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While there has been a long engagement with the impact of time on peacebuilding policies and practice, this engagement has to date focused predominately on issues of short- versus long-term initiatives, and of waning donor support for such initiatives. More recently, the critical peacebuilding turn has focused attention on the politics of the everyday as being essential to emancipatory endeavours enacted through localisation. Yet despite this, time itself has not been the subject of analysis, and the politics of time have not been integrated into the study of peacebuilding. This article, drawing both on historical institutionalist and on critical international studies analyses of temporality, provides a framework for analysing the impacts of time on the potential to achieve emancipatory peace. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Cambodia, this article asserts that a focus on Policy Time, Liberal Political Time, and Intergenerational Time highlights how peacebuilding initiatives are framed by disparate timescapes that limit the visibility of local chronopolitics, and that this in turn restricts local empowerment and resistances.

Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas can be a core component of peacebuilding, providing support for the restoration of government functions, delivery of basic services, the rule of law, and economic revitalization. What has worked, why it has worked, and what is scalable and transferable, are key questions for both development practice and research into how peace is built and the interactive role of domestic and international processes therein. Despite a wealth of research into these questions, significant gaps remain. This volume speaks to these gaps through new analysis of a selected set of well-regarded aid interventions. Drawing on diverse scholarly and policy expertise, eight case study chapters span multiple domains and regions to analyse Afghanistan's National Solidarity Programme, the Yemen Social Fund for Development, public financial management reform in Sierra Leone, Finn Church Aid's assistance in Somalia, Liberia's gender-sensitive police reform, the judicial facilitators programme in Nicaragua, UNICEF's education projects in Somalia, and World Bank health projects in Timor-Leste. Analysis illustrates the significance of three broad factors in understanding why some aid interventions work better than others: the area of intervention and related degree of engagement with state institutions; local contextual factors such as windows of opportunity and the degree of local support; and programme design and management.

Critics of the liberal peace paradigm call for the consideration of local realities in order to come to a more sustainable, comprehensive form of peace – which is not imposed by external actors. The "local" is generally seen as the place where bottom-up or grassroots peace is developed in contrast to the liberal peace proposed by external international agents. Whereas critical peacebuilding literature stresses the difference between the "liberal" and the "local" and acknowledges the incoherence of liberal actors, much less attention has been paid to differences and variations within the "local" sphere. Drawing on empirical research in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) we argue that the "local" is much more complex than presumed by many critics of the liberal peace. We argue that a) the local is fragmented and actors and issues are highly contested; b) neither actors nor discourses are purely local; and c) the very idea of a coherent collective local agency is contested locally.

As one of the most conflict prone regions, the importance of research focusing on peacebuilding on the African continent cannot be over-emphasized. Since the end of the colonial rule, the development of peace and security context in the African continent has been influenced by a specific agenda linked with the removal of the imperial forces. The peace and security narratives have highlighted the need for "African solutions for African problems" with a reference to African sovereignty and ownership of peace and security issues on the continent. At the same time, peace interventions by African states have proven to be no less controversial than international alternatives. Such contemporary contradictions in peacebuilding context in Africa highlight the need to analyze the notion of African peacebuilding, the discussions around peacebuilding activities on the continent and elaborate how the topic is addressed in current discussions. With the use of narrative analysis, this thesis seeks to contribute to this need by analyzing how experts of peacebuilding produce information about the challenges, prospects and future trends of peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The research aims to answer what kind(s) of narrative(s) about peacebuilding in Africa is produced by the Kujenga Amani ('building peace' in Swahili) podcast of the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council. Moreover, this thesis seeks to contribute to the discussion on how information is produced and how the production of certain narratives about peacebuilding in Africa from certain positions (re)shape the realities they reflect. The resulting narratives are the needy Africa -narrative, African first -narrative and real peace is local but liberal -narrative. The first two narratives answer how the African is narrated through the peacebuilding in Africa and the last narrative what kind of peace is narrated through peacebuilding in Africa. The results create a paradox where the 'African' perspectives, 'African' ownership and 'local' peacebuilding are promoted as a critique to the failures of liberal peace while at the same time, the ideals of peace and peacebuilding in Africa are connected to the liberal peace theory. The same contradiction of reasoning the current state of peacebuilding in Africa is present in all three narratives. This thesis concludes that the widespread discourse of 'African peacebuilding' and the promotion of 'local' and 'African' approaches to peacebuilding seems to create a picture of, as if there would be, agreed understanding of both the content and meaning of these concepts as well as the consequences of creating policies which reflects a certain understanding of the 'African'. In the light of this thesis however, such consensus over the concepts remains to be defined, which sets both hindrances of developing efficient and adaptable peacebuilding approaches and increases the risk of misusage of the concepts to cover other motives and agendas. This thesis concludes by stating that the concept of 'African peacebuilding' needs to be further evaluated and its contextual usages and motives assessed in order to avoid using the term just as a rhetorical façade. Furthermore, it introduces an idea of a needs-based peacebuilding approach, which moves beyond pre-defined conceptual categorizations exposed from the outside that produce unnecessary distinctions between liberal, local and African and instead focus on the genuine engagement of the local actors and their context specific needs.

Any peace process is an exercise in the negotiation of big data. From centuries old communal hagiography to the reams of official texts, media coverage and social media updates, peace negotiations generate data. Peacebuilding and peacekeeping today are informed by, often respond and contribute to big data. This is no easy task. As recently as a few years ago, before the term big data embraced the virtual on the web, what informed peace process design and implementation was in the physical domain – from contested borders and resources to background information in the form of text. The move from analogue, face-to-face negotiations to online, asynchronous, web-mediated negotiations – which can still include real world meetings – has profound implications for how peace is strengthened in fragile democracies.

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 from war to peace is proceeding quite smoothly and the political institutions in the capital city are undergoing significant transformation yet this transition has yet to make a difference in the lives of most citizens and for the overall'development' of Nepal. In some ways, the current changes remind of the post-1990situation where a newly democratized Nepal produced a 'good governance bubble' in Kathmandu, but was unable to address many problems and grievances that finally led to the violent conflict. Prescribing more of the 'status quo ante' medicine as many donors and international aid organizations continue to do is another sign of the lack of historical and institutional memory that development not only in Nepal suffers from. In other words, isn'tt he very success of the political transformation a sign that peacebuilding may create stability on the surface, but at the same time fail to achieve its ultimate goal even under favourable conditions: To contribute to long-term, sustainable development and broad'poverty reduction' in the post-conflict environment?

Although attention on peace in Northern Ireland often focuses on negotiations, power sharing and(dis)agreements at a political level, some of the most difficult and critical processes of building peace occurs at a societal and interpersonal level through sustained work to build and maintain relationships between individuals and communities. This work, which is often variably labelled peacebuilding, reconciliation, and/or community relations work, is dispersed, varied and much of it is undertaken within the community and voluntary sector. It comprises different methods and activities, engages different demographics, and is orientated towards a range of specific objectives, however the core of this work lies in bringing people together, whether within social groups or across communal divides, to address the direct and/or indirect legacies of conflict and to build relationships and transform conditions to develop a stable, sustainable peace. This report outlines the findings of a study examining how organisations engaged in peacebuilding work responded and adapted to the immediate impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic on their ability to 'bring people together'. The study also examined the structures and constraints which impacted their responses, and participants' early reflections on the impacts of this period on peacebuilding and community relations in the shorter and longer term

The United States wastes approximately 133 billion pounds of food annually while 15 million American households are food insecure. Current and proposed U.S. legislation attempts to encourage food recovery efforts to address both of these problems by incentivizing donation of surplus foods by businesses to charitable organizations, yet legislation has failed to deliver. Food insecure individuals who use food banks or other safety net programs are often required to provide personal information and are subject to scrutiny in the process of acquiring food. Information can be leveraged in different ways to stigmatize or marginalize those in need. This presentation discusses the relationships between current legislation, safety net programs, and food insecure individuals to demonstrate that food recovery legislation is not a magic bullet that will address food insecurity or food waste in a system that has a long history of treating poverty as a character flaw.

Women's organisations aimed at conflict resolution have been active in Guinea-Bissau in the past decade under the auspices of international and regional bodies, particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United Nations (UN). Guinea-Bissau is a small Western African country of 1.8 million habitants that declared its independence from Portugal in 1973 after a long independent war. The country recent history has been marked by repeated military coups, political assassinations, and the fragility of state institutions. In this article we ask what was the role of women organisations in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in a country marked by a prolonged and systemic political crisis? ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The Covid-19 pandemic is not only a health challenge. In the MENA region, against the backdrop of protracted conflicts, instability, and an overall deterioration in socio-economic conditions, the coronavirus crisis adds another layer of vulnerability and has already had long-lasting repercussions on human security across the region. Moreover, as hybrid actors take on an important role as security providers amid the pandemic in a context of limited or absent oversight, risks associated to a lack of accountability, ethno-religious discrimination, human rights abuses, and gender-based violence grow. While classical approaches to security provision tend to portray non-state actors and the State as inherently at odds, the complexity of a rapidly evolving security landscape throughout the region should trigger a revision of the very concept of effective governance. Against this backdrop, how should Security Sector Reform (SSR) strategies and programmes adapt? What lessons can be drawn from selected case studies such as Iraq, Libya, and Yemen?

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The authors expose the tensions and contradictions in different clusters of peacebuilding activities, including peace negotiations; statebuilding; security sector governance; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Essays also address the institutional framework for peacebuilding in Africa and the ideological underpinnings of key institutions, including the African Union, NEPAD, the African Development Bank, the Pan-African Ministers Conference for Public and Civil Service, the UN Peacebuilding Commission, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court. The volume includes on-the-ground case study chapters on Sudan, the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Niger Delta, Southern Africa, and Somalia, analyzing how peacebuilding operates in particular African contexts. The authors adopt a variety of approaches, but they share a conviction that peacebuilding in Africa is not a script that is authored solely in Western capitals and in the corridors of the United Nations. Rather, the writers in this volume focus on the interaction between local and global ideas and practices in the reconstitution of authority and livelihoods after conflict. The book systematically showcases the tensions that occur within and between the many actors involved in the peacebuilding industry, as well as their intended beneficiaries. It looks at the multiple ways in which peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are reinforced, questioned, reappropriated, and redesigned by different African actors. A joint project between the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge.

This chapter introduces Complexity and Adaptive Peacebuilding and considers how it contributes to the contemporary hybridity debate. Following a brief introduction to Complexity theory, this chapter explores the utility of a complex systems perspective to expand our understanding of hybrid peacebuilding. Adaptive peacebuilding is then introduced as an approach that can help hybrid peacebuilding cope with the uncer- tainty dilemma that is a characteristic of complex social systems, as well as manage the relational dimension of hybrid peacebuilding through a collaborative approach. ; publishedVersion

On a recent visit to Mogadishu I was again confronted with the tension between local ownership and international self-interest. On the one hand was the Somali President, who wanted to assert his sovereign authority and lead the peace process according to his vision for Somalia. On the other hand, there was a powerful but diverse international community that has the resources necessary to enhance peace, though such resources were accompanied by a set of ideas concerning what the Somali President should be doing. Officially everyone claimed to support the Federal Government of Somalia, but in reality each outside nation and organisation is engaged in Somalia for its own strategic political, security and economic needs and interests.

The book analyzes the relationship between religion and peacebuilding through three major topics: forgiveness, reconciliation, and memory in post-conflict settings. In the first part, the book explores the differences between various forms of forgiveness (self-forgiveness, interpersonal forgiveness, intergroup forgiveness), ethical imperatives, and religious connotations behind the term. The second part addresses the challenges of reconciliation, especially when the term is presented as a political or an ideological project to be obeyed. By positing the disparity between 'reconciliation with something' and 'reconciliation with someone' the chapter outlines the potential dangers of reconciliatory activities that have little sensitivity to victims and leave no space for public deliberation. The chapter on memory is centered around two axes: memory as legacy and memory as pathology. It discusses the importance of constructing common mnemonic frameworks related to past tragedies, but it also presents how elements of tragic memories can obstruct groups' ability to 'come to terms with the past' and impede intergroup dialogue. The final chapter outlines how religion interacts with those three elements and subsequently influences peacebuilding processes.