Peacebuilding Practice Research Articles

War or peace tweets? The case of Pakistan

This study explores the application of social media in a violent conflict and examines the role that Twitter can play in communicative processes in light of peacebuilding practices. It bridges a gap in communication research by conducting a war/peace framing analysis on Twitter regarding the second deadliest terrorist attack in Pakistan. Our results challenge the idealistic perspectives of peace communication scholars, who predicted that digital platforms would lead to a strong peace framing approach. Similar to traditional media, the tweets were dominated by war frames. Results also showed the amount of war and peace indicators varied over time. Further, findings suggest the narrative that ultimately failed to highlight a peace framework, was largely shaped by local events and the power of traditional stakeholders.

Reconstructing the International Peace Architecture in the Asian Century

ABSTRACT This introductory paper for the special issue on Reconstructing the International Peace Architecture (IPA) in the Asian Century outlines the background to, the objective and the scope of, and the key contributions of the special issue. A fundamental problem that each contributor has underlined is the inability of the existing IPA to effectively cope with emerging counter-peace challenges in the face of the rise of Asian powers and the global geopolitical rivalry. This special issue seeks to address the following questions: (1) how would the rise of Asian powers affect global power's framing of peace, and its international and local hybridity within the IPA; (2) how might the interests of the Global North, Emerging Powers, and the Global South be addressed simultaneously or be integrated with the IPA; and (3) how global institutions such as the United Nations might incorporate non-Western values, customs, norms and standards into their doctrines and practices of peacebuilding? This paper offers some speculations about peacebuilding, statebuilding and development assistance in the new international relations in which China plays a major role.

Norm Contestation and Normative Transformation in Global Peacebuilding Order(s): The Cases of China, Japan, and Russia

AbstractFocusing on the disconnect between mainstream “liberal” peacebuilding and the discourses and practices of “new” and “alternative” peacebuilding actors, this article develops a nonbinary approach that goes beyond norm localization to capture the ways in which major powers influence the nature, content, and direction of normative change. Within the context of their bilateral and multilateral contributions to the “global peacebuilding order,” what forms and types of interventions are conceived by these actors as peacebuilding? How, in turn, has the substantive content of their peacebuilding practices (re)shaped norms and narratives in international peacebuilding efforts? Based on extensive empirical research of the peacebuilding policies and activities of China, Japan, and Russia, this article analyzes the way in which these “top-top” dynamics between norms embedded in the liberal narrative and major powers with competing visions can influence peacebuilding as practiced and pursued in host states. In doing so, it brings together research on global norms and peacebuilding studies and offers a simple yet analytically powerful tool to better understand the evolution of global peacebuilding order(s) and the role of rising powers in (re)shaping global governance.

Storytelling: Restorative Approaches to Post-2003 Iraq Peacebuilding

ABSTRACT Top-down national reconciliation initiatives overlook the significance of, and connection between, story and culture in social conflict resolution. They have thus failed to emerge in post-2003 Iraq. This article draws on the theoretical insights from social constructionism to examine the potential of centreing storytelling within a bottom-up restorative peacebuilding process. It posits that integrating storytelling-based practices, such as restorative justice dialogue and restorative education, within Iraq's legal and educations systems can promote an inclusive, cross-communal public discourse and facilitate bottom-up and inclusive peacebuilding practices.

The Rise of China’s Developmental Peace: Can an Economic Approach to Peacebuilding Create Sustainable Peace?

ABSTRACT The rise of China’s international peace activities has brought new challenges to the notion and practice of peacebuilding. China employs a style of “developmental peace” in the developing countries of Asia and Africa. Developmental peace prioritises economic development without introducing change to the local government. This raises the question of whether or not a focus on economic development can create sustainable peace in post-conflict societies. We are in a transition period where China is leading a new style of peacebuilding. China, dissatisfied with the current norms in international peace, is trying to challenge and contest Western-dominated norms of peacebuilding. The question is, can China’s style of focusing mainly on addressing economic underdevelopment create sustainable peace in post-conflict societies?

It’s the Little Things: The Role of International Interveners in the Social (re)Construction of the International Peace Architecture

ABSTRACT Much peace and conflict scholarship groups individual international interveners together as ‘the international’, treating them more as an ideational structure – the international peace architecture – than as individual agents. This article brings foreign policy analysis scholarship into conversation with constructivist scholarship to propose analytical questions that can be used to study the role that individual international interveners play in socially constructing the international peace architecture. It proposes questions at both the micro scale of individual international interveners and the meso scale of the international peace architecture, that is, the organisations that make peacebuilding policy and practice peacebuilding work. Analysis guided by these questions could inform future considerations of what peacebuilding means, who is a suitable candidate for performing peacebuilding work, the way that peacebuilding is practiced, and ultimately on the security of the conflict-affected populations in which peacebuilding interventions are conducted.

Gender Perspectives in Contemporary Peacebuilding: Collaborative Approaches to Conflict Responses

This article argues the need to prioritize local co-development of peacebuilding approaches to ensure context-specific and culturally relevant peace efforts. With the recognition that local populations remain primary actors within conflicts, it is argued that international peacebuilders must work with locals to ensure effective peacebuilding efforts. By applying a gender and humanitarian approach to peacebuilding analysis, in both theory and practice, this article offers an alternative, complementary approach to the ‘local-turn’ theory in contemporary peacebuilding. The application of international peace and security frameworks – such as Women, Peace and Security resolutions – informs this piece and offers proven successes for collaborative and local partnerships in building effective peace.

Building Peace in the Shadow of War: Women-to-Women Diplomacy as Alternative Peacebuilding Practice in Myanmar

ABSTRACT Conventional assumptions locating peacebuilding temporally after violence have largely prevented exploration of how peacebuilding is practiced amidst conditions of ongoing violence. This article addresses this gap by analysing how Myanmar women’s activists have devised strategies in pursuit of peace, amidst ongoing armed conflict, from the 1990s and onwards. The findings demonstrate that women’s inter-ethnic cooperation contributed to transform conflict divides long before the initiation of formal national peace negotiations in 2011. Further, theorizing these peacebuilding practices, the article provides new insights into the dynamics of women’s peace activism of relevance beyond the case of Myanmar.

Justicia alternativa y construcción del Estado desde lo local en el contexto rural colombiano

Con esta investigación, se propone exponer y analizar algunas prácticas de justicia alternativa y de resolución de conflictos desarrolladas por comunidades campesinas en la región del Catatumbo(Norte de Santander, Colombia), en un contexto donde la presencia del conflicto armado y la implementación del acuerdo de paz permiten debatir sobre la legitimidad y legalidad de dichas prácticas alternativas de justicia y convivencia ciudadana. En esta investigación se plantea como hipótesisque el fortalecimiento de las prácticas de justicia alternativa, especialmente las desarrolladas por las comunidades campesinas, contribuyen a la construcción del Estado desde lo local.A través del análisis de la normatividad vigente, las vertientes teóricas y la descripción fenomenológica de las prácticas comunitarias, se exponen los dilemas a los que se enfrentan las comprensiones sobre la justicia, los métodos de resolución de conflictos y las prácticas de construcción de paz en un contexto donde aún no se ha superado el conflicto armado.

Reciprocal institutional visibility: Youth, peace and security and ‘inclusive’ agendas at the United Nations

Within the architecture of the United Nations (UN), formal recognition of the contributions of historically marginalised individuals and communities to peacebuilding denotes a positive shift in rhetoric and practice. Alongside broader institutional moves towards ‘sustaining peace’; the emergence of a ‘Youth, Peace and Security’ agenda since 2015 formalises attention to youth as positive contributors to peacebuilding and in responding to violence. This article situates the Youth, Peace and Security agenda within broader institutional and academic attention on ‘inclusive peace’. It considers the ongoing challenges in legitimising youth inclusion; and positions this emergent agenda in relation to the gains made by the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and the establishment of the UN’s sustaining peace agenda. These explorations demonstrate the value of considering the evolution of inclusive peace agendas together, while remaining mindful of their distinctive characteristics, to better understand the potential of inclusive approaches to peace. It argues that the Youth, Peace and Security agenda should be understood as a key element of shifts in UN peacebuilding practice towards inclusivity that enable visibility and legitimacy to a broader range of peace actors. We suggest that greater recognition of the contributions of youth to the broader ‘inclusive and sustaining peace’ mandates is needed.

It Matters How You ‘Do’ Gender in Peacebuilding: African Approaches and Challenges

The article draws attention to the consequences of simplistically equating gender, sex and women when doing peacebuilding. Drawing on the ambivalent nature of security architecture interventions from the African continent, I make a case for keeping a variety of conceptual approaches to gender mainstreaming in mind in order to avoid a narrow fixation on adding women. I show through selected examples how institutional frameworks and commitments may appear progressive but could have potentially exclusionary effects. Gender is an important lens to analyse peacebuilding practices and commitments, but only if viewed as an action or means of ‘doing’ that disrupts additive liberal approaches to peacebuilding. As an alternative, the article proposes a gender-relational and intersected analysis of everyday securities and peacebuilding. A focus on lived, gendered and racialised experiences of insecurity and peacebuilding at the everyday level offsets the abstract and universalised approach adopted by states as well as regional and continental players. The article concludes that approaches to gender mainstreaming through sameness, difference and diversity should be seen as complementary to allow space for a context-specific, thick analysis of gender relations on the ground as well as gendered processes of structural or institutional change.

Dealing With Sri Lanka’s Demons: Using Documentary Film for Peacebuilding

Documentary film is a popular resource amongst peacebuilding organisations and practitioners. Despite this popularity, research on documentary film is still emerging in peace and conflict studies. This article explores documentary film’s role in the study and practice of peacebuilding by examining the documentary Demons in Paradise and its engagement with issues of peace and conflict in post-war Sri Lanka. This article makes conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions. Drawing from empirical research, I identify and discuss documentary film’s engagement along three analytical angles: documentary film as a text, within social processes, and within research processes. Under each angle, I explore how empirical observations and understanding of peace emerge through the visual, using diverse methods and data, including interviews, participant observation, visual elicitation in post-screening focus groups, and film analysis. I conclude that documentary film can contribute to the study and practice of peacebuilding by offering multiple analytical angles that elucidate plural, disparate understandings of peace in post-war societies.

Environmental peacebuilding from below: customary approaches in Timor-Leste

Abstract Environmental peacebuilding is the integration of natural resource management into conflict prevention, resolution and recovery so as to support peace and environmental sustainability. Most studies have been of cases where there is significant involvement of external (usually international) actors. They thus provide implicit support for liberal peacebuilding practice, which is itself the subject of much critique. Conversely, documented examples of environmental peacebuilding from below are rare. We analyse an endogenously emerging environmental peacebuilding institution, the customary tara bandu process in Timor-Leste. We explain the way tara bandu is used bottom-up to promote the sustainable use of natural resources and more peaceful relations. Tara bandu proves to be a successful, locally diverse environmental peacebuilding institution. We further show how recent attempts by international peacebuilders and state institutions to employ tara bandu have somewhat ignored the way it is deeply interwoven with local social and spiritual relations, and in so doing have jeopardized its legitimacy and efficacy. This suggests that attempts from outside actors to facilitate environmental peacebuilding may be constrained by a mismatch between theorized norms of social and environmental relations (such as ‘shared interests’) and local cultural particularities.

‘To romanticise or not to romanticise the local’: local agency and peacebuilding in the Balkans

ABSTRACT Over the last decade there has been increasing attention within peace and conflict studies on the so-called ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding where the role of local actors, their agency and their relationship to international actors is strongly emphasised. Still, even with widespread academic optimism about the emancipatory potential of the local, strong caveats of ‘not romanticising the local’ are constantly repeated. By looking at the Balkan countries and their traditional practices of peacebuilding, this article asks whether the local has the potential to be the empowering agent or if such expectations are much too ambitious, both at the academic and policy level. Drawing on the research findings which show the persistence of coercive and noncoercive local peacebuilding practices, the article poses the Paris question once again: should liberal peacebuilding be saved, and if so, where are the locals in this rescue attempt?

НЕЛИБЕРАЛЬНОЕ МИРОТВОРЧЕСТВО И РЕГИОНАЛЬНАЯ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКАЯ ДИНАМИКА В ПОСТСОВЕТСКОЙ РОССИИ

Over the post-Soviet period, the North Caucasus has been in the focus of Russian peacebuilding practices. Analysing the developments in Kabardino-Balkaria, we demonstrated the causal relationship between stabilisation by the federal centre and regional political dynamics. We used the framework drawn from conflict studies to interpret the strategies implemented by the national government and political settlement analysis to describe the dominant political settlements that emerged under the successive heads of the republic. The first political settlement was a result of institutional arrangement within a broad elite coalition with the late-Soviet nomenklatura in its foundation. Indirect rule by Moscow amounted to transfers of budget subventions in exchange for the provision of relative stability in the region. In the early 2000s, this political settlement failed to effectively respond to internal political problems; amidst federal recentralisation, the new political settlement was established in the republic. It was marked by reduced inclusivity of elites and greater dependence on the federal centre. This political settlement lacked success in tackling complications of elite cleavages and religious violence. In 2013, Moscow replaced the republican governor and constructed a new institutional arrangement with larger subservience to federal elites and substantial attention to security matters. Thus, peacebuilding practices implemented by the centre sought to stabilise the situation in the region; it resulted in a successful tightening of vertical elite control but at the cost of reducing the inclusiveness of the political system within Kabardino-Balkaria.

Peacebuilding through the Lens of an Emancipatory Peacebuilding Paradigm

Critical and Emancipatory Theory (CET) of peacebuilding emerged as the sixth school of thought in Peace and Conflict Studies to critique the liberal and neoliberal approaches to peacebuilding. CET contends that liberal and neoliberal approaches to peacebuilding are discriminatory and biased, perpetrates the interest of Western elites, hinders the achievement of social justice, and considers the local as insignificant for peacebuilding. A call for the reformation of the liberal and neoliberal approaches necessitated the CET school of thought to outline certain principles and guidelines that could guide the practice of peace-building. Different methodologies, intervention strategies, principles and approaches that could guide praxis have therefore been advanced by scholars, researchers, and practitioners. This paper therefore examines and reflects on the multiplex methodologies in peacebuilding, the adoption of a multidisciplinary approach to understanding peace and peacebuilding, and the question of intervention in post-war peacebuilding, the principles that guide the implementation of peacebuilding from the lens of Critical and Emancipatory school of thought. This piece contend that CET approach may not be self-sufficient but would be the most appropriate way to decentralize the peacebuilding process and, as such, local or indigenous peacebuilding processes must be encouraged while acknowledging the salient role of the international community as well.

Exploring the Potential of Cross-Regional Dialogue Platforms in Protracted Con- flict Settings

Protracted conflicts like those in the South Caucasus and Moldova stand as examples of the limits of international peace-building practices in addressing conflict transformation in various ethnic-marked conflicts, and in promoting reconciliation across the deep divides that these long-standing conflicts have generated within and among societies. A major challenge to supporting the transformation of protracted conflicts is that the conflict settings have been solidified as a new normality, and the polarised division between neighbours and within societies has been institutionalised. To address these challenges, we conceptualise cross-regional dialogue as a third-party facilitated process that brings together actors from various protracted conflict settings thus ensuring a greater diversity of opinions and societal standings. Cross-regional formats of dialogue, in our view, provide a space for suspending the dominant mutual antagonisms and for creative thinking about new horizons for the shared future. They enable participants and organisers to break away from the problem-solving paradigm as well as from the bilateral format of dialogues concentrated on one conflict, and thus they can be seen to provide safe spaces for dialogue in the midst of protracted conflicts.

The role of international humanitarian law in the search for peace: Lessons from Colombia

AbstractInternational humanitarian law (IHL) has traditionally been seen as a legal framework regulating armed hostilities, having little to do with peace. However, recent peacemaking and peacebuilding practice has consistently relied on IHL to frame peace efforts, mainly in non-international armed conflicts. This article explores the relationship between IHL and peace, looking at practice in Colombia, where IHL has been used in a creative way as a means to build trust, facilitate peace negotiations and enforce the resulting peace agreement. Looking at this case, the article offers general insights on how IHL can facilitate the end of conflict and reintegration, frame accountability and reparation, and shield peace deals under a framework in which both State and non-State actors can find a common bargaining zone in their search for peace.

‘We Aren't Killing Each Other, but We Bear Grudges that Could Be Sparked’: How Interreligious ‘Peace’ and Non-peace Coexist in a West African City

ABSTRACT An impact of the continual occurrence of Christian–Muslim conflicts in northern Nigeria is the direction of both academic and peace-building attention to the zones of conflict in the region, partly because it is assumed that it is the conflict or post-conflict areas that are deeply divided and should be dealt with. But the reality is that even the religiously mixed parts of the region where there has been no case of interreligious violence for years have only a fragile peace. In this article, I highlight an idea that has been around in Peace Studies: that the absence of intergroup violence does not necessarily mean the presence of peace between groups, and that, even in religiously mixed settings where interreligious violence has been absent for years, there could be serious interreligious and intrareligious divisions, hatred, suspicion and other threats to the existing partial peace. This was the case in Abuja, where I conducted fieldwork from January to August 2019. I contend that this has important implications for our visualization and mapping of (non)peaceful settings, our theory and practice of peace-building in northern Nigeria and other religiously mixed societies, and our study of Christian–Muslim or interreligious relations.

Gaps in knowledge about local peacebuilding: a study in deficiency from Jos, Nigeria

ABSTRACTThe emphasis on local or hybrid efforts in peacebuilding literature brings front and centre the importance of being rooted within a particular context, with leadership and vision for social change and justice proffered by local actors. This is the same emphasis found in development literature and a necessary foundation for transformation. Scholars and practitioners nevertheless also note a role for outsiders in supporting local efforts (eg Lederach in 2005). Yet a significant challenge arises for outsiders, and to some extent local actors: how do you know what was tried or is underway that you might support or from which you might learn? This paper reports findings from a collaborative research project that examined the gap between the practice of peacebuilding locally and internationally available ‘knowledge’ via publications produced on local peacebuilding in Jos, Nigeria, between 2001 and 2008. It identifies a staggering gap between efforts and knowledge in the form of publications. The paper discusses the implications of the findings in terms of what it means for outsiders when thinking about helping resource local transformation efforts.