From Idea to Implementation: Standing up the Civilian Response Corps
Peace Operations and the Government of Humanitarian Spaces
The article identifies how the nexus between democracy, security, humanitarianism and development was built up from the 1990s. It analyses how the discourse of post-conflict peacebuilding has emerged as a notable component of a liberal democratic international order. The article argues that the transformations in peacekeeping operations depend upon a specific spatiotemporal combination ? a cleavage between a global and a humanitarian space and the temporality of development. For South American countries, participation in peacekeeping operations became a way to assert themselves as participants of a liberal democratic international order and a reflexive mode to strengthen the process of transformation of their own societies in order to be integrated into a new global cartography.
Non-State Actors, Peacebuilding and Security Governance in West Africa: Beyond Commercialisation
Commitment Problems or Bidding Wars? Rebel Fragmentation as Peace Building
After highly fragmented civil wars, order is often secured through the selective co-optation of rebel field commanders and atomized insurgents. This paper presents a formal model of civil war settlement as a coalition formation game between various regime and rebel factions. This approach emphasizes the ability of installed civilian rulers to lure warlords into the state based on promises of future wealth, then use divide-and-rule tactics to pit different warlord factions against one another. Quantitative and qualitative data from Tajikistan, including an original data set of warlord incorporation and regime purges during wartime reconstruction, are used to evaluate the model.
Issue Conflict Accumulation and the Dynamics of Strategic Rivalry
Efficiency versus Sovereignty: Delegation to the UN Secretariat in Peacekeeping
This article analyses why the UN’s members delegate resources to the UN Secretariat in the sensitive field of peacekeeping. It argues that the Secretariat can carry out planning and implementation functions more efficiently, but that the states remain wary of potential sovereignty loss. Through a mixed methods approach, this article provides evidence for such a functional logic of delegation, but shows that it only applies from the late-1990s on. The change in approach of states towards delegation can be explained by feedback from the dramatic failures of peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Somalia.
State Collapse and Islamist Extremism: Reevaluating the Link
Stability Operations
Field Manual 3-24 and the Heritage of Counterinsurgency Theory
Collective conflict management: a new formula for global peace and security cooperation?
Intervention in Conflicts from a Network Perspective
The Role of Social Media and User-generated Content in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding
There is a growing body of practice and literature on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in preventing and responding to violence. There is also a lot of excitement and corresponding literature about the role of the internet in non-violent change and democratization. The use of mobile phones, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and user-generated content (UGC) like blogs and YouTube videos in the protests in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as throughout the wider middle-east and North Africa (MENA) region have shown how ICTs can complement and augment the exercise of rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of peaceful assembly. This literature focuses on the use of ICTs before and during conflict, for example in conflict prevention and early warning. What about the use of ICTs in post-conflict situations; after the negotiation of peace agreements? How can ICTs be used in post-conflict interventions; more specifically in post-conflict peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and recovery? What role of can be played here by social media and user-generated content?
Greed and Grievance in Civil War
May 2000 Of the 27 major armed conflicts that occurred in 1999, all but two took place within national boundaries. As an impediment to development, internal rebellion especially hurts the world’s poorest countries. What motivates civil wars? Greed or grievance? Collier and Hoeffler compare two contrasting motivations for rebellion: greed and grievance. Most rebellions are ostensibly in pursuit of a cause, supported by a narrative of grievance. But since grievance assuagement through rebellion is a public good that a government will not supply, economists predict such rebellions would be rare. Empirically, many rebellions appear to be linked to the capture of resources (such as diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone, drugs in Colombia, and timber in Cambodia). Collier and Hoeffler set up a simple rational choice model of greed-rebellion and contrast its predictions with those of a simple grievance model. Some countries return to conflict repeatedly. Are they conflict-prone or is there a feedback effect whereby conflict generates grievance, which in turn generates further conflict? The authors show why such a feedback effect might be present in both greed-motivated and grievance rebellions. The authors’ results contrast with conventional beliefs about the causes of conflict. A stylized version of conventional beliefs would be that grievance begets conflict, which begets grievance, which begets further conflict. With such a model, the only point at which to intervene is to reduce the level of objective grievance. Collier and Hoeffler’s model suggests that what actually happens is that opportunities for predation (controlling primary commodity exports) cause conflict and the grievances this generates induce dias-poras to finance further conflict. The point of policy intervention here is to reduce the absolute and relative attraction of primary commodity predation and to reduce the ability of diasporas to fund rebel movements. This paper – a product of the Development Research Group – is part of a larger effort in the group to study civil war and criminal violence
Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy
Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely ‘let them fight it out among themselves’ and that ‘nothing can be done’ because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.
Does Africa need a Marshall plan?
The Impact of Military Spending on the Likelihood of Democratic Transition Failure: Testing Two Competing Theories
Many countries complete tenuous transitions to democracy and must work to prevent an authoritarian reversal, which is often at the hands of the military. One of the most important tools the new government has in dealing with the military is the amount of money allocated to the military. This leads to the question, how does government military spending in post-transition democratic countries affect the chances of democratic transition failure? The extant literature provides two answers. The first is to increase military spending to placate the military; the second is to decrease military spending to weaken the military and address social welfare needs. The article tests these two hypotheses by examining democratic transitions from 1967 to 1999 using both logit and survival analysis methods. The results of the study provide robust support for the hypothesis that decreasing military spending decreases the likelihood of a democratic transition failure.
Justice Versus Peace in Northern Kenya
The conflicting relationship between peace and justice is frequently debated in the field of transitional justice. The obligation to prosecute serious crimes can contradict the measures necessary to reestablish peace among society. The predicament gives rise to a similar, though less obvious, challenge in many developing countries, where the formal justice system can be at odds with conflict management initiatives. Often, due to their inaccessibility or
incompatibility with local socio-cultural norms, official justice institutions in developing countries do not fully penetrate the whole of society. In response, conflict management and peacebuilding initiatives have proven to be more flexible and responsive to socio-political realities. While such initiatives may be more efficient in reestablishing the peace between communities in conflict, they may contradict the official law. Current policy efforts and practices in the arid lands of Kenya illustrate this dilemma. Official justice institutions have proven too weak or ill-suited to prevent or resolve conflicts between local communities. To address the prevailing tensions, local ad hoc peace initiatives have developed, which operate on the basis of local norms and include local stakeholders. Given their relative success, some high level state agents have embraced the initiatives. The Office of the President is currently drafting a national policy framework on conflict management and peacebuilding, which is in part based on the experiences in the arid lands. Such a policy framework will ultimately have to deal with a similar dilemma known from the field of
transitional justice: a decision between the establishment of peace and the application of formal justice may be required.
Since the end of the cold war, interventions to stabilize post-conflict societies have grown in number, length and scope, no longer just interposing troops between combatants and negotiating a peace agreement, but engaging in far-reaching efforts of institutional and societal transformation to prevent a relapse into war and to encourage a sustainable peace. On the one hand, this expansion of peacebuilding reflects the recognition that functioning institutions are central to post-conflict stability, as they can help to manage conflicts over power, resources and identity in divided societies. For most of the international organizations and donors involved in post-conflict peacebuilding, these institutions are liberal-democratic ones by necessity because they are considered to give all conflict parties a stake in the new, post-war order, they are concomitant with the protection of human rights and the rule of law, and they encourage economic growth. On the other hand, the expansion of peacebuilding activities reflects a growing understanding of how war economies have perpetuated conflict and how economic power structures and dynamics can persist well into peacetime. As well as causing war and sustaining it, the political economy of conflict also shapes the possibilities and the nature of the peace that follows. This emphasis on the role of political institutions and political economy in post-conflict peacebuilding has increasingly shifted the attention of peacebuilders towards the issue of corruption. Closely associated with the distortion of the market and the malfunction of political institutions, corruption is considered a key challenge to consolidating peace because it hinders economic development, perpetuates the unjust distribution of public resources, and undermines the legitimacy and effectiveness of government. In recent years, there has been a growing literature on the impact of corruption after conflict. This collection of papers aims to contribute to this debate by examining the specific conceptual and political challenges that corruption poses to post-conflict peacebuilding. Across the different papers in this special issue, a complex set of issues emerges to shape our understanding of postconflict corruption, its impact on stability and development, and the consequences of anti-corruption measures in the context of peacebuilding efforts. In this introduction, the implications for peacebuilding will be discussed in greater detail.
Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa
When discussing the end of British colonial rule in Africa, many historians have highlighted the role of postwar international relations and the impact of domestic imperial politics on decolonization and have failed to recognize the role of African nationalists. This article argues that such a viewpoint is flawed because it conceives of colonial policy makers as isolated and autonomous entities impervious to changes taking place in the colonies. The national liberation movements in Ghana, Central Africa, Kenya, and other regions of East Africa are explored in this article to illustrate the central role that colonial subjects played in the British decolonization of Africa. While dominant scholarship on the failures of the post-colonial state has made studies of decolonization and African nationalism less fashionable, it is becoming increasingly clear that our understanding of the nature and mechanics of the crises that beset the continent requires taking fresh stock of the record of European colonial rule in Africa. In this regard, the study of colonialism and decolonization in continues to be of critical relevance.
Power Sharing in Postconflict Societies: Implications for Peace and Governance
Horizontal inequalities and conflict: a critical review and research agenda
The Multi-actor Game of Peacekeeping in Africa
Diasporas and conflict societies: conflict entrepreneurs, competing interests or contributors to stability and development?
This paper summarises our state of knowledge regarding diaspora engagement in conflict societies. It presents a map of possible diaspora contributions and their specific potential positive and negative impacts in societies experiencing or recovering from conflict. Following a discussion of diasporas and their motivations for engagement in their places of origin, the paper reviews the specific remittance, philanthropy, human capital and policy influence contributions, both positive and negative, that diasporas may make. Policy implications include the need more systematically to include considerations of diasporas in conflict/post-conflict interventions, and based on a more careful case-by-case analysis, using the provided map as a starting point. Such analyses can inform decisions of when to tolerate, unencumbered, diaspora engagement; when to facilitate or support such engagement; and when to consider strategic partnering with diaspora efforts. By mapping potential positive and negative influences of diasporas, the paper establishes why a more nuanced understanding of diasporas and peace and conflict is so important to policy and practice for a more peaceful world.
Revisiting Un Peacekeeping in Rwanda and Sierra Leone
Financing Peace: International and National Resources for Postconflict Countries and Fragile States
After more than a decade of experience and research on financing arrangements in post conflict countries and fragile states, a consensus has emerged on at least one matter. The core objective is to build effective and legitimate governance structures that secure public confidence through provision of personal security, equal justice and the rule of law, economic well-being, and essential social services including education and health. These governance structures are necessary to ensure that countries do not turn, or turn back, to violence as a means of negotiating state-societal relations. This paper discusses a number of the weaknesses in current financing arrangements for post conflict countries and fragile states, with a focus on Official Development Assistance (ODA). We argue that tensions persist between business-as-usual development policies on the one hand and policies responsive to the demands of peace building on the other. The preferential allocation of aid to ‘good performers,’ in the name of maximizing its payoff in terms of economic growth, militates against aid to fragile and conflict-affected states. If the aim of aid is redefined to include durable peace, the conventional performance criteria for aid allocation lose much of their force. Compelling arguments can be made for assistance to ‘poor performers’ if this can help to prevent conflict. Yet the difficulties that initially prompted donors to become more selective in aid allocation remain all too real. Experience has shown that aid can exacerbate problems rather than solving them.
How to Assess Social Reintegration of Ex-Combatants
The social reintegration of ex-combatants is one of the most critical aspects of peacebuilding processes. However, contrary to economic reintegration in which it would be possible to set up some quantitative indicators in terms of accessing vocational training opportunities, employment and livelihoods income for the assessment of success, social reintegration is an intangible outcome. Therefore, what constitutes a successful social reintegration and how it could be assessed continues to be the challenge for both academics and practitioners. This article will undertake an investigation of the preliminary parameters of social reintegration at the macro, meso and micro levels in order to identify a set of indicators for programme assessment. A nuanced understanding of ex-combatant reintegration is expected to allow the development of context-based indicators according to the specific characteristics of that particular environment. The article also recommends the use of participatory research methods as they would be more appropriate for the measurement of social reintegration impact.
Gender, Conflict, and Development
This book highlights the gender dimensions of conflict, organized around major relevant themes such as female combatants, sexual violence, formal and informal peace processes, the legal framework, work, the rehabilitation of social services and community-driven development. It analyzes how conflict changes gender roles and the policy options that might be considered to build on positive aspects while minimizing adverse changes. The suggested policy options and approaches aim to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by violent conflict to encourage change and build more inclusive and gender balanced social, economic and political relations in post-conflict societies. The book concludes by identifying some of the remaining challenges and themes that require additional analysis and research.
Capacity-building at the Headquarter Level: The Case of EU Civilian Peace Operations
This article traces the institutional evolution of the Council Secretariat that plans and supports EU civilian peace operations. During the early days of the European Security and Defence Policy in the late 1990s competing political priorities of big EU member states and a dominance of military structures put civilian administrators at a significant disadvantage. Between 2003 and 2007, however, the rising number and complexity of civilian missions generated pressure for reform, which eventually led to the creation of a civilian headquarters. The historical analysis provides the basis for assessing the EU’s current institutional capacities for civilian crisis management. While some administrative capacity deficits have been addressed, increased institutional formalization and further politically motivated reforms may increase tensions and hamper the accumulation of expertise.
Aid effectiveness: bringing country ownership (and politics) back in
Western Soldiers and the Protection of Local Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Is a Nationalist Orientation in the Armed Forces Hindering Our Preparedness to Fight?
Mandates for UN peacekeeping operations in Africa have become more robust since the delivery of the Brahimi Report in 2000. Contrary to before, soldiers are now unmistakably expected to use force to protect local civilians in a number of UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. While this expectation of force may be celebrated, the question rises whether peacekeeping soldiers can meet the expectation. Are they ready to kill and risk their lives to protect local civilians? This question is especially pertinent to Western armed forces, which have contributed little to post-millennium UN peace operations in Africa but are explicitly called upon by the UN administration to contribute to the robust peacekeeping missions. This article discusses the question of moral and psychological preparedness in light of the possible tension between the nationalist orientation in Western armed forces and the cosmopolitan demands of UN peacekeeping operations in Africa.
An Anglophone Invention? The Difficult Emergence of a French Security Sector Reform Practice
The concept of security sector reform (SSR) was first formulated by UK development actors. Since 2008, France has officially adopted an SSR strategy and promoted the concept at the European level during the country’s 2008 EU Presidency. However, what appears on paper to resemble full support from French institutions is in fact more complex. If the anglophone roots of the policy initiative do not seemingly explain its lack of institutionalization in the French context, it would appear that the difficulty faced by the French administration in finding a whole-of-government agreement on what the content of SSR should be, does.
Hybrid Peace Governance: Its Emergence and Significance
In hybrid peace governance, liberal and illiberal norms, institutions, and actors exist alongside each other, interact, and even clash. Such a political, economic, and social order is a far cry from the liberal idea of peace based on legitimate and accountable democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights, free media, market economy, and an open civil society. This article accounts for the emergence of hybrid peace governance and develops a typology based on the war/peace and liberal/illiberal spectra. Furthermore, it discusses the implications of hybridity and, in particular, whether it can avoid the pitfalls of top-down liberal peacebuilding and provide new opportunities for a more sustainable, locally engrained version of peace.
Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring
Development cooperation in fragile states: filling or perpetuating gaps?
Natural Resources and Violent Conflict : Options and Actions
Recent research undertaken by the Bank and others, suggest that developing countries face substantially higher risks of violent conflict, and poor governance if highly dependent on primary commodities. Revenues from the legal, or illegal exploitation of natural resources have financed devastating conflicts in large numbers of countries across regions. When a conflict erupts, it not only sweeps away decades of painstaking development efforts, but creates costs and consequences-economic, social, political, regional-that live on for decades. The outbreak of violent domestic conflict amounts to a spectacular failure of development-in essence, development in reverse. Even where countries initially manage to avoid violent conflict, large rents from natural resources can weaken state structures, and make governments less accountable, often leading to the emergence of secessionist rebellions, and all-out civil war. Although natural resources are never the sole source of conflict, and do not make conflict inevitable, the presence of abundant primary commodities, especially in low-income countries, exacerbates the risks of conflict and, if conflict does break out, tends to prolong it and makes it harder to resolve. As the Governance of Natural Resources Project (a research project) took shape, the discussion moved toward practical approaches and policies that could be adopted by the international community. This book presents the papers commissioned under the Governance of Natural Resources Project, offering a rich array of approaches and suggestions that are feeding into the international policy debate, and hopefully lead, over time to concerted international action, to help developing countries better manage their resource wealth, and turn this wealth into a driver of development rather than of conflict.
World Development Report 2011 : Conflict, Security, and Development
The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.
Recent Bank Support for Civil Service Reconstruction in Post-Conflict Countries
Civil service reconstruction is important in post-conflict countries because conflict erodes institutions and civil service capacity. And because successful reconstruction-in all sectors -requires domestic capacity to implement projects, a weak civil service undermines overall reconstruction efforts. Moreover, donor assistance is crucial to a country’s rebuilding, and coordinating such assistance requires a certain amount of civil service capacity. In addition, the Bank has found that country ownership is essential for successful projects. But country ownership can be jeopardized if international agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dominate reconstruction efforts, overwhelming states already weakened by conflict. Civil service reconstruction offers an opportunity to start anew, with little of the resistance to civil service reform often encountered from politicians and civil servants. It allows good practices to be instilled from the outset-without having to undo bad ones.
Demobilization and Reintegration Programs: Addressing Gender Issues
Women have always participated to some extent in combat, but several recent wars have seen them fighting on the front lines. And while the roles of female excombatants vary widely, the women seem to share one unfortunate characteristic: limited access to benefits when peace and demobilization come. This is also true for girls abducted for sexual services and the families of ex-combatants in the receiving community. These groups are often neglected during demobilization and reintegration; or at best, women, men, boys, and girls may receive equal benefits but are treated as a homogenous group, which prevents their specific needs from being addressed. Some think that the first objective of a DRP (Demobilization and Reintegration Program) is to have a positive impact on the peace dividend. Another goal often mentioned is the reduction of military expenditures for budgetary reasons. However, others argue that the DRP objectives should be to assist vulnerable excombatans.
Building Capacity in Post-Conflict Countries
This note looks at the challenge of capacity building in post conflict countries, including at options for creating capacity, and the trade-offs between speed, and longer-term impact, the need to ensure that aid management agencies include sunset provisions, and six proposed general lessons for more sustainable capacity building. Rebuilding institutions is much more difficult than rebuilding damaged infrastructure. Capacity building is an enormous challenge, a challenge that requires imagination, cooperation, and hard work among those who seek to improve the conditions of conflict-affected countries.
Greater Great Lakes regional strategy for demobilization and reintegration
This document first outlines a comprehensive strategy for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) activities in the greater Great Lakes region of central Africa. The purpose of this strategy is to enhance the prospects for stabilization and recovery in the region. The DDR of the ex-combatants is necessary to establishing peace and restoring security, which are in turn pre-conditions for sustainable growth and poverty reduction. A multi-country approach will enhance effectiveness of the international response, provide greater coherence among DDR activities, facilitate positive feedback relationships among DDR activities in the region, provide similar incentives for all parties to the conflict to pursue peaceful strategies, address the regional externalities associated with some individual programs, enhance transparency of closely related DDR activities, and facilitate knowledge-sharing and training across DDR implementers. A regional strategy also serves as a confidence-building measure. The strategy, if successfully implemented, will have a significant impact on reducing poverty by helping to consolidate peace, building confidence among governments in the region, helping to free up national resources for investment, attracting foreign capital, investing in the human capital of ex-combatants, and enhancing capacities for development at the community level.
The Conflict Analysis Framework (CAF) : Identifying Conflict-Related Obstacles to Development
The Conflict Analysis Framework (CAF), developed by the CPR Unit, aims to integrate sensitivity to conflict in Bank assistance, and to help Bank teams consider factors affecting both conflict and poverty when formulating development strategies, policies, and programs. Conflict sensitive approaches that take account of problem areas and potential sources of conflict may help to prevent the onset, exacerbation, or resurgence of violent conflict.
Building Capacity in Post-Conflict Countries
This note looks at the challenge of capacity building in post conflict countries, including options for creating capacity and the trade-offs between speed and longer-term impact, the need to ensure that aid management agencies include sunset provisions, and six proposed general lessons for more sustainable capacity building.
Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Children in Armed Conflict
The Arab Spring: Its Geostrategic Significance
The democratic uprisings and consequent turmoil in the Arab world during the last 18 months have had significant impact on the geostrategic situation in the Middle East as well as on the policies of major regional and global powers. As the upheavals continue to unfold, especially in strategically important countries such as Syria and Bahrain, they will continue to have a major impact on intraregional politics as well as great-power interests.
State reconstruction in Africa: the relevance of Claude Ake’s political thought
Gender, conflict, and peace-building: how conflict can catalyse positive change for women
Containment and territorial transnational actors: Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas
Containment has been salient in intellectual and policy debates for 60 years. It informed US foreign policy towards the USSR and, later, the so-called rogue states. The endurance of containment beyond the Cold War suggests that it possesses the quality of transferability, the capacity of a grand strategy from the past to transcend the circumstances that gave rise to it, to suggest what should be emulated and what avoided in future policies. Drawing on the notion of transferability and on the method of structured, focused comparison, this article uses Israel’s foreign policy towards Hezbollah and Hamas to argue that containment is transferable from the state level to a state/territorial transnational actor (TNA) relationship, albeit with permutations. This argument is examined in relation to four issues: the circumstances under which containment arises; its applicability to territorial TNA; the objectives sought by implementing containment; and the role of legitimacy as a component of containment. In so doing the article seeks to make a contribution to the debate on containment. While there is a rich literature on state containment, research on containing territorial TNA has been extremely limited.
Ethical interventions: Non-lethal weapons and the governance of insecurity
Southeast European NGOs for the Stability Pact
This is a conference report. In May 2000, 25 representatives of Southeast European non-governmental organizations met in Romania to discuss the impact the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe has on the region’s civil society and the potential for cross-border activities. This four-day meeting was organized by the Foundation for Democratic Change (Bucharest), and the Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management (Berlin) and took place in the picturesque mountains of Sinaia (Carpathian Mountains). During several working sessions held in a creative atmosphere the participants developed a list of recommendations concerning the support of civil society in the region.
Desk Study on the Environment in Liberia
Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment – FYR of Macedonia
UNEP Post-Conflict Capacity Building Programme in Liberia
The Road to Peace in Ireland
Strategic Environmental Policy Assessment FYR of Macedonia: A Review of Environmental Priorities for International Cooperation
The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia stands on the threshold of a new and decisive phase in its history as it looks to emerge from the turmoil of armed conflicts and to begin reconstruction and development. It is at this moment that the opportunity must be seized to base plans for economic growth on the principles of sustainable development. This means integrating environmental considerations into all policy areas at all levels to ensure that everyone living in the FYR of Macedonia can breathe clean air and drink clean water. It means provision of universal and affordable access to sanitation, and solid waste disposal, and it means the conservation of the country’s outstanding natural heritage. Above all, it means creating and maintaining the environmental conditions in which investment, employment, health and peace can flourish.
While this vision can only be achieved by the people and Government of FYR of Macedonia, the international community has a vital role to play. Not only in the provision of funding, capacity building and technical support, but also in pressing for environmental issues to be at the top of the development agenda. The United Nations occupies a special role within the donor community. While having access to a broad range of environmental knowledge and resources, the UN, at the same time, has the flexibility to adapt and pursue a policy agenda that closely reflects the immediate needs of the FYR of Macedonia. As a contribution towards the realisation of sustainable development in the FYR of Macedonia this report has been prepared by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) country office in the FYR of Macedonia. It presents the results of a Strategic Environmental Policy Assessment (SEPA) carried out in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia during September 2001. The SEPA was conducted by UNEP, in response to UNDP’s formal request for a comprehensive review of environmental policy in the country.
Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment – Albania
From Conflict to Sustainable Development: Assessment and Clean-up in Serbia and Montenegro
Environmental Considerations of Human Displacement in Liberia: A Guide to Decision-makers and Practioners
Environmental Assessment of Areas Disengaged by Israel in the Gaza Strip
Assessment of Environmental ‘Hot Spots’ in Iraq
I am delighted to present this report on the assessment of contaminated sites in Iraq. This pioneering work has been conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Environment and its professional experts under the guidance and supervision of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The project is part of a series of capacity building activities being undertaken by UNEP, with support from the Government of Japan through the UN Iraq Trust Fund. While UNEP has been undertaking post-conflict environmental assessments since 1999, the situation in Iraq posed some unique challenges. Initial field visits by the UNEP team indicated the need to urgently assess the level of contamination at a number of industrial sites. However, the security situation did not permit UN staff to work inside the country.
UNEP therefore developed a specific approach to assess the contaminated sites using a team of Iraqi experts from various Ministries that were selected and trained by UNEP experts to undertake the work. The data gathered inside Iraq was supplemented with satellite imagery,
and samples were analysed in international laboratories. All of the field work was documented in great detail using global positioning systems and digital cameras. The outcomes of the work highlight a number of important findings and lessons. First and foremost, the report demonstrates that while there are contaminated sites in Iraq, the environmental risks are still very localised and the opportunity exists to initiate immediate clean-up before public health is threatened. Urgent action should be taken as soon as possible to contain the large quantities of toxic chemicals lying unattended and unguarded. In this regard, I am extremely pleased that the findings of this project have resulted in UNEP being awarded additional financial resources by the UN Iraq Trust Fund to initiate clean-up activities. Throughout this work, UNEP has also learned that an approach based on remote supervision, modern communications equipment and remote sensing can produce very useful results even in conditions where the United Nations cannot be present on the ground. This vastly expands the operating envelope for future UNEP interventions in other parts of the world.
Afghanistan’s Environment 2008: Executive Summary
This Executive Summary provides readers with a short overview of the key environmental issues, factors and drivers of environmental
change in Afghanistan, and highlights the latest achievements and prospects ahead. It is intended as an overview of the more multifaceted First State of Environment (SOE) Report for Afghanistan, which is being produced by the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) in accordance with section 9(12) of the Environment Law, 2007, and will be published in mid-2008, with the assistance of the United Nations Environment Programme. It is designed for both a national audience (Government officials, community leaders, and natural resource policy-makers at a central and local level) and the broader international community: donors and international organizations, policy-makers in neighbouring countries, people and institutes interested in Afghanistan. It provides in a consolidated format the best available information and also identifies gaps in data on the state of the environment.
Afghanistan’s 2007 Environment Law
The Norms and Politics of Exit: Ending Postconflict Transitional Administrations
While the impact of norms on post-conflict statebuilding operations has been well-explored in the literature, the ways in which the same normative frameworks affect the exit practices of such operations has so far remained unaddressed. To fill this gap, this paper examines the impact of the liberal-democratic norms governing statebuilding operations on the timing and process of exit of post-conflict international transitional administrations. To that end, it first examines the concept of exit, arguing that exit is best considered as a process rather than an event. The second section outlines the normative framework that has shaped postconflict statebuilding activities since the end of the cold war, and proposes three ways in which norms can affect exit: first, that norms act as blueprints for statebuilding and can thereby shape benchmarks for exit; second, that norms create “zones of permissibility” that explicitly commit statebuilders to a transitional presence and make exit central to the legitimacy of statebuilding operations; and third, that local actors strategically use norms, in particular those of self-determination and the taboo of permanent control of a territory, to push for an early exit of statebuilding operations. The third section explores both the scope and limitations of the three functions of norms with regard to exit in the context of a brief case study of UNMIK’s exit from Kosovo. The article concludes with some observations about the impact of the findings for exit strategies of international actors from statebuilding operations.
Opportunities for Synergy: Conflict Transformation and the Corporate Agenda
This divide between the conflict transformation community and the corporate community is remarkable as there is significant overlap between business interests to establish a stable and peaceful working environment and the peace and conflict transformation agenda. So why is it that, generally speaking, companies and conflict transformation advocates have difficulties hearing each other within this debate? Exploring the answers to this question is the starting point of this article. From there, it is necessary to gain an understanding of how companies view conflict transformation, what leverage companies have in relation to their project cycle, what types of conflict transformation activities companies are currently engaged in, and what will be expected from them in the future. Once this is done, it is then possible to discuss some options that are available to both companies and conflict transformation advocates to increase their engagement and become more strategic in working together in areas of mutual interests and joint concern.
Post-Conflict Governance: From Rubble to Reconstruction
Deterrence, Democracy, and the Pursuit of International Justice
The Unlikely Securitizer: Humanitarian Organizations and the Securitization of Indistinctiveness
The securitization framework has greatly improved empirical analysis of security threats. Yet, it could benefit from heightened analysis of two often neglected aspects. First, this article argues that securitizers may invoke multiple referent objects to strengthen their argument that the referent object possesses the `right to survive’. Second, by drawing attention to the presentation of securitizing moves, as well as their content, it highlights how securitizers attempt to persuade multiple audiences that their securitizing moves should be accepted and countermeasures enacted. These claims are illustrated through the analysis of an atypical case of securitization performed by an unlikely set of securitizers, humanitarian aid organizations, as they argue that indistinctiveness poses an existential threat both to their material security and to their identity.
A Study on the Inter-Relation Between Armed Conflict and Natural Resources and its Implications for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding
The article investigates the inter-relation between armed conflict and natural resources and its implications for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The first part discusses and clarifies the nexus between natural resources and armed conflict, arguing that the former have a strong link with the latter only when natural resources have particular natural and geographical characteristics and when a country experiences peculiar political, societal and economic situations. The article shows how this inter-relation is various and diverse, at the point that even scholars who studied it have sometimes disagreed on their researches. The second part analyses the implications for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Since changing the natural and geographical characteristic of natural resources is almost impossible, the article argues that conflict resolution and peacebuilding policies should be aimed to reduce those political, societal, and economic situations that, if inter-related with the presence of natural resources in a country, can affect armed conflicts. The analysis discusses how the presence of natural resources should be addressed during the resolution of a conflict and should be considered during the post-conflict peacebuilding phase. Finally, it tries to identify how international actors can have an effective role in conflict resolution and peacebuilding when natural resources are at stake.
Peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Waging Peace and Fighting War
The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been derided as one of the world’s least effective peacekeeping forces. This article assesses its performance by using two indicators: mandate implementation and the reduction of human suffering. The analysis shows that effective peacekeeping in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been hampered by two major problems. First, MONUC has had a struggle with, and inconsistent approach to, the vague concept of ‘robust peacekeeping’. During key moments of the peace process, it tried to wage peace when it should have used force. Second it failed to adapt to a dynamic conflict environment. Both problems were underpinned by flawed assumptions about the peace process, the behaviour of local actors and the presumed benefits of ‘post-conflict’ elections.
Statebuilding and Justice Reform
The article analyses peacebuilding theories and methods, as applied to justice system reform in post-conflict scenarios. In this respect, the international authorities involved in the reconstruction process may traditionally choose between either a ‘dirigiste’ or a consent-based approach, representing the essential terms of reference of past interventions. However, features common to most reconstruction missions, and relatively poor results, confirm the need for a change in the overall strategy. This requires international donors to focus more on the demand for justice at local levels than on the traditional supply of financial and technical aid for reforms. The article stresses the need for effectively promoting the local ownership of the reform process, without this expression being merely used by international actors as a political umbrella under which to protect themselves from potential failures.
Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory?
Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil War
Timely and pathbreaking, Securing the Peace is the first book to explore the complete spectrum of civil war terminations, including negotiated settlements, military victories by governments and rebels, and stalemates and ceasefires. Examining the outcomes of all civil war terminations since 1940, Monica Toft develops a general theory of postwar stability, showing how third-party guarantees may not be the best option. She demonstrates that thorough security-sector reform plays a critical role in establishing peace over the long term. Much of the thinking in this area has centered on third parties presiding over the maintenance of negotiated settlements, but the problem with this focus is that fewer than a quarter of recent civil wars have ended this way. Furthermore, these settlements have been precarious, often resulting in a recurrence of war. Toft finds that military victory, especially victory by rebels, lends itself to a more durable peace. She argues for the importance of the security sector–the police and military–and explains that victories are more stable when governments can maintain order. Toft presents statistical evaluations and in-depth case studies that include El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda to reveal that where the security sector remains robust, stability and democracy are likely to follow. An original and thoughtful reassessment of civil war terminations, Securing the Peace will interest all those concerned about resolving our world’s most pressing conflicts.
Striking the Right Balance: How to Rebuild the Afghan National Police
A well-trained, professional police force dedicated to upholding the rule of law and trusted by the population is essential to fighting the insurgency in Afghanistan and creating stability. However, the police programmes in Afghanistan have often been dominated by different national agendas and hampered by too few resources and lack of strategic guidance. These issues pose an enormous challenge for the Afghan government and the international community in rebuilding the police. This article argues that it is imperative that the international effort strike a balance between the short-term needs of fighting an insurgency and the long-term needs of establishing an effective sustainable policing capability when building up the police force; and that the process must not be subject merely to satisfying current security challenges or traditional state-building needs.
Supporting Justice, Co-existence and Reconciliation after Armed Conflict: Strategies for Dealing with the Past
Civil wars and state repression have left many societies traumatised and shattered. Unsolved atrocities and injustices can easily provoke new cycles of violence. Impunity may undermine trust in the legal system, increasing the risk that vigilante justice will be resorted to and encourage further atrocities. Mistrust and hatred between former adversaries inhibits reconstruction, decision making and economic development. An amnesty deal may be required to end violence and enable a peace treaty. The call for compromise and national reconciliation may be necessary to ensure an end to hostilities, but past injustices that are never addressed can easily become a source of renewed violent conflict. Often victims can only make peace with their perpetrators if they know their own suffering and that of their loved ones is officially acknowledged. Furthermore, for the reintegration of perpetrators and victims into society they must be commonly accepted. The first section of this chapter reviews various instruments and institutions that have been established to support peaceful coexistence and the restoration of law. It addresses the following questions: Under which conditions can criminal tribunals, truth commissions or amnesty laws be helpful in dealing with past atrocities? How can property issues be solved through mediation or in community courts? The chapter then outlines some general considerations as to the principles and strategies that should be followed by third parties who seek to support such institutions and instruments. Arguing for a long-term approach, the final section summarises some issues for further debate, pointing to some problematic assumptions and developments that have so far gone hand in hand with the current enthusiasm for international criminal law and truth commissions.
Reconstructing Masculinities: The Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia
Iraq: Reconstruction Assistance
Following years of authoritarian rule and economic sanctions, the United States and the international community agreed in the spring of 2003 that efforts should be made to rehabilitate economic infrastructure and introduce representative government to post-war Iraq, among other objectives. To meet these ends, a large-scale assistance program has been undertaken by the United States in Iraq. This program, funded through a mix of appropriations accounts, is undergoing increased scrutiny in the 110th Congress. This report describes recent developments in this assistance effort and key issues of potential interest to Congress.
Addressing the Perils of Peace Operations: Toward a Global Peacekeeping System
Over the past two decades, people have seen considerable progress made in international conflict management, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. The end of the Cold War has led to the obsolescence of war between major powers, and globalization has increased the interconnectedness and interdependence among people, societies, and countries. However, the longevity and large-scale nature of armed conflicts in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Chad, and Sudan with enormous humanitarian consequences are solemn reminders that international institutions and peacekeeping actions are still unable to meet global challenges with global responses. Here, Tanner addresses the perils of peace operations toward global peacekeeping system. He also cites the important progress that peacekeeping has made over the past twenty years and explores, in view of a continuous North-South divide and a resurging Westphalian bias, what such a global peacekeeping system could look like.
Strategic Approaches to Reintegration: Lessons Learned from Liberia
From a security perspective, the reintegration of ex-combatants has been largely successful in Liberia due to six years of sustained effort to reestablish rule of law throughout the country, to rebuild institutions, to promote early recovery, and to reintegrate the former fighting forces as well as other war-affected populations. This, however, does not mean that all problems related to integration are completely resolve. Since 2003, an array of efforts have been undertaken to reintegrate ex-combatants, from classic disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration to strategic and community-based interventions that aims at promoting alternative livelihoods. Here, Tamagnini and Krafft consider what those efforts have achieved and what was not achievable, explain why it is time to end targeted assistance to ex-combatants in Liberia, and propose the next steps to be taken.
Playing with Fire? The International Community’s Democratization Experiment in Afghanistan
Since the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan has become an experiment for the international community in installing democracy from outside. Externally led democratization against rushed timetables and based on formal institutions, however, was not rooted enough in the traditional institutions of Afghanistan and was conducted simultaneously with war fighting, while any benefits from reconstruction were not reaching the people. This article argues that, as a result of this lack of ‘buy-in’, the gap between democratic ideals and the lives of ordinary Afghans is widening, thereby undermining popular support, perhaps for a generation. Seeing Afghans primarily as recipients of, and not the driving force for, democracy, coupled with growing dissatisfaction with progress on economic development, may ultimately provoke popular resistance.
Business, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding: Contributions from the Private Sector to Address Violent Conflict
Reconstruction as Modernisation: The Post-conflict Project in Afghanistan
This paper examines the post-war reconstruction programme in Afghanistan, arguing that it contains the seeds of radical social change. The paper analyses the tensions of the present reconstruction project in light of the past experience of similar programmes launched by Afghan rulers and their foreign supporters. The central argument is that the conflation of post-war reconstruction with a broader agenda for development and modernisation has brought out a wide range of tensions associated with social change. Simultaneously the prominent foreign role in the undertaking has increasingly had negative effects. As a result, the entire project shows signs of severe contradictions that are adding to the problems caused by the growing insurgency.
Foreign Assistance for Peace: The USAID
An Expanded Mandate for Peacebuilding: The State Department Role in Peace Diplomacy, Reconstruction, and Stabilization
Trends and Causes of Armed Conflict
From the start of 1990 to the end of 1999 there were 118 armed conflicts world wide, involving 80 states and two para-state regions and resulting in the death of approximately six million people. If we seek to prevent conflict from escalating into armed warfare, or, failing that, to at least achieve an end to fighting as soon as possible, and if we want to maximise the opportunity for avoiding the return of the war after apparent settlement, we must first be sure that we properly understand armed conflicts and their causes. This chapter attempts to provide a brief overview of what is known and understood about the causes of armed conflict. The theoretical basis of that knowledge is both limited and important. It is limited, in that it does not offer much by way of general explanation of the phenomenon of armed conflict; this is, perhaps, hardly surprising, given its complexity and diversity. It is also important because it provides valuable guidance as to where to look when analysing individual conflicts for signs of potential escalation and when seeking opportunities for preventing violent escalation. The chapter begins by discussing the incidence and nature of armed conflicts during the 1990s. It then reviews the current state of theoretical knowledge with the aim of providing not only an overview but also a source of further reference, before proceeding to methodology. The article then identifies the paired concepts of justice and mobilisation as the best way to link different types and levels of causes, to connect the short-term with the long-term and to relate the socio-economic background with the political foreground. It illustrates this by looking more closely at the category referred to as ethnic conflict.
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security
The aim of this article is to introduce the privatized military industry. It seeks to establish a theoretical structure in which to study the industry and explore its impact on the overall risks and dynamics of warfare. The first section discusses the emergence and global spread of PMFs, their distinguishing features, and the reasons behind the industry’s rise. The second section examines the organization and operation of this new player at the industry level of analysis (as opposed to the more common focus in the literature on individual firms). This allows the classification of the industry’s key characteristics and variation. The third section offers a series of propositions that suggest potential consequences of PMF activity for international security. It also demonstrates how critical issue areas, such as alliance patterns and civil-military relations, must be reexamined in light of the possibilities and complications that this nascent industry presents.
National Reconciliation After Civil War: The Case of Greece
This article discusses post-conflict reconciliation in Greece following the divisive civil war of the 1940s. Focusing on the elite political discourse and the relationship between reconciliation and democratization, its chief argument is that in Greece continuing disagreement about the civil war did not inhibit a process of reconciliation because it was voiced within a normative framework in which violence had been repudiated as a political tool. Particularly since the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1974, reconciliation has been linked to a number of distinct political projects, some of which were as divisive as conciliatory in their effect. In each case, reconciliation meant different things to differing shades of political opinion, but the widespread adoption of the term by both the governing and opposition elites, as well as society as a whole, gradually entrapped politicians of all persuasions into accepting that a process of reconciliation had occurred. Reconciliation in Greece has therefore rested not on the establishment of a single agreed narrative representing the truth about the past, but rather on the righting of perceived injustices and the free articulation of differing interpretations of that past by both left and right within a democratic environment.
Cyprus: Peace, Return and Property
Peacekeeping/Stabilization and Conflict Transitions: Background and Congressional Action on the Civilian Response/Reserve Corps and other Civilian Stabilization and Reconstruction Capabilities.
The New Security in Democratic South Africa: A Cautionary Tale
The broadened and deepened notion of security has been evolving in two dimensions, one primarily intellectual and the other concerned more with political practice and policy. This paper briefly describes these dimensions, and then critically examines the acceptance of the new notion of security in the form a security-is-development thesis in South African security policy. This case shows how the security-is-development thesis affects the functions of security agencies and legitimates their anti-democratic behaviour. The case serves as a cautionary tale about how an intellectual construct, movement and school, originally intended to be a critique of state behaviour, can become a tool of state power at the expense of democracy.
Training for Conflict Transformation – An Overview of Approaches and Resources
Third-Generation Civil-Military Relations
From Resolution to Transformation: The Role of Dialogue Projects
Dialogues can be viewed as one means – if not the classical one – of dealing constructively with conflicts. In the following, I propose to examine some of the core features of dialogue projects, looking at their variations and implications in greater detail. First I will give an overview of several different ‘ideal types’ of dialogues, as well as identifying the basic elements of most dialogue processes. Second, I will distinguish between four concepts of dialogue work, a taxonomy which serves primarily to illustrate the practical nature of such projects. Third, dialogue projects will be set in the context of various approaches to handling conflict, in order to better establish criteria for measuring success. Fourth, I will present a number of lessons learned in the course of recent evaluation studies. The questions raised above will be discussed at the end, on the basis of the underlying empirical experience on which this chapter is based.
The News Media and the Transformation of Ethnopolitical Conflicts
This chapter explores the relationship between the political framework of conflict regulation and journalism. Second, it specifies what it sees as the determining factors within the media system. Third, it attempts to evaluate the efforts of external actors such as international and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to support the transformation of conflicts. It indicates the limits of external intervention, including coercive measures. Finally, some conclusions on the potential role of the media are drawn and some recommendations proposed for improving the performance of the media in situations of tension and conflict.
Invoking the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Rebuilding: A Critical Examination
An Ethic of Political Reconciliation
Together, the recent entry of reconciliation into the politics of peace building and the ancient presence of reconciliation as a concept in religious traditions create potential for, but also leave undeveloped, an ethic of political reconciliation. This ethic would derive a set of concrete guidelines for recovering political orders from philosophical and theological fundamentals. An outline of such an ethic is what I propose here.
Designing Transformation and Intervention Processes
Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone: The Story of UNAMSIL
The first in a series of “inside” histories, Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone relates how a small country-one insignificant in the strategic considerations of the world powers-propelled the United Nations to center stage in a crisis that called its very authority into question; and how the UN mission in Sierra Leone was transformed from its nadir into what is now widely considered one of the most successful peacekeeping missions in UN history.
Tackling Criminal Acts in Peacekeeping Operations: The Accountability of Peacekeepers
United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations have been increasingly deployed in many crisis contexts. The practice has been established by the UN to ensure peace and protect victims of different types of armed conflict. Unfortunately, during the past ten years, several cases of serious human rights violations committed by peacekeepers against people who should be protected by them have emerged. The UN has gone through a widespread analysis of the issues involved, from the managerial, administrative and legal points of view. The 2005 Zeid Report has provided the basis for further action within the UN system. Since then, several policy and legal measures have been discussed by relevant UN bodies and organs, and some new developments have taken place. This article offers an account and an analysis of the different steps taken within the UN to face difficult cases of misbehaviour, including human rights violations, which may lead to forms of criminal conduct. It takes into consideration the suggestions provided by the Zeid Report and subsequent UN documents. It focuses on legal developments and discusses the main problems in understanding the legal complexity of this phenomenon. The article includes updated documents and proposals that have been discussed and adopted until the most recent reports in 2009.
Outsourcing Post-Conflict Operations: Designing a System for Contract Management and Oversight
Gender, Women and Security Sector Reform
Gender has been marginalized in security sector reform (SSR). Policy has changed in recent years, but the gap between policy and practice remains significant. This article examines gender and SSR, critiques some of the current debate on gender in SSR, outlines the challenges of adopting a gender-sensitive SSR approach and discusses the issue of gender-based violence and justice reform. The article concludes that there is a need to refocus gender in SSR discourse. Gender should be treated within the broader SSR context to avoid the separation of gender from other matters in SSR. Gender is not only about women and essentialist assumptions are not useful to the discourse. There is also a critical need to expand the focus on representation to gender mainstreaming and context sensitivity, and to avoid template models for SSR.
Using the Media for Conflict Transformation: The Common Ground Experience
Founded in 1982, CG is a non-governmental organization (NGO) funded by donations from a range of foundations, governments, businesses, multilateral organizations and individuals. Striving for winwin solutions in cross-cultural integration, CG engages in a long-term process of transformation primarily through media-related projects. This comprises a wide spectrum of very different media work formats, even peace songs, street theatre, posters or comics . Using one of these types or a combination of activities, CG strives to strengthen local capacities to deal with conflict. CG has been working in Angola, Burundi, Greece and Turkey, Iran and the United States, Liberia, Macedonia, the Middle East, Sierra Leone, the Ukraine, Indonesia, and the Balkans. The work of CG is illustrated here to outline the potential of media in conflict transformation.
Hybrid Peace: The Interaction Between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Peace
This article is interested in the interface between internationally supported peace operations and local approaches to peace that may draw on traditional, indigenous and customary practice. It argues that peace (and security, development and reconstruction) in societies emerging from violent conflict tends to be a hybrid between the external and the local. The article conceptualizes how this hybrid or composite peace is constructed and maintained. It proposes a four-part conceptual model to help visualize the interplay that leads to hybridized forms of peace. Hybrid peace is the result of the interplay of the following: the compliance powers of liberal peace agents, networks and structures; the incentivizing powers of liberal peace agents, networks and structures; the ability of local actors to resist, ignore or adapt liberal peace interventions; and the ability of local actors, networks and structures to present and maintain alternative forms of peacemaking.
The War in Afghanistan: Its Background and Future Prospects
If the West loses in Afghanistan and its region, the most important reason will be that we are pursuing several different goals simultaneously, most of which are in contradiction to the others. Western governments need to choose between these goals, and co-ordinate a strategy in pursuit of the most desirable and achievable ones. The creation of a democratic Afghanistan needs to be recognised as a hopeless fantasy. Instead, the West should imitate the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and concentrate on creating an effective military force that can survive Western withdrawal and continue to fight the Taleban. In the meantime, something to be avoided at all costs is the further destabilisation of Pakistan, since Pakistan in the end constitutes a far greater potential threat to the region, the West and the world than does Afghanistan.
The Failure of a Liberal Peace: Sri Lanka’s Counter-insurgency in Global Perspective
The victory by the Sri Lankan government over the LTTE in 2009?apparently ended over 25 years of civil war. However, the ramifications of the government’s counter-insurgency go far beyond Sri Lanka’s domestic politics. The military campaign against the LTTE poses a significant challenge to many of the liberal norms that inform contemporary models of international peace-building – the so-called ‘liberal peace’. This article suggests that Sri Lanka’s attempts to justify a shift from peaceful conflict resolution to counter-insurgency relied on three main factors: the flawed nature of the peace process, which highlighted wider concerns about the mechanisms and principles of international peace processes; the increased influence of Rising Powers, particularly China, in global governance mechanisms, and their impact on international norms related to conflict management; and the use by the government of a discourse of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency to limit international censure. The article concludes that the Sri Lankan case may suggest a growing contestation of international peace-building norms, and the emergence of a legitimated ‘illiberal peace’.
Statebuilding without Nation-building? Legitimacy, State Failure and the Limits of the Institutionalist Approach
The paradox of attempting to (re)construct state institutions without considering the socio-political cohesion of societies recurs throughout the world, most notably today in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. This essay tries to shed some light on the debate around the concepts of state and nation-building. Drawing on a sociological understanding of the modern nation-state, it contends that it is impossible to conceive of statebuilding as a process separate from nation-building. This essay identifies two different schools of thought in the discussion concerning the statebuilding process, each of which reflects different sociological understandings of the state. The first one, an ‘institutional approach’ closely related to the Weberian conception of the state, focuses on the importance of institutional reconstruction and postulates that statebuilding activities do not necessarily require a concomitant nation-building effort. The second, a ‘legitimacy approach’ influenced by Durkheimian sociology, recognizes the need to consolidate central state institutions, but puts more emphasis on the importance of socio-political cohesion in the process. Building on this second approach and demonstrating its relevance in contemporary statebuilding, this article concludes with a discussion of recent statebuilding attempts and the ways external actors can effectively contribute to statebuilding processes.
Iraq: Exception to, or Epitome of Contemporary Post-conflict Reconstruction?
In the literature on post-conflict reconstruction, the intervention in Iraq has been understood as an exception to, if not an aberration from, contemporary state-building. This article argues that whether Iraq is an exception to, or the epitome of post-conflict reconstruction depends on the genealogy one attributes to the latter. Denying that Iraq is an exemplary instance of contemporary reconstruction means neglecting the continuities of state-building from interwar trusteeship via Germany and Vietnam to the contemporary reproduction of the neoliberal model continuities which the example of Iraq exposes more clearly than prior cases. An outline of the genealogy of state-building and an analysis of Iraqi reconstruction both point to the reproduction of a hegemonic international order as the rationale of statebuilding now and then.
What You See is What You Get: Analytical Lenses and the Limitations of Post-Conflict Statebuilding in Sierra Leone
This article juxtaposes donors’ analyses of state failure and strategies of post-conflict statebuilding in Sierra Leone with actual processes of state-formation. It argues that international state-builders’ analytical and policy frameworks are built on stylized assumptions about how states form and operate influenced by ideas derived from neoclassical economics. They focus on individual decision-making and functionalist formal institutions and provide a-historical analyses that fail to comprehend long-term state-formation. Interveners need to broaden their conceptual toolbox by paying more attention to local power structures, informal institutions and historical path dependency. Such a deeper analysis would encourage reflection on whether and how social change can be influenced by external intervention and allow donors to evaluate their statebuilding activities more honestly. This would raise important questions about the mismatch between interveners’ ambitious goals and modest tools.
Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security
Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy
Politically, the Afghan central government is relatively stable, but it is perceived as weak and rife with corruption. The post-Taliban transition was completed with the convening of a parliament in December 2005 following September 2005 parliamentary elections. A new constitution was adopted in January 2004, and presidential elections were held on October 9, 2004. The parliament has become an arena for factions that have fought each other for nearly three decades to peacefully resolve differences, as well as a center of political pressure on President Hamid Karzai. Major regional strongmen have been marginalized. Afghan citizens are enjoying personal freedoms forbidden by the Taliban, and women are participating in economic and political life. Presidential elections are to be held in the fall of 2009, with parliamentary and provincial elections to follow one year later.
Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure
The 1990s has seen an explosion of attention to the phenomenon of civil wars. A proliferation of actors has added complexity to conflict resolution processes. Recent theoretical research has highlighted the importance of inter-connections between parallel or overlapping conflict resolution activities. With this context in view, this book explores the connections between different regional and international conflict resolution efforts that accompanied the Rwandan civil war (from 1990 to 1994), and assesses the individual and collective impact they had on the course of that conflict. Jones explores the reasons for the failure of wide-ranging peace efforts to forestall genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994. The book traces the individual and collective impact of both official and unofficial mediation efforts, peacekeeping missions, and humanitarian aid. It sets the peace effort in Rwanda in the wider context of academic theories about civil war and its resolution, and identifies a range of policy implications and challenges relating to conflict prevention, negotiation, and peacemaking.
Participatory Action-Research in Post-Conflict Situations: The Example of the War-Torn Societies Project
This report provides an overview of the War-torn Societies Project (WSP). The WSP began in 1994 as an experimental project. It facilitates the active involvement of local, national and international actors in ongoing collective research and dialogue that allows societies emerging from conflict to better understand and respond to the challenges of social, economic and political reconstruction. Headquartered in Geneva and supported by almost thirty donor governments and aid agencies, WSP has been engaged in experimental field-based activities in Eritrea, Guatemala, Mozambique and Somalia over the past six years. WSP contributes to the recovery and strengthening of societies emerging from conflict by bringing together indigenous actors (including former adversaries and victims) to set priorities, build consensus and formulate responses, aided by participatory action-research, and with the help of regular consultation with external aid providers. WSP’s carefully defined methodology embodies principles of local capacity and responsibility; wide-ranging participation; better understanding of differing interests and objectives; proper use of relevant data and analysis in integrative decision-making; practical policy impact; and a catalytic rather than a dominating role by international actors. In mid-2000, the experimental pilot phase of the project evolved into the establishment of a successor body. Under the name ‘WSP International’, the project’s work will be further tested in new country projects with new variables in order to draw further lessons.
The Struggle to Satisfy: DDR Through the Eyes of Ex-combatants in Liberia
This article calls for a re-examination of the justification, formulation and implementation of DDR programming in certain post-conflict environments. Qualitative fieldwork among ex-combatants in Monrovia, Liberia, suggests that the extent and form of DDR programming must be more sensitive to and predicated on context, accounting for conflict histories and current socioeconomic conditions and local institutional capacity. Moreover, in some post-conflict societies, a better use of international community resources may be to delink disarmament and demobilization from reintegration, focusing reintegration resources instead on open-access jobs programmes with discrete, complementary bilateral or multilateral programmes for particularly vulnerable groups.
Rewiring Interventions? UK Provincial Reconstruction Teams and ‘Stabilization’
Moving Beyond Rethinking the “State of the State”: To the Challenge of Reshaping International Contributions to Peace Operations
The need for an accurate understanding of the environment into which peace- and capacity-building missions are deployed cannot be overstated. Suppositions about the mission environment inform every facet of an intervention’s design and implementation, in addition to expectations surrounding success. Yet this critical element continues to be misunderstood by those most in need of an accurate grasp, a condition which severely undermines the war to peace transition. Rather than continuing to assume that recipient states are states in the Western sense of the term, we must instead focus our energies on how best to enable sustainable peace in the hybrid political orders which do in fact constitute these troubled places. After setting out the largely unrecognised characteristics of recipient societies, the article explores alternative forms of assistance with promise to complement such realities.
Australian Peacekeeping: Sixty Years in the Field
Peacekeeping has been a significant part of Australia’s overseas military engagement since the end of the Second World War. Yet it is a part of the country’s history that has been largely neglected until the 1990s, and even since then interest has been slow to develop. In the last sixty years, between 30,000 and 40,000 Australian military personnel and police have served in more than 50 peacekeeping missions in at least 27 different conflicts. This insightful, engaging and superbly-edited volume approaches Australian peacekeeping from four angles: its history, its agencies, some personal reflections, and its future. Contributors discuss the distinction between peacekeeping and war-fighting, the importance of peacekeeping in terms of public policy, the problems of multinational command, and the specialist contributions of the military, civilian police, mine-clearers, weapons inspectors and diplomats.
Framing the Issue: UN Responses to Corruption and Criminal Networks in Post-Conflict Settings
This article examines the links between peace operations and combating transnational organized crime. It argues that while UN Security Council mandates direct UN missions to support establishing the rule of law in states that host peace operations, their role in addressing organized crime is more implicit than explicit. This article notes, however, that UN panels of experts, small fact-finding teams appointed to monitor targeted sanctions, may offer insight into, and options for addressing, such criminal networks. Panel findings and recommendations, however, are not integrated with related UN efforts to build the rule of law. This lack of integration reflects a need, on the part of the UN and its member states, to address better the ability of peace operations, UN panels of experts, and other tools for peacebuilding to contribute more effectively to fighting spoiler networks and organized crime.
Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment Methodology
Ethics, Rhetoric and Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction: How Can the Concept of Social Contract Help Us in Understanding How to Make Peace Work?
Hawks and Doves: Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution
Mozambique: “The war ended 17 years ago, but we are still poor.”
Mozambique, an aid darling, poses some stark questions for development co-operation. Current economic management strategies mean that a growing group of young people are leaving school with a basic education but no economic prospects. Will marginal youth in towns and cities pose a threat of political and criminal violence? Can peace be built on poverty and rising inequality? Are elections and expanded schooling enough when there are no jobs?
Capacity and its Fallacies: International State Building as State Transformation
Systems-building Before State-building: On the Systemic Preconditions of State-building
State failure is often seen as due to endogenous factors, rather than systemic ones; correspondingly, the idea that states can be built by supporting internal processes and institutions alone is prevalent in policy documents and in some of the literature on state-building. This paper calls both assumptions into question. I demonstrate that three factors were important external preconditions of historical state formation: (1) effective states and sustainable regional security, which is expressed on an inter-state as well as a sub-state level, requires a region-wide creation of effective structures of state; (2) effective states and effective inter-state security require well-functioning states systems; (3) effective states require regional acceptance of the process of state-building. Analysing three contemporary countries and regions, Somalia/the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan/Central Asia and Namibia/ south-western Africa, the article concludes that state-building is substantially facilitated where these three contextual factors are in place. The absence of these external factors in the regions where Afghanistan and Somalia are located illuminate the depth of the problems facing these countries. In these cases regional structures are preconditions of state-building.
(Re)Imagining Coexistence: Striving for Sustainable Return, Reintegration and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bribes or Bargains? Peace Conditionalities and ‘Post-Conflict’ Reconstruction in Afghanistan
This article focuses on the role of international aid donors in Afghanistan since the signing of the Bonn Agreement in 2001. Specifically, it explores the scope and utility of peace conditionalities as an instrument for peace consolidation in the context of a fragile war-to-peace transition. Geo-strategic and institutional concerns have generally led to an unconditional approach to assistance by international actors. It is argued that large inflows of unconditional aid risk re-creating the structural conditions that led to the outbreak of conflict. Aid conditionalities need to be re-conceptualized as aid-for-peace bargains rather than as bribes for security. Some forms of conditionality are necessary in order to rebuild the social contract in Afghanistan. This finding has wider relevance for aid donors and they should reconsider orthodox development models in ‘fragile state’ settings. Rather than seeing conditionalities and ownership as two ends of a policy spectrum, the former may be a necessary instrument for achieving the latter.
Transnational Police Building: Critical Lessons from Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands
In this paper we begin by defining and examining the concept of police building. Its historical precedents and contemporary forms are briefly reviewed, showing a variety of motives and agendas for this kind of institution building. We argue that police building has been a relatively neglected dimension of nation- and state-building exercises, despite its importance to functions of pacification and restoration of law and order. The emerging literature on international police reform and capacity building tends to adopt a narrow institutionalist and universalistic approach that does not take sufficient account of the politics of police building. This politics is multilayered and varies from the formal to the informal. Using two case studies focusing on events in 2006 in Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands, the reasons for the fragility of many current police-building projects are considered. In both cases, we argue, police capacity builders paid insufficient attention to the political architecture and milieu of public safety.
Security Sector Reform under International Tutelage in Sierra Leone
This essay examines Sierra Leone’s security sector reform (SSR) programme in the context of a post-war recovery agenda with strong international involvement. It discusses the background and priorities as well as the successes and failures of the programme in the areas of armed forces restructuring; disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; police reform; parliamentary oversight; justice sector reform and intelligence and national security policy coordination. It concludes that an ongoing SSR programme in the country should be owned and driven by Sierra Leoneans with support from the international community, and that SSR should go beyond the restructuring of formal security institutions and retraining their personnel, and also work to strengthen the oversight capacities of parliament, the judiciary and civil society groups.
Methods of Third-Party Intervention
This article will focus first on the method of mediation, acknowledging its role as one of the most commonly applied and studied forms of intervention in conflicts. This will set the larger stage for a consideration of the various forms and functions of third-party intervention, some of which draw their appeal from their supplementary nature to mediation and negotiation. A rudimentary model for matching types of interventions to the stage of conflict escalation will be presented as an initial heuristic for realizing the potential complementarity of different forms of intervention. Finally, a number of issues will be identified that can affect the overall current and future usefulness of third-party intervention in addressing the multitude of destructive conflicts that regularly beset humankind.
Civil Society in Conflict Transformation: Ambivalence, Potentials and Challenges
Conflict Transformation by Training in Nonviolent Action. Activities of the ‘Centre for Nonviolent Action’ (Sarajevo) in the Balkan Region – An Evaluation-Report
Holstering the Hired Guns: New Accountability Measures for Private Security Contractors
On September 16, 2007, a team of security contractors from Blackwater Worldwide shot dead seventeen Iraqi civilians while escorting American diplomats through central Baghdad. The fallout was swift and farreaching. Iraq demanded that Blackwater cease operating in the country. Its parliament introduced legislation to revoke the blanket immunity granted to contractors in the early days of the war by the American administrators who governed Iraq. Within a week, family members of the victims had filed a lawsuit in U.S. court, the FBI had launched an investigation and warned of criminal charges, and the House Government Reform Committee had issued a withering report on security contractors’ transgressions. Soon after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, military commanders, academics, and Iraqi officials have warned of insufficient oversight and accountability for the private contractors operating there. Deployed in unprecedented numbers, contractors have been implicated in a range of alleged crimes and human rights violations. So far, however, not a single contractor has been successfully prosecuted for violence perpetrated in Iraq. Furthermore, no contractor or company has been held liable for torts committed there. Attempts at self-regulation by the industry have also proven ineffective. Recent months have seen wide-ranging attempts to bring accountability to the industry. This recent development will explain these efforts, which include legislative initiatives, criminal charges against individual contractors, and attempts by private litigants to secure judgments for money damages. Because of the enormous body of literature on the topic of private military contractors, the analysis will focus narrowly on the issue raised by the September shootings–the various punishments and remedies available under both civilian and military law for harms done by American contractors to Iraqi civilians.
Laudable, Ahistorical and Overambitious: Security Sector Reform Meets State Formation Theory
Security sector reform (SSR) is a concept that is highly visible within policy and practice circles and that increasingly shapes international programmes for development assistance, security co-operation and democracy promotion. This paper examines the concept and practice of SSR using theories of the state and state formation within a historical-philosophical perspective. The paper recognises that the processes of SSR are highly laudable and present great steps forward towards more holistic conceptions of security and international development. However, the main argument of the paper is that we should be careful of having too high expectations of the possibility of SSR fulfilling its ambitious goals of creating states that are both stable and democratic and accountable. Instead, we should carefully determine what level of ambition is realistic for each specific project depending on local circumstances. A further argument of this paper is that legitimate order and functioning state structures are prerequisites and preconditions for successful democratisation and accountability reforms within the security sector.
The Liberal Way of Development and the Developmental-Security Impasse: Exploring the Global Life-Chance Divide
As the rising death toll among humanitarian aid workers suggests, saving strangers has become a dangerous occupation. In addressing the consequences of this increase, this article begins by placing the development-security nexus in its historical context. While it has long been associated with liberalism, two factors distinguish this nexus today: first, the global outlawing of spontaneous or undocumented migration; second, the shift in the focus of security from states to the people living within them. Reflecting these moves, policy discourse now conceives development and underdevelopment biopolitically – that is, in terms of how life is to be supported and maintained, and how people are expected to live, rather than according to economic and state-based models. The household and communal self-reliance that forms the basis of this biopolitics, however, has long been in crisis. Since the end of the Cold War, the destabilizing forms of global circulation associated with this emergency have been reconstituted as threats to the critical infrastructures that support mass consumer society. A new security terrain now links the crisis of adaptive self-reliance with risks to critical infrastructure within a single framework of strategic calculation. Rather than ameliorating the generic life-chance divide between the global north and south, the development-security nexus is entrenching it.
Theories of Social Change and their Contribution to the Practice of Conflict Transformation: Developing the State of the Art in Conflict Transformation Theory and Practice
This report reflects on this productive tension between the analysis and practice strands of conflict transformation, first concentrating on themes around the theories of conflict formation and the values that guide the field (Section 2), then exploring the dilemmas of intervention faced by conflict resolution practitioners (Section 3). Section 4 summarises the discussion that followed the presentation by Berghof of the systemic approach to conflict transformation – a potential tool for linking the stages of analysis and intervention in a more dynamic way and for devising strategic priorities for both research and practice. Finally, Section 5 outlines the vision for future research at Berghof, as inspired, endorsed, and enhanced by the Seminar.
Mission Without End? Peacekeeping in the African Political Marketplace
Challenges to Peace: Conflict Resolution in the Great Lakes Region of Africa
Efforts to bring peace and reconstruction to the Central African region have been fashioned by contemporary conflict resolution models that have a standard formula of peace negotiations, with a trajectory of ceasefire agreements, transitional governments, demilitarization, constitutional reform and ending with democratic elections. Local dynamics and the historical and multifaceted nature of the conflicts are rarely addressed. Furthermore, participants in the peace process are restricted to representatives of political parties, the state and rebel movements, to the exclusion of civil society. Using as examples the conflicts and peace processes in three Great Lakes countries-Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo-the paper contends that contemporary global frameworks for peacemaking and peace building that rest on the acceptance of neoliberal political and economic models cannot lay the foundations for the conditions necessary for sustainable peace. This necessitates the utilisation of a more inclusive concept of peace, the starting point of which has to be the emancipation of African humanity.
This paper examines the experience of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), specifically, its Post-Conflict Assessment Unit (PCAU), as an instrument of post-conflict environmental peacemaking. The ecological challenges facing war-torn societies can be as daunting as the social ones, as people struggle to provide themselves with clean water, sanitation, food and energy supplies in settings marked by toxification, the destruction of infrastructure, the loss of livelihoods, and the disruption of local institutions. Over time, these immediate environmental difficulties evolve into more diffuse but equally important challenges: establishing systems of environmental governance, creating the requisite administrative and institutional capacity, and finding sustainable trajectories for economic reconstruction and development. If handled effectively, environmental challenges may create a solid foundation for peace and sustainable development; if handled poorly, they risk undercutting the already tenuous peace that typically marks such situations. The paper identifies common patterns across several recent cases in which UNEP/PCAU has been active. Particular attention is paid to UNEP’s impact, or lack thereof, with regard to four core themes: (1) the problem of reconstituting government; (2) monitoring and assessment challenges in militarized environments; (3) linking environmental assistance and humanitarian aid; and (4) moving from environmental clean-up to planning and administration.
Introduction: Rethinking the Relationship Between Peace Operations and Organized Crime
Peace operations are increasingly on the front line in the international community’s fight against organized crime. In venues as diverse as Afghanistan, the Balkans, Haiti, Iraq and West Africa, multiple international interventions have struggled with a variety of protection rackets, corruption and trafficking in a wide range of licit and illicit commodities: guns, drugs, oil, cars, diamonds, timber – and human beings. This introduction to the Special Issue on peace operations and organized crime discusses the concept of ‘organized crime’ as a label, and suggests ways of differentiating organized crime groups on the basis of their social governance roles, resources and strategies towards authority structures – such as peace operations.
Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: A Lexicon
Post-Conflict Peacebuilding comes at a critical time for post-conflict peacebuilding. Its rapid move towards the top of the international political agenda has been accompanied by added scrutiny, as the international community seeks to meet the multi-dimensional challenges of building a just and sustainable peace in societies ravaged by war. Beyond the strictly operational dimension, there is considerable ambiguity in the concepts and terminology used to discuss post-conflict peacebuilding. This ambiguity undermines efforts to agree on common understandings of how peace can be most effectively ‘built’, thereby impeding swift, coherent action. Accordingly, this lexicon aims to clarify and illuminate the multiple facets of post-conflict peacebuilding, by presenting its major themes and trends from an analytical perspective. To this end, the book opens with a general introduction on the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding, followed by twenty-six essays on its key elements (including capacity-building, conflict transformation, reconciliation, recovery, rule of law, security sector reform, and transitional justice). Written by international experts from a range of disciplines, including political science and international relations, international law, economics, and sociology, these essays cover the whole spectrum of post-conflict peacebuilding. In reflecting a diversity of perspectives the lexicon sheds light on many different challenges associated with post-conflict peacebuilding. For each key concept a generic definition is proposed, which is then expanded through discussion of three main areas: the meaning and origin of the concept; its content and essential components; and its means of implementation, including lessons learned from past practice.
Race, Culture and Civil Society: Peacebuilding Discourse and the Understanding of Difference
This article seeks to draw out an understanding of the role of narratives and discourses of race, culture and civil society within international peacebuilding, through the location of the discourse of culture as a transitional stage between interventionist and regulatory discourses of race and civil society. It particularly seeks to highlight that the discourse of culture is key to understanding the peacebuilding discourses of intervention and regulation that have developed in the last decade. This is all the more important as the discourse of culture has in many respects been displaced by the discourse of civil society. In drawing out the links between the framings of race, culture and civil society, the article seeks to explain how the discourse of civil society intervention has been reinvented on the basis of the moral divide established and made coherent through the discourse of culture, and how the discourse of civil society contains a strong apologetic content, capable of legitimizing and explaining the persistence of social and economic problems or political fragmentation while simultaneously offering potential policy programmes on the basis of highly ambitious goals of social transformation.
Introduction: Criteria for Evaluating Post-conflict Reconstruction and Security Sector Reform in Peace Support Operations
One of the key challenges arising from the recent increase in international involvement in post-conflict situations has been to establish security and to transfer responsibility to local institutions in ways compatible with principles of ownership, accountability and economic sustainability. While there is no lack of prescriptions for security transitioning, there has been little analysis of past efforts. The author suggests a list of criteria for the evaluation of success and failure of security sector reconstruction and reform in post-conflict situations. He also describes various dilemmas for external actors and concludes with a hypothesis on how the behaviour of external actors influences success and failure of security sector reconstruction and reform.
Addressing Internal Displacement in Peace Processes, Peace Agreements, and Peace-Building.
The Development of Kosovo Institutions and the Transition of Authority from UNMIK to Local Self-Government
Traditional Approaches to Conflict Transformation – Potentials and Limits
The International Relations of the DAHR 1989-96. The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania. An Introduction
The Role of Development Aid in Conflict Transformation: Facilitating Empowerment Processes and Community Building
This chapter will focus on the practical experience of traditional relief and development projects working on complex emergencies in the field of community development. As the authors explore the nexus between conflict transformation on the one hand and participatory and empowerment approaches on the other, they will critically assess the potential of common empowerment approaches within community building not only to avoid doing harm but also to make a substantive contribution to conflict transformation at the local level. The empirical base of the chapter lies within participatory research and in the experiences of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation in the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka. Sections II and III will explore recent aspects of the conflict transformation discourse, paying particular attention to conclusions that might be drawn concerning the role of development aid in complex emergencies. Sections IV and V introduce some common participatory and empowerment approaches within the field of community development, delineating their theoretical objectives as well as their practical implementation. Section VI critically discusses possible spaces of action, as well as constraints, dilemmas and ambivalences for the facilitation of empowerment processes through development aid within complex emergencies. The authors conclude with future prospects on the potentials, constraints and ambivalence of empowerment approaches and recommend a more political role for development aid in complex emergencies as it engages in more inclusive community building through processes of empowerment and recognition.
The Future of the Mujahideen: Legitimacy, Legacy and Demobilization in Post-Bonn Afghanistan
Contemporary Afghan politics is marked by a debate over the “mujahideen.” This contest involves the mythologizing, demythologizing and appropriation of the term by a wide variety of actors, from warlords, tribal combatants, the Taliban and Anti-Coalition Forces to rights activists and journalists. This struggle is a competition for legitimacy over the “right to rule” and the “right to conduct violence”; and it is critical to understanding the dilemmas of statebuilding in Afghanistan. Through such an examination, policy lessons are acquired concerning the role of the Afghan government and members of the international community in confronting armed groups.
Investing for Peace: The Private Sector and the Challenges of Peacebuilding
The new environment for peacebuilding is defined by new approaches to aid, a redefinition of the private sector to include hybrid forms of state and market activity, a new balance of emphasis between corporate social responsibility activities on the part of private-sector actors and the foundational importance of robust legal and regulatory frameworks, a structural boom in demand for natural resources, and the opportunity to have essential small and medium-sized private-sector activity catalysed by macro-finance investment in natural-resources sectors. It presents new risks as well as new opportunities and requires, above all, a new compact between the international donor community and governments in countries experiencing or emerging from conflict that seek to trade their way to sustainable development.
The West and Contemporary Peace Operations
In recent years, senior UN officials have raised concerns about the decline of Western contributions to UN peace operations. Although this is a worrying trend for supporters of the UN, it does not mean that the West is playing a smaller role in peace operations per se. Instead, the West has increased its contribution to `hybrid’ peace operations and missions that take place outside of the UN system. This article examines the West’s contribution to both UN and non-UN peace operations since the Brahimi Report and assesses whether its contribution has markedly changed and what impact any changes have had on international peace and security. It proceeds in three sections. The first provides a historical overview of the West’s ambivalent relationship with UN peace operations since 1948. The second analyses the West’s contribution to UN, hybrid and non-UN peace operations. The final section explores what Western policies mean for international peace and security by assessing their impact on the UN’s authority, the extent to which they save lives and their contribution to building stable peace. The article concludes that while in the short term the West’s willingness to participate in hybrid operations displays a commitment to finding pragmatic solutions to some difficult problems, over the longer term this approach may weaken the UN’s ability to maintain international peace and security.
Conflict Transformation Through State Reform
Views on the Ground: The Local Perception of International Criminal Tribunals in the Former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone
How “Transitions” Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice
Harnessing Post-Conflict “Transitions”: A Conceptual Primer
Women, Security and the Patriarchy of Internationalized Transitional Justice
In the contemporary global context, transitions from conflict to peace and from authoritarian to democratic governance are a critical preoccupation of many states. In these contexts, accountability for the abuses committed by prior regimes has been a priority for international institutions, states, and new governments. Nonetheless, transitional justice goals have expanded to include a broad range of structural reforms in multiple spheres. Whether an expanded or contracted transitional justice paradigm is used to define the perimeters of change, gender concerns have been markedly absent across jurisdictions experiencing transformation. This article examines the conceptualization of and legal provision for gender security and its subsequent effects upon accountability in times of transition, with particular reference to post-conflict societies. The article closely assesses a range of contemporary issues implicated for women including an examination of post-conflict security from a gender perspective, gender and disarmament, and the centrality and effect of security sector reform for women. The article pays particular attention to the under-theorized and under-researched role of international masculinities, and the patriarchy that is imported with international oversight of transitional societies.
Civilizing Peacebuilding: Transitional Justice, Civil Society and the Liberal Paradigm
Experiences with Impact Assessment: Can We Know What Good We Do?
In the pages that follow, we shall address these questions regarding the impacts of agencies that work in or on conflict. We shall begin, in Sections II and III, by describing two collaborative efforts undertaken by agencies to learn more about their impacts on conflict within the societies where they work. The first, the Local Capacities for Peace Project (LCCP), involves a number of humanitarian and development assistance agencies seeking to understand how their efforts to save lives, alleviate suffering and support indigenous development interact with, and in some cases reinforce, inter-group conflicts in areas where they provide aid. The second project, Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP), involves a number of agencies that specifically work on conflict; that is, those agencies that undertake inter-group mediation, reconciliation, peace education, conflict management, conflict transformation and other approaches to reducing the dangers of conflict. In these sections we describe the background, approaches and outcomes of these two projects. In Section IV, we turn to a review of what has been learned through LCCP about how to assess the impacts of humanitarian and development programmes on conflict and, in Section V, we present the findings about how to assess outcomes of efforts intended to reduce conflict and build peace. Finally, in Section VI, we discuss the similarities and differences in assessment techniques required, depending on whether one is working in conflict or on conflict.
From Politics to Arms to Politics Again: The Transition of the Gerakan Acheh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement – GAM)
The present peace agreement reached by GAM and the government of Indonesia has brought major changes to the political landscape in the Province of Aceh, transforming GAM from being an armed group to becoming a non-armed poltical movement which has to compete in a regular electoral process. This paper looks at the character of the GAM movement, how it was drawn into the armed struggle, the factors and events that affected its adoption of a political strategy, and the present outcome of its transition. It was co-written by an Acehnese scholar and a German researcher, based on contributions made by two leading GAM members during the course of several focus group discussions.
Providing adequate protection, antiterrorism (AT) training and, if necessary, personnel recovery for civilian contractors deployed to support U.S. military operations presents significant legal and policy challenges that both the military and civilian contractor companies have yet to fully appreciate, let alone properly institutionalize. In tandem with identifying the legal and policy considerations associated with these issues, this article will also address the matter of civil liability to the parent contracting company should it fail to provide adequate protection, or appropriate AT training, or both, to their civilian employees serving overseas in hostile environments. Due to federally imposed personnel limitations for the armed forces and the need for specialized skills in the modern high-tech military, hundreds of activities once performed by the military are now privatized and outsourced to thousands of civilian contractors. One of the consequences of the global War on Terror is that American and coalition contractors–particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan –are increasingly subjected to kidnappings, torture, and murder by terrorists, criminal elements, and other insurgency forces. Therefore, it is imperative that issues of force protection, AT training, and personnel recovery be fully delineated and the related legal contours be more clearly defined.