Implicación

1.0 Introduction 2.0 Objectives 3.0 Main Body

3.1 The Concept of Peace Building 3.2 Map of Peace Building Activities 3.3 Principles of Peace Building 3.4 The Challenges of Peace building

3.5 The Criticisms and Questions of Peace-building Theory and Practice

3.6 ‘Military’ Peace Building 4.0 Conclusion

5.0 Summary

6.0 Tutor Marked Assignment 7.0 References/Further Readings

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In the early 90s when international community began to show significant interest in reshaping countries recovering from wars, peace-building became a global vocabulary in peace discourse. Here, we are discussing the concept of peace-building through the adoption of analytical framework. So, fasten your seat belt and let us fly.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

By the end of the unit, you should be able to:

i. Explain the concept of peace building.

ii. Describe the map of peace building activities.

iii. Identify the principles of peace building.

iv. Identify the challenges of peace building.

v. Explain the criticisms and questions of peace-building.

vi. ‘Military’ Peace Building.

3.0 MAIN BODY

3.1 The concept of Peace Building

The concept of peace building by the UN in Namibian Operations in 1978 was then understood primarily as a form of post-conflict reconstruction. It has since expanded, as can be seen in the 1992 and 1995 editions of former UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace, in relation to post-conflict situations, he identifies peace-building programs to include ‘co-operative projects ... that not only contribute to economic and social development but also enhance the confidence that is so fundamental to peace’. This explains why scholars today say that peace building includes:

‘Policies, programs, and associated efforts to restore stability and the effectiveness of social, political, and economic institutions and structures in the wake of a war or some other debilitating or catastrophic event’. Peace building generally aims to create and ensure the conditions for ‘negative peace’, the mere absence of violent conflict engagement, and for ‘positive peace’, a more comprehensive understanding related to the institutionalization of justice and freedom’ (Miller and King, 2004) The UN systems have initiated so many ideas of the content of peace building which small selection of them is:

• Assisting an end to military or violent exchanges through the decommissioning of arms, the demobilization of combatants, and rehabilitation and reintegration programs

• Providing humanitarian relief to victims

• Protecting human rights

• Ensuring security and related services

• Generating an environment of trust in order for social relations to function properly

• Establishing non-violent modes of resolving present and future conflicts

• Fostering reconciliation among the various parties to a conflict

• Providing psycho-social or trauma healing services to victims of severe atrocities

• Repatriating refugees and resettling internally displaced persons

• Aiding in economic reconstruction

• Building and maintaining the operation of institutions to provide such services, and

• Co-coordinating the roles of numerous internal and external parties involved in such interrelated efforts. (Adopted from the A Glossary of Terms and Concepts in Peace and Conflict Studies, by Miller and King 2004)

3.2 Map of Peace building Activities

Peace building requires a range of approaches. While many actors engage in multiple categories of peace building, the map highlights the unique goals of different approaches to peace building.

Waging Conflict Nonviolently

Advocates and activists seek to gain support for change by increasing a group’s power to address these issues, and ripen the conditions needed to transform relations.

Reducing Direct Violence

Efforts to reduce direct violence aim to restrain perpetrators of violence, prevent and relieve the immediate suffering of victims of violence, and create a safe space for peace building activities in other categories that address the root causes of the violence.

Transforming Relationships

Efforts that aim to transform people and their relationships use an array of processes that address trauma, transform conflict and do justice.

These processes give people opportunities to create long-term, sustainable solutions to address their needs.

Capacity Building

Long-term peace building efforts enhance existing capacities to meet needs and rights and prevent violence through education and training, development, military conversion and transformation, research and evaluation. These activities aim to build just structures that support a sustainable culture of peace.

Table: 2.2: Cycle of Peace Building

Weighting Conflicting Building Capacity Nonviolently * Training & education

* Monitoring and * Developing

advocacy * Military Conversion

* Direct action * Research and

* Civilian-based evaluation

defense

Circle of Peace building

Reducing Direct Violence Transformation

* Legal and justice Relationships

system * Trauma healing

* Humanitarian * Conflict transformation

assistance * Restoration justice

* Peacekeeping * Transitional justice

* Military intervention * Transitional justice

* Ceasefire agreements * Governance and

* Peace zones Policymaking

3.3 Principles of Peace Building

1. Reflect on Values: Peace-building requires ongoing personal and organizational reflection on how peace-building programs connect withier values.

2. Address Basic Needs and rights: Peace-building helps people to meet their own basic needs and rights while acknowledging the needs and rights of others.

3. Analyze conflict and violence: Peace-building requires ongoing analysis of the causes and dynamics of conflict and violence, and the resources for peace.

4. Plan Long-term: Peace-building moves beyond a short-term, crisis orientation toward designing social change over years and decades.

5. Transform Whole Systems: Peace-building changes the personal, relational, cultural, and structural levels.

6. Coordinate Approaches and Actors: Peace-building requires coordinated approaches that reflect responsibility, accountability, and participation by many different actors.

7. Identify and Create Power: Power exists in all relationships.

Peace-building requires all people to be aware of their power and create nonviolent forms of power to meet their needs in collaboration with others.

8. Empower Others: Peace-building strengthens and builds upon local efforts and empowers other to act. Peace-building is based on participatory democracy and self-determination.

9. See Culture as a Resource: Cultural values, traditions, and ritual can be resources for peace-building.

10. Innovate and use Creativity: Peace-building uses multiple ways of communicating and learning, rather than relying only on words or dialogue to develop creative solutions to complex problems.

Source: Training Manual for Women in Peace-building, WANEP (16-18 Feb. 2006) (unpublished)

3.4 The Challenges of Peace Building

• Failures to address the underlying or root causes of the conflict

• Lack of legitimacy in the eyes of recipients and target groups, particularly in relation to newly formed institutions

• Lack of agreement over the acceptance of roles and implementation of responsibilities by all parties to the conflict

• Limits on leadership in times of political transition or extreme crisis

• Over-reliance on external parties

• Aspirations to build a society that, functions generally better than it did prior to the conflict (Millar and King 2004)

3.5 The Criticisms and Questions of Peace-building Theory and Practice

First, the activities of relief and development have usually been conducted and studied separately, and their intersections are not well defined. Peace building bridges this traditional divide, but a reformulation is needed for integrating the theory and practice of these interconnected disciplines.

Second, peace building seems to suggest long-term, extensive effort and commitment by parties to the conflict and external partners.

Conceptualizing a timeframe for such efforts has generated considerable debate.

Third, peace building is often understood as the final phase of a conflict, yet some argue that such processes can begin in the midst of a violent conflict.

Fourth, the importance of gender in relation to conflict and peace building continues to be overlooked, often completely. The sufferings resulting from conflict affect men and women differently and their subsequent roles in peace building differ as well.