Seeking the Forest through the Trees: Institutional Arrangements and Tools for Peacebuilding

Abstract

PEACEBUILDING is a complex and deeply political enterprise, practised by multiple actors, external and domestic, with different and often conflicting goals and interests. Despite the growth of a peacebuilding ‘industry’ over the last decade, with increasingly professionalised toolkits, methods and best practices, international efforts to help consolidate peace in war-torn countries have met with mixed success. Growing recognition of persistent shortcomings in international efforts has led to calls for more ‘strategic’ and ‘coherent’ approaches by international actors. In response, recent years have witnessed an explosion of reforms and institutional innovations – at the United Nations and elsewhere – to improve the international practice of peacebuilding. The test of their success will be if these efforts move beyond turf battles and bureaucratic reforms to remain focused on the larger goal of building peace in countries emerging from war.