Peacebuilding Model Research Articles

Liberia rising? Foreign direct investment, persistent inequalities and political tensions

A key component of post-conflict reconstruction is inclusive and equitable economic development. In the post-Cold War era, Western donors have promoted the liberal peacebuilding model that emphasises democratisation and marketisation to accomplish stability and development. Attracting Foreign Direct Investment is an essential component of these marketisation policies, contributing to creating new employment opportunities, bringing in new technologies, skills and access to international markets. Others point to potential negative consequences for social stability of large international firms entering post-civil war countries, creating winners and losers and contributing to conflicts over access to land, jobs, social services and revenues generated by the companies. This paper examines the socio-economic and political consequences of FDI flows in Liberia. It argues that the very success of encouraging FDI, mostly channelled into palm oil, forestry, rubber and iron ore mining, undermined other policy goals, and in particular poverty reduction strategies, contributing to an increase in political tensions and protests in the project-affected communities.

Reclaiming the Peacebuilding Agenda: Economic and Social Rights as a Legal Framework for Building Positive Peace - A Human Security Plus Approach to Peacebuilding

This article examines the exclusion of economic and social rights from peacebuilding. The peacebuilding process has become dominated by a liberal agenda resulting in a ‘one size fits all’ model of peacebuilding. As a consequence, the inclusion of human rights within the mandate of peacebuilding has also been limited to a liberal conception of human rights constituting only civil and political rights. It is argued that an alternative approach is required which refocuses the peacebuilding agenda on human security: a hybrid ‘human security plus’ approach to peacebuilding (or a ‘inclusive’ human rights approach) will ensure the protection and promotion of economic, social and cultural rights, while maintaining protection of civil and political rights, throughout the whole peacebuilding process: from peace agreements to post-conflict reconstruction. The result will be a reclaiming of the peacebuilding agenda to improve its effectiveness and provide a legal framework for building positive peace.

El Programa de Desarrollo y Paz del Magdalena Medio – ¿Un modelo de construcción de paz para el post conflicto en Colombia?

Esta ponencia incide sobre una experiencia <em>sui generis</em> de construcción de paz en Colombia – el Programa de Desarrollo y Paz del Magdalena Medio (PDPMM). El objetivo principal es evaluar en qué medida el PDPMM se concibe como un verdadero “laboratorio de paz” y abre caminos novedosos y “fórmulas” alternativas para la paz a nivel local y regional, que se podrán replicar en otras regiones del país, en un potencial escenario de post-conflicto en Colombia. La hipótesis de trabajo es que el PDPMM se configura como un modelo consolidado y válido de construcción de paz positiva a nivel regional, de lo cual se pueden rescatar diversas enseñanzas y “buenas prácticas” para la construcción de una paz sostenible y duradera en Colombia.

Poverty amid plenty: structural violence and local governance in western Congo

ABSTRACTThe protracted conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has drawn sharp criticism regarding the model of liberal peacebuilding employed in the country. Critics emphasise the importance of local ownership of peacebuilding mechanisms at sub-national as well as national levels. This raises questions in relation to the popular legitimacy and efficacy of local mechanisms. Drawing on field research conducted in the relatively affluent province of Bas-Congo in Western Congo, this article highlights a lack of popular legitimacy for provincial-level political authority within the province stemming from an acute marginalisation of the population from local structures of power and wealth. The article also demonstrates the inefficacy of more local, village and neighbourhood-based political structures which, aimed at conflict mitigation rather than transformation, ignore the structural roots of local conflicts and do little to counteract the growing social distrust, conflict and disintegration within local communities.

Beyond the local turn divide: lessons learnt, relearnt and unlearnt

This article builds on the contributions to this special issue by examining different approaches to the local turn and what can be learnt from applying them. The contributors agree on the imperative of understanding ‘the local’ in peacebuilding; however, there seems to be a multitude of ways forward in this regard. The immediate concern is how this acknowledgement translates into practices that allow for both efficiency and local emancipation in the building of peace. The article suggests giving up the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of peacebuilding and engaging in context-based methods and research designs beyond generalisations. One way to go about this is to strive for interdisciplinary research – combining peace studies and political science with social anthropologists and area studies – but also to involve ‘the locals’ themselves in the process of taking a few methodological steps further.

Peacebuilding and Reconciliation through Storytelling in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of the Republic of Ireland

We all live for stories [...] because without stories the stuff that happens would float around in some glob and none of it would mean anything.(Banaszynski 14)IntroductionIn the summer of 2010, one of us (Byrne) interviewed thirteen development officers and 107 community group leaders about peacebuilding and reconciliation. These individuals were working for or receiving aid from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) and the European Union Peace and Reconciliation III Fund (or EU PEACE III Fund) in Londonderry (Derry) and the Border Counties of the Republic of Ireland. A number of projects in their communities and organizations drew on and peacemaking, and some initial ideas emerged about the power of stories and the role of as a central component of a broader repertoire of peacebuilding activities in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. Consequently, this article explores the significance of the storytelling, reconciliation, and peacebuilding model within the context of post-peace accord Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of the Irish Republic through the perceptions and experiences of ten local community group leaders who were recipients of external economic assistance from the IFI and/or the EU PEACE III Fund related to and, specifically, forums of the Towards Understanding and Healing (TUH) project. people of this region are trying to navigate the transition from war to peace. Consequently, understanding constructive and transcultural storytelling (Senehi, The Role of Constructive, Transcultural Storytelling 229) and peacebuilding within the liminal context of Northern Ireland is illuminating.The conflict on the island of Ireland was ostensibly resolved in 1921, when the Republic of Ireland became independent, with six counties-mainly from the historic province of Ulster-remaining within the United Kingdom (White 89). In the seventeenth century, Ulster was predominantly occupied by Irish Catholics but saw the influx of thousands of English and Scottish Protestants settlers. six counties of Northern Ireland had their own parliament, administration, and an exclusively Protestant police force, which led to a fifty-year pattern of anti-Catholic discrimination and violence (White 89).In the late 1960s, the conflict took a catastrophic turn when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) emerged as a counterforce to British dominance and began waging a violent war to rid Northern Ireland of British control (White 89). PIRA's objective was to end British rule and unify the island without Northern Unionist consent (Simpson, Truth Recovery 14). As a result, Loyalist paramilitaries mobilized to oppose Republican violence and to protect the union (Simpson, Truth Recovery 14). Loyalists' response to PIRA political violence led to an intense cycle of virulent violence known as the Thoubles-beginning from the late 1960s to the late 1990s (Aiken 173). constant threat of urban and rural violence over the course of thirty years took its toll on societal cohesion in Northern Ireland, as segregated housing and education prevented social integration between both communities (Aiken 173). There were allegations of state terrorism, racism, and oppression from Protestant Unionist Loyalists and Catholic Nationalist Republicans (Knobel 89). An estimated 3,700 people died, and about 50,000 were maimed during this period (Shea 289). Troubles officially ended with the signing of the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement in 1998.There are still contentions over sociopolitical and economic issues, however, as well as a deepening mistrust among various communities in post-peace accord Northern Ireland (Senehi, The Role of Constructive, Transcultural Storytelling 227; Cormier et al.). Good Friday Agreement failed to address past hurts, focusing instead on governing structures, which in turn lead to a tribal approach to democracy (McLaughlin par. …

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL? POST‐CONFLICT STATEBUILDING, PEACEBUILDING, AND THE GOOD GOVERNANCE AGENDA IN TIMOR‐LESTE

SUMMARYStatebuilding after conflict often entails liberal peacebuilding measures. The end of the UN mission in post‐conflict Timor‐Leste in December 2012 provides a unique opportunity to investigate statebuilding in practice. The liberal peacebuilding agenda has met with stiff academic resistance—mainly from the critical theorist camp—and is questioned as an appropriate measure of …statebuilding success. We deploy instead the good governance (GG) agenda as a hybrid local‐liberal guide. Drawing on field work, interviews, and secondary documents, we investigate what we see as four key, intertwined and overlapping aspects of GG: state capacity including the establishment of a state bureaucracy, participation and the engagement of civil society, institution building and rule of law, and corruption control and transparency. We note GG provides a useful policy heuristic, while abstract “one‐size‐fits‐all” liberal peacebuilding models, which avoid the complexities of machinery of government issues, the time taken to develop institutions, and historical and contextual environments of countries, are likely to face severe problems. New states may be dependent on external forces to maintain monopoly of violence. The reversibility and uncertainty of statebuilding and the decades‐long commitment needed by international agencies are noted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Overcoming the State/Non-state Divide: An End User Approach to Security and Justice Reform

Despite the widely accepted recognition that fragile and conflict-affected countries are characterized by plural security and justice orders, donor-led security and justice programmes continue to engage overwhelmingly with state actors on the basis of liberal peacebuilding models that internalize Weberian understandings of the state. In addition, policies pushing reformers towards engagement with ‘informal’, ‘non-state’, or customary systems often do so in a way that suggests a neat separation between the ‘state’ and ‘non-state’. This does not reflect how security and justice operate in practice. This paper uses the case of Sierra Leone to demonstrate the panoply of actors that constitute the plural security and justice context there, and how these actors interact in practice. This reveals the highly interactive nature of the multiple security and justice chains commonly used in Sierra Leone. It is argued that in order to meaningfully engage with the multitudinous ways in which people access security and justice, external reformers need to develop a comprehensive understanding of this complexity. Such an understanding will assist reformers in transcending the increasingly unhelpful state/non-state distinction and in engaging with security and justice from the perspective of the end users, rather than from the perspective of externally derived models.

Psychosocial Interventions, Peacebuilding and Development in Rwanda

Post-conflict peacebuilding has been criticised as being too focused on macro-level economic development and institutional reform at the expense of a more people-centred, service-oriented process that promotes the transformation in relationships and life conditions necessary to support a sustainable peace. This article suggests that the essence of peace and the capacity for development at the individual and community level are being lost in the dominant state-centric model of peacebuilding. It also suggests that psychosocial services that address the need for individual and community capacity-building should be seen as an integral part of social services where people are struggling to engage meaningfully in life after experiencing mass violence. Using Rwanda as a case study, it argues for a greater emphasis on psychosocial interventions as part of a more holistic and transformative approach to peacebuilding that promotes resilience, social cohesion and sustainable development.

Grassroots Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties: Elements of An Effective Model

Following the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement many community-based organizations became involved in localized peace-building activities in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. Drawing financial support from the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation and the International Fund for Ireland, these organizations adopted various strategic mechanisms to implement their projects –synchronizing bottom-up development initiatives with top-level government policies. Their effectiveness has already been felt in Northern Ireland as reduced political violence and improved socioeconomic conditions. However, the long-term sustainability of this work is questionable, affected as it is by continued intercommunity segregation, low macro-level political support, and global economic instability. This article explores the perceptions of 120 civil society leaders regarding the peace-building practices employed by community-based organizations in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties. Key elements of an effective peace-building model are suggested that may contribute to the improvement of peace-building and reconciliation efforts in other contexts affected by ethno-political conflict.

Building future coexistence or keeping people apart

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of cross‐communal cooperation and its contribution to peacebuilding and reconciliation in Northern Ireland through the opinions of 752 respondents.Design/methodology/approachA multivariate analysis of the respondents' opinions was gathered through a Public Opinion Survey (MBU 2006), which addresses the issue of physical separation of the Catholic and Protestant communities in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process.FindingsFindings indicate that religion is a key variable in any discussion of the sustainability of the Northern Ireland peace process in relation to cross‐community initiatives, social and economic integration as well as existing divisions between both communities. Moreover, professional and skilled worker respondents disagreed that the impacts of physical separation between both communities supports the peace process. Catholic Nationalists and respondents from Belfast city and the Western region of Northern Ireland were less likely to perceive the physical separation of both communities as negatively impacting the peace process.Practical implicationsThe implication for practice necessitates that the liberal peacebuilding model includes hybrid approaches to harness external economic aid in post‐accord societies that are inclusive of local people, ideas and concerns.Originality/valueThe value of the paper to practitioners and policymakers is that the research on the impact of external economic aid on cross community conflict must include the triangulation of both qualitative and quantitative methods to fully grasp its complexity.

Demobilization or Remobilization? The Amnesty Program and the Search for Peace in the Niger Delta

ABSTRACT This paper critically analyzes Nigeria's Amnesty Program and raises questions about its prospects for achieving sustainable peace in the Niger Delta. Since the 1990s, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs have been a core component of the peace-building model used by the United Nations and other institutions. A disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program is typically adopted as a means of transition from conflict to peace since its function is to remove one or more of the disputing parties from the scene. Accordingly, peace negotiations generally include disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration clauses, yet in peace-building theory, a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program is expected to comprise only the preliminary phases of a much broader process of addressing root causes that initially motivated the combatants. By failing to include the latter, the Amnesty Program does not conform to this model and therefore raises doubts about its efficacy. By unpacking the notion of amnesty, the Amnesty Program's weakness may be identified. The strategy for conflict resolution in the region centers on amnesty from prosecution and fails to incorporate a deeper strategy of peace building. By presenting amnesty as a beneficent gift to Delta militants, the state seeks to reinforce its claims to exclusive legitimacy and sovereignty. Additionally, the legalistic nature of the Amnesty Program reflects the state's effort to criminalize the militants, thereby sidestepping their claims of grievances, many of which are shared by the general population. The construction of amnesty as the state's gift to criminals is the major challenge to a durable peace because the state ignores the local population's widely shared grievances and fails to address the structural violence in which militancy germinates. The program may be considered a manifestation of the state's integrated win/lose approach to insurgency in the region, thereby suggesting the need for a third-party intervention to bring a fresh, more consensual, and hopefully more promising peace process.

A Dimensão Institucional do Modelo de Peacebuilding: O caso Timor Leste.

This short essay aims at critically analyzing the United Nation’s peacebuilding model in East Timor. As such, it will initially delineate the theorization around the key pillar of this model, the state-building. In a second moment, it will be observed and problematized the materialization of this political-constitutional dimension in the case of East Timor. The essay ends with some final notes and evincing that this model did not resulte in a sustainable peace in East Timor.

Media para a paz e peacebuilding: uma critica à intervenção internacional

This article presents a critical analysis on peace radio within UN peacebuilding missions. It centres its critical view on the tension between the standardised nature of the intervention peacebuilding model and the need to attend the local specificities of the people they are aimed at. It argues that only taking into account the local can peace be sustainable and longlasting since it is only achieved when it finds itself inclusive, auto-reflexive and participative. Radio Okapi, set up by MONUC and Fondation Hirondelle, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was the case study chosen.

The European Union’s Role in the Palestinian Territory after the Oslo Accords: Stillborn State-building

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate about the European Union (EU)’s role as a state-builder in the case of the Palestinian Territory and in particular the extent to which EU policies and programmes in the area have been able to assist the process of state-building in Palestine in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo Accords. By analysing the liberal peace and liberal democracy debate on the one hand and the EU’s state-building and conflict resolution policies on the other hand, the paper aims to evaluate the distinctive role of the EU as a state-builder in the case of the Palestinian Territory. Moreover, by focusing on state-building initiatives such as police and security reform, institution-building, judicial reform, as well as support for the health and education sectors, the paper aims to answer the following questions: why have the EU’s state-building strategies employed after the Oslo Accords in Palestine had so little impact? Can this tell us anything that we do not know about the high politics of the conflict? Does this represent a failure of the whole liberal peace-building model (or not)?

The Limits of Liberal Peacebuilding? International Engagement in the Sri Lankan Peace Process

This essay explores international engagement in the Sri Lankan peace process between 2002 and 2008. The internationalization of peacebuilding in Sri Lanka is analysed as part of a broader international shift towards a model of ‘liberal peacebuilding’, which involves the simultaneous pursuit of conflict resolution, liberal democracy and market sovereignty. The essay provides a detailed and disaggregated analysis of the various exporters, importers and resisters of liberal peacebuilding, with a particular focus on the contrasting ways in which the United National Front (UNF) and the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) regimes engaged with international actors. It is argued that an analysis of the Sri Lankan case provides a corrective to some of the core assumptions contained in much of the literature on liberal peacebuilding. Rather than viewing liberal peacebuilding as simply an hegemonic enterprise foisted upon countries emerging from conflict, the essay explores the ways in which peacebuilding is mediated through, and translated and instrumentalized by, multiple actors with competing interests – consequently liberal peacebuilding frequently looks different when it ‘hits the ground’ and may, as in the Sri Lanka case, lead to decidedly illiberal outcomes. The essay concludes by exploring the theoretical and policy implications of a more nuanced understanding of liberal peacebuilding. It is argued that rather than blaming the failure of the project on deficiencies in its execution and the recalcitrance of the people involved, there is a need to look at defects in the project itself and to explore alternatives to the current model of liberal peacebuilding.

Transnational peace building: bringing salt and light to Colombia and the USA

In 2003, Lutheran World Relief (LWR), an international relief and development NGO, began a peace-building initiative in Colombia. It facilitated the formation of a partnership between peace-sanctuary churches in Colombia and six communities of faith in the US Midwest, co-ordinated by LWR staff. This partnership, called ‘Sal y Luz’ (Salt and Light), has the goal of education and advocacy both in Colombia and in the USA. Sal y Luz represents a powerful example of transnational solidarity for peace. There are also implications and lessons of this case study for the broader field of NGO peace-building work. The Sal y Luz model of peace building brings benefits in terms of NGO accountability and effectiveness. The key innovation of the model is the means by which LWR effectively helped its US constituency to understand and become involved in peace-building work.

The Fragility of Peacebuilding in Nepal

In some strange and paradoxical way the rapid ‘success’ of peacebuilding that the UN has been proclaiming in Kathmandu seems to be another blow to the Western model of peacebuilding: The transition ...

Environmental peace (Gaia peace), premises to develop a model

In Latin America, environmental conflicts have their very own nature, characteristics and dynamics, hence the reason why we need to develop management processes and resolutions that are set within a framework of peace, i.e., a 'social peace' (Gaia). This, in turn, enables the right elements of justice to be put into place. The peace process is, as a result of this action, both solid and long-lasting. Conversely, we have seen how many environmental conflict resolutions have failed in their final objective in the past, i.e., in not achieving peace. A peacebuilding model for the environment (Gaia) should therefore contain elements of foundational support and action in environmental conflict resolution processes, so that they become sustainable over time, benefit all the parties involved, and provide access to natural resources in a sustainable manner.

Young Peacebuilders: Exploring Youth Engagement with Conflict and Social Change

Changes in the nature of war in the course of the last century are thrusting young people inevitably into more intimate relationships with conflict. This article builds on a critical approach to the issues of young people living in conflict zones which promotes their agency in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. ‘Participation’ is explored in the context of conflict transformation theory and is linked with child rights-based approaches to development. Examples of young people's contributions to peacebuilding in several parts of the world are shared demonstrating their political and social capacities. The article concludes that there is a need to understand how young people perceive conflict and what drives some to become involved in violent conflict when others choose non-violence. It is argued that it is necessary to seek non-violent ways for young people to impact conditions that lead to, and out of, conflict. This will require young people's empowerment. Development actors can look to models of conflict transformation and peacebuilding to better understand how to promote inclusion of young people in peace processes and their more constructive engagement with conflict.