Community Peacebuilding Research Articles

Victims of the Colombian Armed Conflict: The Birth of a Political Actor

A significant addition to the Colombian political landscape over the past ten years is the participation of victims in the debate over the country’s model of transitional justice. This stands in stark contrast with previous periods in Colombian history, when victims -- despite their already growing numbers -- were largely invisible both in the more than twenty successful and unsuccessful peace negotiations that have taken place in the country as well as in the overall political debate. This paper seeks to explain this shift in public attention to the plight of millions of Colombians. It also asks how the average Colombian population evaluates and in what way these opinions reflect tensions between the overall goal of repairing victims and other goals of the Colombian peace-building and development agenda. In brief, the paper argues that international and domestic factors combined to make visible the plight and number of victims in the country and to develop a vast and ambitious transitional justice institutional framework, which will set the tone of transformations for years to come. Like other policies, this has not occurred in a political vacuum: Victims as well as other actors concerned with the shape and scope of transitional justice in Colombia have become mobilized in the pursuit of their interests, endowed with political preferences and a more or less effective repertoire of political strategies. As a result, the discussion about the role of victims and the state and society’s responses to their needs is likely to become a central issue of public debate in the near future. However, the debate has occurred predominantly among a small group of experts, ignoring or underestimating some of the prevailing opinions and attitudes about transitional justice held by the general Colombian population. This may prove problematic as several features of the trade-offs and bargains involved in transitional justice mechanisms will impact large parts of the population via elections, taxes, and processes of community integration of victims and perpetrators, all of which are challenges to the ultimate viability and success of transitional justice mechanisms. For these reasons, this chapter argues that it is important to complement the normative statements of policymakers, activists and organizations with data on the overall victims’ population and on the opinions and attitudes of the average Colombian. In order to so, it resorts to data from the Registro Unico de Victimas (RUV) -- the first attempt to unify information on all types of victimization in the country conducted by the Colombian state -- and from a 2012 survey conducted by a consortium of public and private entities. The RUV data serve to underscore the extent of the suffering. The survey results illustrate some of the structural impediments faced by Colombian victims (such as poverty and little education). In addition, the survey shows that almost a decade of transitional justice pedagogy has paid off in the country: In general, the Colombian population is more aware and understands the magnitude of people impacted by the armed conflict as well as the plight of victims. As a result, a majority of Colombians endorse the wrongfulness of the victims’ experience and the need for reparations. At the same time, the long duration and the complex nature of the Colombian armed conflict -- especially the simultaneous presence of multiple illegal armed actors who have fought over territories over many years, and the similar socio-economic and often geographic origin of victims and combatants (referred to here as social proximity) -- have had an impact on people’s opinions and attitudes. Important fractions of the Colombian population, including victims, are fearful of opportunism in accessing state-provided privileges associated with the status of victims and are reticent to accept privileges for victimized populations to the detriment of larger development goals benefiting all Colombians, illustrating the classic peace-building versus development dilemma that has historically haunted the peace-building community. The chapter also explores the organizational dimension of the victims’ population: According to available data, 7 percent of the more than six million victims are organized in more than 3,000 organizations. This level of dispersion is a result both of heterogeneous experiences of victimization and, so far, of a severe incapability of producing collective action. The small percentage of organized victims raises questions about representation in the political debate. The findings presented here aim to contribute to the developing academic and empirical literature on transitional justice which is still incipient in Colombia, and provide elements for testing some of the prevailing opinions and attitudes about victims in Colombia. It also aims to provide useful insights for practitioners in the global field of transitional justice as many of the findings about the Colombian case are relevant to other transitional contexts around the world.

Theories of Change and Transfer Strategies in Peacebuilding Practice

Theories of Change and Transfer Strategies in Peacebuilding Practice

Healing Africa? Reflections on the peace-building role of a health-based Non Governmental Organization operating in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Whilst there are convincing theoretical arguments about the peace-building potential of the health sector, case studies documenting its interventions remain limited. This article contributes to the existing ‘Peace through Health’ literature by considering the model of HEAL Africa, a health-based non-governmental organization operating in Eastern Congo. Several of HEAL Africa's projects seek to prevent and reduce key risk factors; for conflict, and to contribute to longer term rehabilitation. Many of these interventions are born out of HEAL's emphasis on providing emergency health care – and the neutrality, legitimacy, access and longevity which this generates. However, this focus also tends to act as a limiting factor on the application and resourcing of its conflict prevention and reconstruction efforts. Whilst this case study warns against overstating the potential role of the health sector in promoting peace, HEAL's activities provide evidence of the types of positive contributions that can be made in practice. The role of the health sector, equipped as it is with useful tools for conflict transformation, should therefore be considered more proactively by the peace-building community.

The Process of Peace: A Critical Reflection on the Community Peace and Restoration Fund in the Solomon Islands

The Community Peace and Restoration Fund was established to provide a peace dividend to alienated Solomon Islands communities. This article reflects critically on how the Fund engaged with these communities and its relative success in meeting key peacebuilding indicators. The Fund increased equitable and equal access to resources and contributed to the rebuilding of associational life, utilising peacebuilding methodologies to enhance its community engagement processes. However, the Fund was less successful on a number of fronts, particularly in its interaction with government structures at meso and macro levels. The article analyses why the Fund was so successful at local-level community peacebuilding but failed to capitalise on opportunities at the macro level.

The Nuts and Bolts of Post-Conflict Capacity Building: Practicable Lessons from East Timor

‘Capacity building’ has become a ubiquitous term in the international peacebuilding community. While the need for capacity building in post-conflict contexts is widely accepted, discussions rarely venture into what it is in practical and operational terms, and how it ought to be done. This article 1 examines a major capacity building project in East Timor, focusing on capacity building as it occurs day to day and on the ground. Following a brief overview of the concept of capacity building, it identifies a number of key challenges that arise in initiatives in which internationals work directly with local actors to build their capacity. It then offers a set of concrete proposals, targeted at capacity builders and their managing institutions, for improved practice.

Introduction: Postconflict Peacebuilding and Democratization

Scholars and practitioners have recently given increased attention to the intersection of two concepts: postconflict peacebuilding and democratization or, more broadly, governance. Several factors contribute to this development. First, postconflict peacebuilding itself has become an important concept within international security. The field of peacekeeping, long concerned chiefly with reaching and maintaining durable peace agreements, now embraces the need to address a complex range of challenges in war-torn societies: preventing future armed conflict, redressing past human rights abuses, building effective state institutions, (re)creating a social fabric, and fostering a healthy civil society. (1) Although some question its utility as a concept, peacebuilding has firmly entered the lexicon of peace and security studies. Second, good is increasingly seen as an important concept in postconflict reconstruction. During the 1990s, multilateral and bilateral development agencies brought into their philosophy and programs on economic development. Security specialists have followed that trend, embracing the link between good and durable peace. actors have added good to a postconflict agenda that has historically focused on ensuring immediate military security and regenerating the economy. Preventing future conflicts is not solely a matter of keeping those with guns from using them, but of establishing accountable, transparent, and participatory systems of authority. As United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) administrator Mark Malloch Brown states in his article Democratic Governance: Toward a Framework for Sustainable Peace, is vital not just for ensuring sustainable development, but also for sustaining peace within societies. Third, sound governance, at least in its political dimension, is increasingly identified with some form of democracy. (2) Although controversy surrounds definitions, in this special issue refers to the exercise of political, economic, and social authority in a society. (3) Democracy, used in these articles to mean free and fair electoral competition with minimal civil rights guarantees, is now widely viewed as the only acceptable form of national-level political governance. (4) As Gregory H. Fox demonstrates in his article International Law and the Entitlement to Democracy After War, minimal elements of democracy are part of international legal obligations, and norms of democracy permeate the UN system as well as regional intergovernmental organizations. European and U.S. democracy-promotion programs have grown tremendously in the past decade, and democratic governance now receives most of the UNDP's core funding, as its administrator notes in this issue. assistance, especially to countries experiencing some sort of political or military transition, virtually requires the instauration of electoral democracy, even if authoritarian practices and curbs on freedoms persist, and perhaps half of the world's population lives in political systems that are not meaningfully democratic. Indeed, many such systems are deemed legitimate by the populations living within them. The third wave has its limitations. (5) However, the increasing convergence in practice of these two sub-fields--peacebuilding and democratization--has only recently been accompanied by concentrated attempts by the scholars and practitioners of each to address one another. The postconflict peacebuilding community and the democratization communities have enjoyed remarkably little dialogue. The recent peacebuilding literature, for instance, has not engaged some of the difficult questions posed by research on democratization and governance. Much of that research emphasizes structural preconditions for statehood and democracy that fall beyond the short-term control of policymakers. More importantly, scholars and policymakers increasingly recognize that democratization, especially untimely elections, have sometimes sparked wars and genocide. …