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Description
This article surveys and analyzes twenty-four governmental and intergovernmental bodies that are currently active in peacebuilding in order to, first, identify critical differences in how they conceptualize and operationalize their mandate, and, second, map areas of potential concern. We begin by briefly outlining the various terms used by different actors to describe their peacebuilding activities and correlate these terms with differing core mandates, networks of interaction, and interests. We then identify the divisions regarding the specific approaches and areas of priority. Thus far most programs have focused on the immediate or underlying causes of conflict--to the relative neglect of state institutions. We conclude by raising concerns about how peacebuilding is institutionalized in various settings, including at the UN's Peacebuilding Commission. KEYWORDS: peacebuilding, postconflict reconstruction, peacekeeping, United Nations.
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Thirteen years ago, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali unveiled the concept of postconflict peacebuilding, defining it as "action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid relapse into conflict." (1) Since then practitioners, scholars, international and regional organizations, and states have attempted to better identify what institutionalizes peace after war and what the critical ingredients and steps likely to further that goal are. If the success of peacebuilding is measured against how well it has, indeed, institutionalized peace, the picture is very mixed. Nearly 50 percent of all countries receiving assistance slide back into conflict within five years, and 72 percent of peacebuilding operations leave in place authoritarian regimes. (2) If, however, success is measured in terms of the institutionalization of the concept of peacebuilding, then it appears to be a resounding success. An impressive number of organizations contribute to the cause of ending and preventing deadly conflict and use the concept to frame and organize their postconflict activities. Every indication, moreover, is that the demand for peacebuilding will increase further because the long-term concern about ending civil wars has now been joined by the fear that weak states pose a major threat to international stability. (3) Perhaps the surest sign of the thriving peacebuilding agenda is the decision by the 2005 World Summit at the UN to endorse UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposals to create a peacebuilding commission, support office, and fund. When implemented, these structures will institutionalize peacebuilding at the highest levels--and increase the incentives for others to join the peacebuilding bandwagon.
Although peacebuilding is generically defined as external interventions that are designed to prevent the eruption or return of armed conflict, there are critical differences among actors regarding its conceptualization and operationalization. This article surveys and analyzes twenty-four governmental and intergovernmental bodies that are currently active in peacebuilding in order to, first, identify critical differences in how they conceptualize and operationalize their mandate and, second, map areas of potential concern. Our survey includes actors who are the largest funders or implementers of international peacebuilding assistance and who are likely to participate in a future UN Peacebuilding Commission. (4) In the first section we briefly outline the various terms used by different actors to describe their peacebuilding activities and correlate these terms with differing core mandates, networks of interaction, and interests. Although different terms are used to describe postconflict peacebuilding, there are even greater divisions regarding the specific approaches that might achieve it, which is the focus of the second section. Some programs focus on the production of stability and security in the early days of a peace agreement's implementation, while others focus on building vibrant civil societies and furthering development, democracy, justice, and the rule of law. Although there are various reasons for these differing priorities, the prevailing organizational mandates and interests are an important part of the explanation. Thus far, though, programs have focused on the immediate or underlying causes of conflict--to the relative neglect of state institutions. This neglect is a possible artifact of the ingrained belief by wealthy countries that liberalization, largely defined as the movement toward democracy, markets, and the rule of law, is the best way to develop a positive peace in poor ones. In this respect, international peacebuilders have demonstrated greater concern with the kind of state being built rather than its degree. There is evidence, however, that this neglect is being redressed. Although this greater attention is overdue, to the extent that it is driven by a fear that weak states create a permissive environment for terrorist and criminal networks, it might create a willingness to be more concerned with the degree of the state rather than the kind.
By way of conclusion, we discuss several policy implications. Although we see a lot of interest in peacebuilding, much of it is at the level of rhetoric and not at the level of resources. The danger, therefore, is that while peacebuilding looks highly supported on paper, in fact it receives little meaningful financial and political support relative to the costs of renewed conflict. Second, we need to be very cognizant of the particular version of peacebuilding that is being institutionalized. There are important differences in how various actors see the complex task of peacebuilding and the many priorities it entails. Debates among agencies over how to implement peacebuilding in particular areas must not be settled by bureaucratic power but by the recipient states themselves, with international actors helping inform their choices by access to evidence-based arguments (and an acknowledgment that the evidence is limited and analysis highly provisional). These are critical issues to keep in mind at the UN Peacebuilding Commission. Finally, agencies must focus more attention on creating state institutions that can deliver basic public goods in an equitable manner. Although the state is not the only institution that underpins stability, pursuing peacebuilding without an institutional foundation is a recipe for failure.
Peacebuilding and Its Aliases
Peacebuilding is generically understood as external interventions that are intended to reduce the risk that a state will erupt into or return to war. Yet, as captured in Table 1, different agencies use a wide variety of terms that are related to but are not necessarily synonymous with peacebuilding. Even more confusing, some use the same term, peacebuilding, in slightly different ways. Different groupings clearly emerge: the UN Secretariat, UN specialized agencies, European organizations, and member states. This differentiation, as we suggest below, owes partly to prevailing organizational mandates and networks. The organization's core mandate will heavily influence its reception to, and definition and revision of, the concept of peacebuilding. Moreover, organizations do not exist in isolation but instead are nested in structured relationships and exchange of resources and information; those that are linked have tended to converge on a consensus definition. (5)
The UN Secretariat continues to build on former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's original formulation: "action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid relapse into conflict." (6) At the UN, "peacebuilding" complements the organization's peacemaking and peacekeeping functions. In his Supplement to an Agenda for Peace, Boutros-Ghali expanded on the basic ideas behind peacebuilding and then defined its essential goal as "the creation of structures for the institutionalization of peace." (7) Since then, other units within the Secretariat have modified and refined this formulation. As Charles Call notes in his review of peacebuilding at the UN, at this point the UN introduced two important clarifications. One, it began to emphasize that peacebuilding is more than the elimination of armed conflict; after all, stability can be achieved by the balance or threat of force. Instead, it involves the creation of a positive peace, the elimination of the root causes of conflict so that actors no longer have the motive to use violence to settle their differences. The other clarification, a logical implication of the first, is that the same technologies that are used to help build peace after war also can be used to help societies avoid war in the first instance. In other words, peacebuilding is conflict prevention by another name and, therefore, "postconflict" often modifies peacebuilding to distinguish it from conflict prevention. (8)
In early 2000 the Brahimi Report on Peacekeeping Reform further refined the definition of peacebuilding: "activities undertaken on the far side of conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war." (9) Although the report stressed how peacebuilding comes after conflict, and thus intentionally bracketed its... |
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