Peacebuilding Research Articles

History of an Invisible Idea: The Non-Presence of the Concepts of Peace Building and Reconciliation in the Theory of Violence in Peru.

Peru es un caso claro de conflicto interno violento. Este conflicto, dominado por las acciones del grupo guerrillero Sendero Luminoso tuvo sus anos mas duros durante las decadas de los anos 80 y 90. Sin embrago, es peculiar la poca produccion academica que existe analizando los aspectos de paz y conflicto del pais. Este trabajo busca repasar los trabajos realizados en el pais sobre la violencia y analizar la existencia de contribuciones academicas que traten el conflicto peruano desde la perspectiva de los estudios de paz y conflicto. Para ello se presentan los conceptos de construccion de paz y reconciliacion segun los autores seminales de los estudios de paz y se contrastan esos conceptos con las contribuciones academicas mas destacadas. Este articulo concluye que existe un cuerpo limitado de trabajo al respecto, generado en dos epocas diferenciadas. Durante los anos de la violencia seran trabajos que cuestionan las acciones de Sendero Luminoso y despues de la creacion de la Comision de la Verdad apareceran trabajos mas alineados con los estudios de paz, sobre todo con los conceptos de memoria y reconciliacion.

Reaching the Champions of Social Justice

AbstractSince the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948, the ecumenical voice against social injustice in the church and society has been strengthening. As one expression of unity among the fellowship, the WCC embarked in 2013 on a Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace to work, pray, and walk together for life‐affirming economies, climate change, nonviolent peace building, and reconciliation and human dignity. Champions of these issues exist within the ecumenical movement. Yet one also finds that champions of one theme are pushing back on another theme. Sometimes it is due to diversity of contexts and biblical and theological interpretations. At other times it is due to unconscious bias about the holistic nature of God's mission of justice for all God's people and creation. This paper grapples with this question: Why are people who are so alive to economic and ecological injustice sometimes blind to racial and gender injustice? To answer this, I explore the existence of conscious and unconscious bias despite the many powerful ecumenical statements that have been issued on racial justice.

Sustainable Peace Building and Development in Nigeria’s Post-Amnesty Programme: The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Oil Host Communities

The activities and violence of militants in the Niger Delta which saw the capacity for production of oil in Nigeria fall to an all-time low resulted in the federal government of Nigeria (FGN) announcing the Presidential Amnesty Programme in return for peace in the region. We examine how multinational oil companies’ (MOCs’) corporate social responsibility (CSR) impact on entrepreneurship development and job creation to absorb the youths. 1200 youths were sampled across the nine states of Niger Delta. Results from the use of estimated logit model reveal that GMoU interventions are prevalent in communities with greater ownership, creating room for better projects, sustainability and improved trust; yet the interventions failed to make significant impact on entrepreneurship development and job creation. Clearly, facilitating how youths get involved in skill acquisition and empowerment programmes would help them become entrepreneurs, improving their self-assurance that they can prosper outside militancy activities and violence.

Dayton Legacy – 25 Years of Building Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dayton Legacy – 25 Years of Building Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Peace Building through Religious Tourism in Pakistan: A Case Study of Kartarpur Corridor

Peace Building through Religious Tourism in Pakistan: A Case Study of Kartarpur Corridor

Symbolic Post-Conflict Recovery in the Rwenzori Sub-Region of Uganda

Whereas there is a consensus on the significance of rebuilding conflict-torn states and societies, there is no agreement on how it should be done. The dominant framework of post-war rebuilding is clearly biased to rebuilding the ‘hardware’. This article argues that the government’s attempt to rebuild the Rwenzori sub-region in the aftermath of the Allied Democratic Forces war adopted the conventional approach that pays less attention to rebuilding ‘software’. It further asserts that the recovery programme was symbolic given that government wished to avoid the political consequences of not taking action at all. Symbolism not only led to flawed performance of the recovery programme but also negatively affected peace building in the sub-region. The article advocates not only for a synergy of rebuilding ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ but also for a nuanced approach that triangulates top-down and bottom-up approaches at all stages of post-conflict recovery.

Significance and Issues of Developing Heritage Tourism at Godawaya for Peace in Sri Lanka

Heritage is considered to be anything that someone wishes to conserve or to collect, and to pass on to future generations. Heritage tourism can contribute to reducing stereotypical attitudes in society and it may lead to a behavioural change and then reduce social contradictions. At present, the use of heritage in tourism is a sensitive and dynamic area of development, particularly where communities which were involved in violent conflicts have moved from war to non-war. Sri Lanka in its post-war peace building process is yet to harness heritage tourism as an avenue for peace and to discover its developmental potential and novel perspectives for peace building process. Godawaya in Hambanthota district in the Southern province of Sri Lanka retain archaeological evidence of a prehistoric civilization. The objectives of this research are to explore the archaeological significance of this site, its cultural value, the interconnections between community and to find possibilities of promoting peace through tourism in Sri Lanka. The methodological approach taken to answer the research question was based on grounded theory. This theory had been constructed based on the meaningfulness or understanding of conversations, observations and interpretations made at the research field. Systematic coding, data analysis and theoretical sampling procedures were carried out during the research process that enables the researcher to deduce from diverse patterns of data description into a higher level of abstraction. The main qualitative methods incorporated to the grounded theory were participant observation, unstructured interviewing, observation and documentary materials. The study finds the failure to construct a cohesive identity suffers a major drawback in Sri Lanka’s nation-state building process. This research has explored the potential of this site which can channel the conscientization process to rediscover a common inheritance and identity between the two ethnic groups of Sinhalese and Tamils which can foster peace. This article also discusses how different ideological representations would like to perceive the history, the land and the heritage of Sri Lanka as well as how primordial sentiments are developed leading to the ethnic segregation. This study has identified the potential that heritage tourism has to reduce structural violence by empowering local communities to reduce inter-ethnic, religious and other prejudices.

Who has got what?, Why? And How?: The Political Economy of Reintegration Policy in Aceh

Abstract This article focuses on the power relations between elite and non-elite former GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) combatants in the post conflict reintegration policy in Aceh. A number of scholars have linked the post conflict reintegration to the GAM ex-commanders conflicts over predatory processes of resource appropriation. However what is missing in their account is that the attentions to the rank and file ex-fighters, including women ex-combatants. The finding of the study suggests that the post conflict reintegration has provided opportunities for the former GAM commanders to build and consolidate their political and economic power. Since the former GAM commanders occupied the reconstruction space, they have captured the peace building processes through their predatory behaviour and patrimonial networks. In this context, the ex-commanders GAM elite has become a new dominant post conflict group while the non-elite group of the rank and file ex-combatants, particularly women ex-combatants, lost opportunities to enhance their welfare. As local elites are powerful, they have the capacity to select who are excluded from and included in their alliances. In these circumstances, the welfare outcomes from post conflict reintegration will beframed in terms of ‘who has got what?’, ‘why?’,and ‘how?’.

Everyday violence and bottom-up peace building initiatives by the urban poor in Mumbai

While there has been some research that points to the ‘everyday’ violence in informal settlements that house some of the most marginalised communities in cities of the global South, as much attenti...

The Role of Heritage Interpretation in Building Peace

This article discusses the role of heritage intepretation in building peace. It covers areas such as contested history and sites of memory, and looks at how the interpretation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage can heal wounds created by difficult pasts. It argues that heritage practitioners have an important role in promoting peace by interpreting challenging, painful and emotional histories. Key areas explored are child sexual abuse, contested sites in Japan and Korea and interpretation of atrocities.

Leadership and Statebuilding in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Cameroon

Changing perceptions of security threats post the 9/11 attacks in the United States of America saw the advancement of the idea that international security depended upon fixing fragile states. Based on this premise, statebuilding was constructed as a viable approach to building peace. The normative frameworks associated with peacebuilding have however, gradually given way to a narrow focus on institution building as statebuilding. In pursuing this approach, it is the case that the leadership of these processes is often underemphasised. This article interrogates the impact of this dominant narrative on states that are perceived to be peaceful. By bridging scholarship on the concepts of leadership and statebuilding generally, as well as scholarship on Cameroon’s statebuilding process specifically, this article demonstrates that even for states that are not in conflict, periodic statebuilding is a useful requirement. This article departs from narrowly conceived ideas of leadership and statebuilding and brings into focus the role of leadership as a process in statebuilding practises in Africa. Based on the theoretical discussions and the empirical findings, this article demonstrates that leadership and statebuilding are mutually constitutive processes and leadership is the strongest single driver of an effective statebuilding process.

Negotiating justice: Ceasefires, peace agreements, and post-conflict justice

Post-conflict justice is an integral component in maintaining stability and building peace in the aftermath of civil conflict. Despite its instrumental function, scholars routinely find that policymakers’ choice of justice is shaped by the structural conditions of the post-conflict environment, with outright victories leading to retributive forms of justice and negotiated outcomes yielding restorative forms of justice. However, existing literature conflates ceasefires and peace agreements into a single phenomenon, thereby overlooking the independent effects of each outcome. Leveraging the dual sovereignty framework, this article argues the conflation of negotiated outcomes is problematic because peace agreements and ceasefires generate different post-conflict environments. Relative to ceasefires, peace agreements lead to a reduction in the degree of dual sovereignty because they resolve a conflict’s incompatibility, thereby encouraging efforts to move society beyond war through restorative forms of justice. Due to the persistent threat of recurrent war generated by high levels of dual sovereignty, policymakers following ceasefires will be inclined to pursue retributive forms of justice that may target political opponents or potential defectors to bolster organizational strength. Statistical analyses confirm the underlying expectation that ceasefires and peace agreements yield different post-conflict justice outcomes. Peace agreements, relative to ceasefires, are more likely to be followed by the implementation of amnesties and reparations, whereas ceasefires exhibit a greater probability of yielding purges in the post-conflict environment.

Book Review: Cahill, Lisa Sowle: Blessed are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding

Book Review: Cahill, Lisa Sowle: Blessed are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding

Making music in divided cities: Transforming the ethnoscape

AbstractIn the phenomenon of the divided city – urban environments partitioned along ethno-religious lines as a result of war or conflict – projects seeking to bring segregated people together through community music activities face many operational and psychological obstacles. Divided cities are politically sustained, institutionally consolidated, and relentlessly territorialized by competing ethno-nationalist actors. They are highly resistant to peacebuilding efforts at the state level. This article uses an urban peacebuilding lens (peacebuilding reconceptualized at the urban scale that encompasses the spatial and social dimensions of ethno-nationalist division) to examine the work of community music projects in three divided cities. Through the examples of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Mitrovica Rock School in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and Breaking Barriers (a pseudonym) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we consider the context-specific practices and discourses that are deployed to navigate the local constraints on inter-communal cooperation, but that also contribute to the broader goal of building peace. We find that music-making is a promising strategy of peacebuilding at the urban scale, with both functional and symbolic contributions to make to the task of transforming an ethnoscape into a peacescape.

Personas refugiadas, personas con agencia

espanolBradley, Megan; Milner, James y Peruniak, Blair (eds.). Refugees’ roles in resolving displacement and building peace. Beyond beneficiaries. Georgetown University Press, 2019. 321 pags. EnglishBradley, Megan; Milner, James y Peruniak, Blair (eds.). Refugees’ roles in resolving displacement and building peace. Beyond beneficiaries. Georgetown University Press, 2019. 321 pags. >> The full text articles of this issue are available only in Spanish language

Public relations for peacebuilding: case study from Colombia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to link public relations to peacebuilding. Although scholarship has discussed public relations as relationship management, the nexus between public relations and peace building has been understudied. To address this deficiency, this research studies the negotiations between the Government of Colombia and the FARC-EP separatist group that lead to the landmark peace treaty between the two entities that had fought for over five decades with thousands of deaths. Three research questions addressed the communication factors that contributed to the two sworn enemies – FARC-EP and the Colombian Government – finally sealing a peace agreement; the specific public relations strategies and techniques that led to relationship building between the two sides leading to the landmark peace agreement; and the use of the indicators of relationship building proposed by scholarship in the negotiations between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP.Design/methodology/approachThe case study method was used and a purposive sample of news reports from three national newspapers at specific key dates yielding a final sample consisted of 504 articles was analysed. A codebook with deductive and inductive categories was developed specially to study the existing communication factors (RQ1), public relations strategies and techniques (RQ2), as well as contributions by relationship indicators (RQ3). Given the sensitivity of the issues, only secondary data could be relied upon for this study.FindingsThe results of RQ1 fall within the scope of Grunig’s (2001), Sriramesh’s (1992) and Hung’s (2001) notion of the personal influence model where the leveraging of individuals’ network is important to facilitate communication. Indeed, the relations already existing and established with third parties are revealed to be fundamental to the success of the negotiation process. As for RQ2, findings demonstrate that the Colombian Government used third-party mediation, principled and distributive strategies, while FARC-EP mainly used contending strategies. But results showed that both used compromising during the whole process, and that both transitioned from one-way asymmetrical strategies, such as principled or contending towards compromising along the peace talks. Finally, findings demonstrate evidence of the four indicators of the relationship and their link with public relations techniques. The most evidenced indicators of the relationship were trust, commitment and control mutuality. Trust was the indicator of the relationship the most evidenced in the Colombian case. The dimension was built during the whole process and evolved continually. Distrust was the total between the two enemies at the beginning of the pre-negotiation. However, as parties entered into a relationship, confidence and trust increased.Research limitations/implicationsThe inability to obtain primary data is the major limitation of this study. It was caused by the sensitivity of the topic.Practical implicationsThis study links public relations to a very practical case that is also vastly understudied/underreported – peacemaking/peacebuilding – while also addressing communication by governments and civil society in Latin America – an area that is largely understudied.Originality/valueThis is the first study that links public relations with peacebuilding.

Paz: un sistema humanizador complejo

El presente artículo planteó como problema de investigación la disputa, dispersión y disgregación de distintas nociones de paz a la hora de abordar la fundación y puesta en marcha del naciente proceso de construcción de paz en Colombia y, a posteriori, instó a desafiar esa disgregación e incomunicación desde la representación de una categoría alternativa capaz de integrar, poner en simbiosis e hibridación las perspectivas para ganar corpulencia.
 Bajo un enfoque metodológico cualitativo de tipo exploratoriodescriptivo, se procuró buscar, reconocer, describir y ampliar los contenidos, fundamentos y perspectivas que pueden ser el contenido y el cuerpo amplio de la construcción de paz; reto perceptivo que exigió asociar los métodos complejo/sistémico para abrir un campo de discusión con el fin de re-imaginar una categoría alternativa: un sistema de paz complejo y conscientemente humanizador.
 Como resultado se obtuvo una taxonomía tentativa de las posturas conceptuales actuales y antiguas, la descripción tanto de sus atributos, dimensiones y funciones, como de sus incomunicaciones, restricciones, limitaciones, a manera de un torbellino creativo de lo diverso que condujo a la posibilidad de toparse con una emergente concepción de paz capaz de integrar, poner en diálogo y relacionamiento algunos avances investigativos en materia del cultivo de la paz.

Lisa Sowle Cahill. Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding

Lisa Sowle Cahill. <i>Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding</i>

Empowerment Programmes of Faith-Based Organisations (FBOs) and Socio-economic Well-being of Members in Yenagoa Community, Bayelsa State, Nigeria

This is an investigation on the empowerment programmes of faith-based organizations (FBOs) and socio-economic well-being of members in Yenegoa Communities of Bayelsa. This study lay to rest the controversy surrounding FBOs, whether they are empowering members or exploiting them and the extent to which such organisations have met its goals especially that of capacity building, charity and giving. The survey research method was used for the study. From a population of 12,565 FBOs leaders and members in Yenegoa communities, a sample of 659 participants was selected through proportional random sampling method. Data were collected with a face and content validated self-structured instrument title: Faith-Based Organisations Empowerment Scales (FBOES), (r=0.88). Four research questions were raised and answered using the mean, standard deviation and multiple regression statistics analysis. Results showed that, faith-based organisations provided skills acquisition programmes for member’s empowerment. Majority of the FBOs were actively involved in the empowerment of youth, women and the most vulnerable members of the affiliates and even the host communities. Faith-based organisations derived its goals from the teaching on social capital investment elements of trust, cooperation, mutuality, compromise, reciprocity, courage, integrity, networking, mentoring, and communication for peace building and community development. It was concluded that faith-based organisations empowerment programmes had positive impacts on members’ social and economic well-being. In view of these findings, it was recommended that leaders of FBOs in the communities should moderate their lifestyles, emulate and enhance the example of service, humanness and sacrifice in their engagement.

Conflict analysis: some theoretical and ethical considerations

Hope for development seems to be weathering. In recent years, research on development issues and developmental strategies has been replaced by a burgeoning literature on conflict analysis, conflict transformation and peace building. As the World is confronted with the catastrophic effects of free trade and open financial markets globalization –a catastrophe in terms of quality of life for the majority of the people, as well as in terms of social, gender and economic equality and environmental sustainability– we all are defied by the urgent need to make sense of this state of widespread political violence, Human Rights violations and massive international migration.&#x0D; The purpose of this work is to consider some ethical, theoretical and methodological issues about conducting research on conflict, and especially when dealing with the victims and their attempt to have their voices heard, and to move from victimization to social agency.&#x0D; In part one we give some consideration to the impact of contemporary violence and its manifestations. The second part reviews some of the most influential theories on political violence. The last part deals with some ethical and methodological challenges that stem from the task.