Ensenada una ciudad en busca de la sustentabilidad

Perhaps one of the most insightful scholarly works on the limitations of liberal peacebuilding is Peaceland by Severine Autesserre, an academic with previous experience as a peacebuilder.¹²⁵⁷ Autesserre notes that there are two types of knowledge that could be helpful to the conflict resolution process, namely thematic or technical expertise on the one hand, and local or country expertise, on the other. Over the years, the international peacebuilding community has been consistently favouring the former because locating local and reliable experts can be difficult when trying to intervene in a post-violence society on short notice.

Thus, international policy-makers and the peacebuilders they employ on the ground have tended to operate on the assumption that thematic expertise is easily transferable from one post-violence society to the next, and that programmes that have been successful in one place can be implemented in another with relatively little knowledge of the context. This favouring of thematic experts (who are almost always non-local) has been further promoted by several competitive advantages they enjoy over domestic actors. International peacebuilders do not have any connections to the post-violence society to which they are deployed, which makes it easier for them to avoid pressures from family members or friends to secure jobs, money or other services for them, and minimises the possibility that they will be coerced in any way.¹²⁵⁸ Moreover, their detachment from the context means that they can avoid the perception of a group bias and that unlike some local elites, they have no vested interest in the status quo.¹²⁵⁹ Due to these practical advantages, international peacebuilders have been discouraged from mingling with the locals or spending too much time in the same post-violence society, which has in turn, resulted in their even more sanitised understanding of the context, glimpsed mainly through reports and executive summaries.¹²⁶⁰

While to some extent understandable, the remoteness of international peacebuilders risks undermining the effectiveness of their strategies because even in rare occasions when they are stationed in the same post-violence society for several years, they lack the network, reputation, legitimacy and credibility that is often enjoyed by their local counterparts.¹²⁶¹ Furthermore, since international actors do not have a deep insight of the post-violence society, they have to rely on dominant narratives, rather than more complex analyses of what specific conflicts are about and how their resolution may be hindered by customs, taboos, history and politics.¹²⁶² However, a peacebuilding strategy can only address the conflicts that its designers know about and understand. A superficial knowledge of the context of a specific dispute will necessarily result in an equally superficial response. If this response fails to address the most divisive conflicts, its impact in terms of building peace will be a limited one. Illustrative of this is the

1257 Severine Autesserre, Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014).

1258 Ibid 64-65.

1259 Ibid.

1260 Ibid.

1261 David Marshall and Shelley Inglis, ‘Human Rights in Transition: The Disempowerment of Human Rights-Based Justice in the United Nations Mission in Kosovo’ (2003) 16 Harvard Human Rights Journal 95.

1262 Michael Pugh, ‘The Social-Civil Dimension’ in Michael Pugh (ed), Regeneration of War-Torn Societies (Basingstoke, Macmillan Press, 2000), 123.

fact that between 1996 and 1999, the international community in BiH spent approximately four times as much on rebuilding houses than it did on social support of displaced persons,¹²⁶³ a strategy that was most likely based on the (faulty) assumption that people would return, if only they had somewhere to stay. This shows little appreciation of the more layered reasons for the displaced persons’ reluctance to move, such as their socio-economic insecurity and the fact that they might not have felt welcome by their old neighbours, and goes to explain why ultimately, relatively few people chose to go back to their old homes.

While international actors with exclusively thematic expertise generally find it harder to make meaningful changes to people’s lives, the sole involvement of local peacebuilders should also be avoided. Locals have vested personal interests in the post-violence society, which can encourage them to act as spoilers or make them more interested in increasing their personal or political power, rather than contributing to peace.¹²⁶⁴ Consequently, the best strategy forward is to shift power from international to local peacebuilders, only to certain extent. The two should participate in the same working groups and the expertise of each – thematic or contextual – should be valued equally. Such a step is not only essential for the design and implementation of effective peacebuilding strategies, but also in line with the UN’s pronounced commitment to self-determination¹²⁶⁵ and necessary for avoiding allegations that exclusively international teams are operating as neo-colonialists.¹²⁶⁶ Furthermore, hybrid staff operations are crucial because international peacebuilders report, and are accountable, to a different audience than local ones.¹²⁶⁷ While the latter are concerned with the responses of people within the post-violence society – their friends, families or political supporters – for the former, their bosses in different capitals around the world and journalists from The New York Times or The Washington Post are potentially more influential in setting the mission’s agenda.¹²⁶⁸ Thus, it is only by combining the strengths of the two sets of professionals that peacebuilding strategies will start making real, and not only legal, changes to the society in which they are operating.

While however, for the moment, the UN has acknowledged the importance of such an integrated approach on paper,¹²⁶⁹ in practice, initiatives to empower the grassroots have tended to only be adopted in an ad hoc and haphazard manner.¹²⁷⁰

1263 Rhodri C. Williams, ‘The Significance of Property Restitution to Sustainable Return in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (2006) 44 International Migration 39.

1264 Autesserre, Peaceland 106.

1265 UN Secretary-General, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping:

Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to the Statement Adopted by the Summit Meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992, A/47/277 – S/24111 (New York, United Nations, 1992), [19].

1266 Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, ‘Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Travails of the European Raj’ (2003) 14 Journal of Democracy 64.

1267 Roland Kostić, ‘Shadow Peacebuilders and Diplomatic Counterinsurgencies: Informal Networks, Knowledge Production and the Art of Policy-Shaping’ (2017) 11 Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 120.

1268 Quote from a peacebuilder based in Congo, in Autesserre, Peaceland 210.

1269 UN Secretary-General, The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, S/2004/616 (New York, United Nations, 2004), [15]-[17].

1270 Patricia Lundy and Mark McGovern, ‘The Role of Community in Participatory Transitional Justice’ in Kieran McEvoy and Lorna McGregor (eds), Transitional Justice from Below: Grassroots Activism and the Struggle for Change (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2008), 107; McAuliffe, Transformative Transitional Justice 49; Oliver Richmond and Audra Mitchell, ‘Introduction – Towards a Post-Liberal Peace: Exploring Hybridity Via Everyday Forms of Resistance, Agency and Autonomy’ in Oliver Richmond and Audra Mitchell (eds), Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

If one of the reasons that some peacebuilding strategies have failed to address the real concerns of people in post-violence societies is the international peacebuilders’ more superficial knowledge of the context, another is the significant attention that has been paid to protecting human rights by reforming the law, as opposed to inducing social change through other mediums.¹²⁷¹ While support is gradually being built in favour of more multidisciplinary teams, this trend should not be exaggerated as peacebuilding ‘still remains legalistic in orientation and rooted in a civil and political rights-based framework at a policy level.’¹²⁷² This is, at least partly, because many of the peacebuilders are themselves lawyers.¹²⁷³ Arguably, lawyers have been favoured over other professionals within peacebuilding operations because among the key challenges in post-violence societies, is the absence of the rule of law. In such contexts, law is a useful tool, since its association with values like justice, objectivity, uniformity, universality and rationality, lends legitimacy to the new state of affairs and helps make the post-violence society a member of the international community.¹²⁷⁴ A second reason for the emphasis on the

‘legal’ components of a peacebuilding operation is that (especially international) decision-makers tend to favour short-term, technical projects that are easy to measure and justify to their funders, rather than taking action to address soft issues, such as building community relations and responding to subjective feelings of insecurity or mistrust of the locals.¹²⁷⁵ Focusing on legal outcomes, with their emphasis on the volume of cases that have been litigated, amount of properties that have been returned or sum of bodies that have been retrieved, is convenient because their effects are quantifiable and easy to put on a chart.¹²⁷⁶

They say that to the hammer the world looks like a nail. Similarly, there is a risk that to a lawyer, a complex conflict – with political, social, economic, cultural, psychological and some legal dimensions – looks like a legal puzzle. As a result, when a peacebuilding operation is mainly staffed by lawyers, it is almost natural for them to emphasise the protection of (legal) human rights because their training and background fuels existing tendencies to search for the resolution of a conflict in law.¹²⁷⁷ It is therefore unsurprising, in light of their composition, that, by and large, peacebuilding teams have ‘prioritised justice issues and [are] financing and

1271 McEvoy, ‘Beyond Legalism’.

1272 McAuliffe, Transformative Transitional Justice 4.

1273 Kjetil Mujezinovic Larsen, ‘United Nations Peace Operations and International Law: What Kind of Law Promotes What Kind of Peace?’ in Cecillia Marcela Baillet and Kjetil Mujezinovic Larsen (eds), Promoting Peace through International Law (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015), 299-320, notes that ‘the tendency is to focus ever more on the articulation of human rights as legal entitlements and on the possibility of pursuing human rights ambitions through legal mechanisms. Earlier, one spoke exclusively about the human rights functions of peace obligations, but now it becomes ever more common to speak about human rights obligations.’ (emphasis in the original) Lawyers have a predominant role, even in expressly interdisciplinary institutions, like the SA TRC.

(Nicky Rousseau and Madeleine Fullard, ‘Accounting and Reconciling in the Balance Sheet of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (2009) 4 Journal of Multicultural Discourses 123, 131.)

1274 McEvoy, ‘Beyond Legalism’, 417.

1275 Christine Bell, ‘Human Rights and the Struggle for Change: A Study in Self-Critical Legal Thought’ in Rob Dickinson et al (eds), Examining Critical Perspectives on Human Rights (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012).

1276 Erik G. Jensen, ‘Justice and the Rule of Law’ in Charles T. Call (ed), Building States to Build Peace (Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008).

1277 Tom Gerard Daly, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017) 104.

supporting the implementation of a plethora of legal initiatives.’¹²⁷⁸ While however, lawyers are well-suited in drafting complex pieces of legislation, they are generally not trained in identifying and developing the conditions that must be in place for a peacebuilding strategy, including the implementation of a human rights law, to function effectively. Thus, although focusing on these conditions is crucial for the promotion of subjective peace, they have tended to receive relatively limited attention.

In light of this problem, if we want to achieve ‘embedded’, rather than just ‘distant justice’,¹²⁷⁹ we should use legal tools, yet also be wary of the ‘seduction of legalism’.¹²⁸⁰ Achieving this balance requires that peacebuilding operations are staffed by a range of professionals in addition to lawyers, such as psychologists, economists, social workers, educators, people working within the media, representatives of victim groups, politicians and political analysts.

If ‘change is driven by multiple factors’, then the composition of peacebuilding teams should give the opportunity to different thematic and country experts to identify these and promote them.¹²⁸¹ Of course, involving such a wide range of professionals in the planning and implementation stages of a peacebuilding strategy may be difficult, both in terms of cost and the time it would take for them to reach a decision. One way of addressing the cost problem is to engage with local experts, whose services are almost always cheaper than those of international peacebuilders. This might not be an option in all post-violence societies due to the possible lack of sufficient expertise among the locals, but it can work well in some contexts, such as Cyprus, which boasts of high educational levels¹²⁸² and an engaged civil society within both communities.¹²⁸³ The coordination problem on the other hand, can be addressed by making a conscious effort to build a multi-disciplinary core team of peacebuilders, who are then regularly consulted by a range of other professionals. Admittedly, this is likely to result in much more complex, expensive and long-term peace operations. These are indeed significant hurdles, but if they are used as excuses to prevent much-needed changes in the composition of peacebuilding teams, we run the risk that ‘symbolic victories may be mistaken for substantive ones, covering a reality that is distasteful.’¹²⁸⁴ Empowering different types of peacebuilders – both in terms of their nationality and professional qualifications – might make peacebuilding more challenging, but it will also make its effects more real.

1278 Lundy and McGovern, ‘The Role of Community’, 99.

1279 Paul Gready, ‘Reconceptualising Transitional Justice: Embedded and Distanced Justice’ (2005) 5 Conflict, Security and Development 2.

1280 Kieran McEvoy, ‘Letting Go of Legalism: Developing a “Thicker” Version of Transitional Justice’ in Kieran McEvoy and Lorna McGregor (eds), Transitional Justice from Below (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2008), 19.

1281 Donald and Mottershaw, ‘Evaluating the Impact’, 352. Also see Yehezkel Dror, ‘Law and Social Change’

(1958-1959) 33 Tulane Law Review 787, 801, arguing that ‘changes in law have more impact on emotionally neutral and instrumental areas of activity than on expressive and evaluative areas of activity’ and that in the case of the latter, other tools, such as education and economic development, may be more effective than legal changes.

1282 Cyprus ranks among the first countries in the EU in terms of numbers of university graduates. (Eurostat,

‘Educational Attainment Statistics’ June 2018, available at www.ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Educational_attainment_statistics.)

1283 For more information on civil society actors involved in peacebuilding in Cyprus, see the UNDP’s website,

available at

www.cy.undp.org/content/cyprus/en/home/operations/projects/action_for_cooperation_and_trust.html.

1284 Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope 424. Also, see Scheingold, The Politics of Rights 6, arguing that the myth of rights can cause one to ‘mistakenly identify isolated courtroom victories with real progress.’