Suchergebnisse

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Civil-military relations are vital to the coherence and effectiveness of post-conflict peacebuilding, but have often been problematic. This article argues that civil-military issues vary systematically in relation to the particular civil and military actors in peacebuilding, and that the coercive content of the external military's mission creates special challenges in each of these sets of relationships. Given the significance of the military footprint, the article presents trade-offs for policymakers intending to use military forces to make peace.

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.

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

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

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

Declaring that a tourist Colombia guarantees a post-conflict reconstruction is not a performative act. We must therefore ask ourselves whether perceiving tourism as a tool in the service of peace is more of a myth or a reality. After a brief look at the recovery of Colombian tourism since the beginning of the 2000s, this article aims to observe some of the challenges that have characterised the sector since the signing of peace agreements between the government and the FARC-Ep, such as the rebuilding the country's image, prostitution and narco-tourism, the issue of access to land and resources, the promotion of eco-tourism and "community" tourism, and the role of this industry in the reintegration of demobilised combatants.

Analyses on how the minorities survive in a peace-rebuilding attempt in a post-conflict society have always been interesting. Through an 8-year participant observation in Bosnia, Asst. Prof. Pickering decided to launch this interesting ethnographic-style inquiry. Following Varshney's (2002) suggestion to overthrow the old studies that looked into just political institutions and elites, the author begins a study on grassroots perspectives. She finds that the minorities must solve their daily problems through political choices that favor the moderate or are inclusive towards the minorities. This book adds and reminds us that beyond "normal" attention to policies from large bodies and majorities, there is a lived experience of the minorities that can be gathered and documented in meaningful ways. ; Analyses on how the minorities survive in a peace-rebuilding attempt in a post-conflict society have always been interesting. Through an 8-year participant observation in Bosnia, Asst. Prof. Pickering decided to launch this interesting ethnographic-style inquiry. Following Varshney's (2002) suggestion to overthrow the old studies that looked into just political institutions and elites, the author begins a study on grassroots perspectives. She finds that the minorities must solve their daily problems through political choices that favor the moderate or are inclusive towards the minorities. This book adds and reminds us that beyond "normal" attention to policies from large bodies and majorities, there is a lived experience of the minorities that can be gathered and documented in meaningful ways.

In 2001, the Rwandan government began the phased introduction of a decentralisation programme throughout the country. The new programme aimed at countering citizens' social, economic and political marginalisation which was widely viewed as constituting one of the principal drivers of the horrific genocide in 1994 in which almost one million Rwandans were brutally massacred. This research aims at analysing the extent to which Rwanda's decentralisation process is meeting these aims. Employing a framework which differentiates between procedural participation (electoral participation); substantive participation (ongoing active participation in local decision making); and participation as cost-sharing (ongoing participation through financial contributions and voluntary labour), four main findings are discussed. First, although there is much talk among officials and commentators about bottom-up planning processes emanating from local village meetings (formerly ubudehe and now umuganda), and while such an ethos underpins the original Decentralisation Policy formulated in 2001, the accompanying legislation is somewhat scant in its references to such a form of participation as well as to mechanisms whereby this might take place. Instead, a focus on community mobilisation in participation as cost-sharing is more apparent. Second, a shift in emphasis within the decentralisation programme over time is evident. The current national strategy of fast-track economic development as a route out of poverty has been superimposed on the original goal of reconciliation and community building with an attendant emphasis on results over process. This is evident in the 2013 revisions to the Decentralisation Policy as well as in the shift, during the second phase, from political decentralisation toward administrative decentralisation evidenced in the introduction of public management frameworks such as the imihigo and the emphasis on the administrative capacity of local leaders. It is also evident in the demise of the local planning ...