NGOs have become essential in building stable communities and effective institutions, especially since the end of the Cold War, where it has become apparent that, NGOs not only have a role to play in peacebuilding, but that they are vital to the process entailed in the construction of the liberal peace (Richmond and Carey, 2005:19). Although NGO involvement can hardly be described as a panacea for the establishment of sustainable peace and development, NGOs have made enormous differences to complex peace processes through both their independent interventions at grass roots level, and via their cooperation with the local population, or attempts to modify state and unilateral interventions at the socio-political and developmental levels. However, NGOs are sometimes convinced that their involvement in peacekeeping and peacebuilding is not sufficiently meaningful or effective, while some governments dislike the increasing pressure to make room for civil society through NGO participation in peace deliberations, monitoring and service provision (Richmond and Carey, 2005:19).
According to Richmond and Carey (2005:20), NGOs and the networks that they tend to form are perceived as key providers of the resources necessary to institutionalise human security in conflict zones by liberal states and actors. NGOs have, to a great extent, inherited the role of building civil peace as a key component of the liberal peace, along with the parallel construction of the constitutional peace (through democratisation) and institutional peace (associated with the UN system), which are also components of the liberal peace. Effectively, NGOs are thus crucial in building the institutions of the liberal peace from the bottom up, including free market economies and development strategies, social reform, political democratisation to human rights and humanitarian assistance (Duffield, 2001:11). NGOs are part of the peacebuilding consensus that include donors, major states, IGOs and international financial institutions, in which there is a broad concurrence on liberal peace, though there might be disagreement of how this is to be achieved in a technical sense (Richmond and Carey, 2005:3). This consensus effectively indicated that NGOs have become part of the external governance of post-conflict zones. The construction of liberal peace now focuses on peace-as-governance, and the NGOs
are vital actors in this project within the broader context of the globalisation of the norms of the liberal peace and of global civil society.
Non-state actors and the NGOs have been instrumental in broadening the understanding of peace and security. In 1914, there were only 1 083 NGOs world-wide and no firm conception of universal human rights affirmed by the international community, as it was at the time. The estimated number of NGOs is now believed to be between 37 000 and 50 000 (UN, 2004b:5). Though still contested, there are now firm conceptions of human rights, as well as emerging humanitarian norms and the discourse on human security that provides a basis for non-state actor intervention. Many NGOs were formed in the 1990s as a response to the broad requirements of the synthesis of peacebuilding, humanitarianism, human rights monitoring and advocacy (Richmond and Carey, 2005:21). NGOs have proven to be very useful in the initial stages of establishing sustainable peace. They have also become essential tools for states and IGOs and other institutions in the construction of the liberal peace, due to their unique access, legitimacy and flexibility. NGOs have the ability to react quickly, are not bureaucratically crippled, cannot coerce and are widely respected. Most importantly, according to Richmond and Carey (2005:24), the combination of these assets means that they can fulfil roles and tasks which states and their liberal organisations simply cannot fulfil.
However, NGOs also have certain limits to what they can achieve and there are certain requirements that have to be in place in order for them to function effectively. Above all – NGOs require security. They cannot control what happens to resources that they bring into the conflict zone, and they might even inadvertently confer a level of legitimacy on to actors who are not adverse to the use of violence.
Secondly, there is also a level of conditionality that is introduced into the relationship between NGOs and their benefactors, especially when it comes to the economic, social and political dimensions of the peace that they are helping to construct in conflict zones. There is obviously a significant tension between attempts to introduce conditionality into relationships between IGOs, NGOs, agencies and belligerents, especially as this may undermine or impede on attempts to act in a humanitarian manner. There is also a great problem with the sheer numbers of NGOs operating in conflict zones in terms of the division of labour and overlap of roles and responsibilities. Perhaps most controversially – there is the issue of accountability. The question remains whether NGOs be held accountable and what kind of frameworks can be constructed to ensure accountability. Despite these problems, NGOs have been recognised as an essential part of the broader UN system as they play an essential part in the peacebuilding consensus (Richmond and Carey, 2005:24).
However, despite the increased quantitative and qualitative demands for civilian capabilities in peace missions, few UN-contributing states have actually paid sufficient attention to enhancing their civilian capacities in a systematic manner. As a result, peace missions lack adequate civilian experts, especially in terms of construction. According to Guehenno (2005), the armed forces tend to play a more dominant role in UN missions because they are so much easier to deploy, because, unlike civil servants they work under a common strategic framework, operate under a permanent budget and have systems in place that allow for rapid deployment. As a result, military troops have been saddled with a disproportionate share of the post-conflict burden, even though they lack formal training to provide essential socio-economic services and have battled to produce a tangible peace dividend to host populations (Gueli and Liebenberg, 2006b:3).
2.5. Conclusions
Armed conflicts in the developing world have seriously undermined the attainment of development, security and democratic consolidation. There is no question about the impact of conflict on the inextricable link between durable peace, long-term security and sustainable development. It is today widely accepted that contemporary armed conflicts requires sustained efforts to address not only the military dimensions of conflicts, but also the political, humanitarian, economic, and social dimensions of conflicts. As a result, there has been growing support for the notion that the concepts of security and development should be linked in order to achieve meaningful peace. There is thus a growing awareness that peacebuilding should be an essential part of any multi-national peacekeeping undertaking.
In order to effectively address the challenges associated with complex emergencies, it is essential to recognise that human insecurity takes many forms and that the traditional understanding of the concept of human security should be expanded. As a result, approaches to address these issues must be diverse, multi-dimensional and located at many levels. This demands a critical review of current structures, institutions and processes where these are seen to threaten or undermine people‟s security.
The end of the Cold War has offered such an opportunity for international role-players to revisit dominant conceptions of security and development policy, and to devise integrated and coherent policy instruments and programmes to address violent conflict from a peacebuilding perspective. Development and security need to be mutually reinforcing – especially when many of the threats that confront the
international community emanate largely from failures of development (Tschirgi, 2003:13).
It is clear that a significant range of international reforms throughout the international system has taken place to facilitate peacebuilding endeavours. This included a major overhaul of the UN system, while major agencies established conflict prevention and peacebuilding units. Some governments also aligned their foreign, security and development policies and programmes to respond to the conflict prevention and peacebuilding agenda and challenges of the contemporary international community. This also impacted positively on supporting policies, programmes and projects that facilitate war-prone, war-torn or post-war countries to recover from conflict in order to address longer-term developmental and security goals. This has, in general, led to a better understanding of the political economy of armed conflicts, as well as a drive towards applying appropriate strategies and priorities to deal with developmental and security challenges in response to violent conflict and civil war. Obviously, this is of great importance to all developing countries, given the acute need to apply relevant and constructive measures and strategies in the search for sustainable development and long-term security.
The discourse on human security and humanitarianism has become an important indicator of the agendas of IGOs, agencies and non-state actors in their contribution to sustainable development and peace. These actors, with access, reach and legitimacy are crucial in the evolving peacebuilding consensus. In their conditional relationships with recipients, donors, IGOs and international financial institutions, non-state actors have developed the capacity for the most intimate forms of interventions in civil society in order to develop civil peace and contribute to the broader understanding of sustainable peace and development through the institutionalisation of bottom-up forms of governance, engendered in the liberal peace.
The concept of DPMs was developed to address sustained development and to facilitate the institutionalisation of the liberal peace on the African continent. The DPMs framework constitutes a very ambitious concept that focuses on the realisation of the AU and NEPAD‟s priorities through an integrated plan or framework for post-conflict reconstruction and development. Proponents of the concept purport that DPMs will provide a framework and practical paradigm towards achieving sustainable political and economic development that will, furthermore, advance democracy, as well as regional integration and co-operation through the dismantling of exploitative war economies. It is also contended that DPMs will create platforms for policy reforms and set the scene for increased
investment through the dismantling of war economies. This premise will be explored in Chapter 3 of this study.