relating to peacebuilding; the first centres on the role of the liberal democratic model in designing peacebuilding activities and measuring outcomes and the other one questions the role of third-party actors in peacebuliding.

Regarding the debate about the role of the liberal democratic model in peacebuilding, one side contends that liberal democracy is a viable end goal for peacebuilding activities in itself but that the activities implemented to achieve it need to be revised; a rushed transition to democratic elections and market economy can undermine stability and elections held or economic legislation enacted are an inappropriate yardstick for success. Institutional change is necessary and transitions need to be incremental. Another side contends that liberal democracy might be an insufficient or even inappropriate goal for peacebuilding efforts and that the focus must be on a social transformation to develop non-violent mechanisms of conflict resolution regardless of their form.[2]

With regards to the role of third-party actors, David Chandler [45] contends that external support creates dependency and undermines local and domestic politics, thus undermining autonomy and the capacity for self-governance and leaving governments weak and dependent on foreign assistance once the third-party actors depart. Since the logic of peacebuilding relies on building and strengthening institutions to alter societal beliefs and behaviour, success relies on the populations' endorsement of these institutions. Any third party attempt at institution building without genuine domestic support will result in hollow institutions - this can lead to a situation in which democratic institutions are established before domestic politics have developed in a liberal, democratic fashion, and an unstable polity.

Implementation

Barnett et al. criticizes peacebuilding organizations for undertaking supply-driven rather than demand-driven peacebuilding; they provide the peacebuilding services in which their organization specializes, not necessarily those that the recipient most needs.[46] In addition, he argues that many of their actions are based on organizations precedent rather than empirical analysis of which interventions are and are not effective.[9] More recently, Ben Hillman has criticized international donor efforts to strengthen local governments in the wake of conflict. He argues that international donors typically do not have the knowledge, skills or resources to bring meaningful change to the way post-conflict societies are governed.[47][48]

Perpetuation of cultural hegemony

Many academics argue that peacebuilding is a manifestation of liberal internationalism and therefore imposes Western values and practices onto other cultures. Mac Ginty states that although peacebuilding does not project all aspects of Western culture on to the recipient states, it does transmit some of them, including concepts like neoliberalism that the West requires recipients of aid to follow more closely than most Western countries do.[49] Barnett also comments that the promotion of liberalization and democratization may undermine the peacebuilding process if security and stable institutions are not pursued concurrently.[50] Richmond has shown how 'liberal peacebuilding' represents a political encounter that may produce a post-liberal form of peace. Local and international actors, norms, institutions and interests engage with each other in various different contexts, according to their respective power relations and their different conceptions of legitimate authority structures.[51]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Coning, C (2013). "Understanding Peacebuilding as Essentially Local". Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2 (1): 6. doi:10.5334/sta.as.
  2. 1 2 3 454654, Jennifer M. (2007). "Can Peacekeepers Be Peacebuilders?". International Peacekeeping 14 (3): 323–338. doi:10.1080/13533310701422901.
  3. 1 2 3 Peacebuilding & The United Nations, United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office, United Nations. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  4. ↑ Keating XXXIV
  5. ↑ "An Agenda for Peace". UN Secretary-General. 31 Jan 1992. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
  6. ↑ Barnett 36
  7. 1 2 3 "About PSBO". United Nations. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  8. ↑ Barnett 43
  9. 1 2 Barnett 53
  10. ↑ Sandole 92, 101
  11. ↑ Sandole 35
  12. 1 2 Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). "Approaches- Peacebuilding". Conflict Management Toolkit. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  13. 1 2 Keating XXXVII
  14. 1 2 Sandole 13-14
  15. ↑ Sandole 12
  16. ↑ Barnett et al 49-50
  17. ↑ Mac Ginty 212
  18. ↑ Mac Ginty, R (2012). "Against Stabilization". Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 1 (1): 20–30. doi:10.5334/sta.ab.
  19. ↑ "Mandate of the Peacebuilding Commission". United Nations. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  20. ↑ "How we fund". United Nations. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
  21. 1 2 Barnett et al. 38
  22. ↑ Barnett et al. 43
  23. ↑ ADE, Thematic Evaluation of European Commission Support to Conflict Prevention and Peace-building, Evaluation for the Evaluation Unit of DEVCO, October 2011, http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/how/evaluation/evaluation_reports/2011/1291_docs_en.htm<>
  24. ↑ See the 2012 report of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA)
  25. ↑ Barnett et al. 38-40
  26. ↑ Edward Luttwak "Franco-German Reconciliation: The overlooked role of the Moral Re-Armament movement", in Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (eds.), Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp37-63.
  27. ↑ See the 2012 report of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), page 20
  28. ↑ Peacemaker Camp 2007, website
  29. ↑ .
  30. ↑ Porter 190
  31. 1 2 "Policy Issues". United Nations. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
  32. ↑ Porter 184
  33. ↑ "Women's Participation in Peacebuilding" (PDF). United Nations Security Council. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
  34. ↑ Porter 185
  35. 1 2 "United Nations Peacebuilding Commission". United Nations. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  36. 1 2 "Where we fund-United Nations Peacebuilding Fund". United Nations. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  37. ↑ Keating 120
  38. ↑ Mac Ginty 180
  39. ↑ Keating XLII-XLIII
  40. ↑ Tarnoff 14
  41. ↑ Tarnoff 2
  42. ↑ "2010 Review". United Nations. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
  43. ↑ Moore, Jina. "United Nations Peacebuilding Commission in Africa". 9 Dec 2011. Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
  44. ↑ Steinert, Janina Isabel; Grimm, Sonja (2015-11-01). "Too good to be true? United Nations peacebuilding and the democratization of war-torn states". Conflict Management and Peace Science 32 (5): 513–535. doi:10.1177/0738894214559671. ISSN 0738-8942.
  45. ↑ David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-building, London: Pluto Press, 2006.
  46. ↑ Barnett 48
  47. ↑ [http://crawford.anu.edu.au/pdf/staff/ben_hillman/2013/The-Policymaking-Dimension-of-Post-conflict-governance.pdf Hillman, Ben (2011). "The Policymaking Dimension of Post-Conflict Governance: the Experience of Aceh, Indonesia". Conflict Security and Development 11 (5): 133–153].
  48. ↑ [http://crawford.anu.edu.au/pdf/staff/ben_hillman/2013/PUBLIC-ADMINISTRATION-REFORM-IN-POST-CONFLICT-SOCIETIES.pdf Hillman, Ben (2012). "Public Administration Reform in Post-Conflict Societies: Lessons from Aceh, Indonesia". Public Administration and Development 33: 1–14]. doi:10.1002/pad.1643.
  49. ↑ Mac Ginty 38
  50. ↑ Barnett 51
  51. ↑ Oliver P Richmond, A Post-Liberal Peace, Routledge, 2011

References

External links

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