A New Agenda for Peace

Abstract

20 years laterThis year, 2012, marks 20th anniversary of Boutros Boutros-Ghali's seminal An for Penned in response a request by United Nations security council prepare and circulate an analysis and recommendations on ways of strengthening and making more efficient within framework and provisions of Charter capacity of United Nations for preventive diplomacy, for peacemaking and for 1992 document took advantage of a unique moment in history. The end of Cold War provided fresh resolve among security council members fulfil the Purposes and Principles of Charter [of UN] and presented new opportunities for building sustainable peace.1 Alongside recommendations for more thorough and activist preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, and peacekeeping, for added a fourth tool, postconflict peacebuilding, international toolkit. This issue focuses principally on this fourth tool.Over past 20 years, there has been much development in practice and study of peacebuilding.2 The meaning of peacebuilding and its application on ground have lengthened in time, broadened in scope, and deepened in engagement. Peacebuilding has become institutionalized within UN and broader international community, and peacebuilding endeavours have shown successes in their ability respond violent and prevent its recurrence. But there have also been challenges and even failures in peacebuilding. Peacebuilding has had contend with aftermath of September 11 and falls of Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Most recently, peacebuilding must be envisioned in context of 2011 Arab Spring. 2012 thus presents an opportune moment revisit An for peace.This issue stems from a workshop held at University of Toronto in October 2011. The workshop brought together peacebuilding practitioners, including a UN fieldworker based in Middle East and a member of peacebuilding commission working in west Africa, alongside scholars engaged in peacebuilding work, reflect upon state of peacebuilding today - nearly 20 years after An for peace was published - and move forward possibility of a new for peace. The seven articles that follow consider critically goals of An for peace and evaluate peacebuilding successes and failures. In this introduction, we consider what last 20 years have taught us about peacebuilding, focusing on several lessons for moving peacebuilding forward into next decades.This article proceeds as follows. In first section, we define peacebuilding. In second, we survey peacebuilding since 1992 from an optimistic perspective. In third, we don pessimists' lenses and present a more negative account of peacebuilding over past 20 years. In fourth section, we suggest how lessons learned from past two decades may inform a new for peace.WHAT IS PEACEBUILDING?An for peace defines postconflict peacebuilding as identify and support structures which tend strengthen and solidify in order avoid a relapse into conflict (para. 21) and which will tend consolidate and advance a sense of confidence and well-being among people (para. 55). Peacebuilding, as Boutros-Ghali saw it, aimed to address deepest causes of conflict: economic despair, social injustice and political oppression (para. 15). In other words, idea of peacebuilding was help states move from a merely negative - absence of violence - a positive marked by deeper social, political, and economic features that help make a society work. We acknowledge that peacebuilding means many different things different people, including authors in this special issue. Ian Spears' contribution, for instance, considers peacebuilding as any action taken in pursuit of peace, including those that fall under agenda for peace rubrics of peacekeeping and peacemaking. …