Introduction: Searching for Strategy in an Age of Peacebuilding

Daniel Philpott (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0000
Abstract and Keywords
Daniel Philpott introduces this volume with the search for a definition of strategic peacebuilding,
arguing that holism is its defining characteristic. He first critically examines the notion of the liberal
peace which pervades the dominant thinking of peacekeeping operations, international institutions
such as the United Nations, and western governments. Philpott argues that although these institutions
have moved toward more holistic approaches, they have not fully conceptualized an approach to
peacebuilding that is strategic, meaning it purposefully strengthens integration and coordination
among diverse and interdependent activities, policies, and time horizons. Philpott concludes with a
conceptual map of the book, which evidences the constructive diversity of arguments presented in the
succeeding chapters for innovative ways in which different sectors, actors and policies can link
together fruitfullyin other words, strategically.

Keywords: strategic peacebuilding, United Nations, peacekeeping operations, liberal peace, human rights, democracy

The most recent generation in global politics might well be called the age of peacebuilding. What
merits the moniker is an intense, diverse, and global wave of efforts to end the violence and colossal
injustices of civil war, genocide, dictatorship, and large-scale poverty and to foster justice and
prosperity in their stead. Since 1988, the United Nations (UN) has undertaken peacebuilding
operations in revolutionary number and frequency. Since the end of the Cold War, an unprecedented
number of civil wars have ended through negotiated settlements. A third wave of democracy,
beginning in 1974, has seen some eighty societies move toward human rights, democracy, and the rule
of law.1 Everyone, it seemsfrom the UN to the World Bank to the World Social Forum to relief and
development agencieshas pursued ambitious quests to end poverty. Transitional justice has become
a global pursuit, involving variously national trials, vetting practices, international criminal tribunals,
a permanent International Criminal Court, over thirty truth commissions, an outbreak of reparations
and public apologies, and sometimes forgiveness in the political realm. Western states have struggled
to establish security and the rule of law in sites of violence and anarchythe United States in Somalia,
Afghanistan, and Iraq; Germany in Afghanistan; and the European Union (EU) in Kosovo and the
Democratic Republic of Congo. Human rights organizations, religious institutions, tribal elders, and
citizens of domestic societies have sought to resolve and transform conflict in innovative ways, too.

But if this montage of energies describes a trend, so too it evokes urgent questions. Are all of these
efforts truly ones of peacebuilding? Which have been successful? Under what conditions are
they (p.4)successful? Which are just? By what criteria? Do some of these efforts affect others,
positively or negatively? Most of all, are there concepts, doctrines, or paradigms that tell us how
peacebuilding ought to be pursued?
The dominant thinking is the liberal peacedominant in that it pervades the most powerful and
prestigious institutions and governments who take on the work of peacebuilding. 2 Its aims are simple
and familiar: to end armed violence and to establish human rights, democracy, and market
economies. Its intellectual provenance is the liberal tradition that arose from the Western
Enlightenment. It envisions the UN, outside intervening states, state governments, and oppositional
factions, undertaking mediation, military intervention, war settlement, disarmament, election
monitoring, refugee resettlement, and the creation of free government institutions, free markets, and
a free media. A cardinal virtue is finitude: when will the operation end?

Such an approach is far too narrow, this volume argues. None of the authors herein rejects human
rights, democracy, economic growth, or the United Nations. But the building of peace, we propose, is
far wider, deeper, and more encompassing and involves a far greater array of actors, activities, levels
of society, links between societies, and time horizons than the dominant thinking recognizes. It
involves the United Nations carrying out sanctions against terrorist groups in a way that also
promotes good governance, human rights, and economic development in the countries where the
sanctions are targeted. It involves coordinating the international prosecution of war criminals with the
need to settle a civil war and the efforts of local cultures and leaders to bring peace. It involves
educating the children of the next generation so as to transform their hatred into tolerance and even
friendship. It involves nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society. It involves religious
actors, who are all but ignored in most current thinking on peacebuilding. It involves combating
inequalities that are embedded in global structures of power and wealth. It involves trials, truth
commissions, and reparations, and also apology, forgiveness, and rituals of reconciliation. Not only is
the broad range of these players, practices, and periods crucial for achieving a sustainable peace, each
is linked to others through cause and effect, for better or for worse. Effective peacebuilding, it follows,
aims to strengthen these ligatures of interdependence, accenting, deepening, and synchronizing them,
and linking them further with the efforts of governments and international institutions and with the
broad project of building a just peace in and between societies. Any particular effort at such
strengthening may be called a strategy of peace.

What follows in the rest of this introduction is a brief analysis of the liberal peace and its criticsnot
because strategic peacebuilding merely defines itself against the liberal peace but because the concept
becomes clearer when situated in the global conversation about peacebuilding. Prominent criticisms
of the liberal peace as well as movements within the liberal peace indeed point in the direction of
strategic peacebuilding. Next comes a deeper definition and description of strategic peacebuilding.
The introduction closes with a conceptual map of the volume that shows how the chapters both reflect
strategic peacebuilding as well as advance it through strategies of peace.

(p.5) The Liberal Peace and Its Critics

When, in 1989, four decades of worldwide ideological rivalry came to an end, the global consensus on
human rights, democracy, and free markets sharply expanded as did possibilities for cooperation in
the UN Security Councila new world order, U.S. President George H. W. Bush called it.
Meanwhile, large-scale ethnic conflicts raged around the world,3 and a form of violent and
impoverishing anarchy known as the failed state became prevalent. This was a world that, to
paraphrase Voltaires description of the Holy Roman Empire, seemed neither new nor global nor
particularly orderly. These two divergent trends converged as supply and demand to yield what is
known as the UN Revolution, an intense spate of efforts by the Security Council and its authorized
agents to bring peace and relief to sites of calamity. Between 1987 and 1994, the Security Council
increased its resolutions by four times, its peacekeeping operations by three times, its economic
sanctions sevenfold, its military forces in the field from 10,000 to more than 70,000, and its budget
for peacekeeping from $230 million to $3.6 billion.4 Of its fifty-five peace operations since 1945, forty-
one (75%) began after 1989.5 Between 1989 and 1999, it sent out thirty-three peace operations, more
than double the fifteen missions it had conducted during the previous four decades. 6 Between 1989
and 2005, it conducted twenty-two post-conflict peacebuilding operationsthe most extensive sort
in administrative terms.7

Not only the number but just as notably the ambition of these operations swelled. Exceeding the
boundaries of traditional peacekeeping operations, which depend on the consent of the parties to a
conflict and do not legally constitute intervention, many of these operations involved armed force
sanctioned by Chapter VII of the UN Charter and overrode state sovereignty, flouting the will of at
least one party to the conflict. Other operations formally remained traditional peacekeeping
operations under Chapter VI but mushroomed in their mission, coming to be dubbed Chapter six and
a half. Both sorts pursued aims ranging among humanitarian relief, disarmament of armed factions,
election monitoring, refugee resettlement, the construction of government institutions, and at times
even running government institutionsthe latter a particularly poignant departure from the principle
of state sovereignty.

These operations coincided with yet another trend, a marked rise in the frequency of civil wars being
settled through negotiations rather than the victory of one side or a petering out. Political scientist
Monica Duffy Toft reports that between 1940 and 1989, 75 to 100 percent of civil wars in any one
decade ended in military victory, whereas only a handful ended in negotiation. By contrast, during the
1990s, a sharply increased 42 percent of civil wars ended in negotiations, coming to exceed the 40
percent that ended in military victory.8 In fact, more civil wars ended through negotiations between
1989 and 2004 than in the previous two centuries.9 It is frequently in conjunction with such
negotiations that UN operations have taken root.

The manifesto of the UN revolution was former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghalis Agenda for
Peace of 1992. Written in the heady days of the new (p.6) world order, the document both reflects on
the ballooning of UN operations and sets a course for its continuation. Four major peace operations
were envisioned by Boutros-Ghali: (1) preventive diplomacy; (2) an expanded version of traditional
peacekeeping; (3) peacemaking, which brings hostile parties to agreement generally through peaceful
means but at times through Chapter VII enforcement; and finally, (4) postconflict peacebuilding, a
range of efforts to consolidate peace after a settlement.10 Subsequent documents written or
commissioned by secretary generals have followed up on the proposals of An Agenda for Peace.
Boutros-Ghali himself issued a supplement in 1995.11 In 2000, Secretary General Kofi Annan
commissioned Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi to convene a panel on peace operations, which
recommended greatly enhanced institutional capacities.12 That same year, in response to a challenge
from Annan, the government of Canada convened an International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty to produce Responsibility to Protect, a set of principles intended to guide and
promote humanitarian intervention.13 In 2004, a similar panel, this one commissioned directly by
Annan, produced A More Secure World, recommending UN reforms that included a Peacebuilding
Commission to coordinate and strengthen transitions from war to peace. 14
Here the assumptions of the liberal peace can be foundits stress on human rights, democracy, free
markets, and the central role of international institutions and state governments in building peace. 15In
1996, Boutros-Ghali issued a document called An Agenda for Democratization.16 The same
assumptions can be found among those departments and officials in Western governments that most
involve themselves in building peace, not least the U.S. government, which has played an integral role
in UN-authorized peace operations in Iraq (1990s), Somalia, Haiti, Cambodia, Bosnia, and
Afghanistan, and in operations outside UN mandates in Kosovo and Iraq (1999 and 2003). They are
found, too, in the Washington Consensus, a doctrine of economic development shared by the World
Bank and agencies of the U.S. government stressing reduced trade barriers and public sectors and
generally free market economic policies in developing country governments.17 They are found in much
scholarship on UN peace operations.18

In 2005, Andrew Mack reported in the Human Security Report that contrary to abounding myths,
civil wars, genocides, and international crises all declined sharply after the end of the Cold War, and
he credited UN peace operations as the primary source of the trend.19 Have UN operations achieved
such success? Scholars differ over the question, and their differences depend on the stringency of their
standards.
Representative of a skeptical assessment is political scientist Roland Paris, who, focusing on the
effects of postconflict peacebuilding operations in promoting political and market liberalization, finds
that only two out of eleven operations between 1989 and 1999Namibia and Croatiawere
successful, measured by amelioration of the conditions that give rise to conflict and a positive impact
on the likelihood of stable and lasting peace within the host country. 20 Political scientists George
Downs and Stephen John Stedman take Paris to task for adopting such demanding standards that he
cannot (p.7)distinguish between catastrophic failures and partial successes and hence derives too
pessimistic a verdict. To them, UN operations are successful if they bring large-scale violence to an
end and do so on a self-enforcing basis that allows them to exit without fear of violence resurging. On
this basis, they survey sixteen UN efforts to implement peace accords between 1980 and 1997 and
conclude that six were successes, four were partial successes, and six were failures. 21 Reasoning
roughly similarly about success is arguably the most sophisticated study of peacebuilding to date,
political scientists Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambaniss Making War and Building Peace, an
analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, of the factors that contribute to peace in the wake of civil
wars. They measure success in terms of both sovereign peace, which requires an end to civil war,
undivided sovereignty, no residual violence and no mass human rights abuses by the state, as well
as a more robust participatory peace, which includes all of these ends but also a minimum level of
political openness. Doyle and Sambanis discover (among their other conclusions) that UN peace
operations have a significant positive effect on participatory peace two years after the end of a war and
that UN peace operations are positively correlated with the length of the peace, reducing peace
failures by 50 percent.22
The debate over criteria for success need not be settled here; it ought only to be noted that even the
most favorable evaluations judge the success of UN peace operations to be mixed. Doyle and
Sambaniss quantitative analysis is probabilistic and includes cases of both successful and failed peace
operations. One of their findings is that in the short run, UN missions have little effect on whether
parties resume warfare, though in the long run their pacifying effect is strongeragain, a mixed
verdict.23 Other studies show a large proportion of peace settlements relapsing into violence. The
negotiated settlements that have become so characteristic of the postCold War period revert to
violence three times as often as civil wars that end in the victory of one side.24 According to Charles T.
Call and Elizabeth M. Cousens, most studies show that somewhere between a fifth and a third of all
settled conflicts revert back to warfare within five years.25 Andrew Macks 2007 study showed that
armed conflicts ending with a negotiated settlement experienced a reversion rate of 43 percent within
five years.26 Most arresting are two outbreaks of violence that followed the breakdown of UN peace
operations: Angola in 1993, which resulted in 350,000 deaths, and Rwanda in 1994, which left
800,000 dead. Peacebuilding still has a long way to go.

Reacting to this mixed verdict, these and other analysts have proposed improvements. Paris diagnoses
the problem as a rush to bring about political and economic liberalization, which undermines stability
if it takes place in the absence of stable government institutions. Institutionalization before
liberalization, he counsels.27 Downs and Stedman claim that good peacebuilding rests on a better
understanding of two critical variablesthe difficulty of the environment and the willingness of
outside parties to interveneand the factors that shape both. Within operations, Stedman considers
demobilizing combatants to be the most important task.28 Doyle and Sambanis somewhat complexify
Downs and Stedmans model by proposing a peacebuilding (p.8) triangle in which international
capacities, levels of hostility, and local capacities are the three crucial assets for peacebuilding
success.29 Former Ambassador James Dobbins and his coauthors (who, like Downs and Stedman,
think that peacebuilding operations have been a mixed success) stress sizing up the necessary
resourceswhich they calculate with admirable precisionand adopting a multiplicity of
practices.30 Francis Fukuyamas analysis of statebuilding criticizes the Washington Consensus for
devaluing state capacity and argues for measures that strengthen state institutions under the rule of
law, but remains broadly skeptical of international efforts at peacebuilding. 31 In her study of civil wars,
Toft argues that negotiated settlements, which are far less likely than victories to remain stable, will
only last when an outside party offers combatants a combination of harms and benefits for adhering to
it; third-party intervention alone is not enough. She particularly stresses the importance of security
sector reform.32Inquiring into the kinds of domestic institutions and territorial settlements through
which civil wars have been settled, political scientists Philip G. Roeder and Donald Rothchild analyze
and argue that majoritarian democracy is far more stable than power sharing or partition. 33 All of
these analyses, however, work roughly within the assumptions of the liberal peace: stable peace,
human rights, democracy, and market economies are the primary ends; intergovernmental
institutions, state governments, and warring parties are the primary actors. Generallywith the
possible exception of certain aspects of Doyle and Sambaniss model that are stressed in Sambaniss
chapter hereinthey do not approach the holism of strategic peacebuilding.34
Yet in the principle and the practice, in the doctrine and the debate over peacebuilding during the
period inaugurated by the UN revolution, one can discern a movement toward holism. 35 Since the
early days of no-fly zones in Iraq and intervention in Somalia, peacebuilding operations have taken on
an increasingly complex, multifold, and ambitious array of tasks. First in Cambodia and Bosnia, then
more extensively in eastern Slavonia, Kosovo, and East Timor, operations took the form of an
international administration that assumed, at least for a short time, sovereign powers, much like
international trusteeships did earlier in the twentieth century.36 In the doctrine of the UN, strains of
holism are perceptible in both An Agenda for Peace and in the Supplement to an Agenda for Peace,
where Boutros-Ghali wrote of the multiple tasks involved in postconflict peacebuilding. 37 They
crescendo in the Brahimi Report, which points to the need for peacebuilding strategy, integrating
peacebuilding into peacekeeping operations, and incorporating a comprehensive program for national
reconciliation into peace operations,38 and in a 2001 statement of the Security Council recognizing
that

peacebuilding is aimed at preventing the outbreak, the recurrence or the continuation of armed
conflict and therefore encompasses a wide range of political, development, humanitarian, and human
rights programmes [sic] and mechanisms. This requires short- and long-term action tailored to
address the particular needs of societies sliding into conflict or emerging from it. These actions should
focus (p.9) on fostering sustainable development, the eradication of poverty and inequalities,
transparent and accountable governance, the promotion of democracy, respect for human rights and
the rule of law, and the promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence.39

Then, the report, A More Secure World, proposed a UN Peacebuilding Commission whose mission
would include coordinating the efforts of the UN Security Council, the Economic and Social Council,
the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and representatives of principal donor countries,
the country where the intervention is taking place, and regional and subregional organizationsalso a
thrust toward holism.40 In December 2005, the Peacebuilding Commission was created. For its part,
the World Bank took a step toward holism in a 2006 report proclaiming and documenting the role of
civil society in peacebuilding.41 But for all of their thrusts, strides, and movements toward holism,
these landmark statements of the liberal peace stop short of directly and forthrightly conceptualizing
an approach to peacebuilding that integrates diverse and interdependent actors, activities, and time
horizons.42
A Proposal for Strategic Peacebuilding
The authors in this volume take up from where these trajectories have led the business of
peacebuilding. A lasting and even reasonably just peace, we claim, depends on a wide array of actors
and activities, at all levels of society and between societies, oriented toward the past, the present, and
the future. These sectors are interdependent, and in taking them into its range of vision, strategic
peacebuilding evinces holismits most quintessential characteristic. It is the mission of advocates and
practitioners of strategic peacebuilding to exploit this interdependence and holism, synergetically
linking sectors that would otherwise remain isolated or in conflict. The intentionality of such efforts is
what gives force to the adjective strategic. Strategic peacebuilders are like doctors who understand
that the body is composed of interconnected systems and then specialize in certain regions of
connection with the conviction that these subsystems crucially sustain the entire anatomy. A feature of
this medicine is its interest not only in laws, institutions, and policies but in emotions, attitudes,
beliefs, legitimacy, and, broadly speaking, the wide range of relationships among citizens. In pursuing
this interest, it draws wisdom not only from the liberal tradition of human rights, democracy, free
markets, and international law and institutions but also from cultural, religious, and tribal traditions.

Get real! exclaimed one interlocutor at the November 2006 conference at the University of Notre
Dame where the essays for this volume were first presented. How can a holistic approach be anything
other than utopian in the face of large-scale violence like the wars in Yugoslavia or Rwanda? Realists
might also ask how, given the strains that peacebuilding operations already face, a still more
ambitious set of undertakings can be envisioned. Call and Cousens caution that in the context of the
UN, calls for integrated strategy tended to (p.10) lose out to laundry lists and what could be called a
no agency left behind notion of peacebuilding.43 In advocating greater attention to interdependence,
holism, and integration, none of the authors herein has in mind a Peacebuilding Panopticon or a
World Office of Strategic Peacebuilding that will direct and command the efforts of all who are
involved. Even the Peacebuilding Commission does not have such ambitions, and at the time of this
writing has not yet realized the coordinating functions that it was mandated to perform. Nor do the
chapters herein call for an abolition of internationally sanctioned military intervention or
international policing.44 Rather, particular nodes of interdependence, instances of overlap between
activities, actors, and other kinds of sectors are what the authors identify and propose ways to
develop. Through many such efforts, which may begin to be coordinated once they occur, a more
holistic approach to peacebuilding can emerge. Our proposal is not to throw in the kitchen sink but to
mix together carefully heretofore unmixed ingredients. Far from placing more strain on the UN and
other institutions, such an approach ought to lessen the pressure that they face by spreading the work
of peacebuilding over a far greater array of actors endowed with variegated expertise and assets.
That strategic peacebuilding can be successful is evinced through examples in the chapters that follow.
John Paul Lederach and R. Scott Applebys contribution details the fruits of strategic peacebuilding in
Mozambique, Colombia, and the Philippines. Gerard Powers points to the successful efforts of
religious mediators in Guatemala, northern Uganda, and elsewhere. Naomi Roht-Arriaza touts
transitional justice efforts in Guatemala for their success in bridging national and local levels to be
healing for victims of human rights abuses. Many other success stories emerge. The chapters likewise
contain examples of operations that were mixed or lacking in success because of an arguable dearth of
strategic peacebuilding. Simon Chesterman, for instance, evaluates several UN missions, among them
Kosovo, Somalia, Cambodia, and East Timor, and concludes that their limitations were due in good
part to insufficiently strategic aims, inadequate coordination among actors, and poor standards for
evaluating success. To be sure, he cautions that modest expectations are in order, but he still believes
that progress in all of these areas would improve UN operationsand would, in fact, involve strategic
peacebuilding.

Each of the essays asserts some way in which sectors, practices, policies, or time horizons can be
linked fruitfullythat is, a strategy of peace. The strategies take a wide variety of forms and involve a
wide variety of sectors and activities, reflecting the diverse disciplines and methods of the authors,
who include sociologists, legal scholars, peace scholars, political scientists, psychologists, and a
historian. By and large, these differences are complementary, reflecting the very character of strategic
peacebuilding. At times, they involve creative tensions. Nicholas Sambanis and Jackie Smith each call
for a greater integration of economic development into peacebuilding but differ over the wisdom of
economic liberalization and the role of international financial institutions. In his concluding essay,
Oliver Richmond applauds George Lopez and David Cortright for linking fighting terror with building
peace on the ground through (p.11) UN policy but still worries that UN counterterrorism policies risk
radicalizing extremists and undermining peace processes. Such disagreements are constructive
because they offer readers a wider portfolio of strategies of peace to explore and evaluate.
Generally, the books chapters are arrayed in three broad clusters that each makes the case for
strategic peacebuilding in a different way. Chapters 1 through 4 set forth strategic peacebuilding at a
general, conceptual level: the theory of strategic peacebuilding. Chapters 5 through 8 make up a
second cluster, one that presents peacebuilding from above, that is, with a central stress on
international institutions, especially the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
Chapters 9 through 13 form the third and final grouping, presenting peacebuilding from below,
emphasizing the role of civil society, economic, religious, educational, and other nongovernmental
actors. That these divisions are not perfect is entirely to be expected: linkages between levels are a
leitmotif in strategic peacebuilding. The essays in the second cluster call for international institutions
to be linked to the work of national and nongovernmental actors, and several of those in the third
cluster advocate the same sort of links in the other direction. The clusters are a matter of emphasis.

John Paul Lederach and Scott Applebys chapter orients the whole volume by laying out a
foundational theory of strategic peacebuilding, one to which subsequent chapters refer. Lederach is a
prominent scholar and practitioner who has pursued what he calls the art of peacebuilding in locales
as diverse as Nicaragua, Colombia, Nepal, Spain, and Kazakhstan; he is credited with pioneering a
paradigm shift from conflict resolution to conflict transformation.45 His writings have developed many
of the intellectual planks of strategic peacebuilding: relationships, reconciliation, transformation, the
importance of multiple social levels and a wide time horizon that involves healing the past as well as
envisioning the future, and an elicitive method that taps local cultures for their peacebuilding
codes.46 He teams up with Scott Appleby, a historian and scholar of religion whose book The
Ambivalence of the Sacred was one of the first to give conceptual depth to the idea of religious
peacebuilding. Appleby founded the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, a worldwide association of
activists and scholars who seek to advance the study and practice of peacebuilding in the Philippines,
Burundi, Colombia, and many other locales.47 Lederach and Appleby extend and develop the ideas
behind these pursuits, weaving into a new synthesis the concepts of interdependence; holism;
transparency; communication; coordination between levels, actors, and practices; and the idea of a
comprehensive justpeace.

Then, a chapter by Peter Wallensteen, a long-standing leading peace researcher, gives historical and
conceptual specificity to the concepts that Lederach and Appleby develop. After laying out the
precedents for peacebuilding in both political practice and peace scholarship, Wallensteen unveils an
approach to peacebuilding that, echoing the metaphor of a body composed of multiple systems,
describes the construction of peace as combining state-building, democracy-building, security-
building, nation-building, and market-building. He closes by probing four contextual questions that
must (p.12) be answered for effective peacebuilding to take place: how the previous war ended, how
the previous war started, who is conducting peacebuilding, and the nature of the neighborhood where
peacebuilding is taking place. Through developing and applying answers to these questions, effective
strategic peacebuilding takes place.
How should peacebuilding initiatives, particularly those of multilateral agencies and NGOs, be
evaluated? This is the question that Hal Culbertson, a practitioner and analyst of peacebuilding in
both NGO and university settings, poses. His answer is far more than a technical one. A central
criterion for assessment, consistent with the vector of this volume, is the NGOs or civil society
organizations strategic adaptation to the other actors and sectors of the society in which
peacebuilding is taking place. He cites the finding of the remarkable Joint Utstein Study of
Peacebuilding that of 336 peacebuilding projects funded by foreign and development ministries in
Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom, 55 percent showed no commitment to a
wider country strategy of peace. Joining this insight with several others based on a holistic
understanding of peacebuilding, Culbertsons essay offers a useful framework for monitoring and
evaluating peacebuilding programs.

Peacebuilding can also be evaluated through moral reasoning. What is just peacebuilding? By what
criteria should it be assessed? These are the questions for which my own chapter offers a framework, a
set of standards analogous to those that the just war theory poses for war. Its orienting idea is
reconciliation, a concept of justice as restoration of right relationship that is derived from the
Abrahamic religious traditions and whose meaning is much like Lederach and Applebys notion of
justpeace. Animating the ethic of political reconciliation is a set of practices that aim to repair one or
more wounds to human flourishing that political injustices leave behind and transform hostile
emotions and judgments to ones of assent to just political orders. Reflecting the volumes axial
notions, the practices are interdependent and collectively holistic.

The ensuing nine chapters explore strategic peacebuilding in particular contexts. In them can be
found the range of actors, activities, and time horizons, the stress on holism and interdependence, and
the proposals for linking sectors togetherthe strategies of peacethat characterize strategic
peacebuilding. Legal scholar Simon Chesterman and Nicholas Sambanis both look at UN
peacebuilding operations, stressing the need for their integration with certain other practices.
Drawing from his experience observing the UNs most ambitious operationsEast Timor and
KosovoChesterman concludes that states cannot be made to work from the outside. International
assistance can be successful, but only when it complements the creation of local institutions, policies,
and practices and the efforts of local actors. The Peacebuilding Commission, he believes, carries
potential for enriching such complementarity, but it is too early to judge its success.

Sambanis focuses on that aspect of UN peace operations that he and Doyle believe is most lacking:
economic development. He advocates a commitment to economic reconstruction and to integrating
such reconstruction into the project of peacebuilding that is far more capacious than the
Washington(p.13) Consensus approach of creating free market institutions and reducing public
sectors. Sambanis describes what this reconstruction consists of, how his and Doyles peacebuilding
triangle reveals the need for it, and who carries it out in his chapter.
The UN is also the focus of George A. Lopez and David Cortrights chapternot its peace operations
but its policies for countering terrorism. Widely recognized experts on sanctions, Lopez and Cortright
outline a policy that vividly exemplifies strategic peacebuildings interdependence of activity.
Recognizing the connection between terrorism and good governance, economic development, and
human rights, they offer informed recommendations for sanctions and other enforcement measures
that enhance (not detract from) these ends. In so doing, they propose ways to combat violence while
also improving the environments that incubate this violence in the first place.

Robert C. Johansens chapter also strongly illustrates strategic peacebuildings interdependence by

exploring two pursuits whose clash begets vociferous controversy today in countries like Ugandathe
prosecution of war criminals through the International Criminal Court and achieving a negotiated
settlement to civil war, which some argue requires amnesty or at least forgoing trials. His approach is
precisely a strategy for peace: a presumption for prosecution, but one that is pursued so as best to
promote long-term peace in war-ridden societies and is potentially overridden in cases where it
prevents such peace. With sophistication, he addresses the dilemmas to which his approach gives rise
and proposes concrete solutions.

Legal scholar Naomi Roht-Arriaza makes the case for strategic interdependence and complementarity
in another realm that is integral to building a just peacetransitional justice. As she describes, it is a
realm with a trajectory toward holism all of its own, beginning with debates over whether to prosecute
in Latin America in the 1980s, proceeding to the rise of robust truth commissions in Chile and South
Africa in the 1990s, and now coming to involve rich hybrids of both trials and truth commissions,
often combined with practices of vetting, reparations, and commemorations. Roht-Arriazas piece
partners with Johansens essay on trials, then, in plumbing the other institutions involved in this
complementarity. She argues that practitioners of transitional justice need to recognize another sort of
holisma linking of international, regional, national, and local transitional justice mechanisms, each
of which complements the others in its strengths and weaknesses.

Like Johansen, peace scholar Larissa Fast takes up the tension between two activities that often come
into conflict in the field: humanitarian relief and other dimensions of peacebuilding, like mediating an
end to wars. Her response to the problem seems at first to be a dissonant one for the volume: the two
activities should not be linked, she avers, lest humanitarian relief become diverted and compromised.
But respecting other sectors autonomy can be construed as a strategy for peace. Amid war, anarchy,
and chaos, such respect requires intentionality, awareness, and coordination. In arguing for such a
severance, Fast takes on a rival position that would link humanitarianism and politics. She explains
why the case for separation is more persuasive.

(p.14) Sociologist Jackie Smith challenges the liberal peace head on, especially its optimism about
market economies. Like Roland Paris, she believes that a rapid push for free markets, free trade, and
minimal government in the wake of armed conflict can actually destabilize societies rather than build
lasting peace. Both her diagnosis and her solution to the problem exceed Pariss call for sequencing.
For her, the chief obstacle to peace is local structures of inequality that are in turn embedded in global
structures of inequality, which, if not addressed, will only lead to further war. What sort of strategy
can combat these inequalities and hence offer hope for a sustainable peace? Her bold and surprising
answer leads us far beyond the corridors of international financial institutions.
What of strategic peacebuildings concern with changing hearts and minds? What of its emphasis on
the long run? Both factors receive play in the chapter by psychologists Robert D. Enright, Jeannette
Knutson Enright, and Anthony C. Holter, who draw conclusions from the curriculum for teaching
forgiveness to children that they have established in the school system of Belfast, Ireland. Forgiveness
contributes to peace by encouraging a new generation to turn away from communal hatred and
toward civic friendship, a virtue that resembles Lederach and Applebys notion of right relationship as
well as my own concept of reconciliation. Forgiveness, civil society, affective change, the educational
sector, and the long run: all of these features add new hues to strategic peacebuildings palette.

One sort of actor in particular, one also associated with hearts, minds, and the long run, has been
virtually neglected by the liberal peace: the religious. The chapter by Gerard F. Powers, an expert on
international affairs in the Catholic Church, is a strong corrective. Behind the neglect of religion, he
explains, is the secularization paradigm, which views religion as an irrational, violent, and intolerant
force that is destined for extinction. The religious can be violent, he acknowledges, but they have also
proven to be powerful, passionate, and effective agents of social and political transformation, their
efforts ranging from high-level mediation to interreligious dialogue to grassroots and civil society
efforts. What lies behind their influence? Under what conditions are they most successful? What can
the answers to these questions teach religious peacebuilders as well as secular Western governments?
These issues are at the heart of Powerss inquiry.

Finally, political scientist Oliver Richmond concludes with a chapter that synthesizes and comments
on the entire volume. A prolific scholar of peacebuilding and commentator on the liberal peace,
Richmond evaluates the essays and the collective argument of the project from the perspective of an
engaged intellectual, employing both the tools of international relations theory and his wide
experience observing peacebuilding efforts on the ground around the world.

This is strategic peacebuildingan approach that takes up and seeks to extend the movement toward
holism that peacebuilding has traveled over the past two decades. Insofar as it is sound, it is an
approach that ought to be of interest to a wide variety of parties, including officials in the United
Nations, (p.15) the World Bank, and other international organizations, religious leaders, NGO leaders
and staff, educators, economists, activists, tribal and village leaders, international lawyers and judges,
state officials in countries struggling to escape war and poverty, civil society leaders, and people living
and working at the grass roots wherever peacebuilding does or should take place. But strategic
peacebuilding might prove to be of interest to Western governments as well. Since the end of the Cold
War, the U.S. and European governments have experienced their most difficult foreign policy
dilemmas in locales where creating a sustainable peace in the aftermath of formal war proved far more
difficult than military victory itselfas noted at the beginning of this introduction, this includes the
U.S. experience in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq; Germanys in Afghanistan; and the European
Unions in Kosovo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. To recommend a strategic, holistic
approach to peacebuilding in these cases is not necessarily to approve of the wars that begat these
challenges in the first place. It is only to say that aims like fighting terrorism, promoting democracy,
and creating stability in sundered societies might well be pursued more profitably through adopting
into policy the insights in the chapters that follow. At the time of this writing, a new president has
taken office in the United States, one who promises to conduct Americas foreign policy with greater
sensitivity to the character of its footprint on countries around the world. Might strategic
peacebuilding prove an asset?
Apart from who is building the peace, much is at stake. The lives of thousands (even hundreds of
thousands) of people, government based on human rights and accountability, the prospect of escaping
abject poverty, the protection of local villages and their cultures, justice for war criminals, the healing
of hatred and revenge, stability between countries and within regions, and the avoidance and
alleviation of AIDS, famine, and other calamitiesall depend on whether societies widen and deepen
their peace or collapse back into war. Just as suffering itself is multiple and interdependent, one form
begetting another, so must peacebuilding be capacious, multivalent, and strategic.

Notes
The author thanks Gerard Powers and Scott Appleby for helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes:
(1) . The exact number of countries that have become democracies since the third wave began in
1974 is not clear. In his The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) , Samuel P. Huntington documents thirty transitions

between 1974 and 1989. Freedom House reports that the number of free countries increased by
thirteen from 1989 to 2004. See Freedom House Press Release, Russia Downgraded to Not
Free (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2004) ; and Freedom House, Freedom in the World
2005: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House,

2005) . Democracy theorist Larry Diamond estimates that from 1974 to 1996, between thirty-six
and seventy-seven states became democracies, depending on how one counts democratization exactly.
See his Is the Third Wave of Democratization Over? An Empirical Assessment, Working Paper no.
236, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, March 1997. Here, I adopt an estimate from the high
end of the spectrum by writing of societies that have moved toward democracy.

(2) . For descriptions of the liberal peace, see Roland Paris, At Wars End: Building Peace after Civil

Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4051 ; Oliver Richmond, Patterns of

Peace, Global Society 20, no. 4 (2006) ; Oliver P. Richmond, The Problem of Peace:

Understanding the Liberal Peace, Conflict, Security, & Development 6, no. 3 (2006) .

(3) . This is not to say that a wave of ethnic conflicts broke out just after the Cold Wara prevailing
myth. Ethnic conflict had been increasing for several decades during the Cold War and continued to
remain at a high level just after the Cold War ended. The Human Security Report of 1995 shows that
after a high point for the entire Cold War period in 1991, struggles for self-determination (most of
them ethnic or communal in nature) declined sharply up through 2004. See James D. Fearon and
David D. Laitin, Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War, American Political Science Review 97, no. 1

(2003) ; Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Boulder, Colo.:

Westview Press, 1994), xiii, 11 ; The Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st

Century (Oxford: Human Security Centre, 2005) .

(4) . Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 2006), 67 .

(5) . James Dobbins et al., Americas Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica,

Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2003), xivxv .

(6) . Paris, At Wars End, 17 .

(7) . Roland Paris, Bringing the Leviathan Back In: Classical versus Contemporary Studies of the

Liberal Peace, International Studies Review 8 (2006): 433 .

(8) . Monica Duffy Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars, (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 2010), 67 . Different figures, but ones yielding the same conclusion,
come from Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles T. Call. The trend toward negotiated settlements after
the Cold War also created entry points for international peacekeeping: between 1946 and 1990, twice
as many conflicts ended through victory than through negotiations, whereas between 1995 and 2004,
negotiated settlements were three times as likely to end war as outright victory, they write. They add
in a note that between 1994 and 2004, out of 48 wars ended, 36 concluded with negotiation
compared to victory. See Charles T. Call and Elizabeth M. Cousens, Ending Wars and Building
Peace: International Responses to War-Torn Societies, International Studies Quarterly 9 (2008): 5

(9) . A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility: Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats,

Challenges, and Change (New York: United Nations, 2004), 3334 .

(10) . Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, 2nd ed. (New York: United Nations Publications,

1995) .

(11) . Ibid. ; contains the supplement.

(12) . Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (New York: United Nations, 2000)

(13) . Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State

Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001) .

(14) . A More Secure World.

(15) . Paris, At Wars End, 4051 .

(16) . Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Democratization (New York: United Nations, 1996)
.

(17) . For a description, see Francis Fukuyama, State Building: Governance and World Order in the

Twenty-First Century (Surrey, U.K.: Profile Books, 2004), 2023 .

(18) . See, for instance, Richard Caplan, The International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule

and Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) ; Noah Feldman, What We Owe

Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation-Building (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006)

; Virginia Page Fortna, Peace Time (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004) ; Michael
Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan(Toronto: Penguin Books,

2003) ; Stephen John Stedman, ed., Ending Civil Wars(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002)

; Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002)

.
(19) . Human Security Report 2005, 19.

(20) . Paris, At Wars End, 5558 .

(21) . George Downs and Stephen John Stedman, Evaluation Issues in Peace Implementation,
inEnding Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Accords, ed. Stephen John Stedman, Donald

Rothchild, and Elizabeth Cousens (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 50, 59 . Call and
Cousens share Downs and Stedmans criticism of Paris and advocate a moderate standard of no
renewed warfare plus decent governance. See Call and Cousens, Ending Wars and Building Peace, 7

(22) . Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace, 73 , and Nicholas Sambaniss
chapter in this volume. The broad verdict of mixed success is shared by other systematic analyses,

including Caplan, International Governance ; James Dobbins, The Beginners Guide to Nation-

Building (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2007) .

(23) . Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace, 110 .

(24) . Call and Cousens, Ending Wars and Building Peace, 2 .

(25) . Ibid., 5 .

(26) . Andrew Mack, Global Patterns of Political Violence (New York: International Peace Academy,

2007) ; cited in Call and Cousens, Ending Wars and Building Peace, 5 .

(27) . Paris, At Wars End, 179211 . See also Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence:

Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: Norton, 2000) .

(28) . Stedman, Ending Civil Wars, 3 .

(29) . Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace, 64 .

(30) . Dobbins, The Beginners Guide to Nation-Building .

(31) . Fukuyama, State Building, 157 .

(32) . Toft, Securing the Peace, 26 .

(33) . Donald Rothchild and Philip G. Roeder, Power Sharing as an Impediment to Peace and
Democracy, in Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars, ed. Philip G. Roeder and

Donald Rothchild (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005) .

(34) . Even Paris, for his sharp criticism of the liberal peace, does not contest its goals. His dispute is
about sequencing more than it is about what ends ought to be pursued. He even grounds his case in
Enlightenment political thought, arguing that the same thinkers who generated the liberal peace also
understood the importance of establishing stable government institutions. See Paris, At Wars End,

4651 .

(35) . For one account of a holistic approach to peacebuilding involving the UN, see Thomas M.
Franck, A Holistic Approach to Building Peace, in Peacemaking and Peacekeeping for the New
Century, ed. Olara A. Otunnu and Michael W. Doyle (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998)

(36) . See William Bain, Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of

Power(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) ; Caplan, International Governance ;

and Dominik Zaum, The Sovereignty Paradox: The Norms and Politics of International

Statebuilding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) .

(37) . Boutros-Ghali, Agenda for Peace, 19, 61 .

(38) . Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations, 1, 6, 7.

(39) . Statement by the president of the Security Council, quoted in Call and Cousens, Ending Wars

and Building Peace, 6 .

(40) . A More Secure World, 83, 84.

(41) . Social Development Department Sustainable Development Network, Civil Society and
Peacebuilding: Potential, Limitations and Critical Factors, World Bank, 2006.

(42) . It is important to note that alongside the present work are other analyses in which the UN,
Western governments, and international institutions are not the only or even the primary actors but
are situated in a world of grassroots initiatives and civil society activities, of NGOs and religious
leaders, of globalized markets and their local merchants, of truth commissions and tribal rituals, of
villages and metropolises, of immediate crises and long-term transformationsefforts and analyses
that have initiated the idea of strategic peacebuilding. For these, see citations in John Paul Lederach
and R. Scott Applebys chapter. See also Mary B. Anderson and Lara Olson, Confronting War: Critical
Lessons for Peace Practitioners (Cambridge, Mass.: Collaborative for Development Action, 2003)

; Johannes Botes, Conflict Transformation: A Debate over Semantics of a Crucial Shift in the
Theory and Practice of Peace and Conflict Studies? International Journal of Peace Studies 8, no. 2
(2003) ; Necla Tschirgi, Peacebuilding as the Link between Peace and Security: Is the Window

of Opportunity Closing? (New York: International Peace Academy, 2004) .

(43) . Call and Cousens, Ending Wars and Building Peace, 3 .

(44) . It should be noted that some of the authors do place a strong stress on nonviolence in the larger
corpus of their writings. There is no general agreement on the issue among the present authors.

(45) . Botes, Conflict Transformation.

(46) . See especially John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided

Societies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1997) ; John Paul Lederach, The Little Book

of Conflict Transformation (Intercourse, Penn.: Good Books, 2003) ; John Paul Lederach, The
Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

; John Paul Lederach, Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures (Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1995) .

(47) . R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and

Reconciliation(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) .

Strategic Peacebuilding: An Overview

John Paul Lederach (Contributor Webpage)
R. Scott Appleby
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter argues that peacebuilding operations cannot fulfill their potential and
achieve justpeacewithout strategic planning and implementation. The authors employ vignettes
from Mozambique, Colombia, and the Philippines to illustrate the current challenges of conflict
transformation and peacebuilding. The multiplicity of peacebuilding actors and increasing interaction
between the local and global point to the need for strategic responses to conflict. The authors sketch
the contours of a theory of strategic peacebuilding, arguing that it includes a confluence of disciplines,
practices and expertise that is intended to promote social change and healing that would not naturally
occur. They propose principles of strategic peacebuilding and offer practical suggestions for
peacebuilding practitioners.

Keywords: strategic peacebuilding, justpeace, conflict transformation, conflict management, civil

society, Philippines, Colombia,Mozambique

As faculty members of a peace institute, we study worldwide efforts to reduce violence, resolve
conflict, and build peace, and we regularly receive inquiries and requests from people confronting a
variety of challenges posed by intense conflict. Consider the following examples, drawn from well-
known cases and from our own experiences, keeping in mind the following question: what are the
strategic dimensions of building peace in this context?

Following a decade of struggle, the African nation of Mozambique gained its independence from
Portugal in June 1975. Twice the size of California, the new nation was plagued by poverty, a 90
percent illiteracy rate, and periodic, devastating droughts. The 230,000 Portuguese settlers who fled
in the mid-1970s left the country bereft of most skilled, professional, and business people; they also
took working capital and sabotaged equipment as they departed. Therefore, the economy at
independence was in a shambles. Samora Machel, the military leader of the independence movement
known as FRELIMO (the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), became the new nations first
president. FRELIMOs Marxist-Leninist ideology inspired opposition in the form of the Mozambique
National Resistance, or RENAMO, which was composed of former Portuguese soldiers, disgruntled
FRELIMO deserters, and common criminals. RENAMO launched a guerrilla war in the early 1980s
directed at destabilizing FRELIMO. By 1992, the RENAMO insurgency had left over a million
Mozambicans dead and had displaced 6 to 8 million others.

Throughout the civil war, the religious communities of Mozambique constituted the nations civil
society. The Catholic Church, (p.20) which had maintained close ties with the colonial government
well into the 1960s, grew more diversified politically, with many priests supporting the Marxist
FRELIMO leadership. The relationship between the mission-educated President Machel and the
Catholic Church nonetheless deteriorated rapidly after independence. From the late 1970s until 1982,
FRELIMO attempted to suppress the evangelistic, publishing, and educational activities of the
churches in Mozambique. It appropriated the churches considerable rural assets in particular and
hounded religious actors across the country. State persecution served to galvanize the religious,
however, prompting them to renewed efforts of ministry. During this period, the churches came to
represent the single largest and most influential alternative voice and institution in the country.
Repression, furthermore, triggered the emergence of nonviolent liberationist elements in the
churches.
The larger Mozambican religious community was divided, however. Muslims were generally hostile
toward FRELIMO. Evangelical and Pentecostal organizations such as the Shekinah, Christ for the
Nations, the End-Time Handmaidens, and Frontline Fellowship recognized and supported RENAMO;
these groups conducted fund-raising and lobbying operations on behalf of the insurgents in
Washington, London, and elsewhere. On the other hand, the Protestant ecumenical associationthe
Mozambican Council of Churchessupported FRELIMO and condemned RENAMO, as did the
United Methodist Church in the United States. The Catholic bishops issued pastoral letters
condemning atrocities committed by both sides and calling for negotiations.

Relations between the government and the religious groups and churches improved markedly
between 1981 and 1988, the period when the United States provided $240 million in primarily
humanitarian aid to the FRELIMO government. This policy had its intended effect: in 1983,
Mozambique began to allow nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the private relief agency
CARE, to operate in the nation, and in the late 1980s Mozambique moved toward a less centralized
economy. The government could no longer deny that the churches were providing essential social
servicessuch as the distribution of food and clothing, education, and health carewhich the state
itself was unable to supply during the war with RENAMO.

The Mozambique churches were able to draw on an international religious network of social services,
channel desperately needed assets into the country, and thus relieve some of the pressing economic
needs. In addition, the churches maintained their infrastructure in the rural areas despite the ravages
of the civil war. State officials often had to rely on religious groups for information about rebel-
controlled areas. In time, the horrendous condition of the economy and the depredations of the civil
war itself forced FRELIMO to reconsider its own policies and seek the cooperation of any groups
willing to help bring the conflict to an end. In this context, the Community of SantEgidio took on a
major role in hosting and mediating the complex negotiations that eventually led to the end of the civil
war.

What element of strategic peacebuilding did this transnational organization of lay Catholic
professionals bring to the setting?

(p.21) In 2006, following the election of lvaro Uribe as president of Colombia, representatives of the
government opened a process to demobilize the paramilitary structure in the war-torn nation. In the
long history of governmentinsurgent negotiations, different administrations had asked the Catholic
bishops and their support staff to provide oversight, good offices and guarantees of safety and
integrity, and occasional facilitation. As the new initiative took shape, Church leadership faced
questions regarding how it would respond to the new requests and what role it would play in the
process. Specifically, the role of paramilitaries in human rights abuses in Colombia and their
proximity to government actors generated concerns, as did the prospect of an end-game scenario
which, hidden under the umbrella of a peace process and reconciliation, would fail to address the
need for truth, justice, and reparations.
In this context the ethics of peacebuilding came into stark contrast with the pragmatics of negotiation
and the dismantling of an armed organization. Victim communities affected by paramilitarism
communities that the Church had accompanied in some regionsexpressed anxiety about the process.
They feared renewed violence and worried whether they would receive the acknowledgment and
reparations they deserved. Not least, the victimized communities felt pressure to engage in
reconciliationbut what, they asked, does reconciliation mean in this context?

The situation became even more complex in light of the fact that the Church was also engaged in on-
again, off-again negotiations with armed insurgencies on the left. In addition, local parishes were
supporting communities of internally displaced persons and helping maintain fledgling peace zones
that had been declared at grassroots levels in at least three different regions.

What did a strategic peacebuilding perspective offer to the Catholic Church as it attempted to
balance these competing claims and build peace in the context of a fifty-year insurgency?

In August 2008, a historic peace accord in Mindanao between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) and the government of the Philippines nearly reached fruition. The result of seven years of
negotiation facilitated by the Malaysian government, the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral
Domain (MOA-AD) had survived numerous iterations and stages of consensus building. In the last
push, following the initialing of this yet-to-be signed negotiating document, a divided Supreme Court
declared it unconstitutional.

Immediately a variety of international, civil society, and local actors lodged protests and encouraged
the negotiators to salvage the historic opportunity to end a conflict that traces its roots across
centuries in this largest southernmost island of the archipelago. The negotiators asked: How might the
resources and methods provided by a strategic peacebuilding approach sustain the negotiation
process at a time of crisis?
Several groups working in Nogaleswhere half the city is located on the Arizona side of the border,
and the other half in Mexicoidentify the need for help from someone who can view the situation
comprehensively, see the (p.22) big picture, identify a path forward, and facilitate a common
approach to local issues. They recruit peacebuilders to the scene.
These groups are not alone. Borders in many countries create interdependent communities living in
close proximity, while the policies that regulate immigration are formulated thousands of miles away
in national capitals. The economic globalization that creates flows of capital and workforces
underscores the artificiality of maps and mocks pretensions to sovereignty. Workers and their families
are buffeted about by the economic and social hurricane. We are not in open war, but we have got a
mess on our hands, they say.

Does strategic peacebuilding offer relevant analysis, diagnosis, and paths to constructive change to
people caught in the crossfire of immigration and the globalization of economies?

At its core, peacebuilding nurtures constructive human relationships. To be relevant, it must do so

strategically, at every level of society and across the potentially polarizing lines of ethnicity, class,
religion, and race. This book proposes the need for strategic peacebuildingthe capacity to develop
strategies to maximize the impact of initiatives for constructive change within this complexity. It
focuses on transforming inhumane social patterns, flawed structural conditions, and open violent
conflict that weaken the conditions necessary for a flourishing human community. We are, in the
words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, seeking the simplicity on the other side of complexitya simplicity
that makes a real difference. Strategic peacebuilders must embrace complexity and find within any
given situation or issue practical approaches that stitch together key people and initiatives to reduce
violence, change destructive patterns, and build healthy relationships and structures.

Strategic peacebuilding therefore denotes an approach to reducing violence, resolving conflict and
building peace that is marked by a heightened awareness of and skillful adaptation to the complex and
shifting material, geopolitical, economic, and cultural realities of our increasingly globalized and
interdependent world. Accordingly, peacebuilding that is strategic draws intentionally and shrewdly
on the overlapping and imperfectly coordinated presences, activities, and resources of various
international, transnational, national, regional, and local institutions, agencies, and movements that
influence the causes, expressions, and outcomes of conflict. Strategic peacebuilders take advantage of
emerging and established patterns of collaboration and interdependence for the purposes of reducing
violence and alleviating the root causes of deadly conflict. They encourage the deeper and more
frequent convergence of mission, resources, expertise, insight, and benevolent self-interest that
characterizes the most fruitful multilateral collaborations in the cause of peace.

There are certain hallmarks of the constructive relationships that strategic peacebuilders seek to foster
among conflicted peoples. These include the cultivation of interdependence as a social and political
context for the effective pursuit of human rights, good governance, and economic prosperity; the
promotion of transparent communication across sectors and levels of society in the service of
including as many voices and actors as possible in the reform of (p.23) institutions and the repair or
creation of partnerships conducive to the common good; and the increasing coordination and (where
possible) integration of resources, programs, practices, and processes. These hallmarks characterize
the reflexive practice of peacebuilders themselves who think and act strategically.
Elements of these definitions of strategic peacebuilding require unpacking and elaboration.

Peacebuilding: Comprehensive and Sustainable

In this chapter we explore peacebuilding in its most capacious meaning by conceptualizing it as an
ideal typewhich is to acknowledge that peacebuilding in this ultra mode may exist only in our
imaginations and on paper, rather than in the real world of practice. We take this ideal-type approach
for at least three reasons.

First, many if not all elements in the definition and description of peacebuilding that we present in
this chapter do, in fact, appear in actual peacebuilding activities and operations; all of them appear in
peacebuilding activities and operations, collectively considered; and all of them are central to the
successful building of peace.1 In short, we add nothing to the array of activities and aspirations already
associated with the building of peace.

Second, a comprehensive definition and description of peacebuilding is necessary if the peace being
built is to be sustained over time. A sustainable peace, the historical record shows, requires long-term,
ongoing activities and operations that may be initiated and supported for a time by outsiders but must
eventually become the ordinary practices of the citizens and institutions of the society in question. We
believe, furthermore, that peacebuilding occurs in its fully realized mode when it addresses every
stage of the conflict cycle and involves all members of a society in the nonviolent transformation of
conflict, the pursuit of social justice, and the creation of cultures of sustainable peace. Properly
understood, the building and sustaining of a culture of peace and its supporting institutions requires a
range of relationship-building activities encompassing the entire conflict cycle, rather than merely the
postaccord, coming-out-of-violence period. Accordingly, activities that constitute peacebuilding run
the gamut of conflict transformation, including violence prevention and early warning, conflict
management, mediation and resolution, social reconstruction and healing in the aftermath of armed
conflict, and the long, complex work of reconciliation throughout the process. 2

In addition, peacebuilding theory articulates the end goal of these disparate but interrelated phases of
conflict transformation. The end goal is perhaps best expressed by the idea of a justpeace, a dynamic
state of affairs in which the reduction and management of violence and the achievement of social and
economic justice are undertaken as mutual, reinforcing dimensions of constructive
change.3Sustainable transformation of conflict requires more than the (necessary) problem solving
associated with mediation, negotiated (p.24) settlements, and other elements of conflict resolution; it
requires the redress of legitimate grievances and the establishment of new relations characterized by
equality and fairness according to the dictates of human dignity and the common good.
To say that a justpeace is the end goal of peacebuilding is not to suggest that peacebuilding ends when
the fundamental requirements of a justpeace are established; rather, the practices of peacebuilding
that help bring about this desired state of affairs must become routinized in the society. For example,
effective institutions for participatory government, once established, require continual oversight,
nurturing, and renewal.

Part of the rationale for conceptualizing peacebuilding in this comprehensive sense is a recognition
that conflict does occur in a cycle, that each phase of the cycle is related to the others, and that efforts
toward a sustainable peace must address each phase of the cycle in the context of the overall conflict.
Accordingly, efforts toward prevention, for example, should not be confined to one temporal
periodthat is, before the conflict occurs (in most societies, some level of violence has already
occurred among the belligerents). Rather, systematic efforts toward the prevention of further violence
should be prominent in every stage of conflict, including the peace process and the post-settlement
implementation period.

Each of the tools available to a peacebuilder must be applied in situ, of course. For example, efforts to
prevent the recurrence of violence after a period of state oppression, genocide, or civil war, which
often occur while a negotiated settlement is being implemented, will require a particular and
somewhat different set of skills than efforts undertaken to prevent an unprecedented outbreak of
deadly violence in a society simmering with ethnic, religious, or political tensions but not yet plunged
into war.4Nonetheless, prevention must unfold at every stage of conflict. The building of constructive
personal, group, and political relationships, in short, is perpetual, occurring as a constitutive part of
prevention, negotiation, transitional justice, and problem resolution.

Third, an ideal-type definition offers the advantage of identifying the distance between the current
scope, scale, and transformative impact of efforts to end violence and build peace, on one hand, and
the fullest possible realization of peacebuilding potential, on the other. Our definition therefore
includes a prescriptive dimension; we believe that the greater potential can be realized by envisioning
peacebuilding as a holistic enterprise, a comprehensive and coherent set of actions and operations,
that can be improved by greater levels of collaboration, complementarity, coordination, and, where
possible, integration across levels of society.

In short, a comprehensive definition of sustainable peacebuilding, if widely adopted, would stimulate

the further realization of the comprehensive reality of sustainable peacebuilding. Accordingly, we
urge a more consistent incorporation of the myriad elements of peacebuilding practice in
peacebuilding initiatives, as appropriate to the context, and a more realistic assessment of the time
frame necessary for integrating them into a coherent program for sustainable peace.

(p.25) Time has been the stumbling block of several otherwise savvy or at least well-intended
interventions. The robust definition of peacebuilding we advocate incorporates the often bitter lessons
of experience, learned from interventions (or noninterventions) such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Iraq, and
Afghanistan, regarding the critical importance of getting both the timing and the duration of
interventions right.
As various chapters in the present volume illustrate, a lack of clarity about the end goal of such
interventions clouds planners thinking about timing and duration. Professional peacebuilders, well
aware that a comprehensive and sustainable approach to ending violence in deeply divided societies
takes significantly more time and commitment than governments and intergovernmental agencies
typically allot, might subscribe to a modified form of Colin Powells dictum: If its broke, they might
say, who cares who broke it? We are going to try to fix it. Fixing it, they realize, requires strategic
thinking about how to forge the collaborative local-national-transnational alliances and partnerships
and movement-to-movement, person-to-person relationships that will be needed to build a justpeace.
Consider the experience-based counsel of peacebuilders who have observed and consulted in settings
of sustained violence across millions of miles and dozens of years: the period of time it takes to
accompany a society out of a protracted period of deadly violence, achieve stability, and move toward
a justpeace, will be at least as long as it took the conflict to gestate, turn violent, and run its course. 5

Such sobering considerations might give pause to politicians and policy makers, potential donors,
intergovernmental organizations, and other critical contributors to any peacebuilding operation that
would be planned according to the requirements of our comprehensive definition. Presumably, no one
wants to sink (much less dive) into what looks like a quagmirewhich is how long-term interventions
within bloody borders far from home can readily be depicted. How does one go about building the
political will necessary to compel governments and other players to expand the time horizon of their
commitment?6

Two partial responses begin the discussion of this crucial question. First, one cannot object to the fact
that states and intergovernmental agencies act in their own interests. Yet we are encouraged by the
growing realization by powerful actors, ranging from major foundations to the European Union, that
smart investment in carefully planned and coordinated peacebuilding operations is in their own
interests, given the increasingly interdependent environment. This interdependence can be seen
most vividly in the current debates, in places like Nogales, Colombia, and Mozambique, about
immigration, displaced populations, and the strain put on both the international and local
communities as people seek survival from the hotbeds of conflict. This is only predicted to increase
when we consider the impact of environmentally driven conflicts, particularly over issues like the
access to and use of water and land, as the case of Mindanaos indigenous peoples suggests. 7

That awareness of the utility of carefully planned and coordinated peacebuilding operations brings
us to a second and fuller response, which is the burden of this chapter. How do we best attempt to
ensure that peacebuilding (p.26) operations fulfill their potential by leading societies to the threshold
of ajustpeace? Our answer, in a word, is that we do our best to ensure that strategic planning and
performance inform peacebuilding operations.
Strategic Peacebuilding: Interdependent and Integrated
Peacebuilders, like other professionals working on the international stage, encountered a new set of
circumstances in the aftermath of the Cold War, as regional conflicts, civil wars, genocides, and ethnic
cleansings, and the so-called war on terror unfolded within the context of the technology-driven
expansion of world markets, mass communication, and the rapid transfer of social and intellectual
capital that marks the current phase of globalization.8 This new world brings with it a new horizon of
possibilities and challenges peacebuilders to respond with an ever-greater capacity for strategic
thinking and action.

Our answer to two related questions stands behind this claim. First, one might ask: why is it necessary
today to challenge the conventional understanding of peacebuilding by calling on its practitioners to
be more strategicwhat has changed? Second, how is strategic peacebuilding different than
peacebuilding as previously understood?

What has changed? The end of the Cold War superpower standoff between the United States and the
Soviet Union opened the field, not only for the explosion of various kinds of regional and local wars
but also for the interventions of a dizzying array of international and transnational, governmental and
nongovernmental actors. The problems facing twenty-first-century societies are no longer (if ever they
were) contained within national boundaries or susceptible to solutions based on one way of knowing
and assessing the world.

As scholar-practitioners reflecting on the new global reality, we can identify four insights about the
nature of contemporary conflicts and their possible solutions that help us rethink peacebuilding and
fashion it as a strategic enterprise.

First, the players have multiplied. In the postCold War era a wider range of actors and institutions
mattered. Recalling our opening vignettes, for example, consider the variety of religious, civil,
nongovernmental, academic, legal, and other actors that were necessary to negotiate the end of
Mozambiques civil war, advance the peace process in Mindanao, and mediate between the military,
the paramilitaries, the victimized groups and the rebels in Colombia. Although most of them had
already been on the scene in various capacities, the changing nature of the conflicts suddenly required
new kinds of participation by a wide range of nonofficial and nongovernmental actors; no longer was
peacemaking the exclusive purview of governments.

In short, a traditional peace studies approach to conflict resolution, in contemplating root causes and
structural change, tended to take the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis. In the aftermath of
the Cold War, the framing question became: how do we adjust the scope, scale, and priorities of
peacebuilding to incorporate a much wider range of actors?9
(p.27) In addition, practitioners of on-the-ground peacebuilding began to realize that deadly
conflicts, if they are to be transformed, require multiple points of analysis and intervention to create
sustainable change. Accordingly, peacebuilders began to seek strategic alliances and coordination over
the longer term, rather than merely a negotiated solution. In this regard, a second framing question
for the inchoate practice of strategic peacebuilding emerged: how do we design processes that envision
conflict as the opportunity for wider constructive social change?10
Third, the field of play was enlarged to encompass and link two previously unlikely spheres of action:
the local and the global. At the local level, the capacity and need for communities to activate and
mobilize resources to face the realities of internal conflicts rose sharply. It was impossible to think
about peace without engaging, including, and respecting the local community.

Practitioners specialize in the dynamics of peacebuilding within the boundaries and on the terms set
by local communities, but they recognize that local communities today always already exist within
national and global contexts. Accordingly, peacebuilders, especially during the course of the past two
decades, have become experienced in cultivating and applying human and material resources both
within and beyond the local community. Peacebuilding practice is thus an interdisciplinary, local-
global, expertise-driven approach to building sustainable peace.

Striking the right balance is a delicate and difficult business. The relationship between the three
distinct transformative processes at the heart of peacebuildingstriving for social justice, ending
violent conflict, and building healthy cooperative relationships in conflict-ridden societiesis
complex. These processes of transformation are interrelated most fundamentally at the local level;
even when violence originates and occurs at the national or regional level, its impact is felt most
keenly and directly in neighborhoods, towns, villages, citiesin local communities. To violate the
principle of subsidiarity by moving too quickly beyond the most immediate community of concern and
agency, to national or regional actors as agents of conflict management, is to undermine any hope of
genuine resolution and transformation of most conflicts. Bringing representatives of warring sides to
peace talks typically requires concerted effort by those wielding high levels of political and social
authority. But they cannot replace cultural agents who, operating on the local level, interpret
agreements and prepare the society for their implementation and the transitions called for by the
agreements.11

On the other hand, the proliferation of transnational social movements for global-local justice
influenced peace studies scholar-practitioners to think beyond borders, to locate both the causes of
conflict and potential change agents both within and beyond nation-states. The nation-state,
meanwhile, came under increasing pressurefrom above (the international and transnational
community of nations and intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, institutions, and
foundations), from below (local communities and grassroots movements for change), and from
across (demands for forms of autonomy at regional levels).

(p.28) The principle of indigenous empowerment suggests that conflict transformation must actively
envision, include, respect, and promote the human and cultural resources from within a given setting.
The setting and the people cannot be seen as the problem and the outsider as the answer. Rather, the
long-term goal of transformation demands that external agents of change take as the primary task of
accompaniment the validation of the people and the expansion of resources within the setting.
In this regard the framing question posed by and for would-be strategic peacebuilders was: how do we
build the global movement for justice while at the same time empowering the voice and capacity of
local communities?12
Fourth, a paradigm shift came with the understanding that peacebuilding requires more than
management of the conflict, reduction of violence, or agreement on political issues. Peacebuilding
must address the healing of peoples scarred and alienated by the lived experience of sustained
violence in their communities and nations. Healing increasingly is understood not as a postconflict
form of therapy but as a precondition for the prevention of renewed conflict and the transformation of
destructive social and structural patterns.

Promoting reconciliation and healing as the sine qua non of peacebuilding is predicated on a hard-
won awareness that violent conflict creates deep disruption in relationships that then need radical
healingthe kind of healing that restores the soul, the psyche, and the moral imagination. Such
healing, it is recognized, draws on profound rational, psychological, and transrational resources,
especially the spiritual dimension of humanity. Its preferred modalities are therefore symbolic,
cultural, and religiousthe deepest personal and social spheres, which directly and indirectly shape
the national and political spheres.

In this respect, the framing question for strategic peacebuilding seems to be: how do we heal broken
humanity?13

The builders of a comprehensive and sustainable peace, we suggest, engage each of these four
fundamental questions, which together reflect the particular challenges of the contemporary global
condition. To illustrate these challenges and the response offered by peacebuilding that is strategic, we
consider again our opening vignettes.

How do we adjust the scope, scale and priorities of peacebuilding in order to incorporate a much
wider range of actors?14 The timely and crucial role of the transnational Community of SantEgidio in
the resolution of Mozambiques civil war is by now a classic example of track-two diplomacy
blossoming into track one; of an outsider (who was also a partial insider) providing the good offices,
international resources, and connections conducive to moving the negotiations from phase to phase;
and of the coordinating and empowering function of peacebuilding that is strategic.15

No stranger to the setting, SantEgidio had been involved with the Christian churches in Mozambique
since 1976, when a young Mozambican priest studying in Rome, Don Jaime Goncalves, joined the
community. The new freedom of movement in Mozambique in the 1980s allowed the community to
demonstrate its neutrality, social concern, and dedication to rigorous dialogue. SantEgidio
representatives became personally familiar with leaders of both (p.29) warring parties and
established ties to missionaries serving in the war zones controlled by RENAMO. In 1981, Goncalves,
now the archbishop of Beira, met with Enrico Berlinguer, the secretary general of Italys Communist
Party, who opened a channel of dialogue between FRELIMO and SantEgidio. In 1982, representatives
of the community negotiated the release of missionaries RENAMO had taken captive; the occasion
provided the opportunity for SantEgidio to build a relationship of trust and credibility with the
insurgents that proved invaluable in the subsequent peace talks. In 1985, SantEgidio arranged a
critical meeting between President Machel and Pope John Paul II.
The growing perception of SantEgidio as an impartial moderator and facilitator of constructive
dialogue was reinforced by the way the community used its influence with governments and churches.
The community established networks in Italy to obtain funds and material for Mozambique and to
spread information in Europe on Mozambiques crisis. A parallel network soon appeared inside
Mozambique itself, where SantEgidio members made overtures to the Islamic as well as the Christian
communities, extending its social services and educational network across denominational and
traditional lines. In addition, community leaders went to Maputo, Mozambiques capital, in 1984 to
discuss humanitarian needs with government ministers. The meeting led to the establishment of a
program, supported by the Italian government at SantEgidios request, to deliver massive shipments
of food and medicine to the war-torn nation.

In 1986, President Machel was killed in an airplane accident and replaced by Joaquim Chissano.
Chissano recognized that there was no military solution to the civil war; it would have to be settled
through political and diplomatic means. He also confronted a staggering debt and a worsening
economic situation that the nations Eastern-bloc allies, preoccupied with their own economic
difficulties, were unable to assuage. Western aid was contingent on specific reforms in social,
economic, and political policies. FRELIMO responded with the Structural Adjustment Program to
move Mozambique toward a free-market economy. Prompted by the U.S. government, it also took
steps to draw up a new constitution, inviting a variety of interest groups and churches to participate in
the process.

FRELIMO moved to consolidate support from the religious community in Mozambique with a
number of concrete concessions. The state began returning confiscated church properties, granted the
churches permission to erect new buildings, and opened positions within the party to religious
believers. In 1987, SantEgidio arranged for the pope to visit Mozambique during his African tour.
Pope John Paul II met with President Chissano on September 16, 1988, in Maputo. The pope
emphasized the solidarity of the Church with the aspirations of the Mozambican people for economic,
social, cultural, and spiritual development, and he stressed that the role of the Church in the country
was not a form of foreign intervention but a response to the desires and intentions of the people.

At this point SantEgidio and the Mozambican Christian Council (CCM), which represented seventeen
of the nations Protestant denominations, were (p.30) able to initiate peace talks to end the civil war.
Late in 1987, Chissano approved a proposal that permitted CCM to establish contact with a RENAMO
delegate in Washington, D.C. In February 1988, the CCM invited Alexandre dos Santos, the Roman
Catholic archbishop of Maputo, to join the peace delegation as an equal member. Goncalves, the
archbishop of Beira, also joined the group. Although RENAMO consistently denied any responsibility
for the continuing atrocities in Mozambique, the delegation, known as the Peace and Reconciliation
Commission, became convinced that RENAMO was serious in pursuing a resolution to the conflict. In
1989, peace talks were held between these Protestant and Catholic leaders and RENAMO in Nairobi,
Kenya. Although the church-mediated talks in Nairobi did not produce a concrete outcome, they
created a new dynamic for peace by legitimating a forum in which both sides could formulate their
demands.
At this juncture, SantEgidio in effect became the forum for the face-to-face talks. The first direct
contact between RENAMO leadership and the FRELIMO government took place at SantEgidio
headquarters in Rome on July 8, 1990. Joining Archbishop Goncalves on the mediation team were
two SantEgidio representatives, Andrea Riccardi and Don Mateo Zuppi. A fourth team member,
Mario Raffaelli, represented the Italian government. In concert with the Italian government, U.S.
advisors, the United Nations, and several other governmental and nongovernmental organizations,
the representatives of SantEgidio were able to maintain a momentum for peace among the two parties
over the course of ten rounds of talks, which were held from 1990 to 1992 in the sixteenth-century
Carmelite convent in Rome that serves as the international headquarters for SantEgidio. Following
two closing summits, the General Peace Accord was signed on October 4, 1992.

Clearly, SantEgidios contributions were indeed strategic. We refer here not only to its impartial
stance but especially to its networking ability; its range of governmental and nongovernmental
partners across Europe, the United States, and Africa; its cultural and religious literacy and
sophistication; and above all, its capacity to mobilize resources in a timely fashion at critical junctures
in the march toward an agreement. It seems fair to conclude that the expansion of actors in
Mozambiques evolution toward peace, which included not only SantEgidio but also the churches and
other religious communities native to the country, was essential to effective conflict resolution.

The link between this concern, for expanding the range of actors building peace, and the next two
questions, relating to ways of effecting larger social change and pursuing justiceis embedded in the
vignette describing the decision of civic leaders and officials in the city of Nogales to invite extralocal
peacebuilders to assist in the conceptualization of the regions challenges and solutions. As readers
will recall, the leaders of Nogales recognized that the local issues confronting themincluding the
patterns of migration as they affect the composition of the workforce, the health of the local economy,
the respective rights and obligations of immigrants and citizens, cultural and ethnic tensions, and
violenceare also inevitably regional, national, and indeed (p.31) global issues. This is a complicated
pattern that is being replicated in thousands of borderland communities around the world not
unlike Nogales.
The strategic peacebuilder in such cases is not only a coordinator and network builder but a
comparativist. She draws on knowledge of national and international law, contacts in a variety of
professional fields, and the experiences of other communities in similar contexts. Yet she also depends
heavily, of course, on the local wisdom and experience of the people of Nogales.

The skills needed for strategic peacebuilding are increasingly honed, and named as such, by a range of
professionals trained in one or more of a variety of disciplines and areas of expertise. For example, we
have peace studies colleagues at Notre Dame, Uppsala, Nairobi, Chiang Mai, Bogota, and elsewhere
who advise the United Nations and specific governments on counterterrorism initiatives that favor
nonviolent measures as alternatives to military operations. These scholars and faculty experts no
longer rely exclusively on intelligence reports, aggregate data, and statistical analyses. They now
depend on instantaneous communications and insight from the fields of conflict to stay abreast of the
constantly changing dynamics on the ground and integrate into their recommendations and analysis
the specific social and economic contexts, victims experiences, human rights concerns, and justice
claims of local communities. This is peacebuilding in a globalized world, where those previously
voiceless now have the capacity to be heard and measured in the decision-making processes of so-
called international elites.

How do we design processes that envision conflict as the opportunity for wider constructive social
change?16 How do we build the global movement for justice while at the same time empowering the
voice and capacity of local communities?17 To answer these interrelated questions by way of
illustration, we consider the example of Mindanao. In that case, as in most, the prominently visible
aspect of peacebuilding is the high-level negotiations that took place. Equally crucial, however, is a
wider context of activities, roles, and initiatives that provided an infrastructure for constructive
change in Mindanao. A short list would necessarily include the following:

1. 1. A decade of grassroots initiatives that built relationships in local communities across the
important divisions among Muslim, Christian, and indigenous Lumad groups;
2. 2. Education and training programs in conflict transformation and peacebuilding undertaken
during this same period that reached a wide range of civil society actors and created
important links between local peacebuilders and the representatives of both the Philippine
national army and the MILF, who on numerous occasions participated in the workshops;
3. 3. The careful nurturing and development of ever-widening civil society networks dedicated
to peacebuilding and human rights (e.g., the Peaceweavers coalition, with an active
constituency of more than twenty organizations);
 (p.32)

4. 4. The commitment on the part of the government to create a national office to sustain and
coordinate its peace efforts beyond a particular administration;
5. 5. The commitment on the part of religious leaders to develop the Bishop-Ulama Conference
that has met on a regular basis for more than a decade;
6. 6. Sustained and long-term funding by a range of international donors to build the local
capacity and institutional platforms of the local and regional organizations;
7. 7. The commitment on the part of Malaysia, the MILF, and the Philippine government to
slowly but surely negotiate the basis of the document over the course of seven years.
At the point of the collapse in negotiations, violence rose sharply and trust decreased among the
players in the formal process. At the same time, however, the web of relationships mobilized within
and around Mindanao. Sets of relationships between a variety of different actors that had not existed
ten years agofor example, those between civil society actors, militaries on both sides, negotiators,
and the concerned international communitybegan to coordinate a response to the emergency needs
of the communities affected by the renewed violence. These unofficial but critical actors mobilized
conferences within and outside Mindanao that put forward numerous proposals for reinitiating the
negotiations and the beginnings of wider consultations that moved from local to higher levels. At the
time of this writing, the outcome regarding the final formal agreement is unknown, but the
infrastructure of a multiplicity of actors engaged in a common concern, functioned in ways
unthinkable a decade earlier. What is clear is that the final, most visible aspect of the processthe
formal negotiationsrests on the courage and creativity of not only the negotiators but also the wider
set of relationships, activities, and initiatives that will be needed to sustain the peaceful
transformation of a social, religious, economic, and political conflict that traces its roots across
centuries. This commitment to a web of activity, the development of capacity for creative response,
and the high level of coordination among improbable actors represent a striking example of strategic
peacebuilding.

How do we help heal broken humanity? is a question that cannot be dismissed as a luxury or as the
work of ex post facto humanitarian actors; it is central to the heart of conflict transformationif the
conflict is actually to be transformed and the transformation sustained over time. The question and its
answers are also organically connected to the questions posed previously, for, as we shall see, healing
broken humanity necessarily involves the strategic peacebuilder in efforts to enlarge the circle of
participants in peace negotiations, connect the resolution of local conflicts to larger processes of social
change, and address fundamental questions of justice.

The dilemmas posed in the example of Colombia are instructive in demonstrating this inherent link
between healing broken humanity and the pursuit of a justpeace that is, by definition, socially
inclusive and transformative. (p.33) Although the Colombian governments goal of ending
paramilitarism through negotiation is laudable, strategic peacebuilding requires that we place those
negotiations in a context of wider transformation. The guidepost necessarily begins with and returns
to the people most affected by decades of extreme abuses of human rights and the destruction of
anything approximating human security at the community level. Transformation asks the hard
questions of what kind of change is sought, for whom, and by whom? Processes that purport to
improve the lives of local communities without sufficient engagement of their experience, without the
provision of spaces to acknowledge their voice and concerns will, in the end, create political
compromises and other outcomes that replicate new forms of structural violence and social exclusion.
Strategic peacebuilding requires approaches that enable people who must live with the outcomes and
decisions of negotiations to have adequate and secure mechanisms to participate and influence the
process and the decisions.
It is no longer sufficient, that is, to fall back on the exclusive politics of old in settings of protracted
conflict that suggest the common good can be assured by a small number of elite negotiators without
meaningful participation of those most affected. Strategic peacebuilding requires a capacity to
envision and creatively develop the mechanisms of public participation to which negotiators are
accountable. The most significant weakness of far too many peace processes has been the gap between
elite levels of decision making and the communities that are the recipients and inheritors of those
outcomes. To build participation and voice that forges constructive change requires a far more
strategic approach, with peacebuilders striving to ensure that peace is established via a reconstituted
public space and new social contract.

With respect to the example of the Catholic Church in Colombia, consider the variety and specificity of
roles Church officials and members have been asked to play. The key to their success as strategic
peacebuilders lies in how effectively these actors mobilize their innate and extraordinary vertical and
horizontal relationships across Colombian society to help forge new spaces of participation,
engagement, and support for those most excluded and affected by the violence and to ensure public
accountability for high-level decision makers. The healing central to peacebuilding in our era is often
the restoration of voice and presence, and it depends on the creation of spaces that redefine
relationshipsspaces configured by the key principles of participation and voice for those most
affected by the violence and accountability for those on all sides who perpetrated the violence for
decades.

Justice at the Core of Strategic Peacebuilding

In most settings, the effort to validate and empower local actors, even while calling the global
community to become a transparent and robust force for peace, requires that strategic peacebuilders
pay close and careful attention to the demands of justice. Specifically, this often means considering
the evidence (p.34) on the links between inequalities and violence and paying attention to the ways
inequalities are produced and reproduced within a given society.
Conflicts are more likely to escalate into violence when inequalities exist. When access to political and
economic power is not at least somewhat equally available and distributed within a given society,
conflicts are more likely to remain latent, generating hostilities as well as more complex problems
with wider ramifications. Therefore, any attempt to end or prevent violent forms of conflict must
address power sharing and transparency of decision making directly, including the vertical as well as
horizontal power dimensions of intractable conflicts.

Jackie Smiths chapter in this volume raises the issue of power dynamics in the context of the debate
about the relationship between free markets, economic growth, economic inequality, and violent
conflict. Conflict transformation, she contends, entails reorganizing power relations, empowering
some groups and reigning in others. Such reorganization of power relations can happen peacefully
through processes such as the creation of mechanisms for the rule of law and fostering a human rights
culture. As global integration expands and becomes more institutionalized through trade
relationships, political and economic institutions, and global communications and exchanges of all
kinds, it is increasingly problematic to view a particular conflict without accounting for how it is
embedded in broader regional and global sets of power relations, Smith has argued.

Similarly, the strategic peacebuilder will work to ensure the human rights foundation of a range of
peacebuilding activities that may not explicitly advocate for or use the discourse of human rights,
including formal peace negotiations, reconciliation work on the ground, international institution-
building, and social justice movements. Numerous analyses of truth commissions, for instance, point
to the need for strengthening civil society and extensive human rights education to help postconflict
societies rebuild and reconcile.

Fostering human rights is a crucial part of any attempt to overcome the inequities that divide
societies, Smith writes. And human rights education is also an antidote to the escalation of conflicts
into violence, and so the lessons of truth commissions might be fruitfully extended to societies that are
not currently experiencing such violence. Indeed, a strategic peacebuilding approach should
encourage these sorts of connections, not least because conflicting parties are embedded within
broader networks of economic, political, and/or cultural relations that may be fueling or mitigating
violent tendencies.18

Smiths recommendations for expanding the scope of analysis is typical of the new awareness of
scholars and practitioners that an array of competencies is required if peacebuilding is to be
comprehensive and sustainable. To succeed in fostering a justpeace, peacebuilders must nurture
sustainable human relationships at every level of societybetween local ethnic and religious groups,
political parties and governments, faith-based groups and NGOs, state and international offices or
agencies dedicated to conflict transformation, and so on. In this context peacebuilding therefore
requires, inter alia, various kinds of expertise, including knowledge of international norms and
institutions, global (p.35) politics, economic development, the requirements of vibrant civil societies,
the religious and cultural dynamics of deadly conflict, and religiously and culturally nuanced methods
of conflict transformation. Accordingly, any comprehensive effort to build sustainable peace must
draw on the experiences and writings of reflective practitioners and scholars working in the fields of
conflict resolution, security studies, human rights advocacy, international law, and economic
development, as well as psychological studies, trauma healing, ethnic and cultural studies, and
religion and spirituality. These disciplines are not often marshaled together in the same enterprise,
but, as we argue, strategic peacebuilding thrives on such unlikely alliances.
This confluence of actors, competencies, and resources underscores our definition of peacebuilding as
a set of complementary practices aimed at transforming a society riddled by violent conflict,
inequality, and other systemic forms of injustice into a society oriented toward forging a justpeace.
Strategic peacebuilding encompasses practices of mediation and conflict resolution that bring a stop
to open warfare, as well as measures to perpetuate peace agreements (monitoring, enforcing, and the
like), demobilization of armed parties, accountability for human rights violators, economic
development, reconciliation efforts, and the resettlement of displaced peoples. It also involves a
multiplicity of institutions, including international nongovernmental and civil society organizations
and religious groups.

Taking all these factors into account and attempting to discern a path forward is a formidable task. If
peacebuilding begins and ends with the local, even while calling the national and international
communities to reform; is attuned to culture and cultural particularity; envisions and unfolds within a
long-term, even multigenerational horizon of change; draws consistently on a array of competencies;
and requires the art of healing and reconciliation of victimized peoples, it is indeed a vast
undertaking!

We come then to the key framing question: out of this vastness, how does the word strategic enhance
the art of peacebuilding?

The Art of Strategic Peacebuilding

As we have seen, a multiplicity of actors, originating from and working at all levels of society, with
different capacities and areas of expertise, constitutes the reality of peacebuilding today. None of these
actors, considered in isolation from the others, has provided the conditions for a sustainable and
comprehensive peace in societies divided or threatened by violence. Their collective efficacy increases,
however, when they work togetherthat is, when their operations are interdependent and
coordinated to some degree.

That, at least, is the conclusion of the Human Security Report (HSR), the most extensive,
comprehensive, and conclusive study of peacebuilding to date. In accounting for the gradual reduction
in wars and other forms of deadly violence in recent years, HSR author Andrew Mack writes: Not one
of the peacebuilding and conflict prevention programs on its own had much of an (p.36) impact on
global security in this period. Taken together, however, their effect has been profound. 19
Both the extant literature on peacebuilding and the direct experience of observing and mediating
conflict on the ground compels us to take Macks dictum one step further: the effectiveness of
peacebuilding operations in stimulating the kind of constructive social change that promotes
ajustpeace increases dramatically when the efforts of the many relevant actors, aware of their unique
contributions, find points of coordinationand, where possible, integrate their effortsaround a
vision of systemic change that depends on dynamic interdependencies. Peacebuilding becomes
strategic when initiatives, whether from below, above, inside, or out, begin to link and coordinate with
differentiated spaces and processes to effect the wider desired change. In a word, constructive
transformation unfolds in relational spaces. Strategic peacebuilding requires the capacity to envision
and encourage the intentional confluencethe flowing togetherof improbably related processes and
people toward constructive change.

Indeed, this focused definition of strategic features an improbable, atypical, unconventional element.
The honorable and effective work of peacebuilding can and does occur in the absence of what we call
strategic conceptualizing and planning by scholars, policy makers, nongovernmental officials, and the
like. But bringing together, say, religious leaders and trauma therapists to pursue the healing of
memories, World Bank analysts and subsistence farmers to fashion local development projects,
government housing officials and slum dwellers to negotiate urban reform measuresbringing such
disparate actors together under the right circumstances and with a strategy in hand for dynamic
coordination and collaborationrequires the kind of creative and innovative thinking called for by the
current world context. Such exercises in relationship building are precisely the kind of improbable
alliances to be fashioned by the moral imagination and technical expertise of the strategic
peacebuilder. Indeed, what makes the operation strategic is precisely the flowing together of people
and processes who would not normally come together or head in the same direction, who now
collaborate to realize a horizon of possible measures to reduce violence and advance justice.20

The phrase strategic peacebuilding requires clarity and precision about the change goals sought in a
given context. In pursuit of those goals, relational spaces are then explored. The practice of strategic
peacebuilding develops around the critical question of who and what types of processes will be
needed to initiate, develop, and sustain the desired transformation. Our assumption is simple: in
settings of deep-rooted conflict, pursuing transformation requires an alliance of key people and
processes that converge in a more precise and coordinated way on the overall desired change. It
requires us, no matter our expertise or access within the wider system, to recognize that the quality of
the change process we seek depends on bringing together key relationships and influence that would
not naturally converge.

(p.37) Strategic peacebuilders therefore are intentional in thinking carefully about a range of
resources and relationships that go beyond their natural niche, their most immediate circle of
influence, access, and exchange. This does not mean that any specific activity, research, or approach is
not important on its own; it simply means that strategic peacebuilding must build toward a
common, coordinated set of goals. These common goals are configured within the specific
connotations of strategic.
To put it negatively, under what conditions would the word strategic not apply? First, thinking and
acting is not strategic when the time horizon is too narrow or constricted. Let us imagine the plight of
a U.S. artillery colonel in Baghdad tasked with discerning a path to reconciliation (as called for in
the Iraq Study Group Report of November 2006). Were he to approach the situation solely by
considering the immediate goals to be accomplished for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraqsuch as
ensuring security for the Iraqi people, training the Iraqi police force, stabilizing key neighborhoods,
and so onthe colonels recommendations might have been considered prudent or even tactical in
service of short-term political purposes. But by failing to comprehend the bigger picture, especially
what would serve the long-term interests of stability, security, and peace in the region, such
calculations would fall dreadfully short of the standards of strategic peacebuilding. 21

Second, research or practice that focuses narrowly on one aspect of change within the larger historic
cycles of violence or structural injustice is hardly strategic. In the service of postviolence
reconciliation, for example, offers of amnesty or forgiveness made in the effort to prevent the
recurrence of violence can be considered strategic only if they are coordinated or integrated with a
commitment to retributive and restorative measures designed to uphold and strengthen the rule of
law.22

To illustrate this point, we return to our opening example regarding the Catholic Church in Colombia.
Although the Church may fulfill a short-term role by monitoring the process of demobilization of
paramilitaries, that role defined in the narrow sense does not constitute strategic peacebuilding. Given
the Churchs accompaniment of local displaced communities, access to government officials, and
direct relationships with armed groups, the key to acting strategically is found in how processes and
roles are integrated toward a wider transformation of the historic patterns of conflict and violence.
Strategic action requires considering how the process of demobilization sparks and sustains
acknowledgment of past harms and processes of increased transparency and appropriate forms of
reparation for those most harmed. These requirements imply that government programs move
beyond rote application of narrowly defined negotiations toward initiatives that bring forward into the
public arena processes that embrace the challenge of looking truthfully at human rights abuses and
responsibilities. Such processes are engaged with local communities affected by the waves of violence
and seeking reparation. In other words, the narrow role of monitoring cannot be isolated from the
wider potential of transformation that involves and links national government, local communities,
and the transition of militias away (p.38) from violenceall spaces of relationships that the Church
can mobilize and encourage through an ethical and moral imagination that requires dialogue,
advocacy, and public leadership.
Third, approaches that are issue-dependent must take cognizance of their echo effect in related
areas of the conflict. Research or practices that seek to forge solutions or end disputessuch as
alternative dispute resolution practicesmust take strategic measure of their implications for other
official and unofficial mediation practices, police reform, and the like. 23

Fourth, peacebuilding initiatives that are focused exclusively on a particular social sector or level must
be integrated with initiatives at other levels. To be considered duly strategic, for example,
grassroots/community-level peacebuilding measures must proceed with an informed awareness of the
dynamics and intended outcomes of elite-based negotiations. Similarly, attempted political change
based on a worldview in which the nation-state is the primary or exclusive actor has repeatedly failed,
not least because the worldview was not sufficiently inclusive and comprehensive.24
To illustrate the point, we consider the virtual impossibility of a breakthrough occurring in Mindanao
in the absence of an innovative approach that resists confining the circle of participants to the
government and the opposition. In fact, the situation is complicated by many players, both within
and beyond state borders. Strategic mediation must consider the potential for the outbreak of conflict
on any or all of these levels, and the interests of key players at each one.

To make peacebuilding strategic, in short, requires that research and practice employ a
comprehensive perspective that does not restrict the inquiry/practice to the immediate presenting
concern but embeds it in a systemic, encompassing analysis. All of the areas mentioned become more
strategic if they are time expansive (e.g., they take account of historic patterns, dynamics of exclusion
and oppression, historic experiences of trauma, and so on); systemically oriented (i.e., they embed
understanding within a multifaceted structural view of change); and multidependent (i.e., linking
people, movements, levels, phenomena in a process that includes interdependence but strains for
something greater, such as principled collaboration for the common good).

To repeat: we are not arguing that research and practices that engage particular timeframes of action
or levels of work are not important on their own. We are suggesting that if they do not include a robust
inquiry into the wider and deeper, then they are aspects of peacebuilding without the qualifier
strategic.

Five Suggestions for Practitioners

What practical suggestions can we make for those currently working to build peace within their
particular niche, area of expertise or issue, and who seek to become strategic? Speaking directly to the
practitioners, we can identify five.

(p.39) First, the cornerstone of strategic practice is the act of locating oneself within the wider system
of conflict and change. Without a comprehensive vision of the landscape, it is impossible to see clearly
your particular contribution, the importance of other sectors and initiatives, or the points of
coordination and convergence that must be forged. To do otherwise is like arguing that what matters
most for the sound performance of a boat is a good rudder, sail, or hull. Systemically, they are all
needed and need each other. The least strategic approach is to believe that you and your particular
contribution are the only ones that exist, matter, or should be given priority.
Second, learn to think about your goals in reference to change processes that build and transform
constructively those things that most concern you. When you develop a capacity to envision
peacebuilding as change processes that lead to desired transformation, you will naturally notice and
identify much more clearly the key relational spaces, alliances, and influences that are needed and
mutually interdependent for achieving those goals.

Third, focus on clusters of influence and contribution around the change goals. Cluster thinking
requires you to reflect on sets of people and platforms that would need to align to affect a more robust
change process. The most effective change processes are those that integrate unusual sets of people in
a common direction. For example, when key businessmen in South Africa began to align with social
change activists, apartheid cracked. This was by no means the only thing that created the change, but
this clustering of influence contributed a unique and what we would call strategic impact on the
overall situation.

Retain the idea of contribution as opposed to attribution. Too often, peacebuilders worry about getting
credit or laying claim to the outcome of a particular process. System change happens when sets of
influences align, each contributing and affecting their sector and the whole. Attribution, within a
systems view, is senseless and potentially counterproductive because it requires one to locate a single
cause and effect. Strategic thinking understands that transformation flows through multiple causes
and effects.

Fourth, identify system change facilitators or existing spaces where system change converges. A
system change facilitator, as we call it, refers to a role (not necessarily found in a single person or
institution) within the system that pays attention to the multiple changes processes happening
simultaneously. This role consists of identifying the needs of the change processes in the system,
imagining creative ways to support those changes process, and how and when they may converge
toward wider, sustained change. In a complex system like peacebuilding, we have too few spaces that
notice and create points of coordination for strategic impact. Specific activities include identifying and
prioritizing strategic change processes, naming the gaps and needs in promoting and sustaining those
change processes and supporting them with corresponding resources, creating and encouraging a
strategic convergence of processes, and staying vigilant about the bigger picture.

Fifth, develop a capacity to think simultaneously rather than sequentially. Most peacebuilding
programs and initiatives develop around some form of sequential thinking, that is, we first do A, then
B, then eventually C. The logic (p.40) of this approach is its capacity to provide phases and
deliverable programs. The dynamic of change and social transformation is rarely if ever logical or
linear, however. Thus the weakness inherent in sequential planning is its limited capacity to see
emerging and unexpected interdependencies related to change within the wider system. The capacity
to notice simultaneitythe attentiveness to the ways in which A, B, and C are happening at the same
timeincreases ones ability to identify the various aspects of change that eventually will be needed,
nurture their development along the way even though they are not currently connected, and watch for
opportune moments where they may converge.
Conclusion: Five Principles of Strategic Peacebuilding
To summarize our argument, we conclude by reviewing five principles underlying the peacebuilding
conceptual framework we have presented in this chapter. These principles animate the basic
philosophy of peacebuilding at its most robust and provide a guideline for assessing the strategic
weight of specific initiatives.

First, strategic peacebuilding is comprehensive. This principle commits us to develop the lenses that
permit us to see the overall picture of needs, actions, vision, and designthe architecture of
peacebuilding. We must be able to step back from the day-to-day swirl of crises and reactions to
situate ourselves, as well as events, in the broader flow of the vision and purpose of our efforts.

Second, strategic peacebuilding is interdependent. This principle proposes that peacebuilding is

connected to the nature and quality of relationships. It is a system of interconnected people, roles, and
activities: no one person, activity, or level is capable of designing and delivering peace on its own. All
things are linked and mutually affect one another. Interdependence seeks to build the relationships
necessary for pursuing and sustaining desired change. In specific terms, this often means that we
must develop processes that link and relate dissimilar concerns and activities and that forge
relationships between people who are not like-minded.

Third, strategic peacebuilding is architectonic, that is, it pays attention to design and infrastructure.
This principle demands that we provide the social spaces, logistical mechanisms, and institutions
necessary for supporting the processes of change engendered to pursue a justpeace. Peacebuilding
infrastructure can be likened to the foundation and pillars that hold up a house. In this instance the
foundations are people, their relationships, and the social spaces needed to support the processes of
change from division and violence to increased ownership and responsibility for the building of peace.
Infrastructure creates the platform that enables processes to weather the immediate intensity of
permanently emerging crises while pursuing with patience the slow, long-term desired change.

Fourth, strategic peacebuilding is sustainable. This principle emphasizes the long-term concern for
where our activity and energy is leading. Rather than (p.41) thinking only in terms of immediate
effective responses to issues and crises, sustainability requires that we think in terms of what creates
ongoing capacity within the setting for responding to and transforming recurring cycles of conflict and
crisis. Drawing inspiration from appropriate technology, sustainable peacebuilding seeks to discover
and strengthen the resources rooted in the context of the protracted conflict.
Fifth, strategic peacebuilding is integrative. This principle pushes us beyond the visible aspects of any
given activity and requires that we situate the design and assessment of peacebuilding action in terms
of how it links immediate need with the desired vision of change. To seek integration means to gauge
how to respond proactively to emerging, dynamic social situations such that we are responsive to
immediate concerns and needs, while at the same time reinforcing the platform supportive of change
processes. We are crisis-responsive, not crisis-driven. Striving for integration of people and resources
raises analytic inquiries to the level of the strategic who, what, where, and how of any activity. It
requires of peacebuilders a more comprehensive view of the situation in terms of levels, timeframes,
processes, and their respective roles/activities.

Achieving a minimal consensus on a comprehensive definition of strategic peacebuilding, we believe,

is a first step toward deepening the transformative agency of peacebuilding and establishing it as a
guiding concept for practitioners, policy makers, and scholars.

Thus we find it appropriate and heartening that the chapters in this volume address a wide range of
topics, themes, and activities not always included in the same conversationincluding debates about
the relationship between economic growth, democratization, and violence reduction; the role of
religious actors in transforming conflict; the relationship between counterterrorism, sanctions, and
peacebuilding; and the ways of strengthening the peacebuilding agency of the United Nations. All of
these are part of peacebuilding in its most comprehensive and sustainable formthe mode of
peacebuilding, that is, which we indicate by the adjective strategic. That the authors collectively
illustrate the convergences of these various themes and topics within the parameters of one coherent
conversation and, furthermore, take steps toward imagining their possible confluences, ishow shall
we put it?improbable.

Thus, we begin.

Notes

Notes:
(1) . What is peace? is a question asked continually, not least by people working actively for it in their
personal and professional lives, including the authors in this volume. The question is complicated but
hardly impossible to answer. One can discern something approaching a consensus among mainstream
secular and religious thinkers, which identifies the conditions for the elimination of deadly violence
and the development of local and national communities that respect the dignity of each individual and
promote authentic human flourishing. These conditions include the absence of war and other forms of
deadly violence, such as violations of human dignity by state or nonstate actors (i.e., negative peace)
and extends to basic human security, access to food and clean drinking water, housing, justly
compensated employment, education, and other expressions of positive peace. See, inter alia, Chester
A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of
Managing International Conflict (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2001) ; Louis
Kriesberg, Constructive Conflicts: From Escalation to Resolution (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &

Littlefield, 1998) ; John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided

Societies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1997) ; and Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom
Woodhouse, and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution: The Prevention, Management and

Transformation of Deadly Conflicts, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005) .

(2) . See, inter alia, Elizabeth Cousens, Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile

Societies(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2001) ; Michael Pugh, Regeneration of War Torn
Societies (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan; New York: St. Martins Press, 2000)

(3) . John Paul Lederach, Justpeace: The Challenge of the 21st Century, in People Building

Peace(Utrecht: European Centre for Conflict Prevention, 1999) . See also Pierre Allan and Alexis

Keller, eds., What Is a Just Peace? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) ; andChadwick Alger
and Michael Stohl, eds., A Just Peace through Transformation: Cultural, Economic, and Political
Foundations for Change (Proceedings of the International Peace Research Association, Eleventh

General Conference, University of Sussex, 1986) . The idea that peaceful change must address
both root causes and transform violent expressions of conflict has been present for many years in
peace studies literature and beyond. Roman Catholic Social Teaching, especially sections of the
encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, and Pope John Paul II, can be read as commentaries on
Paul VIs admonition: If you want peace, work for justice. The literature of peace studies, including
the titles cited previously in these notes, with its focus on root causes of conflict, has consistently
expressed a concern that peace not be understood as a static concept of tranquility on the surface but
must address root causes requiring a rigorous inquiry into the interplay of justice and peace. See, for
example, Johan Galtung, A Structural Theory of Imperialism, Journal of Peace Research 8: 81117

; and Adam Curle, True Justice: Quaker Peace Makers and Peace Making (London: Invicta

Press, 1981) . Glen Stassen coined the phrase just peacemaking as the overarching
nomenclature that articulated the multifaceted nature of peacebuilding that must include elements
that both advocate for needed change while reducing reliance on violence as the only way to produce
the change or respond to conflict. See Glen Stassen,Just Peacemaking (Louisville, Ky.:

Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) . Within the conflict transformation field, John Paul
Lederach initiated a framework for peacebuilding that explicitly argued for the convergence
of nonviolent activism, often framed as efforts to raise awareness and escalate conflict from out of a
latent state of passivity as part of the necessary work for justice, andmediation, often seen as a
mechanism to deescalate acute conflict and violence. He referred to this convergent space as a
transformational approach to conflict and peacebuilding. Lederach proposed the use of a single
word, justpeace, to highlight the significant need to focus more carefully on the gap, particularly
within the practice of peacebuilding, that the professional field of conflict resolution has evolved
greater capacity through negotiation and mediation to lower violence but has not equally evolved a
capacity to increase justice in human relationships, structures, and institutions. See John Paul

Lederach, Preparing for Peace (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995) . Lisa Schirch
links the goal of justpeace with strategic peacebuilding in a comprehensive overview that brings
together a much wider array of approaches and specialty areas in the field. See Lisa Schirch, The Little

Book of Strategic Peacebuilding (Intercourse, Penn.: Good Books, 2004) .

(4) . John Darby, ed., Violence and Reconstruction (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame

Press, 2005) ; John Darby, The Effects of Violence on Peace Processes (Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Institute of Peace Press, 2001) .

(5) . John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2005) .

(6) . For trenchant criticism of the UN peacekeeping operations in the 1990s, see William
Shawcross,Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict (New

York: Simon & Schuster, 2000) .

(7) . See The Water and Conflict Bibliography funded by the Carnegie Foundation and hosted by the
Pacific Institute (http://biblio.pacinst.org/conflict).

(8) . Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004) .

(9) . See, inter alia, Morton Deutsch and Peter T. Coleman, eds., The Handbook of Conflict

Resolution: Theory and Practice (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 2000) ; Edward Newman
and Albrecht Schnabel, eds., Recovering from Civil Conflict: Reconciliation, Peace, and

Development(Portland, Ore.: F. Cass, 2002) .

(10) . Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding ; I. William Zartman, ed.,Peacemaking
in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2007)

; Lederach, The Moral Imagination .

(11) . Caritas Internationalis, the worldwide Catholic relief and development organization, has
developed significant expertise in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Its how-to manual and
conceptual guide to the topic, Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook 1999, makes explicit
the centrality of grassroots agency: As we look back on the history of peacemaking and peace
processes we see that they have traditionally centered on diplomacy, mediation, the cessation of
hostilities and the achievement of peace agreements. These things we are all familiar with. Once a
peace agreement is signed the diplomats and mediators go home and parties to the conflict get on with
life under the terms of the peace agreement. This is not sufficient any more. What must be
developed, the handbook continues, are cohorts of indigenous peacebuildersagents for nonviolent
change who, as members of the society experiencing strife, have a vested and long-term interest in
applying their irreplaceable local knowledge to the tasks of social transformation and hoped-for
reconciliation. Such local and regional conciliators have become essential actors because peace
settlements do not bring about the required change of heart, which is the crux of peace, particularly in
complex internal conflicts. Brian Starken, ed., Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas

Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999), 4 .

(12) . John Paul Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books,

2004) .

(13) . Barry Hart, ed., Peacebuilding in Traumatized Societies (New York: University Press of

America, 2008) ; Carolyn Yoder, The Little Book of Trauma Healing (Intercourse, Pa.: Good

Books, 2006) .

(14) . See, inter alia, Deutsch and Coleman, Handbook of Conflict Resolution ; Newman and

Schnabel, Recovering from Civil Conflict .

(15) . This account of SantEgidios role in ending the civil war in Mozambique is adapted from R.
Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, Md.:

Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 158164 .

(16) . Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding ; Zartman, Peacemaking in

International Conflict ; Lederach, The Moral Imagination .

(17) . Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation .

(18) . Jackie Smith, personal communication.

(19) . Andrew Mack, ed., Human Security Report 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century (New

York: Oxford University Press, 2005) .

(20) . Lederach, Building Peace .

(21) . See, for example, Gerard F. Powers, Our Moral Duty: How Would U.S. Withdrawal Affect the

Iraqi People, America, 198, no. 5 (February 18, 2008) .

(22) . For the basic themes of the debate, see, inter alia, C. Dale White, Making a Just Peace: Human

Rights and Domination Systems (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1998) ; Priscilla
Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York and London:
 Routledge, 2001) ; Neil J. Kritz, ed., Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon

with Former Regimes (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1995) ; and A. James
McAdams, ed., Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies (Notre Dame, Ind.:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) .

(23) . Among the key recommendations that emerge from this view is the importance for state- and
national-level actors to engage the basic premises of strategic peacebuilding, requiring that they more
fully embrace the paradox of their agency. Strategic peacebuilding requires the practicality of the
interest-based pragmatists in reference to programmatic response to core challenges while at the
same time nurturing the moral imagination necessary to envision constructive change as spaces of
interaction that encourage and sustain a wider participation of improbable people and processes. This
is particularly true of high-level negotiations whose primary weakness has been the lack of
imagination for how a wider public can be informed, be engaged, and have points of access into the
framing and delivery of processes that so affect their lives. Typically, this is seen only as a literal
afterthought of peace accords. Strategic peacebuilding forges the kind of imagination that envisions
the nature of change and locates key constituencies that will need to be included and supported early
and often in the process. In practical terms, it requires innovation in how state-level processes make
visible and include multilevel and multisector connections.

(24) . Analyses of peacebuilding operations from various perspectives and levels of sympathy
includeMichael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations

Peace Operations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006) ; Elizabeth M. Cousens and
Chetan Kumar, Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Boulder, Colo.:

Lynne Rienner, 2001) ; Oliver Richmond and Henry Carey, Subcontracting Peace: The

Challenges of the NGO Peacebuilding (Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005) ;Roland
Paris, At Wars End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004) ; Fen Osler Hampson, Nurturing Peace: Why Peace Settlements Succeed or

Fail (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996) .

Strategic Peacebuilding: Concepts and Challenges

Peter Wallensteen
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0002
Abstract and Keywords
Wallensteen argues that further defining and specifying key concepts in peacebuilding will result in
increased consistency and contribute to the development of policy-relevant strategies for peace. He
suggests that any analysis of peacebuilding efforts should employ a typology of conflicts that
distinguishes between interstate war, internal conflict, and new state formation. It should also
consider that the state is central to many wars, so it is essential to distinguish among the specific aims
or ambitions of post-conflict peacebuilding: limited forms of state-building, democracy-building,
security-building, nation-building, and market-building. A review of current research on sustainable
peace processes highlights the importance of four factors: how the previous war ended; whether the
causes of the war have been addressed; the impact of international actors on local state-building,
including the timing of democratization; and the extent to which the regional context is conducive to
peacebuilding.

Keywords: conflict typology, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, sustainable peace processes, state-
building, internal conflict, peace research, human security, democracy-building

Peacebuilding is one of the novel terms in political discourse that actually has a longer history, for
instance, in the early work of Galtung.1 It is parallel to concepts such as security community, which
also stem from an academic concern.2 When conditions require, such terms take on a political
dimension and become operational in ways often not anticipated by the original inventor of the
concept. Peacebuilding today is one such urgent concern. It is not difficult to explain why. The
Uppsala Conflict Data Program has identified 121 armed conflicts, that is, small or large wars, since
1989; and 231 since the end of World War II. By historical standards this is a staggering amount. At its
peak, in the early 1990s, there were 51 armed conflicts waged around the planet at the same time. In
2005 the number was down to 31. Since the end of the Cold War, a majority of UN member states
have had a war on their territory or have had their nationals in a war. Including member states
engagement in international peacekeeping efforts, dealing with war today is a universally shared
concern.3

Wars in seemingly distant places affect the entire planet. The major refugee flows come from wars, the
largest one at the end of 2006 being the exodus from Iraq into neighboring countries but also into the
European Union.4 Furthermore, refugees from wars may face greater difficulties in returning after the
triggering event than would be the case for those displaced because of natural disasters. Politics,
economic conditions, and social demands all enter into their situation. They may become permanent
diasporas that play a political role in their host countrys relations to their home state. This is only one
example of how such events have major repercussions. Thus, peace is a benefit to all and as a
consequence, peacebuilding is a global issue.

(p.46) Research into the conditions of peacebuilding still is fairly limited. The events of the 1990s
have sparked renewed concern on the conditions of peacebuilding as well as strategies that could be
potentially useful for international, regional, and local actors. In the policy debate as well as in the
scholarly community there have emerged numerous concepts of peacebuilding and appropriate
strategies. In this chapter, a selected set of concepts of peacebuilding are discussed to contribute to
increased consistency. Also, thoughts on policy strategies will be presented together with ideas on
urgent research needs.
An example of the need for research concerns the issue of the actual reduction of armed conflicts since
the early 1990s. This has been attributed to the involvement of the international community. These
conflicts have not been ended by themselves or even by the parties. International efforts have been
central for the creation of peace, through mediation, negotiations, peace agreements, and peace
arrangements. This seems to demonstrate that international efforts can succeed in reducing the
incidence of war. The Human Security Report 2005 (HSR) presented these arguments.5 They have
gained considerable acceptance, and parallel, for instance, the results of the high-level panel of the UN
secretary general, which suggested the formation of the UN Peacebuilding Commission on the basis of
similar findings. This commission is now in operation.6 Still, conclusive, scholarly based proof of the
connection is lacking. HSR demonstrates a reverse covariation: as international peacemaking
activities go up, the number of conflicts goes down. It also shows that other plausible explanations,
such as increased economic wealth and growth in the number of democratically ruled states, do not
follow the same patterns. These finding are made on a global and macro level of analysis. The
literature on actual interventions tells a more rugged history with less straightforward successes.
Thus, further study is warranted on the correlation of global, regional, and local levels to validate the
role of the international community, but the conclusion of the HSR is the most authoritative for the
time being.7

Peacebuilding and the Conflict Typology

The understanding of peacebuilding has become a major challenge to the international community.
Peacekeeping missions have been supplemented with peacebuilding functions. Clearly, this refers to
postwar situations. This is drawn from one of the earlier definitions, the one by UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1992, when the phrase actually was postconflict peacebuilding and
concerned action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace
in order to avoid a relapse into conflict.8 In principle, this implies that there are preconflict
peacebuilding efforts as well. Possibly these could be defined as preventive measures, actions by the
international community to contain the emergence of new wars. In later usage the
word postconflicthas been incorporated into the delimitation of peacebuilding. It makes sense to refer
only to postwar actions, although they, of course, also have a long-term ambition to prevent the
emergence of renewed conflict (p.47) by the same parties over the same issues. The international
efforts and much of scholarly understanding have come to concentrate on postwar situations. Thus, it
is important to scrutinize such war situations first to then be able to encircle and define peacebuilding
as a general concept.
There are differences in the type of conflict that have an impact on how actors and scholars can
conduct a discussion on peacebuilding strategies. A typology of conflicts will assist in categorizing
different peacebuilding efforts before we can settle for a general definition.9

The postCold War conflicts over Liberia, Burundi, Haiti, and Sierra Leone are often given as typical
examples of challenging situations for peacebuilding tasks. These cases all share the need for the
reconstruction of a society after a protracted internal war. Peacebuilding in this case entails the
reforming of state structures, and also bringing together factions that have been fighting for a long
time. Issues of war crimes, reconciliation, as well as economic reconstruction are high on the agenda.
The list of activities is long. These are situations where we also find peacekeeping missions (by the UN
or by regional organizations) engaged in multidimensional tasks. Internal conflicts have become a
major concern for peacebuilding theorizing. This category definitely deserves attention. In much
writing, however, it seems to be the only category that is referred to.

However, there are other situations as well, one of which is the creation of entirely new states as a
result of conflict. An example of an unsolved conflict is the IsraelPalestine conflict, but this category
also includes the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia after a long war inside the then-existing
Ethiopian state seemingly ended that conflict. Other, not terminated situations that concern the status
of particular territories and where state boundaries might be affected are, for instance, those over
Northern Ireland; the conflict between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam; the
conflict over the Basque provinces and their status in Spain; and the one over Abkhazia in Georgia. A
question to ask is whether the task of peacebuilding in this type of conflict would be the same as the
one of reconstructing a country torn by civil conflict. In reality, a potential or agreed territorial
separation actually involves the reconstruction of the former central state as well as the construction
of an entirely new unit. There is a dual state-building activity, and peacebuilding would then rather
refer to the management of the relations between the two new entities. The renewed war between
Ethiopia and Eritrea less than seven years after the agreed separation testifies to the significance of
this. It also illustrates the lack of effective peacebuilding action. Very little attention was paid to this
relationship internationally following the dissolution of Ethiopia and the ending of the war in 1991.
Then, there are the classical interstate wars. They are not that many today, but the category remains
very important, as exemplified by a most recent one: the 2003 war between the United States and its
allies on the one hand and Iraq under Saddam Hussein on the other. This conflict has then
transformed itself into an internationalized civil war and also contains features of a potential break-up
of the state. This is an exceptional situation. In this category of (p.48) conflicts more typical are
territorial conflicts, for instance, over border issues. There are also cases that involve internal affairs,
such as the removal of an entire government. This provides for a set of different challenges to
peacebuilding efforts that require further elaboration. Even if the removal of a dictator may be
immediately applauded, the long-term presence and dependence on external actors may create
resentment and color internal dynamics.
Obviously, the tasks are many following a war. The proliferation of concepts tells us that. Many of
them center on the functions of the state. The state is central to many wars, whether they concern the
control of government or a particular piece of territory. 10 Thus, peacebuilding will have to deal with
the state. This means that when confronting a case of peacebuilding, an important first question to ask
is whether this involves a significant state-building component. As already observed, most references
today are to peacebuilding within states, which often means exactly this: there is an important
element of state reconstruction involved. Thus, we have to consider the issue of the state when
developing a terminology for peacebuilding.

Peacebuilding and the State

There are good reasons to concentrate on the state, as it has a set of unique functions that are relevant
for postwar conditions. These concern such matters as maintaining a monopoly of violence,
generation of tax revenue, exerting territorial authority, and providing legitimacy of decision making.
There are different peacebuilding dimension for each of these elements of the state. Thus,
peacebuilding has to be understood as an activity covering many sectors, and, in theory and practice,
making them interact in reinforcing dynamics.

A common conception found in leading literature points to one of the key elements, that is, state-
building, but as a more limited task, for instance, of reforming state structures, establishing
noncorrupt practices, and fairness and transparency in governmental transactions. There is also a
separate concern aimed at democracy-building: creating specific political structures and a political
culture in line with predominant thinking in the world today. Democracy-building could be said to
cover the input factor into a states policy making, responding to such issues as how policies are made,
the degree of popular representation, whether equal access is guaranteed, how and when elections are
conducted, and so on. The concept of state-building could then be limited to the output side of
policies, giving answers to questions about how decisions are made, how they are implemented, and
by whom. The rule of law is an obvious element in this, actually relevant both for the input and output
sides, but it also relates to the next aspect.11

Highly related are the issues of the security sector and its reforming, what could be called security-
building. It is a matter of reconstructing a state after a war and considering its territorial authority.
Will the postwar regime actually exert control over the territory under its formal control, with what
means, and how are those means checked? In any war, the security services (be they (p.49) the
military, the police, the intelligence operations, paramilitary activities, or revolutionary armies) have
national priority. During the war, they are the ones with the first access to resources, decision making,
and privileges. The postwar conditions challenge many of these advantages and thus make such
sectors problematic to deal with. There is a civilianmilitary relationship that has to be established,
which will affect the state structures that are created and the scope for democracy-building. There are
also other priorities in society, making the demobilization of the armed forces a necessity. Military
leadership as well as ordinary soldiers may find this difficult, and they also believe that the civil
economy has little to offer.
These concerns are different from what is customarily referred to as nation-building, which deals with
the creation of a common attitude of belonging together, possibly healing the divides and wounds that
the war left behind, a more soft aspect than the hard ones of (re)creating state structures and
dealing with postwar security. This ambition could be said to focus on the legitimacy of the new
postwar arrangement. Reconciliation includes the recognition of past wrongdoings and an
incorporation of the perspectives of the other side.12 The expectation is that a unifying nation-building
effort will improve relations in a society in the long run, and thus make the new conditions more
acceptable to all. This is a tall order, of course, and it is likely to be the more complex the more there is
of ethnic diversity and experience of recent ethnically defined conflict.

Nation-building is likely to be more possible if the state formation conflict has a colonial nature,
where the polarization is between a distant center (colonial metropolis) and a local liberation
movement, than when it has to do with a nearby center with more interspersed populations. There is a
difference between the decolonization movements of the 1950s and 1960s in Africa and the separation
movements of Biafra, Bangladesh, or the Tamil Tigers during the following decades. These have often
not been accepted by the original anticolonial movements as equally legitimate. Eritrea and East
Timor are interesting cases where the liberation movement was waged as an anticolonial struggle
(having had different colonial masters than the central government at the time, i.e., Ethiopia and
Indonesia) and thus had more popular legitimacy. Internationally, these two movements and the
following creation of new states were not accepted until after the end of the Cold War, when the
national center changed its mind (after the fall of the Mengistu and Suharto regimes, respectively).
The conflict with the former center, however, has continued to be significant in the building of a
postwar identity and has resulted in renewed conflict.

In addition to these tasks, there is the need to reconstruct the economy and, as it were, shape market
conditions. This could be referred to as market-building of the internal economy and establishing its
relationship to external economic activities. This is necessary for the postwar government: the
economy has to move on, generating the revenue the state needs and giving jobs to the unemployed
(not the least the ex-combatants), thus reducing the pressure on the state to provide such services.
However, experience is that international support is short-lived, international aid is temporary, and
international trade is (p.50) unpredictable. There is a need to import goods and services but also to
develop export products, which require competitiveness and capital. Investment may be forthcoming
in sectors that are attractive to the international market (i.e., oil, mining) but not necessarily
conducive for job creation or policies against corruption.
All of these peacebuilding ambitions have their own names and can be seen as independent tasks, but
they also relate to one another. Arriving at the appropriate mix and spacing such activities in a
reinforcing way is a major political task. This is where different peacebuilding strategies become
important. In total, this is what will be judged when evaluating the postwar policies. Together,
however, these aspects would tentatively define a broad concept of peacebuilding: to provide the
postconflict conditions that make the inhabitants of a society secure in life and dignity now and for the
foreseeable future.13 Only with this sense of basic security are people interested in investing money,
time, and energy in doing all these other tasks. If a society or a relationship is likely to collapse again,
within some few years, what is the point in making long-term commitments? This also means that the
different elements of peacebuilding have to be clearly identified and related to one another. A task of a
strategy of peacebuilding is to arrive at an interaction among these factors, creating the sustainable
conditions that yield the basic security needed.
This first definition works for all the types of conflicts that have entered into a postwar phase. For
internal conflicts this should be fairly obvious, as governance is likely to be what was disputed and
possibly regulated by the victor or in a mutual peace agreement. In state-formation conflicts that have
resulted in two separate states, there is a need for internal peacebuilding, particularly in the novel
entity: bureaucracies have to be built (state-building), procedures have to be developed for popular
influence (if democracy-building is the priority), borders have to be surveyed and controlled (part of
security-building), taxes have to be collected, an economy has to be stimulated (efforts of market-
building). The pressure for nation-building is likely to be particularly strong: the new national identity
has to be cemented to justify all the sacrifices that the conflict involved. Here, there is a strong
difference between those situations where states were created fairly peacefully (such as Slovakia and
the Czech Republic breaking up their common union in 1993, or the dissolution of the Soviet Union)
and the violent situations in former Yugoslavia or between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It can be postulated
that the emphasis on national identity is likely to be higher the more violence there has been in the
process of the break-up.

The way state formation conflicts end will affect international relations in the postconflict situation.
The dissolution of the British Empire in India resulted in a peacefully agreed separation, but its
implementation led to the deaths of millions of people and left the subcontinent divided ever since.
For each population security has been sought within its own state, rather than with the former
adversary. Interstate security dilemmas rise under these conditions. For instance, the Eritrean
decision to make its own currency (to get its own economy going, that is, a market-building effort) is
said to have soured the relations to Ethiopia (which was not informed beforehand and whose
economy (p.51) depended on Eritrean ports for trade and transactions, immediately affecting its own
market-building plans). When a minor border dispute occurred in the following year, it immediately
escalated into a war (the war thus was fought over a piece of territory deemed at least symbolically
important to both, a failure in mutual security-building). There was no confidence and, in effect, no
peacebuilding between the two countries. Thus, even though security was built internally, the
international dimension had been neglected. This suggests that what takes place inside one of the
formerly united units will affect that other. Independence is not absolute, and a border, however solid,
is not enough as a guarantee against the other.
State-formation conflicts after a war that has resulted in the creation of two internationally recognized
states constitute a subcategory of interstate wars. The classical interstate wars are fought between
neighbors that have had both cooperative and conflictual relations through history. Peacebuilding in
these cases involves the creation of regional security arrangements, as covered in the term security
community.14 In such a community, there is some degree of integration, but the key issue is that the
parties actually do not expect conflicts to be solved by violent means. An attitudinal change has taken
place cementing the relations. This may sometimes appear utopian, but in fact such transitions have
taken place throughout history, even among major powers. Britain and France were rivals during the
1800s, whereas during the 1900s they were on the same side in all major wars.

The case of Franco-German relations after 1945 is seminal, however, and illustrates all the dimensions
of peacebuilding we have identified. It involved a state reconstruction effort (of defeated Germany,
developing a decentralized federal structure); democracy-building (democratizing German society,
civilian control over the armed forces, even including a right for soldiers to refuse certain orders);
national redefinition (war crimes pursued and Germany defining itself as a democratic, peaceful and
European country); and market integration (the Marshall Plan, the German currency reform). It was a
successful transformation of the inner operations of a society. Important is that this was combined
with integration into the rest of Europe (what today is the European Union, EU). It is a unique
example of peacebuilding that has left a lasting imprint on world history.
In many other interstate conflicts similar strategies have been less successful or even avoided. Many
divides have instead been strengthened, rather than reduced, as time passes and interaction occurs.
The two Koreas remain divided, having fought a war in the early 1950s and that war continued to be
an important marker for the separated identities of the two sides. The most recent interstate war, the
United States versus Iraq, has not included a successful peacebuilding strategy.

To analyze peacebuilding there is, consequently, a need to keep in mind the difference in the type of
conflict (internal, state formation, interstate conflicts) as well as the focus of ambitions (e.g. the
building of state structures, democracy, security, identities, legitimacy, markets, all at the same time,
in a sequence, or only concentrating on some of the tasks). The different elements of peacebuilding
mean that we have to be concerned about the strategy for (p.52) peacebuilding. What are the
elements that are normally given priority in postwar society? With this in mind and with a tentative,
overarching general definition where peacebuilding is defined as the provision of present and future
conditions of security in life and dignity, the achievements in research with implications for strategic
considerations can now be reviewed.
Researching Peacebuilding
Peacebuilding in this way is clearly a major undertaking. I have isolated four key dimension and three
different types of postconflict situation. This makes twelve different challenging situations to
peacebuilding efforts. Recent research has seldom made such detailed specifications but tends to treat
internal and state formation conflicts as one and the same and not say much at all on interstate
conflict. Furthermore, the four dimensions are seldom separated in research and, thus, not completely
covered. There have been more case studies of, for instance, security-building strategies (particularly
on ex-combatants), but few very systematic projects (dealing with a large number of cases). The field,
in other words, finds itself in an early stage. Furthermore, there is a strong focus on individual cases,
rather than on regional aspects, and fairly little on workable strategies undertaken by international,
national, or local actors. Still, there are some important debates and insights, which have to be
presented. The following section deals with studies that include at least a comparative approach.

A first observation is that peacebuilding is a novel activity, and thus it is difficult to determine the
appropriate time frames. Some studies measure the achievements after two or five years.15 At best,
this is a first period that shows that a society has overcome the immediate postwar conditions. But it is
not enough to say that a country or a relationship is beyond the risk of relapse after such a short
period. Even under the best of circumstances, peacebuilding is likely to be a concerted process for ten
or fifteen years. Frequently used examples in literature and public discussions include Germany and
Japan, which began to return to preWorld War II economic levels fifteen years after their
defeat.16Lebanon was beginning to appear normal in 2005, fifteen years after the end of the war: the
center of Beirut was reconstructed, the Syrian forces were moved out, and democracy was taking root.
However, many of these efforts were undone by the renewed destruction in 2006, again increasing the
tensions among the different groups in the society. Ugandas major war ceased in 1986 and by the late
1990s the country was on an economic upturn, although still challenged by rebels in the north of the
country.

The number of years that have passed without a return to war is only a crude indicator of whether a
country has successfully managed the transition from war to peace. Return to war, of course, is a sign
that something failed in peacebuilding, particularly if it is a war with the same actors that fought the
previous war. However, conflicts in new constellations may in fact say that peacebuilding worked in
one relationship, but that no efforts were taken in another relationship. The definition provided here
suggests that it should be for the (p.53) society as a whole, rather than an arrangement with a
particular former enemy. Any war would be a sign of failure.
Thus, I ask what recent research provides in terms of explaining the continuation of comprehensive
peace after a devastating war. There seems to be a clustering of explanations emerging from four
separate, general questions, cutting across the dimensions and types I have introduced. First, studies
point to the ending of the (previous or last) war: which types of ending? Second, there can also be
factors relating to how the last war started: what were the causes and have they been removed or
handled? Third, is there the postwar capacity for peacebuilding? Fourth, what is the neighborhood in
which a society finds itselfis it supportive or not?

First, there is the point of beginning postwar peacebuilding: how did the last/latest war end? There is
a strong correlation between earlier war experiences and relapse into renewed war. A crucial factor is
the type of ending. That may be highly significant for what is to follow in a particular relationship or
society as a whole. There are two typical ways of ending a war and thus starting a new era of
peacebuilding. One is that the warring parties sign a peace agreement; another is that one of them
defeats the other and imposes its own peace, that is, victory.

It is easy to be sarcastic about peace processes and resulting peace agreements: peace negotiations
appear cumbersome; they are full of setbacks, political maneuvers, and concerns with seemingly
insignificant details. This is not novel. All negotiations have this character; ending a civil war by
negotiations is a particularly difficult task. What matters is whether the negotiators deal with the
appropriate issues, whether they find an agreement that has sustainable qualities, and whether the
agreement includes all parties. These are issues and actors that have to be dealt with.

As noted, there have been 121 wars since 1989, but there are also 144 peace agreements. In forty-six
cases, a peace agreement helped end the conflict.17 In general terms, one-third of all conflicts end
through a negotiated settlement or through a cease-fire, another third ends in victory, and a third
simply goes on. This record of negotiated endings is historically novel, particularly for civil wars. The
histories of Europe and North America provide few historical lessons in civil war peacemaking. Most
civil wars in these areas have ended through victories rather than through peace agreements. Typical
examples are the U.S. Civil War and the various revolutions in France, England, and Russia that are
often associated with civil wars. In history, peace has exclusively been something
negotiated betweenstates, not within states. This means that, for instance, Europe also finds itself in
an era of working out how to deal with the problem of internal peace (peace within the state). That can
be seen, from Belfast (Northern Ireland) to the Balkans, from the Basque country to Baku
(Azerbaijan). The Western world cannot claim that it has an advantage in this area; it is learning at the
same time as all others.

It is also important to ask who makes the agreements. Normally and immediately researchers and
practitioners tend to think of the warring parties. Indeed, they are important, but that might not be
enough. A recent study by (p.54) Desire Nilsson suggests that the inclusion of nonwarring parties in
agreements increases their durability.18 This is the first work along this line, but it is suggestive. The
inclusion of more stakeholders may make negotiations more complex, but the result may be more
lasting. An interpretation is that this means that more actors have an interest in the agreement. In
particular, nonarmed actorsthe civil societygain access and have a role, and thus an interest in the
implementation of agreements. It goes without saying that this also means giving a more prominent
role to women in the peace process as such. The results are likely to improve the quality of postwar
society.
Wars may also end in victories. Victories can have a lasting quality. However, a major study of civil
wars and peacebuilding since 1944 concludes that peacebuilding after a peace agreement (rather than
after a victory) has a greater chance of keeping the peace.19 The peace agreements clearly are
important for the outcomes. There have been very few studies of different types of victories, however.
The examples that are used often stem from interstate conflict, rather than the other categories. In the
present discussion on the interstate war in Iraq, the experiences of Germany and Japan are often
referenced. A most significant point is constantly overlooked. The leadership of Germany and Japan
formally and symbolically capitulated, that is, they admitted defeat and instructed their troops to
surrender. They became prisoners of war and were treated according to international law of the time,
that is, with respect. In contrast, the Iraq war of 2003 did not include such an act of capitulation by
the losing side, although there were many acts of victory by the winner. There is an important legal
and psychological difference, which probably has a significant effect for peacebuilding after victory. 20

Second, the way the previous war started provides lessons for the appropriate strategies of
peacebuilding to prevent a recurrence of war. There is an increasing body of literature on the general
causes of civil war. Largely, research has gone into factors associated with greed, need, and creed:
actors fighting for their own gain, for the basic needs of a large segment of the population, or for the
creation of a new society.21

There has been considerable attention to economic questions, thus potentially relating to postconflict
market-building ambitions. Paul Collier and associates argue that lootable raw materials, such as
diamonds, are likely to increase the likelihood of war because they serve to finance wars as well as
enrich the actors themselves.22 Interestingly, this observation has also been made by policy makers
and led to action. Take, for instance, the UN use of sanctions on the sale of particular resources, as
part of a new form of measure. Targeted sanctions stem from an analysis of the significance of such
resources for power and warfare.23 Diamonds were among the first resources pointed to: easy to
transport, high unit value, and little weight. Recent studies by Macartan Humphreys and work by
Joseph Bamidele compare different types of resource dependencies to point out which ones are more
prone to conflict or more optimal for lasting peace.24 Bamidele argues that for Africa resources with a
large labor absorption capacity are more conducive for peace. That means that agricultural production
creates more employment.

(p.55) The peacebuilding strategy that follows from this analysis of economic causes is not obvious.
To diversify a countrys economy certainly is a logical conclusion, but to do this immediately after a
war is a tremendous task. To return to the illustrative cases of Germany and Japan, both went back to
previous industrial production as part of their postwar recovery (excluding armaments, which were
banned). This seems also to be the pattern in internal conflicts. For instance, Lebanon focused after
1990 again on becoming a tourist attraction, with the use of international capital (particularly from
other Arab countries). The success in this approach became visible during the 2006 war: there were
thousands of international tourists in the country, dramatically evacuated during the first weeks of the
renewed conflict. Another case is Uganda, which invited the old Asian entrepreneurs back to the
country after the war endings in the mid-1980s. For new states emerging as a result of a state
formation conflicts, this is likely to be acute. How can an independent economy be created? As we
have seen, Eritrea came into a renewed war with Ethiopia, whereas East Timor (now Timor-Leste)
hoped for incomes from a new source: oil discoveries. Changing the economy is likely to be a difficult
proposition running counter to the needs of immediate postwar reconstruction. What one already
knows will be the first priority in reconstruction, followed by easily mobilized skills that can be
brought back to the country. Only in some instances will there be a chance of immediately developing
something entirely different.
This brings in the different concern of finding ways in which resources can be shared within the state.
It is also more possible to do in the postconflict environment. There are many ways of doing this. This
is the significance of a functioning taxation system, tariffs on produce crossing the borders, as well as
the creation of funds for long-term investment. A situation where few control all the wealth and the
rest are marginalized is clearly an unlikely scenario for peacebuilding. The poorer the conditions, the
more contention there is likely to be for scarce revenue, threatening to result in authoritarian regimes
or state failure.

Collier and colleagues and other studies point to the significance of unemployment, which Marx once
described as a reserve army. In Marxist thinking, it was a way for capitalism to depress wages.
Keynesian thinking differs on this point.25 What we see today is a much more literal meaning. If war is
the only employment around and somebody is paying, then why not take on this as any other
occupation? It is an option that is referred to in stories of unemployed in the Middle East and in
Afghanistan, as well as among young people in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro or in the run-down areas
of Los Angeles. Joining the drug lords may pay better than finishing school. The reserve army
becomes an active army. Thus, to think about employment creation as part of peacebuilding makes a
lot of sense. After war, there are needs that have to be met, but are there enough resources? Many war
endings include the provision of international support, particularly in cases of negotiated settlement.
A focus for such efforts might be the meeting of basic needs that also involve hiring a lot of labor.

Increasingly, issues of governance and leadership are getting attention as causes of conflict and thus
become a key consideration for peacebuilding (p.56) in internal postconflict situations. The phrase
state failure has been used to describe this.26 In the appendix to this chapter, an overview is
provided of different types of state failure to assist in gaining the full picture. Clearly the state as such
needs to be singled out, and that is also done in most concepts of peacebuilding. The focus may not
necessarily and exclusively be on institutional capacity, however. There are other initiatives and
institutions that may need encouragement, on a national level. Courts, agencies, and bureaucracies all
have a role to play. A good state would be one that can constitute a national capacity to deal with
conflict and be an exponent of the conflict carrying capacity of society.27 The decline of a broad set of
state and national institutions in this fundamental way suggests that such institutions not merely
provide law and order but also bestow an element of redress, even justice. If that ability is not there,
the result could become chaotic. Thus, in the fear of creating too strong a state, some prefer no state at
all; in the fear of having no state, others prefer an authoritarian order. A task is to find intelligent
constructions in between these extremes. However, here is an important lacuna. There are, for
instance, no global measures on efficacy and integrity of state institutions that can be used to compare
states or follow developments over time.28
This points to a future challenge for peacebuilding: what type of state is sufficiently strong to
distribute the costs and benefits of society in a legitimate way, but not so strong that it can overrun the
economy or suppress groups in society? This is the direction in which the debate on peacebuilding
may be moving, for instance, from the works of Roland Paris.29 Paris and others, be they practitioners
or academics, criticize the early imposition of democratic institutions such as national elections. They
express a preference for postponing this political measure in favor of institution-building (or, what
here has been termed state-building, in contrast to democracy-building). This is an important critique
of prevalent strategies for peacebuilding. In reality, it is often more a discussion of timing. When are
the conditions ripe for democracy? Too early after a war may mean that the warlords have a heroic
status and are the only ones with access to resources, making it likely that they can get democratic
recognition. Too late in the process, however, may give room for the same warlords to criticize the
transitory arrangements and undermine democracy-building. Clearly, early after a war, civil society
and other actors are likely to be weak and economic development varied. Only later are civil society
actors likely to gain strength and contribute to a broader representation in the elections. Larry
Diamond, analyzing the situation in Iraq in 2004, pointed to the possibility of first calling local
elections, as a way around the problem of timing the introduction of democracy. 30
A discussion in democracy-building cannot be pursued only in theory. In reality, some authority has to
rule, even during a transition. Who is it likely to be, and what will be its role in the following
democratization? The international support for long-term commitment cannot be taken for granted,
although huge resources have gone into such situations as those found in Timor-Leste (primarily
19992002), Afghanistan (since 2001), Kosovo (since 1999), and (p.57) Bosnia-Herzegovina (since
1995). International authority took over some of the functions that would normally belong to the state,
but state-building was part of the international mandate. The record of success can be debated: there
has been a return to war in only one case (Afghanistan) but considerable sporadic conflict in two
others (Timor-Leste, Kosovo) and tensions in all. Paradoxically, the long international presence is an
indication of a failure in providing the conditions that confidently can be regarded as peacebuilding
where the national and local levels regain control.
This brings us straight to the third question: who is doing peacebuilding? Clearly, this is something
that has been taken over by the international community. Some reduction in armed conflict has been
observed. But as a long-term strategy, this is not sustainable. There is also increasing evidence to
underline the significance of peacebuilding based on local capacity. When studying the early
development of conflicts, one can observe that the internal mediators and the local third parties, what
is sometimes called moderates, or the groups that are in between the warring factions, are also those
targeted by belligerents and militants. This means that the center, the political space where much of
the population is often located (politically speaking), may be without spokespersons. The extreme
sides may manage to polarize the situation. When this results in civil wars, international efforts at
peacebuilding enter as a replacement for local capacity. This may be necessary, but it is also a major
problem. There is a danger that a heavy international presence may further reduce local conflict
resolution capacity, contribute to the erosion of traditional authority, and with that, undermine bodies
that might be able to competently deal with conflicts on a local level. 31 There are now studies emerging
of recent experiences of international peacebuilding efforts. Roland Kostics work on Bosnia-
Herzegovina is one example; John Heathershaws work on Tajikistan is another.32 Both seem to bring
out the same message, albeit with different emphases and meaning. The international efforts may lead
to a stifling of local initiative or delay or prevent the emergence of local capacity to deal with the
situation. Louise Olsson has analyzed UN engagement in Namibia from the perspective of the role of
women in the war-ending and early peacebuilding processes.33

An important conclusion is that international peacebuilding strategies have to primarily enhance local
capacity and interact with such actors; thus, peacebuilding will have to be differently shaped in
different situations. There is a danger of unproductive tension between local and international
capacity.34 There are different mandates driving these two efforts. Often international peacebuilding
will have more access to resources, comparatively speaking, but will also be less committed to a
particular situation. The experts and managers will move on within a short period of time, but the
locals will remain in the situation. Finding ways these two levels can connect and support each other is
highly significant.

In interstate peacebuilding, however, international efforts are much more rare. We have already
alluded to the postconflict experiences in EthiopiaEritrea and IndiaPakistan relations. These actors
have been strong enough to (p.58) block international involvement, except for limited tasks of
peacekeeping or observation teams. The strategies of peacebuilding need different forms. The example
of the Franco-German relations suggests that a regional approach may be more practical.
This leads us to a fourth issue that affects all three types of conflict and concerns: the neighborhood in
which peacebuilding takes place. Neighboring countries may contribute to a war directly (by
supplying their own troops, allowing bases for warring parties, expressing political support, etc.) or
indirectly (e.g., by not being capable to control their own borders). Clearly, what happens in one
country is to some extent dependent on what happens with its neighbor(s).35 There are
interconnectionsthe closer to the scene, the closer the interconnections. There are concepts such as
regional conflict complexes and regional security communities expressing exactly this.36 Regional
spill-over effects can be seen in some of the conflictual African regions.

There is a debate, however, over whether the neighborhood itself is the problem or whether internal
conflicts are triggered from internal causes. Michael E. Brown has argued that the proximate causes of
internal conflicts are mostly internal (thirty-two out of thirty-six cases, in his overview, 1996: 582).
The typical cases of externally driven conflicts were the conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, Afghanistan,
and Sierra Leone. However, he as well as others would agree that there are a number of regional
dimensions of internal conflicts, for instance, regional instability, arms trade, refugee flows, and
disruption of trade and transportation. Harbom and Wallensteen (2005) report that there is much
international engagement in a large majority of all armed internal conflict over a period of time.
Clearly there are close connections, and they have become even more obvious since Brown presented
his findings. Entire regions have been dramatically affected by war and disputes, weakening not only
one state but several: the Mano River region is one (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cte dIvoire). The
African Great Lakes region is another (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda); the Horn of Africa a third;
the connections between Darfur (Sudan), Chad, and the Central African Republic have also received
attention and appear to lead to a spread of armed conflict. These are areas where links are close, the
borders fragile, and the states weakall contributing to new opportunities for those who see potential
gains in armed options. Thus, there are not only state failures, as mentioned before, but also regional
failures.

This affects peacebuilding in a number of ways. It may make it difficult to build peace in one country if
the neighboring state is war-torn and collapsing. There are, however, also elements of a reversal.
Peace in one country may assist peace efforts in another: Liberia and Sierra Leone may interact
supportively in peacebuilding in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s, compared to the
dynamics five or ten years earlier. The same may apply to developments in Burundi, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, and southern Sudan. Certainly the picture is not complete, but there has been a
discernible trend of slowly but systematically unfolding peacebuilding activities in
many (p.59) African states over the past half-decade. It is also clear that regional initiatives play a
role in this reversal. Neighbors shift from exploitative to supportive stances, and that may contribute
to peacebuilding. Regional settings for peacebuilding have to be taken into consideration. Remarkably
little research has gone into this.
The account given for Africa is in stark contrast to the Middle East, where fighting and conflict
strategies have been dominating the agenda of the main actors, particularly since the collapse of the
Oslo Process by late 2000 and after the events of September 11, 2001. In other parts of the world,
different patterns dominate: the critique of peacebuilding seen in the Balkans does not emerge from
the need to undo the security that has been built, but aims at finding ways to turn peacebuilding into a
more effective and locally informed approach. Similarly, the relative peace of East Asia suggests again
different ways of managing conflict. In the disputes around North Korea, for instance, the neighboring
countries have been heavily involved in diplomacy and economic pressure, but have not resorted to
militarily undermining the regime or initiating armed action.

The regional approach to peacebuilding has received little attention. Peace agreements contain fewer
such aspects and after a victory, neighbors mostly seem to adapt to the new conditions. Regional
peacebuilding in interstate conflict has been almost completely lacking, andpossibly as a
consequenceso is research. This suggests an important agenda, where not only knowledge of
security but also broader expertise is brought to bear. It may also have an effect on negotiations for
ending wars or implementing peace.

Conclusion
The field of peacebuilding studies is in its early phases. It has largely concentrated on internal
conflicts and thus developed conclusions relevant for peacebuilding after such wars. For instance,
there is a common observation that countries with dependence on one commodity for export are at
risk of renewed war and that unemployment provides an additional risk for conflict. Peacebuilding
policies clearly need to address issues of sharing resources, finding investment, and creating jobs. This
relates largely to the needs of one particular aspect: the market-building dimension of peacebuilding.
The tasks are likely to be the same, whether we discuss the formation of a new government after a war
or a new state as a separate entity.

However, an emerging conclusion is also emphasizing weak local capability to deal with conflict
through a functioning state or another locally legitimate framework. This is a challenge to
peacebuilding that points to the representativeness of the state and the space it allows for local
capacity (an aspect of state-building). The importance of democracy-building is discussed as to
appropriate timing and sequencing, although it is seldom questioned as a goal.

Security-building is an obviously important matter. The international efforts of peacekeeping have

this as a central task, and other matters are seen (p.60) as auxiliary. However, strategies for long-
term security-building require considerable study for all three types of conflict. In the interstate
postwar situation, there is a tradition of analysis in terms of a security dilemma. This concept is also
useful for describing internal conditions, something that has not been done much so far.
Nation-building in terms of finding common identities in postconflict situations is a challenge that
seems to have paralyzed researchers as well as practitioners. There are few ideas on systemic
approaches, but there is much awareness of the significance of this factor. It seems to provide a
particular challenge to peacebuilding research.

Finally, this chapter has pointed to the lack of regional studies, particularly how the regional
dimension may systematically support or undermine peacebuilding efforts of individual countries or
actors. Such interaction seems particularly pertinent for future studies.

Peacebuilding is a strategic topic in itself. It is located in the crossroads of academic research and
practical application. The urgency of such research is clear as practice evolves, whether or not there is
research. Research needs to incorporate such experiences and also develop solid insights that can
contribute to improving present strategies.

Appendix: A Typology of State Failure

Notes
This chapter is a substantial elaboration of my inaugural speech as the Richard G. Starmann Sr.
Research Professor of Peace Studies, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, November
5, 2006. This chapter has benefited from many commentators, notably Roland Kostic, for which I am
grateful, while I remain solely responsible for the analysis presented.

References

Bibliography references:
Bamidele, Joseph. 2006. Natural Resource Dependence and the Political Economy of Civil Conflict in

Sub-Saharan Africa. PhD Dissertation, submitted to the University of London, United Kingdom.

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. 1992. An Agenda for Peace. New York: United Nations.

Brown, Michael E. (ed.). 1996. The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.:

MIT Press.

Brounus, Karen. 2003. ReconciliationTheory and Practice for Development Cooperation. A

Report for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Stockholm: Sida.

Buzan, Barry. 1991. People, States and Fear. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.

Chesterman, Simon. 2004. You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration, and

State-Building. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chesterman, Simon, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur (eds.). 2005. Making States Work: State

Failure and the Crisis of Governance. Tokyo, New York, Paris: UN University Press.

Collier, Paul, et al., 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and Development Policy. New York:

World Bank and Oxford University Press.

Deutsch, Karl W., et al., 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press.

Diamond, Larry. 2005. Building Democracy After Conflict. Lessons from Iraq. Journal of

Democracy16(1): 923.

Dobbins, James F. 20032004. Americas Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to

Iraq, Survival45(4): 87110.

Doyle, Michael W., and Sambanis, Nicholas. 2000. International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and

Quantitative Analysis, American Political Science Review 94(4): 779801.

Fetherston, A. B. 2000. Peacekeeping, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding: A Reconsideration of

Theoretical Frameworks. International Peacekeeping 7(4): 190218.

Frhlich, Manuel, Btof, Maria, and Lemanski, Jan. 2006. Mapping UN Presence. A Follow-up on
the Human Security Report, Die Friedens-Warte. Journal of International Peace and

Organization 81(2): 1323.

(p.64) Galtung, Johan. 1976. Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and
Peacebuilding, in Peace, War and Defence. Essays in Peace Research Vol. 2. Copenhagen: Christian

Ejlers, pp 282304.
Gawerc, Michelle I. 2006. Peace-Building: Theoretical and Concrete Perspectives, Peace &

Change31(4): 435478.

Harbom, Lotta, and Wallensteen, Peter. 2005. Armed Conflict and Its International Dimensions,

19462004, Journal of Peace Research 42(5): 623635.

Harbom, Lotta, Hgbladh, Stina and Wallensteen, Peter. 2006. Armed Conflict and Peace

Agreements, Journal of Peace Research 43(5): 617631.

Heathershaw, John. 2007. Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from Post-Conflict

Tajikistan,International Peacekeeping 14(2): 219236.

Human Security Report 2005. War and Peace in the 21st Century. Human Security Centre,

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Humphreys, Macartan. 2005. Natural Resources, Conflict and Conflict Resolution, Journal of

Conflict Resolution 49(4): 508537.

Jarstad, Anna, and Sisk, Tim (eds.). 2008. From War to Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Jenkins, J. Craig, and Bond, Doug. 2001. Conflict Carrying Capacity, Political Crisis and

Reconstruction, Journal of Conflict Resolution 45(1): 331.

Kostic, Roland. 2008. Nation-Building as an Instrument of Peace? Exploring Local Attitudes towards
International Nation-Building and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Civil Wars 10(4): 384

412.

Nilsson, Desire. 2006. In the Shadow of Settlement. Multiple Rebel Groups and Precarious Peace.

Uppsala: Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research.

Olsson, Louise. 2001. Gender Mainstreaming in Practice: The United Nations Transitional Assistance

Group in Namibia, International Peacekeeping 8(2): 97110.

Organski, A. F. K., and Kugler, Jacek. 1980. The War Ledger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Paris, Roland. 2002. International Peacebuilding and Mission Civilisatrice, Review of

International Studies 28: 637656.

Paris, Roland. At Wars End. Building Peace after Civil Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2004.

SIPRI Yearbook 2006. New York: Oxford University Press.

Skott, Peter. 1989. Effective Demand, Class Struggle and Cyclical Growth, International Economic

Review 30(1): 231247.

United Nations. 2004. A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Report of the Secretary-

Generals High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, United Nations, 2004.

Wallensteen, Peter. 2007. Understanding Conflict Resolution, 2nd ed. London: Sage.

Wallensteen, Peter, and Staibano, Carina (eds.). 2005. International Sanctions: Between Words and

Wars in the Global System. London and New York: Frank Cass.

Woodward, Bob. 2006. State of Denial. Bush at War, Part III. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Zartman, I. William. 2000. Mediating Conflicts of Need, Greed and Creed, Orbis 44(2): 255266.

Notes:
(1) . Galtung, Johan, 1976. Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and
Peacebuilding, in Galtung, Johan, Peace, War and Defence. Essays in Peace Research vol. 2,

Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, pp. 282304 .

(2) . Deutsch, Karl W., et al., 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area, Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press .

(3) . Harbom, Lotta, Stina Hgbladh, and Peter Wallensteen, 2006. Armed Conflict and Peace

Agreements, Journal of Peace Research 43(5): 617631 .

(4) . Refugee flows are constantly monitored by UNHCR, Human Rights Watch, and Refugees
International. The link to armed conflicts is obvious even from a visual inspection of the Web sites of
these organizations.

(5) . Human Security Report 2005. War and Peace in the 21st Century, Human Security Centre,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, www.humansecurityreport.info.

(6) . The proposal is found in United Nations, 2004, A More Secure World: Our Shared
Responsibility, Report of the Secretary Generals High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and
Change. The new commission was established in June 2006 by the UN General Assembly and selected
Burundi and Sierra Leone as the first countries to work with.

(7) . The recent work of Manuel Frhlich et al. (2006) studying the contributions of the UN Special
Representatives confirms the observations from HSR. An obvious indicator would be global military
expenditures, but they show a sharp rise since 2000, at a time when the conflict patterns are neither
declining nor rising. See SIPRI Yearbook 2006, New York: Oxford University Press, chapter 8.

(8) . Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 1992. An Agenda for Peace, New York: United Nations .

(9) . This trichotomy of conflict is presented in Wallensteen, Peter, 2007. Understanding Conflict

Resolution, 2nd ed., London: Sage, chapter 4 .

(10) . The distinction of government and territory as the chief incompatibilities in armed conflicts is
central to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, see www.ucdp.uu.se.

(11) . The dilemmas in postwar democracy-building are penetrated in Jarstad, Anna, and Sisk, Tim,

eds., 2008. From War to Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

(12) . Brounus, Karen, 2003. ReconciliationTheory and Practice for Development Cooperation. A

Report for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Stockholm: Sida .

(13) . There is a proliferation of definitions for this concept from its contemporary launching by
former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his report An Agenda for Peace. As noted, the
concept was used by Johan Galtung already in 1976. For an overview, see Gawerc, Michelle I., 2006.

Peace-Building: Theoretical and Concrete Perspectives, Peace & Change 31(4): 435478 ,
andFetherston, A. B., 2000. Peacekeeping, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding: A Reconsideration

of Theoretical Frameworks, International Peacekeeping 7(1): 190218 .

(14) . Deutsch, et al., 1957.

(15) . An example of what can be achieved with short time periods is Doyle, Michael W., and
Sambanis, Nicholas, 2000. International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative

Analysis, American Political Science Review 94(4): 779801 .

(16) . Valuable insights are provided by Dobbins, James F., 20032004. Americas Role in Nation-

Building: From Germany to Iraq, Survival 45(4): 87110 . A classic treatment isOrganski, A.F.

K., and Kugler, Jacek, 1980. The War Ledger, Chicago: University of Chicago Press , which used
the expression the Phoenix factor for these two cases.

(17) . Harbom et al., 2006, and www.pcr.uu.se/database.

(18) . Nilsson, Desire, 2006. In the Shadow of Settlement. Multiple Rebel Groups and Precarious

Peace, Uppsala University: Department of Peace and Conflict Research .

(19) . Doyle and Sambanis, 2000, p. 789.

(20) . Woodward asserts that President Bush in 2003 wanted to end the war on Iraq on an aircraft
carrier to remind the public of Japans capitulation in 1945 (Woodward, Bob, 2006. State of Denial.

Bush at War, Part III, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 186 ). A difference that escapes
Woodward is that in 1945, Japanese officers signed the act of surrender on instructions from the
emperor, whereas in 2003 there were no Iraqis onboard the ship. As part of this, the Japanese
authorities had to save and protect civil and military property. In the same vein, the capture of
Saddam Hussein in December 2003 was only seen as a way of militarily defeating the insurgency

(ibid., p. 275 ), and the issue of capitulation does not seem to have been on the mind of the
American leadership.

(21) . Zartman, I. William, 2000. Mediating Conflicts of Need, Greed and Creed, Orbis 44(2): 255

266 .

(22) . The argument is more nuanced than what is presented here. Among numerous studies see, for
instance, Collier, Paul, et al., 2003. Breaking the Conflict Trap. Civil War and Development Policy,

New York: World Bank and Oxford University Press .

(23) . For an overview and evaluation of this development see, for instance, Wallensteen, Peter, and
Staibano, Carina, eds., 2005. International Sanctions: Between Words and Wars in the Global

System, London and New York: Frank Cass .

(24) . Humphreys, Macartan, 2005. Natural Resources, Conflict and Conflict Resolution, Journal of

Conflict Resolution 49(4): 508537 . Bamidele, Joseph, 2006. Natural Resource Dependence
and the Political Economy of Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. PhD dissertation, University of

London .

(25) . Peter Skott finds that theoretically one explanation does not exclude the other; see Effective
Demand, Class Struggle and Cyclical Growth, International Economic Review 30(1989:1): 231247
 . Also, women and the elderly have been analyzed from the perspective of being reserve armies
for a capitalist economy.

(26) . Chesterman, Simon, Ignatieff, Michael, and Thakur, Ramesh, eds., 2005. Making States Work:

State Failure and the Crisis of Governance, Tokyo, New York, Paris: UN University Press .

(27) . This concept has been elaborated particularly by Jenkins, J. Craig, and Bond, Doug, 2001.
Conflict Carrying Capacity, Political Crisis and Reconstruction, Journal of Conflict Resolution 45(1):

331 .

(28) . This has been apparent, for instance, when one wants to see how states implement UN-decided
sanctions initiatives. Daniel Strandow, Uppsala, has made this observation as part of a sanctions
project.

(29) . Paris, Roland, 2002. International Peacebuilding and Mission Civilisatrice, Review of

International Studies, 28: 637656 ; and Paris, Roland, 2004. At Wars End. Building Peace

after Civil Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

(30) . Diamond, Larry, 2005. Building Democracy after Conflict. Lessons from Iraq, Journal of

Democracy 16(1): 923 .

(31) . Chesterman, Simon, 2004. You, the People: The United Nations, Transitional Administration,

and State-Building, Oxford: Oxford University Press .

(32) . Kostic, Roland, 2008. Nation-building as an Instrument of Peace? Exploring Local Attitudes
towards International Nation-Building and Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Civil

Wars10(4): 384412 ; Heathershaw, John, 2007. Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from

Post-Conflict Tajikistan, International Peacekeeping 14(2): 219236 .

(33) . Olsson, Louise, 2001. Gender Mainstreaming in Practice: The United Nations Transitional

Assistance Group in Namibia, International Peacekeeping 8(2): 97110 . Olssons latest work
deals with East Timor.

(34) . On this score, recent case studies point in the same direction as the statistical work by Doyle and
Sambanis, 2000.

(35) . Harbom, Lotta, and Wallensteen, Peter, 2005. Armed Conflict and Its International

Dimensions, 19462004, Journal of Peace Research 42(5): 623635 report on this .

(36) . See for instance, Deutsch et al., 1957; Buzan, Barry, 1991. People, States and Fear, Boulder,

Colo.: Lynne Rienner; and Wallensteen, 2007 .

The Evaluation of Peacebuilding Initiatives
Putting Learning into Practice

Hal Culbertson
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords
An appropriate evaluation of peacebuilding initiatives is a pressing concern for improving
and legitimizing peacebuilding efforts. Culbertson provides a helpful comparison of
accountability-based and learning-based evaluation models and demonstrates that while not
mutually exclusive, accountability-based evaluation can inhibit learning. Evaluations that do
not sufficiently assess how initiatives can and do contribute to broader peacebuilding efforts,
for instance, through strategic engagement and coordination with other actors, are losing
valuable learning opportunities. Similarly, the field needs assessment tools that consider the
role of emergent planning (as opposed to deliberate planning), particularly given the volatile
and dynamic environments in which peacebuilding occurs.
Keywords: evaluation, monitoring, strategic planning, accountability-based evaluation, peacebuilding, learning-based
evaluation,evaluation tools, emergent planning

The peacebuilding enterprise is at a critical point in its development as a field of practice.

Peacebuilding emerged in the early to mid-1990s as a distinct focus of interventions by
multilateral agencies and nongovernmental actors. Much of the impetus for peacebuilding
stemmed from concrete needs on the ground. As the number of civil conflicts increased after
the end of the Cold War, it became apparent that international peacekeeping forces were only
able to address the immediate security needs and that other kinds of intervention that focused
on rebuilding societal structures and institutions were needed to prevent a relapse into
conflict.1 In addition, the peacebuilding enterprise quickly expanded to include efforts at
conflict prevention.2

Proponents of peacebuilding in the relief and development community argued for a greater
focus on peace in development agendas based on research that documented shortcomings of
humanitarian and development efforts in conflict settings.3 This analysis challenged the
assumption that aid can be apolitical and proposed new models of postconflict assistance that
are more sensitive to conflict impact and seek to address underlying causes of conflict.

The initial arguments for peacebuilding were largely deductive in character, given the paucity
of peacebuilding experience previously.4 Now that the field has had over a decade of
experience, however, calls are increasing for more inductive evidence of the value and impact
of peacebuilding.5Although it has established a foothold in the international community and
donor agendas, both as a new dimension of other fields of practice (such as development) and
as a distinct kind of intervention, peacebuilding still must compete for (p.66) resources and
attention with relief and development activities as well as health, education, and other areas
of intervention.
As this suggests, the legitimacy of the field as a whole, and not just individual initiatives or
approaches, is at stake. Tschirgi underscores the urgency of the situation: Unless there is
growing evidence that changes in programming, institutional reform, and more effective
collaboration and coordination among different actors serve to promote conflict prevention,
conflict management and post-conflict reconstruction, the peacebuilding agenda will not be
sustainable politically or in terms of deploying the necessary resources.6

The new challenges posed by the post-9/11 world create additional pressure to show the
relevance and effectiveness of peacebuilding. As Lund observes, Whether the anti-terrorist
agenda will now skew or subvert the decade-long process of formulating a multi-dimensional
concept of peacebuilding and nation-building, or instead it will be tempered by them, is a
crucial question that needs to be tracked, not pre-empted.7

Although some in the peacebuilding community have resisted evaluation, arguing that peace
work will not show results in the short run or cannot be measured, the mood seems to be
changing.8 The peacebuilding community is increasingly recognizing that evaluation can be
an important tool for improving and legitimating the field. Significantly, efforts to develop
better evaluation systems and processes are coming as much from peacebuilding practitioners
themselves as from the donor community.9

This chapter explores how evaluation can be used to improve the peacebuilding field as a
whole. It focuses on civil society peacebuilding efforts; however, it also draws on literature
on peacebuilding initiatives by the international community, and many of the observations
and conclusions are relevant to the evaluation of these wider peacebuilding efforts. As
emphasized in the definition of peacebuilding elaborated by Appleby and Lederach in
chapter 1, the analysis of peacebuilding is grounded in an understanding of the field that
emphasizes the multisectoral and multilevel nature of the peacebuilding enterprise and the
challenges these pose for evaluation efforts. It identifies a set of issues in the field that would
benefit from more systematic evaluation. It then concludes by exploring how evaluation
processes could be improved to foster greater learning about these issues.

Paradigms of Evaluation
Evaluation processes can be understood in terms of two broad paradigms: accountability and
learning. The fundamental difference between these orientations concerns who is viewed as
the intended user of the evaluation findings. A user is someone who has a stake in an
initiative or program, such as program staff, beneficiaries, staff from related organizations,
and, in many cases, the public. Although accountability perspectives give significant weight
to the interests and perspectives of donors or other external users who authorize
organizational activities, learning approaches give greater weight to the(p.67) interests of
organizational staff, practitioners in the field, and even the broader public.

Accountability Models
The end result of an accountability evaluation is typically a judgment about the worth, merit,
or value of an initiative.10 Donors frequently need to make such assessments as they decide
whether to continue to fund an initiative or replicate it in other areas. Organizations may also
make such assessments internally and may use evaluations to inform those decisions. A key
element in such an evaluation is the establishment of standards against which program
performance will be measured, and then the measurement of how successful the program was
in meeting those standards.

Historically, the practice of evaluation in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has been

shaped largely by accountability concerns. In the 1980s and 1990s, the number of NGOs
increased dramatically, and their share of international aid grew, as donors turned away from
government-led development initiatives.11 This growth, together with several highly
publicized scandals, led to demands for greater scrutiny of NGO activities.12

Evaluation became a prominent tool for donors to maintain accountability among recipients
of their funds. Evaluation processes tended to focus on two dimensions of accountability,
which Edwards and Hulme called functional and strategic accountability.13 First, donors
sought to assess whether resources were used as planned, much like an external financial
audit. Second, donors sought to assess the success of the project in achieving its stated goals
and objectives.

A set of standard practices and procedures for managing projects and conducting evaluations
was developed that facilitated these assessments. Planning processes were used, particularly
the logical framework planning matrix,14 that required recipients to specify high-level goals,
mid-level objectives, and immediate outputs of every project. In addition, project planners
were required to specify indicators of success against which their project would be measured
in the evaluation.

Because development assistance was the predominant form of international aid at the time,
many of the models and tools developed were particularly aimed at development
interventions. A standard set of evaluation criteria was developed by the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee
(DAC) and is widely used as the basic framework for evaluations by aid agencies.15 This
includes consideration of relevance (whether the project is suited to local needs and priorities,
as well as donor policies), effectiveness (whether the project achieves its objectives),
efficiency (whether the project is cost-effective), impact (the positive and negative changes
produced by the project, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended), and sustainability
(whether the benefits of the project will continue after donor funding has ceased). These
criteria were closely tied to the logframe planning system, which specified the outputs,
objectives, and goals for the project and the indicators that would be used to measure success
at each level.

(p.68) In reaction to the dominant role of donor perspectives in evaluation processes,

alternative approaches which stress accountability to beneficiaries have also been developed.
As Kaldor has observed, the very structure of NGOs as nonprofit, voluntary organizations
creates a separation between donors and beneficiaries that weakens the accountability of the
organization to the beneficiaries, whose interests are easily overlooked in program decision
making.16 In response, participatory approaches to evaluation have been developed that foster
high levels of involvement by local community members in planning and implementing the
evaluation and responding to the results. Such an evaluation may be an extension of the
participatory nature of a project itself, with participants setting standards and then evaluating
the initiatives success in achieving them.17

Learning Models
Whereas the accountability paradigm focuses on assessing past performance, learning
approaches are oriented toward improving future actions of the organization that undertook
the initiative or other related constituencies. As Patton observes, Using evaluation results to
improve a program turns out, in practice, to be fundamentally different from rendering
judgment about overall effectiveness, merit, or worth.18 Evaluation oriented toward learning
is more open and inductive in its methodology and results in recommendations for
improvements rather than mere assessments of past performance quality. In practice, this
means that organizational leadership and staff play a larger role in shaping the objectives of
the evaluation, determining its timing, framing questions or criteria to be evaluated, and
responding to the findings.

As Church and Rogers indicate, this approach to evaluation in some cases has led to an
expanded role for the evaluator.19 Unlike accountability evaluations, where the evaluator is
usually an external expert who collects and analyzes information for an external donor,
evaluators using a learning approach might spend significant time working with
organizational leadership and staff after the evaluation to discuss the findings and implement
the recommended changes in policy or procedures. This has sometimes raised concerns about
the objectivity and neutrality of the evaluator, which was the prime concern in accountability
models; however, in learning models, this expanded role may be seen as essential to create
effective feedback loops that can facilitate organizational change.

This approach to evaluation has close connections with the growing interest in organizational
learning. Organizational learning first emerged in the corporate sector as a field of study and
practice focusing on how organizations incorporate various kinds of feedback from their
experiences into their planning and decision making.20 More recently, many NGOs have
made it part of their overall mission to become learning organizations.21 In these
organizations, evaluation is often understood as a critical tool for fostering learning.22

(p.69) Evaluation can also be used to foster learning more generally. This approach, often
referred to as conceptual use, emphasizes the role evaluation can play in educating a wider
community about the issues under evaluation.23 As Weiss observed, insights from evaluation
sometimes do not have an immediate effect on specific actions, but nonetheless play a role in
bringing about change by percolating into the public discourse and subtly shaping views and
attitudes toward programs and policies. For example, evaluations of prison rehabilitation
programs that indicated they did not decrease recidivism did not have any discernible impact
on prison policy for many years. However, over time, these evaluations shaped debates about
prison reform that led to significant changes in policy, such as the California legislatures
removal of rehabilitation as a primary goal of incarceration.24
Sometimes, evaluations designed to increase knowledge are targeted at a specific community
or group, rather than the public at large. For example, evaluations are sometimes designed to
identify best practices and lessons learned that will improve future activity by similar
agencies or help establish professional standards in the field. Such evaluations might compare
a range of organizational efforts in a certain field of activity to derive general principles that
successful or good programs follow in designing and implementing activities.

For example, Child Friendly Cities (www.childfriendlycities.org) has intentionally adopted a

best practices approach to evaluating various efforts that support childrens rights in urban
areas around the globe. Based on a broad range of experiences of members of its network, the
organizations secretariat has created a data bank of these best practices under the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child and synthesized these into general principles that can
guide future projects.

Evaluations can also contribute to the development of a field of practice by critically

examining the broader theory of change behind a program initiative. A theory of change is an
explanation of how and why a set of activities will bring about the broader changes it seeks to
achieve.25 Theories of change often operate implicitly. They may be gut instincts or
commonsense assumptions, such as the belief that increasing interaction between members of
conflicting groups will reduce stereotypes or prejudice. Of course, they also may be informed
by social science theories as well as cultural perspectives.

In a theory of change evaluation, the evaluation team seeks to make the underlying theory of
change explicit and then establishes evaluation goals and priorities to test the theory of
change. For example, if a programs underlying theory of change is that interaction between
members of conflicting groups will reduce prejudice against the opposing group more
generally, the evaluation might seek to measure the extent to which participants have
developed positive perceptions of project participants from the other group as a result of
interacting. Given the projects theory of change, the evaluation would also consider the
extent to which these positive perceptions are transferred to members of the opposing group
who did not participate in the project or to the group as a whole. By designing the evaluation
around the programs theory of change, the (p.70) evaluation results can inform other efforts
that are based on similar theories and contribute to the accumulated wisdom about how best
to implement this kind of project.

Paradigm Choices
Accountability and learning orientations toward evaluation are not mutually exclusive.
Evaluations done primarily for the purposes of accountability have increasingly considered
lessons learned and areas for improvement. Furthermore, donors, who are often seen as
primarily interested in accountability, are increasingly recognizing the role evaluation can
play in promoting wider learning and are actively developing evaluation models to promote
this.26

However, tensions can arise between the accountability and learning paradigms. As Ebrahim
points out, evaluations undertaken with accountability as the primary motivation tend to
focus on penalizing organizations for not meeting expectations or not complying with
accepted norms rather than helping them improve their performance or the performance of
the field in general.27 In some cases, the evaluation becomes primarily a symbolic act of
legitimating or delegitimating an organizational effort, rather than one intended to improve it.
Even if legitimated through an evaluation, the organization may receive additional funding or
support, but not significant feedback on how to improve its programs or effectiveness.
Moreover, organizational staff or beneficiaries who understand evaluation in terms of
accountability may skew or avoid disclosing information that could be important for learning.
In this way, the accountability focus can inhibit the learning potential of evaluation.

As a result, one must consider the strengths and weaknesses of each approach in determining
which type of evaluation is most appropriate for a given situation. As Carlsson notes, where
the mechanism that links the activities undertaken with the overall objectives of the effort is
well understood and agreed on, an accountability orientation will likely be the most
appropriate.28 Accountability approaches are well suited to determining whether the activities
were implemented as planned and the quality of the implementation. For example, a project
focusing on reducing malaria by providing low-cost mosquito nets could be evaluated by
measuring the number of nets distributed, the recipients use of the nets, and the reduction in
the rate of malarial infection in the area. Because both the cause of malaria and the impact of
using a mosquito net properly are fairly well understood, evaluating key aspects of
implementation is a good indicator that the project had its intended impact.

However, when projects test new methodologies or pursue complex social goals through
approaches that are not well understood, evaluating whether the program was implemented in
accordance with preestablished criteria may not be the most appropriate focus for evaluation.
As Riddell observes about evaluations aimed at assessing the impact of development
interventions, Donor funds would probably be better spent in helping NGOs develop and
experiment with different methods of assessment than in undertaking a large (p.71) number
of impact studies based on methods used to date.29 In such cases, an evaluative approach
that probes the underlying theory of change and results in suggestions for improving the
effort is better suited to the needs of the initiative.
The Peacebuilding Enterprise
Understanding the evaluation issues facing the peacebuilding community requires an
understanding of the nature of the enterprise in which it is engaged. To this end, this section
sketches the contours of the peacebuilding enterprise through an analysis of its overall goals,
particularly noting several ways these goals create dilemmas that the peacebuilding
community must grapple with in evaluating its efforts. As will be seen, the complexity of the
enterprise shapes both the issues that deserve attention through evaluation and the kind of
evaluation approaches that need to be used.

Goals
At the risk of sounding tautological, I begin by observing that the enterprise of peacebuilding
is best understood as any activity or initiative that is intended to promote peace. This
approach does not begin with a specific set of activities, such as conflict resolution,
mediation, or the development of democratic political institutions; instead, it begins with an
orientation toward a broad goalpeaceand considers any person or entity that is
intentionally designing programs and initiatives toward that end to be part of the
peacebuilding enterprise.

As Ken Bush argues, if peacebuilding is understood as a specific set of activities, this limits
the concept in ways that may be detrimental to the development of the field.30 To overcome
this problem, he proposes to define peacebuilding as an impact, so that any activity
undertaken to achieve that impact would be considered a peacebuilding activity. In this way,
relief and development programs that seek to make a community less conflict-prone through
carefully directed economic development activities but do not directly engage partners in
dialogue about conflict or conflict resolution workshops would still be considered part of the
enterprise. The key element is not the particular kind of activity undertaken but the broader
intent that the initiative will have a positive impact on the conflict.

This understanding of the peacebuilding community is highly inclusive, but not all-inclusive.
As Larissa Fast notes in chapter 11, relief organizations sometimes seek to keep their efforts
separate from peacebuilding initiatives, as a way of preserving their neutrality or credibility.
In such cases, these efforts would not be considered part of the peacebuilding enterprise and
should not be evaluated in terms of their impact on peace.

Viewed from this perspective, peacebuilding is an extraordinarily complex and multifaceted

endeavor. Those who have attempted to approach the concept (p.72) of peace systematically
find a dichotomy at its core. Johan Galtungs famous distinction between positive and
negative peace is often understood as delineating two fundamental dimensions of the concept
of peace. Negative peace refers to the absence of violent conflict, whereas positive
peace refers to the presence of just relations in society.
Though initially developed as a conceptual tool, the distinction between positive and negative
peace has come to reflect more practical distinctions in the field of peacebuilding. This can be
seen in the overall goals that practitioners articulate for their activities. Interestingly, the
Reflecting on Peace Practices project, which involved listening to a broad spectrum of peace
practitioners from a wide range of contexts, arrived at a similar distinction between two
fundamental goals actually operating within the field: stopping violence and destructive
conflict, and addressing political, economic, and social grievances that drive conflict.31

Evaluation Dilemmas
The relationship between these two overarching goals generates significant dilemmas for the
evaluation of peacebuilding efforts. Although it is common to view the two as closely
intertwinedeven as two sides of the same cointhe nature of their mutual interaction is
unclear when viewed in the context of evaluation. These dilemmas stem from several factors.

First, NGOs and other civil society actors typically articulate their peacebuilding goals in
terms of positive (rather than negative) peace. Directly contributing to ceasefires is usually
beyond the capacity of most NGOs, although there are a few notable exceptions, such as the
contribution of SantEgidio to peace negotiations in Mozambique.32 Of course, NGOs are
sensitive to the impact of their activities on negative peace. Many have adopted do no harm
principles and processes to ensure that their initiatives do not unintentionally fuel conflict.
However, this is not typically understood as the organizations primary contribution to
peacebuilding. This contribution is usually expressed in language about reconciling broken
relationships, changing attitudes toward the other, and contributing to equitable development
and just social institutions.

To what extent should such efforts to build positive peace, such as an effort to rebuild an
interethnic marketplace in a war-torn region, be evaluated by their impact on the level of
armed conflict? On the one hand, because such an effort is intended to build better
relationships between ethnic communities, and in turn reduce tensions between them, one
might expect that the effort would have some impact on the level of violence. On the other
hand, it might be too ambitious to expect such a project, even a broad based and widely
supported one, to contribute to a discernible reduction in armed violence. Furthermore, tying
the success of this project to reductions in the level of violence might make it susceptible to
criticism if violence continues, even if the project is achieving its immediate objectives. As a
result, project designers might seek to frame the project as a purely positive peacebuilding
effort and delink it from negative peace concerns.

(p.73) Second, the evaluation problem is complicated by the fact that hard data on negative
peace are often more easily assembled and analyzed than data on positive peace. Databases
like the Conflict Data Project at Uppsala University provide a good basis for assessments of
changes in negative peace in a given locality. However, similar data on changes in positive
peace are more elusive. One can rely on indices such as the Freedom House index or human
rights reports to assess movements toward positive peace, but these may not reflect the kinds
of changes that are targeted by a given project.
Third, the evaluation dilemma is further magnified when one unpacks the operative concept
of positive peace. As discussed in more detail in chapter 1, positive peace is a comprehensive,
all-encompassing goal that may require changes in virtually all sectors of societyeconomic,
social, and political. As such, conceptions of positive peace are shaped in significant ways by
local factors, including historical, cultural, and religious understandings of justice and the
common good. Thus, a deep understanding of local perspectives on peace would be needed to
assess the impact of peacebuilding initiatives.

However, as Roland Paris argues, virtually all peacebuilding operations undertaken by the
international community have reflected a liberal internationalist perspective by attempting to
introduce a market economy and liberal democracy, sometimes with disastrous
consequences.33 If positive peace is defined by this agenda, then the criteria selected for
evaluating the success of peace initiatives may measure adherence to this agenda more than
progress toward peace in the eyes of local people.

As a result, NGOs and other civil society actors who seek to contribute to peacebuilding may
find themselves negotiating between conflicting conceptions of positive peace as they
develop criteria for evaluation. For example, a local community may think that giving more
freedom to the media will only empower voices that seek to divide the community, whereas
members of the international community may see this as a prerequisite for a peaceful society.
Or these roles may be reversed. For example, after the Dayton Accords, several international
donors in Bosnia and Herzegovina provided funding to develop an unbiased media there and
to counteract its use to fan ethnic tensions. However, some donors effectively censored
programming that they thought could inflame ethnic tensions, undermining their stated goal
of developing a free media and alienating local media owners.34

In addition to illustrating the political contentiousness that can surround peacebuilding

projects, this case also highlights the more general uncertainty and disagreement regarding
whether and how a particular effort will contribute to positive peace in a given locality. Is a
truly free media in a postconflict context an institution that strengthens peace, or is it a
potential tool for those who would reignite the conflict? How does the use, or abuse, of the
media during conflict affect its capacity to serve as a source of peacebuilding? When are
international efforts to strengthen local media in postconflict situations most (and least)
effective?

An accountability evaluation that focused on whether the project was implemented according
to plan and the quality of the implementation can (p.74) easily fail to address important and
useful questions such as these. As Church and Shouldice observe, Current evaluation
generally explores whether a project has met its stated goals but does not question whether
the beliefs about how to instigate change on which the project is based are accurate.35 An
evaluation-focused on learning, on the other hand, would treat this situation as an opportunity
for gaining greater insights into how media efforts can better contribute to peacebuilding. In
such situations, there is certainly a need for accountability to make sure that funds are spent
properly and projects are implemented appropriately. However, there is also a need for
learning that is too often left unexplored.
Peacebuilding Strategies: Where Can We Improve?
Given comprehensive, multifaceted goals and a highly complex working environment, one of
the key issues facing the peacebuilding community is its strategy for achieving its goals,
particularly its strategy for contributing to positive peace. Indeed, peacebuilding practitioners
often cite strategic issues, such as the linkages between grassroots involvement and wider
peace processes or the relationship between context and strategy development, as among the
most central to their work.36However, these kinds of issues are often neglected in the
evaluation of peacebuilding initiatives.37

Organizational strategy is notoriously difficult to define, in part because the term is used to
refer to a variety of distinct but overlapping concepts.38 For our present purposes, strategy is
understood as involving an organizations choices about how to deploy its varied resources to
meet its overall goals. This approach to organizational strategy emphasizes the alignment of
internal resources with external realities. Although goals are sometimes viewed simply as
broad statements of organizational vision or as rallying points for staff, they also reflect
strategic choices about the organizations positioning in the wider environment relevant to
other actors and initiatives as well as decision making about the effectiveness of intervention
approaches adopted in the situation. Strategic decision making thus involves an alignment of
organizational resources, including its expertise, reputation, and material resources, with the
external environment to achieve organizational goals.

The Strategic Environment

A key component in organizational strategy is the organizations position within the wider
context or environment. In the context of a businesss activities, this may involve an analysis
of the competition for a good or service and the definition of a unique niche for the
organizations products or services. Although similar issues also affect the nonprofit sector,
especially as the number of NGOs continues to grow, increasing the competition for scarce
resources, NGOs also have a strategic interest in coordinating activities and services with
other agencies and initiatives to achieve their broader objectives.39

(p.75) In the context of peacebuilding, the need for coordination with other actors takes on
particular significance. In many cases, coordination is not just a means to an end; instead, it
may be an end in itself to get certain actors to work together. As such, coordination is not just
about tactical concerns, such as making sure that efforts are not overlapping or redundant
with other agencies. It is a key element of an overall strategy for bringing about wider change
or impact.
Yet few organizations evaluate their strategies for achieving wider impact in the surrounding
environment.40 Even when the wider strategy is that of the funding agency supporting a
project, peacebuilding initiatives often fail to consider links with donor strategies. In one of
the largest reviews of peacebuilding evaluations undertaken to date, Smith analyzed
evaluations of over 336 projects funded by foreign and development ministries in Germany,
the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom.41 One of the most significant findings of
the study was that more than 55 percent of the projects made no reference to a wider country
strategy for peacebuilding. In some cases this was because the donor agency did not have a
wider strategy for peacebuilding; in other cases, however, such a strategy existed, but the
project was not linked to it. Smith argued that such a high rate constituted a strategic deficit
in peacebuilding practice.

One reason for the neglect of this aspect of strategy in evaluation is the inherent difficulty of
measuring peacebuilding impact. Fast and Neufeldt identify several challenges that bedevil
attempts to evaluate this impact.42 These include the inherent long-term nature of
peacebuilding efforts, the difficulty of measuring changes in intangible dimensions such as
relationships and attitudes, and the vast political, economic, and social contexts in which
peacebuilding occurs.

Unlike some other types of intervention, peacebuilding impact cannot be determined through
aggregation methods. In assessing the impact of microfinance initiatives, for example, impact
studies typically focus on the changes in the lives of recipients of microloans and draw
conclusions based on the kind of changes observed across a large pool.43 Although
peacebuilding initiatives do work with individuals, and their changes of attitude and behavior
can to some extent be measured and aggregated, many of the changes desired in these
initiatives are broader changes in structures, policies, and relationships between communities,
which cannot be readily assessed through aggregation approaches.

Another reason wider impact is neglected may be fear of accountability for matters over
which the organization has no control. Given current approaches to evaluation, which focus
on measuring results, it is no surprise that impact strategies are neglected. NGO
peacebuilding initiatives are often a small piece of a much larger and more complex
peacebuilding endeavor, and NGOs do not want to be (and should not be) held accountable if
the wider project fails.44

NGOs sometimes assume that the only way to contribute on a wider scale is to expand their
programs, perhaps by replicating them in other villages or cities, or for chance events to put
them in the spotlight or carry their efforts beyond their local community. However,
contributions can also happen through(p.76) strategic engagement with other actors,
including UN agencies, other NGOs and NGO networks, local governmental agencies, social
movements, governmental policies and programs, donor initiatives, or complex interventions
by the international community to secure implementation of a peace agreement.
Of course, these issues are complicated by the fact that peacebuilding efforts do not have a
natural institutional home on the national or international levels.45 Unlike health initiatives,
which are usually spearheaded by a ministry of health or other public or international health
institution, or rule-of-law initiatives that revolve around the development of legal and judicial
institutions, peacebuilding initiatives cut across and involve the work of highly diverse
institutional actors. As discussed by Simon Chesterman in chapter 5, the UN has taken steps
to create coordinating agencies, including the new Peacebuilding Commission, but its
capacity to provide an institutional home is still untested.

As a result, coordination takes a wide range of forms in peacebuilding initiatives. It may

involve simply taking cognizance of other actors and their strategies in program planning and
implementation and could also extend to actively engaging with others in joint efforts and
everything in between. Coordination also needs to happen across a broad array of differences,
including coordination between insiders and outsiders (most often the local community and
international actors), between actors in different societal sectors (government, military, civil
society, business communities), and between actors in different professional fields and
disciplines (including health, education, security, agriculture, the judiciary, and many others).
In addition, each institution or sector may be affected somewhat differently by conflict,
making the coordination challenges in any given situation unique.

Evaluation efforts should provide feedback to peacebuilders on how engagement with other
actors and initiatives can enhance (or inhibit) program reach and impact. The purpose of such
an inquiry is not to establish that the organizations efforts led to peace writ large, which is
unlikely to be the case, or even to show the exact level of its contribution to certain outcomes
through some kind of attribution analysis. Rather, what is important to learn is how such
engagement strengthened (or weakened) the overall capacity for peacebuilding in the society.

Useful areas for exploration might include the organizations choice of wider initiatives to
engage in, the quality of its engagement, and the impact of the engagement on the wider
initiative and the organizationissues rarely discussed in evaluations focused on
accountability. If a local peacebuilding initiative chooses to participate in a national social
movement for peace, for example, is this the kind of link that could foster greater impact in
society at large, or does this do little to expand the reach of the initiative? What costs and
benefits does this create for the organization and the social movement? Or if a Catholic NGO
engages with a Muslim NGO to promote interreligious dialogue in an area marked by
violence between their members, how does the joint nature of the initiative affect its
legitimacy and impact, and how is it viewed in the wider community? Similar questions
could be asked regarding engagement with UN coordinating agencies or local officials.

(p.77) Of course, positioning strategies do not necessarily have to involve alignment with a
wider peacebuilding initiative; they may also involve criticism or advocacy for alternative
approaches. NGOs are highly independent actors, and this approach to evaluating impact
strategies does not seek to remove that independence. The key question is not whether the
NGO joined a wider initiative, but whether it engaged it constructively.

Strategy Formulation
Strategy formulation is often understood solely as the making of strategic plans. However, as
Mintzberg and Waters observe, although strategic plans are an important point of reference,
they are only one end of a continuum that constitutes organizational strategy
formation.46 They distinguish between deliberate strategies, which take the form of plans,
and emergent strategies, which are formed through patterns of decisions and actions by
organizational personnel that occur despite or in the absence of strategic plans.

For example, an NGO that states in its strategic plan that it seeks to reduce intercommunal
violence at a local university by training students in nonviolent approaches to conflict would
be following a deliberate strategy in organizing trainings for students. If the NGO learns
through its engagement with students that the university administrations mismanagement of
conflicts is a major contributing factor in the violence, and the NGO then works with
university administrators to develop their conflict management system, the strategy guiding
this effort would be emergent rather than deliberate. As Mintzberg and Waters argue,
emergent strategies are not necessarily a sign that organizational leaders are out of control;
instead, they may be reacting to opportunities or changes in the environment in wholly
appropriate ways.47 Indeed, emergent strategies may later become deliberate strategies as part
of a subsequent strategic planning process.

Strategy formulation in any organizational context can be understood as the interaction of

deliberate and emergent strategies. Based on a wide range of case studies, Mintzberg and
Waters delineate several amalgams of deliberate and emergent strategies, including planned
strategies that are based largely on goals articulated in a strategic plan, entrepreneurial
strategies where there is a highly individual vision that is elaborated in subsequent actions,
umbrella strategies where organizational leaders provide broad boundaries but leave
decisions within those boundaries, and consensus strategies where all organizational
personnel converge on a pattern of mutual adjustment of goals. The key factors determining
the mix of deliberate and emergent strategies are the degree of control needed or desired by
organizational leaders and the volatility of the external environment.

The evaluation of peacebuilding strategies needs to give appropriate weight to each aspect of
strategy formulation. The deliberative dimension of peacebuilding has received much greater
attention than emergent strategies. This is due in large part to the fact that standard NGO
evaluation systems focus almost exclusively on strategic plans as the point of reference for
evaluation.

(p.78) Recent assessments of the planning of peacebuilding projects indicate a need for more
appropriate tools for designing peacebuilding interventions. As Smith observes, It is striking
that project documentation frequently offers no clear analysis of the problem that is to be
addressed by the project. When present, the analysis often gets no further than
acknowledging that there is a conflict and therefore conflict resolution activities are
appropriate.48
To assist in formulating deliberate strategies, peacebuilders need planning tools that help
them better articulate their understanding of the conflict(s) they confront and the kinds of
changes that are needed to foster sustainable peace. This understanding can be articulated
through a variety of methods, including conflict maps or implementation frameworks that
delineate changes needed across various sectors, such as the demobilization of militants, the
removal of discriminatory laws, and equitable economic development.

In creating such a framework, those developing an intervention strategy must consider

whether to emphasize prioritization or integration. While focusing primarily on high-level
peacebuilding operations by the international community instead of civil society initiatives,
Stedman et al.s work on ending civil wars provides a good illustration of the prioritization
approach.49 They divide peacebuilding into several subgoals, including the demobilization
and reintegration of combatants, disarmament, elections, human rights, and refugee
repatriation. Based on an analysis of sixteen cases, they conclude that while other sectors
should not be neglected, the demobilization of soldiers and the demilitarization of politics
should be given the highest priority in peacebuilding operations, given the central role they
play in relation to needs in other sectors.

Lederachs approach, on the other hand, emphasizes the need for integrating multiple
dimensions and even multiple time frames in responding to deep-rooted conflict.50 Like
Stedman, Lederach posits that sustainable peace requires changes in a range of arenas, which
he describes as the personal, relational, structural, and cultural spheres. However, Lederachs
arenas are not seen as distinct sectors but as concentric circles with each embedded in the
subsequent arena. Given the complex interconnections between these dimensions,
particularly at the local level, he encourages peacebuilders to consider all of these dimensions
as they develop peacebuilding projects and to be particularly sensitive to opportunities to
develop activities that integrate multiple dimensions.

Likewise, Anderson and Olson suggest that integrative strategies are a prerequisite for
effective peacebuilding.51 They note that peacebuilding efforts aimed at changing public
attitudes and building interpersonal relationships are much more likely to succeed if they are
linked with processes that seek to change social and political structures. Of course, as they
recognize, this does not mean that each organization or initiative must itself be multisector
and integrated. If a project is well coordinated with other peacebuilding efforts in other
sectors or working on other issues, the organization itself may not need to diversify its
program. Thus, a key strategic choice, and one that deserves greater attention in evaluation,
concerns whether an organization develops an integrated program itself or seeks stronger
coordination with efforts by other actors.

(p.79) In cases where an organization does develop a highly integrated initiative, evaluating
such an initiative poses some unique challenges. As Bush observes, an educational initiative
that also seeks to improve relationships between members of different ethnic groups can be
understood as having both an educational and a peacebuilding goal.52 Such a project might
succeed in improving relations between students but fail in improving test scores. Or it might
lead to improved test scores but fail in improving relationships. In either case, the
effectiveness and value of pursuing the project as an integrated initiative is brought into
question. Peacebuilding efforts which integrate multiple dimensions, such as combining local
refugee resettlement with involvement in national-level reconciliation efforts, may pose
similar dilemmas.
To meet these challenges, peacebuilders will need to better articulate the underlying rationale
for pursuing integrated programming and then evaluate the validity of that rationale in
practice. An examination of initiatives that integrated peacebuilding with health programs
provides a useful model of how to evaluate initiatives with two simultaneous goals.
MacQueen and Santa-Barbara identify five mechanisms or stratagems through which health
initiatives can play a role in peacebuilding.53 For example, one stratagem posits that certain
health needs of the population may form superordinate goals that transcend the interests of
the conflicting parties and provide opportunities to promote cooperation between them. They
note that in El Salvador in the mid-1980s, UNICEF, the Catholic Church, and other
organizations negotiated three days of tranquility each year for seven years that allowed
immunization of children against common diseases. Evidence suggests that the common
interest in child health on both sides of the conflict played an important role in gaining
agreement to these temporary cease-fires. In addition, this appears to have strengthened the
standing of the Church as it participated in the peace accord process. A similar evaluation of
the particular stratagems behind integrated efforts would be useful in many other areas.

Whereas deliberate strategies are often the focus of evaluation, emergent strategies are rarely
examined. The implications of this neglect for the evaluation and improvement of
peacebuilding endeavors are far-reaching. Given the volatility of their working environment,
peacebuilders frequently need to adjust plans in light of a changed environment. If evaluation
efforts do not consider these adaptations of strategy, an important opportunity for learning is
lost.

In reflecting on his years of experience in peacebuilding practice, Lederach underscores the

pivotal role that unplanned occurrences or serendipitous decisions play in bringing about
wider change:

My greatest contributions to peacebuilding did not seem to be those that emerged from my
accumulated skill or intentional purpose. They were those that happened unexpectedly.
At a certain point, I came to call this divine naivet, which originally I defined as the
practitioners dilemma of learning more from mistakes than successes. The reality was that
these were not mistakes in the proper sense of (p.80) the word; they were important things
that happened along the way that were not planned.54
The evaluation of serendipity may seem to be a futile undertaking. Yet models have been
developed to explore how emergent and deliberative strategies interact. A recent study of
nonprofit governance examined how a board chairperson and organizational CEO blended
deliberate and emergent strategies in guiding a new organization committed to developing
stronger nonprofit boards.55 The study used an ethnographic method to probe how decisions
made in response to opportunities or concerns of stakeholders are woven into more
deliberative strategic planning. Although such an evaluation is difficult to conduct and will
require the development of new evaluation tools and approaches, it could provide significant
insights into the practice of peacebuilding.

Implications for Evaluation Processes

If improving the strategic dimensions of peacebuilding initiatives is a priority for the field,
what practical steps can be taken to make evaluation more effective in addressing issues of
strategy?

Designing Projects
Giving greater emphasis to learning about strategy begins at the project design phase, when
plans for evaluation approaches and criteria are often determined and funding for evaluation
is allocated. As currently implemented, program planning systems often do not promote the
consideration and articulation of specific strategies for achieving wider impact.56 Although
wider goals may be stated and indicators that these goals are being achieved may even be
included in the plan, the particular strategy through which the program will contribute to
these wider goals is often left implicit. To evaluate a strategy, evaluators must know what
strategic choices were made during the design phase (and during project implementation) and
why they were made.

One approach to encouraging greater attention to strategy issues in planning is the

development of a theory of change. Theories of change were first developed as an approach
to evaluation, as already discussed. Over time, however, theories of change have increasingly
been used as project planning tools.

Although theories of change are not usually discussed in conjunction with strategies, the links
between them deserve attention. Articulating the underlying beliefs and assumptions about
how the project is intended to work can sharpen program goals and strategies, help identify
relevant indicators, and promote learning from program activities. Reflection on a projects
theory of change can also generate questions that will be relevant to peacebuilding
practitioners in other contexts. For example, if a dialogue among community (p.81) religious
leaders is intended to have an impact on local members of these religious communities, one
key link between the activity and goal is the communication systems within each religious
community that report on and discuss the dialogues. Given the key role they play in the
project strategy, these communications systems deserve close attention in the projects
monitoring and evaluation system. An evaluation that explored the role of these systems in
the project and reflected on how these systems can be effectively used to broaden the
projects impact could be useful to practitioners in many other contexts.

Scope of Evaluations
Evaluations based on an accountability paradigm often focus on the project or program level.
Donors typically provide funds to specific projects or programs, and thus their interest in
accountability most naturally requires an evaluation of the recipient of the funds. In the case
of the U4 (Germany, Great Britain, Norway, and the Netherlands), for example, individual
project evaluation was the norm, and over 40 percent of peacebuilding projects funded by U4
countries were evaluated.57 However, despite this considerable effort in evaluating
peacebuilding activities, and though many of the evaluations draw useful conclusions about
individual projects, there is no basis for drawing wider conclusions about, for example, what
works and what does not work in U4 peacebuilding.58

When viewed from the perspective of the peacebuilding community, evaluations that are
wider in scope may provide more useful feedback that fosters learning by the community.
Such an evaluation can compare efforts of different actors as well as observe how different
actors coordinated their efforts. These could include evaluations of the overall response to a
specific conflict by a particular funding agency, the evaluation of all efforts of a particular
type or in a particular sector, systemwide evaluations of how all sectors responded to a given
conflict, or international comparisons of peacebuilding initiatives.59

An evaluation of ten years of grant making in the area of conflict resolution by the Mott
Foundation provides an instructive example of the value of wider scope for learning. In
addition to evaluations of several specific initiatives, the report derives a number of lessons
from a diverse range of experiences. For example, it notes the critical importance of the point
of entry into a conflict situation and observes how skilled, committed and publicly known
university faculty and students proved to be appropriate partners and project participants in
several programs.60

Evaluation Methods
If the promotion of learning by the peacebuilding community is the goal of an evaluation,
then the participation of peacebuilding practitioners in evaluations is critical. As Church and
Shouldice note, external evaluators may not understand the local environment or may miss
important local factors affecting the project.61 Practitioners bring questions and perspectives
that complement (p.82) those of professional evaluators or academics, who typically make up
evaluation teams. Including practitioners, both local and those from other contexts, would
give the peacebuilding community an important stake in and link to evaluation.
Of course, making learning a priority will also require changes in the way that evaluations are
conducted. Although the OECD/DAC guidelines provide a useful point of reference, they do
not focus attention directly on strategic issues. Analysis of the effectiveness of a project is
akin to operational strategy; however, the practice of assessing effectiveness looks primarily
at whether the program met the established targets for its objectives laid out in its plan. Thus,
evaluation of issues such as the merits of an integrated programming strategy might fall
outside the scope of this criterion.

These guidelines need revision to more adequately meet the current needs of the
peacebuilding community. Interestingly, the OECD/DAC has recognized that its criteria
would need adjustments if they were used to evaluate interventions other than development.
In providing guidelines for the evaluation of humanitarian efforts in complex emergencies,
the OECD/DAC recommended adding several criteria, including coverage (whether the effort
reaches major groups facing life-threatening suffering wherever they are and is devoid of
extraneous political agendas), coherence (whether humanitarian actors are acting coherently
with military, security, trade, and development policies and with the policies of other
humanitarian actors), and coordination (whether humanitarian actors are working effectively
with other actors in the situation). The OECD/DAC has begun a similar process to adapt its
general guidelines to the needs of conflict prevention and peacebuilding initiatives, and
preliminary reports have been published.62 Issuing guidelines that focused evaluations on the
strategic challenges facing the peacebuilding community would be a welcome step.

Dissemination and Use of Evaluations

If evaluations are to promote learning by the practitioner community, they must be available
to the practitioner community. Of course, the dissemination of evaluation findings raises a
number of delicate ethical and political issues. Confidentiality may sometimes be necessary
to protect the disclosure of sensitive information. In addition, the public release of evaluation
reports, positive or negative, can create dilemmas for both funders and the organizations they
support. As a result, evaluators have found it necessary to determine from the outset who will
be entitled to see the final product.63

Nonetheless, organizations should make every effort to disseminate relevant evaluations to

the wider community. The Internet has made it possible to disseminate written reports
cheaply and widely. In recent years, a number of Web sites have begun to post evaluations of
peacebuilding projects.64 These evaluations not only provide insights into the achievements
of peacebuilding projects in a wide range of settings but also suggest models for new projects
and innovative approaches to evaluation. Wider dissemination could increase use of
evaluations in the development of new peacebuilding programs.

(p.83) Conclusion
The current challenges facing the peacebuilding community would benefit from evaluations
that seek to promote learning. In the complex and volatile environments where peacebuilding
efforts are implemented, program impact beyond immediate results is subject to myriad
external factors beyond the control of the implementing organization or agency. In such a
situation, many of the primary questions facing peacebuilding practitioners are strategic in
nature: Are we working with the right people or groups to bring about wider change in the
situation? Are the activities appropriate for bringing about those changes? Did we build
appropriate linkages with other efforts that reinforce and multiply impact?
An approach to evaluation rooted in accountability is unlikely to provide the feedback needed
to improve the practice of peacebuilding. Although setting goals and performance indicators
as part of project design and then evaluating success in achieving these intended outcomes is
useful, this approach to evaluation can easily neglect emergent strategies or underlying
theories of change that effectively guide program efforts. Given the fundamental nature of
peacebuilding as a multidimensional and multilevel enterprise, evaluating the advantages and
disadvantages of alternative strategies is critical to the further advancement of the field.

In addition, organizations or efforts resist being held accountable for outcomes they have
little control over, even as they hope to contribute to these outcomes. As a result,
organizations that perceive they will be held in some sense accountable for wider impact are
likely to narrowly circumscribe their program goals and may neglect integration with wider
efforts. Recent research on donor evaluations65and practitioner attitudes66 suggests that this is
happening.

Peacebuilding practitioners should be encouraged to think deeply about the role their
initiatives play in wider peace efforts. Peacebuilders cannot deliver peace on their own.
However, they can deliver outcomes that help move peace processes or efforts forward if
their initiatives are linked with others. A learning approach to evaluation processes can
encourage reflection and action that will improve these critical links.

Notes
References

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Edited by James Connell et al. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute. (p.90)

Notes:
(1) . Tschirgi, Necla. 2004. Peacebuilding as the Link between Peace and Security: Is the
Window of Opportunity Closing? In International Peace Academic Studies in Security and

Development. New York: International Peace Academy, p. 2.

(2) . Lund, Michael. 2003. What Kind of Peace Is Being Built? Taking Stock of Post-
Conflict Peacebuilding and Charting Future Directions. A Discussion Paper. International

Development Research Centre, p. 6.

(3) . Anderson, Mary B. 1999. Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peaceor War. Boulder,

Colo.: Lynne Rienner. Uvin, Peter. 1998. Aiding Violence. The Development Enterprise

in Rwanda. West Hartford, Conn.: Kumarian Press. Menkhaus, Ken. 2003. Measuring
Impact: Issues and Dilemmas. A Discussion Paper. War-Torn Societies Project (WSP), p. 3.

(4) . Ibid.

(5) . Lund, 2003, p. 16.

(6) . Tschirgi, 2004, p. 15.

(7) . Lund, 2003, p. 20.

(8) . Anderson, Mary B., and Lara Olson. 2003. Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace

Practitioners. Cambridge, Mass.: Collaborative for Development Action, pp. 89.

Church, Cheyanne, and Julie Shouldice. 2003. The Evaluation of Conflict Resolution
Interventions, Part II: Emerging Practice and Theory. Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland:

INCORE, pp. 67.

(9) . .Lederach, John Paul, Reina C. Neufeldt, and Hal Culbertson. 2007. Reflective
Peacebuilding: A Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Toolkit. Mindanao, Philippines: Joan
B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame and Catholic

Relief Services Southeast, East Asia Regional Office. Church, Cheyanne, and Mark
Rogers. 2006. Designing for Results: Integrating Monitoring and Evaluation in Conflict
Transformation Programs: Search for Common Ground. Available
at http://www.sfcg.org/programmes/ilr/ilt_manualpage.html (accessed October 26, 2006).

Anderson, Mary B., and Lara Olson. 2003. Confronting War: Critical Lessons for

Peace Practitioners. Cambridge, Mass.: Collaborative for Development Action. Conflict

Sensitive Approaches to Development, Humanitarian Assistance, and Peacebuilding: Tools
for Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment. 2003. FEWER, International Alert,
Saferworld. Strategic and Responsive Evaluation of Peacebuilding: Toward a Learning

Model. 2001. Naivasha, Kenya: NPI-Africa and the NCCK-CPBD Project.

(10) . Patton, Michael Quinn. 1997. Utilization-Focused Evaluation: The New Century Text,

3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, p. 65.

(11) . Smillie, Ian. 1997. NGOs and Development Assistance: A Change in Mind-

Set? Third World Quarterly 18 (3): 563577.

(12) . Ebrahim, Alnoor. 2003. Accountability in Practice: Mechanisms for NGOs. World

Development31 (5): 813.

(13) . Edwards, Michael, and David Hulme. 1995. NGO Performance and Accountability:
Introduction and Overview. In NGOsPerformance and Accountability: Beyond the Magic

Bullet, edited by M. Edwards and D. Hulme. London: Earthscan Publications.

(14) . A logical framework, or logframe, is a project design and management tool. The
framework is usually presented in the form of a matrix. The rows in the matrix describe the
logical link between a projects activities, outputs, purposes, and overall goal. The columns
specify indicators that will be used to measure project success at various levels, the means
that will be used to verify the indicators, and underlying assumption about the project design.

(15) . OECD/DAC. 1999. Evaluation and Aid Effectiveness: Guidance for Evaluating
Humanitarian Assistance in Complex Emergencies. Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development, Development Assistance Committee.

(16) . Kaldor, Mary. 2003. Civil Society and Accountability. Journal of Human

Development 4 (1): 527.

(17) . Ross, Marc. 2001. Action Evaluation in the Theory and Practice of Conflict

Resolution. Peace and Conflict Studies 8 (1).

(18) . Patton, 1997, p. 68.

(19) . Church and Rogers, 2006.

(20) . Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schn. 1978. Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action

Perspective. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

(21) . Roper, Laura, and Jethro Pettit. 2003. Development and the Learning Organisation: an
introduction. In Development and the Learning Organization, edited by L. Roper, J. Pettit,

and D. Eade. Oxford: Oxfam GB, p. 1.

(22) . Riddell, Roger C. 1999. Evaluating NGO Development Interventions.

In International Perspective on Voluntary Action: Reshaping the Third Sector, edited by D.

Lewis. London: Earthscan, p. 234. Carlsson, Charlotte, and Paul G. H. Engel. 2002.
Enhancing Learning through Evaluation: Approaches, Dilemmas and Some Possible Ways

Forward (Background Papers). Maastricht: ECDPM.

(23) . Weiss, Carol Hirschon. 1982. Policy Research in the Context of Diffuse Decision

Making.Journal of Higher Education 52 (6).

(24) . Ibid.

(25) . Weiss, Carol Hirschon. 1995. Nothing as Practical as Good Theory: Exploring
Theory-Based Evaluation for Comprehensive Community Initiatives for Children and
Families. In New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and

Contexts, edited by J. Connell and others. Washington, D.C.: Aspen Institute.

(26) . McGarvey, Craig. 2004, 2006. Learning Together: Collaborative Inquiry among

Grantors and Grantees. Kellogg Foundation. 1998. Evaluation Handbook.

(27) . Ebrahim, Alnoor. 2005. Accountability Myopia: Losing Sight of Organizational

Learning.Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 34 (1): 5687.

(28) . Carlsson and Engel, 2002, p. 10.

(29) . Riddell, 1999, p. 237.

(30) . Bush, Kenneth. 1998. A Measure of Peace: Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment
(PCIA) of Development Projects in Conflict Zones. The Peacebuilding and Reconstruction
Program Initiative & The Evaluation Unit, International Research and Development Centre,

pp. 3334.

(31) . Anderson and Olson, 2003, p. 12.

(32) . Ross, Marc Howard, and Jay Rothman. 1999. Issues of Theory and Practice in Ethnic
Conflict Management. In Theory and Practice of Ethnic Conflict Management, edited by M.

H. Ross and J. Rothman. London/New York: Macmillan/ St. Martins Press, p. 2. Aall,
Pamela. 2001. What Do NGOs Bring to Peacemaking? In Turbulent Peace: The
Challenges of Managing International Conflict, edited by C. A. Crocker, F. O. Hampton, and

P. Aall. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, p. 374.

(33) . Paris, Roland. 2004. At Wars End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

(34) . Kumar, Krishna. 1999. Promoting Social Reconciliation in Postconflict Societies:

Selected Lessons from USAIDs Experience. Center for Development Information and

Evaluation. U.S. Agency for International Development.

(35) . Church and Shouldice, 2003, p. 23.

(36) . Anderson and Olson,. 2003, p. 2.

(37) . Church and Shouldice, 2003, p. 23.

(38) . Mintzberg, Henry. 1987. The Strategy Concept I: Five Ps for Strategy. California

Management Review 30 (3).

(39) . Cooley, Alexander, and James Ron. 2002. The NGO Scramble: Organizational
Insecurity and the Political Economy of Transnational Action. International Security 27 (1):

539.

(40) . Anderson and Olson, 2003, p. 14.

(41) . Smith, Dan. 2004. Towards a Strategic Framework for Peacebuilding: Getting Their
Act Together. In Overview Report of the Joint Utstein Study of Peacebuilding. Bratvaag:

Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

(42) . Fast, Larissa A., and Reina C. Neufeldt. 2005. Envisioning Success: Building Blocks
for Strategic and Comprehensive Peacebuilding Impact Evaluation. Journal of

Peacebuilding and Development 2 (2): 2441, p. 25.

(43) . Microfinance Gateway Impact Assessment Center. 2006. Available

athttp://microfinancegateway.com/section/resourcecenters/impactassessment.

(44) . Prendergast, John, and Emily Plumb. 2002. Building Local Capacity: From
Implementation to Peacebuilding. In Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace
Agreements, edited by S. J. Stedman, D. Rothchild, and E. M. Cousens. Boulder, Colo.:

Lynne Rienner, p. 328.

(45) . Tschirgi, 2004, p. 5.

(46) . Mintzberg, Henry, and James A. Waters. 1985. Of Strategies, Deliberate and

Emergent.Strategic Management Journal 6 (3): 257272.

(47) . Ibid., p. 271.

(48) . Smith, 2004, p. 45.

(49) . Stedman, Stephen John. 2001. International Implementation of Peace Agreements in

Civil Wars: Findings of a Study of Sixteen Cases. In Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of
Managing International Conflict. Edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and

Pamela Aall. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, pp. 737752.

(50) . Lederach, John Paul. 2003. The Little Book of Conflict Transformation. Good Books.
(51) . Anderson and Olson, 2003.

(52) . Bush, 2001, p. 4.

(53) . MacQueen, Graeme, and Joanna Santa-Barbara. 2000. Conflict and Health:

Peacebuilding through Health Initiatives. British Medical Journal 321: 293296.

(54) . Lederach, John Paul. 2005. The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of

Peacebuilding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 115.

(55) . Morrison, J. Bart, and Paul Salipante. 2007. Governance for Broadened
Accountability: Blending Deliberate and Emergent Strategizing, Nonprofit and Voluntary

Sector Quarterly 36 (2): 195217.

(56) . Smith, 2004, p. 46.

(57) . Ibid., p. 50.

(58) . Ibid., p. 51.

(59) . OECD/DAC, 1999.

(60) . Mott Foundation. 1999. Reaching for Peace: Lessons Learned from Mott Foundations
Conflict Resolution Grantmaking, 19891998. Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Available
at:http://www.mott.org/publications/pdf/SPECIALreachingforpeace.pdf (accessed October

26, 2003), p. 26.

(61) . Church and Shouldice, 2003, p. 13.

(62) . OECD/DAC, 2007. Encouraging Effective Evaluation of Conflict Prevention and

Peacebuilding Activities: Toward DAC Guidance. OECD Journal of Development 8 (3): 7

106.

(63) . Ibid., p. 23 .

(64) . These include the ALNAP Evaluation Reports Database (http://www.alnap.org), the
CR InfoCompleted Evaluations
(http://www.crinfo.org/action/recommended.jsp?list_id=882), the DAC Evaluation Resource
Center (http://www.oecd.org/dac/evaluationnetwork/derec), and Search for Common Ground
Evaluations (http://www.sfcg.org/sfcg/sfcg_evaluations.html).

(65) . Smith, 2004, p. 53.

(66) . Anderson and Olson, 2003.

Reconciliation: An Ethic for Peacebuilding

 John Paul Lederach (Contributor Webpage)
R. Scott Appleby
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter explores the applicability of a political ethic of reconciliation to cases of gross human
rights violations and past political injustices, drawing on reconciliations central virtuemercyas
found in various religious traditions, international human rights discourse, and the liberal tradition.
The chapter brings to light not only a deeper meaning of the term reconciliation as a concept of
justice, but also what political reconciliation translates to in practice for victims, perpetrators, and
state institutions. Like peacebuilding, an ethic of reconciliation at the political and state level involves
a multiplicity of practices that are often viewed as mutually exclusive. However, Philpott illustrates
through engaging key critiques of reconciliation that when taken together these restorative practices
constitute a unique and holistic ethic of reconciliation for political healing.

Keywords: peacebuilding, reconciliation, mercy, human rights violation, justice, political reconciliation

A genocide in Rwanda that killed 800,000 people; a civil war in Sudan that took over 2 million lives;
wars in Northern Ireland and the Middle East that have taken far fewer lives but have convulsed
societies and regions; the thousands of injustices committed by communist dictatorships in East
Germany and Poland. In all of these settingsones where human rights violations number in commas
and zerosis situated the central theme of this volume: the multiplicity and interdependence of
practices that constitute strategic peacebuilding. Where injustice and suffering is colossal, systemic,
and splayed into manifold dimensions, the building of peace involves a range of actors, activities, time
horizons, and modes of analysis. Multiplicity and interdependence attend even the concept of peace
itself: peace scholars commonly make a distinction between a negative peace, involving the cessation
of armed hostilities, and positive peace, which realizes a degree of justice. Understanding the many
dimensions of peacebuilding in turn involves multiplicity and interdependence among modes of
analysis: empirical, policy prescriptive, and legaland also ethical. The latter sort is pursued in this
essay: what constitutes justice in the wake of its massive despoliation?1

Justice in fact embodies the multiple dimensions of peacebuilding, all of which are shot through with
ethical questions. Should negotiators forgo the prosecution of war criminals to secure their assent to a
peace settlement? Are conditional amnesties justifiable? If so, under what conditions? What are the
respective roles of international and domestic actors in prosecuting war criminals? May leaders
apologize on behalf of entire nations? Are reparations owed to representatives of past generations?
Who owes them, and how much? Can (p.92) states practice forgiveness? Or does forgiveness
unjustifiably sacrifice retributive justice? Might outside states or international organizations exercise
the prerogatives of sovereignty in helping societies rebuild? Many of these questions, many of these
several dimensions of peacebuildings ethical multiplicity have been taken up by political
philosophers, legal theorists, theologians, and other scholars. Many overlap with other chapters in this
volumeprosecution versus peace in Robert Johansens chapter, the several dilemmas of transitional
justice that arise in Naomi Roht-Arriazas chapter, the prerogatives of outside states and institutions
in Simon Chestermans piece, and forgiveness in Robert Enright, Jeannette Knutson Enright, and
Anthony Holters chapter. What only a few scholars have addressed, though, is peacebuildings ethical
interdependence. Might a just response in one area be related to a just response in another area?
Might an ethical approach to one dimension of peacebuilding be incomplete if it is not accompanied
by a similar engagement of other dimensions? Is there a common concept that links together the
ethics that govern peacebuildings several dimensions? What is needed is a holistic ethics of
peacebuilding, developing the moral logic of its several component activities, identifying their
complementarities, and resolving tensions between them.
A model of success for such a project is the ethic produced by the just war tradition. Developed over
centuries in the West and resonating in several cultural traditions, the just war ethic ingeniously
derives from philosophical roots a set of integrated ethical guidelines that governs a wide range of
questions of war and that has succeeded in becoming institutionalized in international law, taught in
military academies, invoked in trials and truth commissions, and appealed to in political debates, even
if its standards are still seldom heeded in practice.2 Although notions of justice for dealing with past
political evil also have ancient pedigrees, a similarly integrated ethic for contemporary recovering
states remains at a comparatively early stage. Whether one will ever succeed in commanding the
consensus and influence of the just war ethic is an open question, one whose answer surely depends
on the long-term conversation of a community of scholars.

This chapter joins that conversation. It outlines a general approach to the justice of dealing with the
past in political settings where colossal evil has taken place. Its orienting concept has arisen from
debates about justice in recovering societies all across the globe: reconciliation. The term is
eponymous for truth commissions in Chile, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Liberia, East Timor, and Peru
and often appears in the discourse of scholars, analysts, and political actors elsewhere. True to
peacebuilding, reconciliation is an ethic of multiplicity and interdependence. The ethic begins by
recognizing a multiplicity of wounds that political injustices leave behind. It is then constructed from
a multiplicity of traditions that it brings into dialogue, also a kind of interdependence. It draws its core
concepts from religious traditionsJudaism, Christianity, Islamwhere reconciliation finds its
richest and most ancient expression, but then seeks to synthesize these concepts with the best insights
of the liberal traditionhuman rights, democracy, and lawto form an ethic for modern politics. The
result of the synthesis is an ethic of restorative justice whose central virtue is mercy, understood in its
classical sense. From this center, the (p.93) ethic then derives six practices that give reconciliation
political expression: building just institutions, acknowledgment, reparations, accountability, apology,
and forgiveness. Manifesting multiplicity, each practice addresses different wounds of political
injustice in different ways. Interdependently, the practices relate to one another through synergies
and tensions. This chapter seeks to depict this multiplicity and interdependence by presenting a
conceptual map of an ethic of reconciliation. Of necessity, it will touch briefly on many issues whose
justification, explanation, and application require far more attention than can be offered here. 3 It is
rather the holistic, interwoven character of the ethicreflecting the same characteristics of
peacebuildingthat is conveyed.
The Wounds of Political Injustice
In its most ancient meanings, reconciliation connotes a comprehensive restoration of right
relationship. The Jewish concept of shalom, for instance, describes a state of peace where everyone is
living in right relationship with God and with everyone else, in every respect. Advocated here is a more
limited concept of political reconciliation. It draws on holistic religious conceptions of restoration and
aspires to a subset of what they envisionright relationship in the political order. In modern political
orders, at least reasonably just ones, right relationship is realized through the rule of law, which the
state lives under and promotes and which citizens uphold when they respect and recognize the rights
and dignity of other citizens. The kind of rupture in right relationship relevant to political
reconciliation, then, is political injusticesdeeds through which agents of the state or opposition
forces violate the rule of law in the name of political ends or simply unjust laws and structures. In
contemporary contexts of peacebuilding, political injustices have typically occurred on a colossal and
systemic scalein commas and zeroes. They depict the fundamental condition that an ethic of
peacebuilding must address.
Exactly which sorts of actions and structures are political injustices? According to whose rule of law?
The institutions and political processes through which societies have dealt with the past over the past
generationtruth commissions, trials, reparations schemes, and the likehave almost uniformly
adopted as their governing standards the norms of human rights and the laws of war that can be found
in the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and sundry international
legal instruments. Most prominent are the three crimes with which the Nuremberg Trials charged
Nazi war criminals in 1945 and 1946, including military aggression, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity, in which a body of people is violently persecuted. Genocide and torture are also strongly
embedded in international law and appear often in procedures for transitional justice. More recently,
rape has joined the company of crimes in many of these proceduresan important victory for the
rights of women. Injustices that do not involve mass atrocity, like deep economic inequalities or the
violation of civil rights, are often taken up as well in transitional justice and the debates that surround
it.

(p.94) Human rights and the laws of war define what political injustices are, but not the wide extent
to which they wound their victims. What are the ways they break right relationship and diminish
human flourishing? Here arises the first important form of multiplicity in the ethic: there are at least
six forms of wounds that political injustices leave behind, six respects in which political injustices
diminish the human flourishing of those who are involved in them. This array of wounds depicts the
complex social affliction that the ethic must confront.
Human rights and the laws of war not only define what political injustices are but depict the first and
most fundamental respect in which these injustices wound their victims. Because the status of a
citizen as a subject of the rule and a bearer of human rights is a fundamental dimension of right
relationship in the political order and, indeed, of human flourishing, the violation of this status does
egregious harm to the victims dignity.

Political injustices do far more than strip victims of their guaranteed rights. A second dimension of
woundedness is their harm to the victims very person, her body and her soul. This dimension
includes a whole range of harms, including death; the loss of family and friends; permanent bodily
impairment; sexual violation; ongoing trauma and grief; humiliation; the loss of economic livelihood;
disrespect for ones race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender; the taking of the land of ones community;
and many other harms.

Compounding these harms themselves is victims frequent ignorance of the source and circumstances
of the political injustices inflicted on thema third dimension of woundedness. Relatives of the
missing or the dead express this injury most poignantly. If they can just show us the bones of my
child, where did they leave the bones of my child? the mother of a missing political activist in South
Africa exclaimed.4

The wound of ignorance is deepened further by a fourth dimension of woundednessthe failure of

fellow citizens to acknowledge victims suffering, either through ignorance or indifference. South
African political philosopher Andr Du Toit wrote that for the victims, this actually is a redoubling of
the basic violation: the literal violation consists of the actual pain, suffering and trauma visited on
them; the political violation consists in the refusal (publicly) to acknowledge it. 5

A fifth dimension of woundedness pertains to the perpetrator. It may be thought of as the standing
victory of the message of injustice that the perpetrator communicated through his act. In addition to
the material, psychological, and spiritual harms that a perpetrator of political injustice leaves behind
is the undefeated triumph of the disregard for the victims dignity that defines the act. This standing
victory is itself a harm to the victim as well as an attack on the shared values of a just political
community.

The sixth dimension, also pertaining to the perpetrator, is the wound that a political injustice inflicts
on the perpetrator himself. That evil objectively diminishes the soul of the wrongdoer, dissevering his
acting self from his true moral self, is an insight as old as Platos Gorgias and several religious
traditions. Perpetrators psychologically and spiritually wounded in this way often (p.95) go on to
commit further political injustices and contribute to undermining just and stable political orders.
Each of these six dimensions of woundedness entails harms to human flourishing that result directly
from acts of political injustice. They may, then, be called primary wounds. But wounds harm
persons and relationships in a further sense: by leading victims, perpetrators, and citizens at large to
form emotionsrevenge, hatred, resentment, and the likethat in turn lead them to make hostile
judgments toward political orders and other members of them, which then lead them to participate in
and commit more war crimes, massacres, torture, and acts of international aggression or simply
refuse their assent to nascent peace agreements or constitutional orders, thus depriving them of
much-needed legitimacy. These further deeds may be thought of as secondary wounds. Instances of
them can be found anywhere that injustices of one period have resulted in recurrent injustices or at
least lasting enmity within or between countries: Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, the
Basque Country, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Kashmir, Nanking, post-Versailles Germany, and many
others.6

Reconciliation as a Concept of Justice

Landscapes of woundedness have given rise to a range of ethical approaches to redressing the past,
among which reconciliation has as many critics as it does proponents, who differ as much over its
meaning as they do over its merits. These divide broadly into advocates and nonadvocates, with each
group having its own variants.

Reconciliation, For and Against

Nonadvocates include both outright critics and simple avoiders of reconciliation. Virtually all of them
take as the central task in dealing with the past the construction of constitutional liberal democracy:
the rule of law, civil and political rights, democratic institutions and elections, and stable, uncorrupted
courts. Some would add, variously, punishing criminals of the past regime or the war and establishing
popular legitimacy for the new regime, civic trust, a healthy pattern of democratic deliberation, or
some form of economic justice. Generally, they reason much along the lines of the liberal peace
described in the introduction to this volume. Nonadvocates either ignore or criticize reconciliation
because they believe that it calls for something different than or directly compromises constitutional
liberal democracy. Among those who discuss reconciliation, some acknowledge it as a concept of
justice, say, restorative justice, but consider it the wrong concept. Others consider it not to be justice
at all but a set of healing practices that ought not to stand in the way of justice.

Critics of reconciliation offer several more specific objections. Some perceive that reconciliations
emphasis on harmony sacrifices some crucial element of justice. Most often, they have in mind
retributive justice, which they (p.96) believe to be sacrificed by forgiveness or by amnesties that are
justified by arguments for healing. For others, what is sacrificed is structural economic justice, the
reduction of gross inequalities that feed conflict.7 Critics also take reconciliation to task for its
soulcraftits efforts to bring about changes in the heart in ways that cross the line between what is
properly public and private. In a similar spirit, some question the religious basis of reconciliation,
doubting its place within the liberal democratic institutions that are being constructed in so many
settings of peacebuilding.8 Others simply regard reconciliation as unrealistic, setting forth utopian
goals amidst the rubble of colossal social fracture.
Reconciliations advocates also make a great variety of arguments, differing mainly over
reconciliations status as a concept of justice. One sort agrees with those nonadvocates who argue that
reconciliation is not a concept of justice but a set of healing practices, including forgiveness, trauma
recovery, and the embrace of friendship. For them, these practices are to be favored, either as a
complement to justice or as a second-best substitute when prosecution is too costly. Some advocates
of South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), for instance, took this second-best
approach in arguing that ideally apartheid officials would be prosecuted, but given the need for
healing and stability, an amnesty that was conditional on a restorative public truth telling could be
allowed.9Such arguments can be heard from a variety of quarters, sometimes taking a pragmatic form,
sometimes smacking of exoneration of the status quo. In 1992, for instance, President Alfredo
Cristiani of El Salvador offered amnesty to military generals and death squad leaders during the
countrys civil war with the argument that the moment was one for reconciliation; after World War II,
some conservative Germans used the language of reconciliation in advocating a halt in the prosecution
of Nazis.

Other advocates of reconciliation see it not as a complement to justice, an alternative to justice, or as

something to be balanced against justice, but as itself a concept of justice. What some of these
advocates mean by reconciliation turns out to be almost identical to the justice that nonadvocates
seek. David Crocker, for instance, advocates a thin form of reconciliation that reaches beyond
nonlethal coexistence to a democratic reciprocity involving mutually recognized rights and
responsibilities within constitutional liberal democracy.10 Others, though, view reconciliation as a
fuller, more distinct concept of justice. Probably the most prominent of these views it as restorative
justice, a concept that calls for the restoration of relationships among the many dimensions in which
injustice severs them and among the many parties who were involved in the severance. Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, for instance, argued for restorative justice in South Africa, placing special emphasis
on forgiveness.11

An Ethic of Restorative Justice

The ethic of reconciliation defended here is one of restorative justice. To many modern Western ears,
it will seem strange to call reconciliation a concept of justice at all. Justice is rather what the liberal
tradition of John Locke, Immanuel (p.97) Kant, and their legatees thought it was, involving human
rights, democracy, constitutional government, and some notion of just punishment, either along
retributivist or consequentialist lines, or else what the utilitarian tradition of Jeremy Bentham, John
Stuart Mill, and their progeny thought it was, entailing those institutions that maximize happiness,
usually thought to be liberal and democratic.12 But restorative justice is indeed justice. As will be
explained further, it can be found in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, though it has
contemporary secular proponents as well. At least if it is interpreted broadly enough, it fulfills the
Roman jurist Ulpians classical definition of justice: the will to render everyone his or her due. To
modern Western ears, due may connote only desert or entitlementpunishment for crimes,
restitution for harm, and rights for all. But restorative justice conceives due more widely as that which
restores people to human fulfillment and right relationship in the political order following political
injustices.
The concept of restorative justice first gained currency in the thought and practice of criminal justice
in New Zealand and the United States, particularly at the level of local communities. Intellectuals
associated with Chiles truth commission and then, far more famously, Archbishop Tutu of South
Africas TRC, applied the concept to whole political orders. Though its proponents, like
reconciliations proponents, do not all agree on what it means, they generally converge on some
common themes: crime is primarily a rupture of relationship between offender and victim and
between victim and community; response to crime ought to be oriented toward repairing these
relationships and the dimensions of injury and harm they leave behind; and such repair ought to
involve the active participation of victims, offenders, and members of the community through
dialogue, narrative, and negotiation.13

As an expression of an ethic of political reconciliation, restorative justice invokes peacebuildings

multiplicity: responding to the many wounds and ruptures, primary and secondary, that political
injustice causes, it proposes a matching multiplicity of practices. Each of the practicesand again,
there are six, including building just institutions, acknowledgment, reparations, accountability,
apology, and forgivenessin a unique way aims to transform the wounds that political injustices have
inflicted to a state of comparatively greater human flourishing.

The first justification of the six practices is simply the intrinsic value of these restorations. Because
they aim to restore the primary wounds that the political injustices caused, they may be called
primary restorations. When a prime minister or president issues an apology to victims on behalf of
an entire political community, he confers recognition on these victims, helps defeat the standing
victory of the injustices that agents of the state committed on behalf of the political order, and beckons
the members of his state to join their own voices to further these ends. When a truth commission
confers acknowledgment on victims, it also provides them with recognition, publicly proclaims their
restored citizenship, perhaps reveals information about the circumstances of their suffering, and at
times encourages or pressures perpetrators to express public contrition for their crimes. The other
practicesaccountability, (p.98) reparations, forgiveness, and building just institutionshelp restore
victims and their wounds in other unique ways.
Just as acts of violence also produce secondary woundsemotions, then judgments, then further acts
of injusticeso the practices of reconciliation can also bring about secondary restorations, that is,
transformations of judgments about the character of the political community. These take the form of
assent to a peace settlement or a new regime as legitimate, a renewed identification with the national
community, an increase in trust toward fellow citizens, and willingness to engage in democratic
deliberation. The acknowledgment conferred by truth commissions, the restoration of basic rights
entailed in the creation of reasonably just institutions, the defeat of the message of injustice conferred
by apology of punishmentall of these actions help bring about secondary restorations.

Summed up and defined, the ethic of reconciliation is as follows. As a concept of justice, political
reconciliation entails the will to restore the spectrum of six wounds that political injustices cause and
the full array of parties that political injustices involvevictims, offenders, members of the
community, and the stateto a state of right relationship in the political order. It comprises six
practices that aim to restore each party in the distinct respect in which the injustice wounded it.
Cumulatively, political reconciliation seeks to restore an entire political community or a relationship
between political communities to a condition of respected citizenship, rule of law, legitimacy, and
trust.

The central virtue of an ethic of reconciliation is mercy. This also may seem strange in modern
Western parlance, where mercy most often means to let someone off the hook by canceling the
punishment that he or she justly deserves, and is thus in deep tension with justice. But an ethic of
reconciliation draws on an older understanding of mercy, which is something much wider. In
his Dependent Rational Animals, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre draws from Thomas Aquinas in
defining mercy, ormisericordia, as the virtue by which one feels grief or sorrow over someone elses
distress.14 Here, mercy is similar, though it might also include sympathy toward a person who is
suffering in any way, including a way that arises from his or her own fault.15 The practices of political
reconciliation are all ones of mercy, the good that is internal to them being restoration of persons and
relationships. Perhaps surprisingly, this is true even for accountability and punishment. The concept
of restorative punishment for which I argue can indeed be understood as a manifestation of
reconciliation, informed by mercy. Mercy, in this understanding, then, is closely convergent with
justicethe justice that restores people and relationships.

The Role of Religion

These foundational concepts for an ethic of reconciliation find some of their strongest articulations in
religious faiths. For adherents of these faiths, this fact is of straightforward importance: reconciliation
finds support in their own deepest convictions. It is important, too, for peacebuilding processes
around (p.99) the world, to which religious leaders and communities have served as strong
contributors through their unique moral authority and influence.16 They have been instrumental in the
downfall of authoritarian regimes in numerous locales, including Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, the
Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, Kenya, South Africa, Chile, and Brazil. They have mediated
settlements of civil war in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, East Timor, Uganda, Liberia, and
Mozambique, and the departure of dictatorships or occupations in East Germany and East Timor.
Religious leaders and communities were instrumental in forming and conducting truth commissions
in Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Peru, and East Germany.17 To be
sure, in other cases, religious communities exercised little influence or were counterproductive in
peacebuilding. In Argentina, in contrast to Brazil and Chile, the Catholic Church supported a military
dictatorship and its crimes during the civil war from 1976 to 1983. In Sri Lanka, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Russia, Cameroon, Burma, and elsewhere, religious actors did
little to oppose authoritarianism. In Rwanda, churches were even acquiescent and sometimes
supportive of the 1994 genocide, though in its aftermath some of them have carried out reconciliation
work within civil society. Generally, those religious communities that contributed to peacebuilding
most effectively, whether through mediation, nonviolent opposition to dictatorship, transitional
justice institutions, or civil society efforts were those that practiced the highest degree of institutional
autonomy from dictatorships and carried liberal democratic doctrines of justice and, often, a concept
of reconciliation.18
Some religious traditions also bring to peacebuilding the foundations for an ethic of reconciliation
especially its core ideas of restorative justice and mercyrooted in their scriptures, rituals, and, most
of all, theology. Familiarity and space constraints confine the present analysis to Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. This is not to deny the resources for reconciliation that other traditions offer.
Rich resources can be found in certain tribal traditions in North America, New Zealand, Australia, and
Africa, for instance. Conversely, even in the Abrahamic traditions, not all theologians conceive of
reconciliation as a concept of justice for political orders. Indeed, such an understanding has only
emerged in any of these faiths in the past few decades. Still, these three faiths offer a grounding for
restorative justice and mercy that at least some of their proponents see as the basis for an ethic of
political reconciliation.

In the Jewish scriptures, the Hebrew words that translate to justice in English are the same words that
translate into righteousness (sedeq and mishpat), the condition of the people of Israel living in
comprehensive right relationship according to the covenant God made with them. This state of right
relationship is also closely related to shalom, the Jewish concept of peace, a thoroughgoing condition
of right relationship. Lederach and Applebys concept of justpeace is indeed much like shalom.
Following their disobedience to the covenant, God is willing to restore the people of Israel on their
repentance and true conversion. This willingness flows from hesed, or covenant love, the Hebrew
word that is translated to mercy. Generally, mercy amounts to Gods help for the distressed, those
who suffer from both misfortune and sin. The Jewish scriptures (p.100) also recount Gods
punishment for sin and call for punishment of crime on the civil level. It is in Gods generations-long
relationship with the corporate people of Israel, whom he continues to restore and whom he refrains
from punishing measure for measure, that mercy is most salient. Between people, reconciliations
logic of restoration and mercy is manifested in the Jewish tradition through teshuva, a set of practices
involving restitution, remorse, confession, and a commitment to change. 19
In the New Testament, Gods merciful covenant love is extended through his self-revelation and
atoning work in Jesus Christ. Over the centuries, theologians have understood atonement through a
variety of metaphors and emphases, most of which stress restoration in one way or another: victory
over sin, release from captivity, solidarity with victims. Only penal substitution theories of certain
strands of the Protestant Reformation tend to view atonement as a payment of debt that involves no
transformation. In the New Testament, particularly the letters of Paul, justice is also understood as
living in right relationship. Atonement restores right relationship for wrongdoers, victims, and,
indeed, all of creation. Here, too, this will to restore is the meaning of mercy. Like the Old Testament,
the New Testament affirms the possibility of divine punishment as well as the justice of civil
punishment. But it places comparatively more central emphasis on forgiveness as an ethic for
relationships between people.

In the New Testament, the Greek words translated to reconciliation are found
katallage andkatallossoappearing there fifteen times, twelve of these in the letters of Paul. Its
meaning is either the process of restoration of right relationship or the condition of right relationship
that results from this restoration.20 Because right relationship, or comprehensive righteousness, is the
meaning of justice in the Scriptures, it follows that reconciliation can just as well mean the restoration
of justice or a resulting state of justice. In this sense, it can be said that reconciliation is a concept of
justice.

Although the meanings of justice, peace, reconciliation, and mercy in Islam are not precisely
equivalent to those in the Jewish scriptures or the New Testament, they converge closely with their
meanings in the present ethic of reconciliation. The Qurans words for justice, adl and qist, with some
interpretive effort, can be understood as comprehensive right relationship. 21 As for reconciliation, the
Arabic sulh refers to a restoration of right relationship between two or more parties who have been at
odds, whereas a related word, musalaha, translates more directly to reconciliation and connotes
comprehensiveness. The Arabic word for peace, salam, is closely related, both linguistically and in
meaning, to the Jewish shalom, and describes a broad state of harmony. The Arabic words for
mercy,rahma, rahim, and rahamin, denote a wide notion of compassion, a general will to
restore.22 Mercy is indeed the first of ninety-nine names accorded to Allah. Although the Quran
contains no concept of original sin or divine atonement, it repeatedly describes Allah as forgiving the
repentant and calls for forgiveness between people, always with restoration of relationship as the
goal.23 A notion of restorative justice can be found in at least some portions of Islamic criminal law as
well.24 Like the Jewish and Christian scriptures, (p.101) the Quran also depicts God as exercising
punishment and allows (but does not always require) retribution in human affairs. Traditional Arab
Islamic cultures have developed elaborate rituals of sulh (settlement) and musalaha (reconciliation)
that bring about reconciliation between estranged peoples through apology, confession, remorse,
restitution, and forgiveness.25
Such brief characterizations can hardly plumb the depth, subtlety, similarities, and differences of
these traditions. Some scholars have argued, for instance, that Judaism and Islam call for restitution,
punishment, apology, and justice before forgiveness can take place, whereas Christianity envisions
forgiveness taking place initially or unilaterally. Theologians within each tradition in fact disagree
among themselves over these relative emphases, many of them arguing so as to minimize the
differences. One problem, attendant on the relatively recent entry of theologies of reconciliation in the
political realm, is yet unsolved in all three traditions: the relationship between forgiveness and
punishment in politics. Still, the notions of justice, peace, mercy, and reconciliation and the depiction
of Gods response to evil and injustice in the three traditions yield the building blocks of an ethic of
political reconciliation.

To some skeptics, though, theological concepts and language ought not to be involved in politics at all.
Their argument comes from the tradition of liberal political philosophy, though even there it is quite
recent, voiced most prominently by John Rawls, who argues for a concept of public reason that
requires political discourse to be secular.26 Liberal commentators, for instance, criticized Archbishop
Tutu for his overt use of Christian language and ritual in chairing South Africas TRC. 27 Reconciliation,
though, is not always practiced in settings of constitutional liberal democracy. Truth commissions
have now taken place in Morocco, a predominantly Islamic state, as well as in Sierra Leone, which is
60 percent Islam, and have been proposed in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Here, the Western concept of
separation between religion and politics is untenable. It is important to remember that even Western
European societies, situated at secularizations supposed ground zero, have established churches or
officially recognize certain religious bodies. The United States, where most advocates of public reason
live and write, in fact practices the highest degree of constitutional separation of religion and state in
the world.28 Numerous critics of an argument for religious restraint have offered strong arguments
for why, even in liberal settings, religion ought not to be excluded from public debate. Most centrally,
the placing of epistemological or other substantive limits on language, religious or secular, is
incompatible with liberalisms own commitments to open debate, tolerance, free expression, and the
benefits of argument.29

If religious language is not to be excluded in principle, there is still a good reason that in certain
settingsnamely, in societies where practices for dealing with the past take place among populations
who are of different faiths or are divided between religious and secular perspectiveholders of
religious concepts ought to seek common terms with proponents of other religions and of secular
concepts. The reason lies in the benefits of consensus for the practice of reconciliation. Especially
when peacebuilding deals with fundamental matters of law, punishment, and constitutionalism,
widespread popular assent (p.102) and legitimacy is crucial. This is not to be achieved through
religious believers setting aside their commitments but by entering into dialogue with people of other
religious traditions as well as secular perspectives with the goal of finding an overlapping consensus
on basic principles of justice that can guide the practices. The fact that the ethic here can be expressed
in secular language assists greatly in finding this consensus. For religious believers, this language will
not carry the full meaning and basis for the ethic, which they may still want to articulate publicly. For
the purpose of forging consensus, they are willing to agree to use secular justifications as well.
A Political Ethic
Arguing also in the spirit of contemporary liberal political philosophy, some skeptics will object that
certain other elements of an ethic of reconciliationrestoration, transformation of judgment,
forgiveness, a virtue of mercycross the boundary between what is properly public and private and
that the state is not competent to pursue them. True, the state need not be the only agent of political
reconciliation. Civil society actors, including religious communities and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), bear unique restorative assets. But the state has plenty of warrant to be
involved. By definition, political injustices are caused by agents acting in the name of the political
order. What they violate is the most fundamental rights of citizenship, those that any state has the
obligation to uphold. Because states speak in the name of the political order, uphold the law, and
promote justice, they are not only warranted but obligated to repair (insofar as they can) the range of
wounds that result from political injustices. There is a further basis for the states role: insofar as
wounds result in political judgments that erode citizens faith in institutions and can lead them to
armed opposition, constitutional liberal democratic states have an interest in the practices that
transform these judgments into ones that create legitimacy, trust, and assent.

Political reconciliation, though, is also bounded. To be sure, it commingles the thick and the thin, the
political and the personal, but in several important respects it honors the boundaries of the political.
In liberal polities, these boundaries will include the full range of liberal freedoms. Of course, political
reconciliation is not only to be practiced in liberal democracies but might take place in a traditional
Muslim society, for instancethough the ethic here always insists on basic human rights and respect
for the laws of war as articulated in international law. Wherever it is practiced, though, political
reconciliation ought to respect limits of three sorts, I argue.

First, the state that practices political reconciliation deals only with those wounds that result from
political injustices. Although it may deal with these in their several dimensions, it does not seek to
restore those relationships, whether they exist between family members, neighbors, or townspeople,
that have been fractured by some other event, even one that is somehow related to the war or the
injustices of the regime. It does not seek to restore relationships (p.103) in respects other than
mutual citizenship. Behind these limits lie the intrinsic connection between the state and the law. All
political injustices violate some sort of lawif not always the explicit laws of a regime, at least the
international law that governs war and human rights. Because laws are those norms that the state
expresses as the communitys morality and backs up with its sanctioning power, the state has a unique
mandate to deal with their violationbut no mandate to deal with ruptures other than their violation.
A second set of limits also involves the law. They are the constraints posed by the entire body of laws,
rights, and procedures embodied in the constitution of the state where political reconciliation is being
practiced. The practice of accountability, for instance, whether it involves trials, vetting, or other
forms of public censure, must always respect the due process rights of alleged perpetrators. All
practices of political reconciliation also ought to respect the complete rights of citizens as well as the
boundaries between religion and state as a given constitution prescribes these. Political reconciliation
respects laws both because the rule of law is one of its background commitments and because one of
its key goals is to restore and strengthen the rule of law to communities where it is lacking or weak. So,
then, it must respect those laws where they exist.

A third, distinct (but closely related) set of limits pertains to the competence of the state given the sort
of organization it islarge, collective, and public. Not only should the state respect the spheres of
protection that its constitution establishes, it should refrain from attempting to perform
transformations it cannot competently effect. Constraints, then, arise to govern each of the practices.
The state may significantly restore victims dignity by publicly acknowledging their suffering, but it
cannot provide them with long-term therapy (though it might well provide the resources for it as
reparations). It may commend to its people practices that seek emotional transformation like
acknowledgment, apology, and forgiveness and even carry them out collectively in the peoples name,
but it should always leave them as voluntary for individuals themselves to practice. It cannot begin to
understand the range of inner influences, for instance, that lead a person to determine whether, when,
or how to forgive, and so must respect ones freedom to decide this. None of these constraints emerge
from a strong separation between the public and the private but from reflection on what sort of
actions the state does and does not perform well.

Such borders, boundaries, lines, and spheres demarcate the contours of where an ethic of political
reconciliation may be practiced. It respects the rule of law, basic human rights, and the just
constitutional provisions of the country in which it operates, as well as spheres where individual
freedom ought to be respected. None of these boundaries choke off the practices. Even within its
proper contours, each may exert significant political sway.

One other form of limit to political reconciliation is worth stressing, also in response to an important
criticism: its typical partial fulfillment. Some of the six practices will take place in some places but not
others. In any given country, some of the practices (but not others) will take place. Sometimes this
selectivity will create skewed justice, as when acknowledgment and forgiveness occur without
accountability for wrongdoers. Often, this selectivity arises from power (p.104) differentials among
parties in the negotiations of transitions. When perpetrators of political injustices continue to hold
power after peace settlements, for instance, they prevent their own prosecution.30 Sometimes the
practices occur but are flawed: lustration procedures, for instance, may occur without fairness or due
process. For all of this partiality, though, all six practices do occur, some of them on a global scale. The
fact that they are partial does not rob them of their moral validity; rather, it means that they fall short
of their full moral potential. Indeed, it is the combination of their occurrence, their inner moral logic,
and their flawed practice that beg the need for an ethic of reconciliation.
The Six Practices
Reconciliation as a conception of justice is enacted in the political order through the six practices. The
practices are a bridge from the abstract to the particular; they are the concrete activities that bring
reconciliation about.31 Each practice in some way moves some set of parties from one or another
dimension of woundedness to a condition where they are more restored than they were before.
Cumulatively, they may help an entire society be more restored than it was before. Each is a particular
kind of activityacknowledging, forgiving, and so onthat achieves this good in a different respect,
corresponding to the parties involved and the forms of wounds it seeks to repair. Each is then subject
to a corresponding set of ethical standards that explain how, by whom, and under what circumstances
the activity may be conducted justly.

Like the wounds of injustice, the practices are multiple and interdependent. Though they virtually
always remain partially fulfilled and are frequently subject to political compromises, they are
complementary to one another and together model the holism of strategic peacebuilding. Each of
them restores relationships in some irreplaceable way. The interdependent character of the practices
also gives rise to ethical dilemmas. If political realities force a society to choose one against the other,
which one ought to be dropped? Here, these dilemmas cannot be addressed in detail. What is offered
is rather a broad outline of the practices, showing the institutions and procedures through which they
are enacted, how they purport to restore wounds of injustice, and the kinds of moral criteria that
pertain to them.

Building Just Institutions

Recall that human rights and the laws of war perform a double duty in the ethic. They both define a
political injustice as well as describe the good whose absence is the first form of woundedness that
political injustices inflict. Among the practices, building just institutions plays a similar role. Political
societies based on human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and just economic institutions;
relationships between political societies that are based on international law and the laws of war; and
finally, the legitimacy of these laws and institutionsmeaning assent to them through the judgments
of those who live (p.105) under them32are the very goals of political reconciliation. These same
laws, institutions, and judgments also perform a restorative act insofar as the lack of legal guarantee
for human rights, rights under the laws of war, and the like is a form of woundedness, a failure of
human flourishing. Though building just institutions may not come readily to mind as a practice that
seeks to remedy past injusticesreparations, forgiveness, and trials do so more obviouslyin fact,
they transform injustice by supplying something that was egregiously absent. Because the practice of
building just and legitimate institutions is also the fundamental goal of reconciliation, it is the most
basic of the six practices and a practice against which the other practices ought not to be compromised
or traded off.
This has an important implication for political reconciliationnamely, that reconciliation is not true
reconciliation if it is not based on justice and should not be mistaken for the irenicism of a peace
agreement that fails to ensure fundamental elements of justice like basic human rights, including
those of minorities. Dictators must be defeated; shalom, sedeq, positive peace, justpeace must be
established. In some settings, reconciliation has indeed come under heavy fire for short-circuiting
justice. One example comes from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Noting the prevalence
of reconciliation in the language of fellow church leaders and activists, in 1986 a group of black
theologians penned what is known as the Kairos Document, where they stressed that reconciliation
and recognition of the enemys humanity must not mean compromise in the struggle for justice:
apartheid must end. Militant liberationists in Kashmir criticize reconciliation as the Indian
governments rhetorical strategy for defending the status quo. Similar examples can be adduced from
all over the world. The present ethic accordingly permits a just war, whether it takes the form of a
defense against outside aggression, humanitarian intervention, a revolution, or a self-determination
movement. But resorting to the use of force must itself be just. The criteria embedded in the just war
tradition supply the ethic of reconciliation with a compelling framework for assessing this justice,
although there is not space here to defend these criteria philosophically, resolve internal disputes
within the tradition, or apply it to new problems.33 There is also an important sense in which
nonviolent resistance movements, when they have a reasonable chance of success, to borrow one
criterion of the just war tradition, offer a mode of struggle against injustice that embodies the spirit of
reconciliation. As articulated by theorists and practitioners like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma
Gandhi, such movements actively oppose injustice even while inviting enemies to turn away from
injustice (apology) and bringing attention to the injustices of oppressive rule (acknowledgment), thus
modeling the holistic character of the ethic. The efficacy of such movements should not be
underestimated. A recent report from Freedom House describes some sixty successful people power
movements for democratization in the past generation.34

Another controversy arising from the practice of building just institutions is the place of economic
justice in reconciliation. Again, reconciliation has been criticized for going without it: The South
African TRC may have been a (p.106) model of forbearance toward enemies, runs the argument, but
it did nothing to address the economic injustices underpinning apartheid. Truth and reconciliation in
El Salvador and Guatemala did nothing to bring about land reform. An important truth lies behind the
criticisms. The economic dimension to justice is essential both in an intrinsic sense and because of its
importance for legitimacy. But putting economic justice into practice runs into two problems. First,
exactly what economic justice means is subject to far more dispute in the world than what human
rights means. Even in the liberal tradition, of which human rights are a cornerstone, disagreements
over the content of a just distribution are legion. Certain economic rights like subsistence and minimal
standards of labor may be widely agreed on as basic, but the broader question of distribution remains
open. Second, even if agreement on a just distribution could be attained, the best policies for bringing
it about are also hotly disputed. The role and strategy of international financial institutions is
notoriously controversial. Unclear, too, is what degree of effective economic reform can be demanded
within the time frame of a peace agreement. Such reform may rather be a long-term proposition. None
of this is to dismiss the importance of economic justice, but only to underline the need for further
reasoning about its meaning and its pursuit.
Of all the practices in the ethic, building just institutions is the one that most converges with the
commitments of the liberal tradition. Human rights, the rule of law, and the components of a just war
are also endorsed widely in contemporary Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Each tradition contains
disputes over the justification, content, and extent of rights as well as opponents of rights altogether.
Especially the most basic human rights and laws of war enjoy an impressive global overlapping
consensus.

Acknowledgment
Restoring the wounds of injustice involves far more than restoring rights or even administering just
punishment. The failure of the political communitythe state and the citizens for whom it speaksto
recognize victims suffering and victims own ignorance of the circumstances that brought it about
must be addressed as well, for not only are these direct forms of woundedness but also sources of
secondary woundsalienation from and hostility to new political orders and peace agreements.
Through the practice of acknowledgment, communities recognize victims suffering, the intrinsic
injustice in this suffering, and the victims rights of citizenship; they confer on victims empathy and
knowledge of the circumstances of the injustice; and by calling an injustice an injustice they help
defeat the standing victory of the perpetrators message. Acknowledgment is more than knowledge: it
confers a public recognition of injustice that was committed in the name of the political order. 35 Alone,
it rarely brings about the long-term healing of the victim, but it performs the important public,
political dimension of it.

Several kinds of public forums have performed acknowledgment in the past generation. The most
prominent and thorough is the truth commission, (p.107) over thirty of which have occurred around
the world. Appointed by a government, the purpose of a truth commission is to bring to light a reliable
record of human rights violations during a particular period. Though virtually all commissions
produce an official report at the end of their labors, they vary in the method through which they
discover the truth about the past: some involve public hearings, some of which are televised; some
involve extensive subpoena powers; some offer amnesties; and others vary with respect to these and
other features. Public acknowledgment can take other forms as well, including museums, monuments,
rewriting school textbooks, and other forms of commemoration.
True to the interdependent character of an ethic of political reconciliation, acknowledgment often
yields fruit for other practices as well as secondary restorationschanges in judgments regarding the
political order. Descriptions of truth commissions from South Africa to El Salvador have recounted
stories of victims forgoing demands for revenge and retribution after being publicly acknowledged at a
hearing. Through telling the truth about past injustices publicly, acknowledgment helps delegitimate
these injustices and establish the legitimacy of new regimes. Sometimes, the information that a truth
commission discovers then aids in both trials and determinations of reparations. Truth commissions
have also elicited contrition and apology from perpetrators.

Criticisms and controversies surround all forms of public acknowledgment. They are taken to task for
lacking balance, focusing on the misdeeds of one side disproportionately to another, or imposing a
version of the truth that suits one side. Museums and monuments rarely escape criticism from those
discontented with their portrayal of victims and perpetrators. Then, does acknowledgment truly
restore? Or does it just open the wounds and reinflame agonistic emotions? Some critics have taken
truth commissions to task for meddling in matters of the heart rather than sticking to gathering
information.

Again, space is too limited here to cover all such controversies. But one virtue of acknowledgment can
be noted: personalism. Acknowledgment restores best when the recognition that it confers is most
direct, personal, and empathetic. Guatemalas Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI), a
truth commission created and carried out by the Catholic Church, manifested personalism in its effort
to send trained volunteers, or animadores, to rural villages where they took the testimony of victims
in a manner that was psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually supportive, not merely effective in
eliciting information.36 Personalism is also increased when the work of a truth commission is
conducted in local forums that allow direct citizen participation. The community panels of East
Timors Commission on Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation took place in villages, for instance.
Here, the restorative work that acknowledgment accomplishes can be done best.

Reparations
Like acknowledgment, reparations confer public recognition on victims. Unlike acknowledgment, they
take a material form: cash payments, health services, and (p.108) the like, which are geared toward
alleviating or compensating victims for the harm they have suffered, both physical and mental. This
harm, of course, can never be reversed, particularly when it takes the form of the death of relatives or
long-term injury. But it can be addressed through public measures. Reparations are usually conferred
by a national court or a special body appointed by a national government, but sometimes also by an
international court. Like truth commissions, reparations have become more common in the past
generation.
Some view reparations as fulfilling a straightforward obligation on the part of the political community
to compensate property and goods that were lost due to political injustices. Though sometimes such
compensation can be determined easily, claims can also be bewilderingly complex, especially when
properties have changed hands since the original seizure, as in postcommunist Eastern Europe or
postgenocide Rwanda, or still more when claims are made by descendants of victims long dead. Here,
as Jeremy Waldron has argued, compensation is virtually impossible to assess.37 Still worse, it is also
notoriously difficult to place a monetary value on forms of harms like the loss of relatives.

A different way of viewing the argument for reparations, though, can avoid becoming immersed, at
least to some extent, in complex determinations of amounts. In what can be called the symbolic
expression argument, reparations perform much the same communication as acknowledgment does,
with their material dimension giving this communication all the more force. A soft proportionalism,
by which greater harms result in greater reparations, still applies, but the question of exact
compensation is not as important.

Reparations may well depend for their success on other practices complementing them, again evoking
the ethics holism. Some common objections to reparations are that they amount to blood money,
money that appears to pay off victims so that they drop further demands; that they equate the
injustice victims suffered with financial goods; or even that they buy victims silence. Reparations best
overcome these objections and attain their greatest legitimacy when acknowledgment or apologies
accompany them, expressing public recognition and remorse for the political injustices. A crucial
factor in achieving a deal on reparations between the German government and survivors of forced
labor during the Holocaust, for instance, was a public apology in 2000 from German President
Johannes Rau to living victims and the German governments agreement to implement a school
curriculum that would sustain memory of the Holocaust well into the future.38 The complementarity
of other practices enable the moral success of reparations.

Punishment
A practice of punishment in an ethic of reconciliation? It will seem a strange fixture to followers of
global debates over transitional justice that so often pit reconciliation, mercy, forgiveness, and
restorative justice against punishment, retribution, and imprisonment. Often, those who share the
core commitments (p.109) of the liberal peace take the side of punishment in these disputes, with
advocates of reconciliation responding with comparative leniency. Prosecuting human rights violators
and war criminals is at the center of transitional justice for members of the human rights community,
who generally articulate either one or a combination of two justifications of punishment that have
pervaded the liberal tradition since the Enlightenment. Retributivists holdbroadly speaking, with
variations39that criminals ought to be punished simply because they deserve it. Consequentialists
focus on the effects of punishment, arguing in this context that accountability is necessary for the
legitimacy of a new regime based on human rights and democracy.
A contrasting ethic of reconciliation need not reject punishment. A rationale for punishment exists
that is quite compatible with the logic of the ethic and affirms some elements of both retributivism
and consequentialism, but also differs importantly from both. Its logic can be articulated through the
Abrahamic religious traditions and is found in certain contemporary philosophers. Theologian
Christopher B. Marshall has called it restorative punishment. 40 Desert, proportionality, due process
of lawrestorative punishment shares all of these elements of retributivism. But its central rationale
for punishment is differentthe restoration of persons, relationships, political communities, and
relationships between political communities. Punishment, like the other practices in the ethic, is a
political communitys communication: one that expresses censure to the wrongdoer for violating the
values of a just political community; that delegitimates the message of injustice entailed in his crimes;
that invites him to repent, express contrition, and join the community again; and that recognizes the
dignity of the victim. Hardship, including imprisonment, is not forgone. It is part and parcel of
communicating the gravity of the offense and can serve as a material expression of penance on the
part of the criminal. Punishment might also deter future crimes, contribute to a new regimes
legitimacy, and immobilize dangerous criminalsrestorative punishment shares these aims with
consequentialism. The validity of punishment does not depend on such outcomes, nor on the
perpetrators reform. It is sufficient that it is a communication of censure that strengthens the
communitys values, invites perpetrators to contrition and reform, and honors the dignity of the
victim. Such a logic of restorative justice, Marshall explains, can be discovered through an
interpretation of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Other scholars have made the case for a similar
rationale in the Quran.41

What does restorative punishment mean for political orders addressing past injustices? At the level of
states and relationships between them, restorative punishment favors those measures that accomplish
a range of restorations, including reintegrating perpetrators into the community and bringing victims
and citizens into the process, and that act complementarily to the other practices in an ethic of
political reconciliation. For the masterminds of major atrocities and even the willful murderer,
torturer, or rapist, whose culpability is not diminished on account of his own duress or some other
factor, arguably only long-term imprisonment can communicate the gravity of the offense. If justified
restoratively, the verdicts of the International Criminal Court can be (p.110) compatible with an ethic
of political reconciliation. For a wide range of lesser crimes and criminals, other forms of punishment
(or some combination of them) can restore a broader spectrum of wounds. Public forums like truth
commissions have a punitive function insofar as they bring public shame and censure onto a
perpetrator; they also, at least when these forums take a certain form, play a restorative function in
that they allow victims to confront perpetrators with their stories of suffering and allow perpetrators,
should they choose, to show remorse directly. Such an event is not unheard of. The South African TRC
saw several cases of hardened human rights violators coming to show remorse for their deeds in the
context of commission hearings. Truth commissions at the village level, like those that took place in
East Timor, increase the local and personalist character of the meeting between victims and
perpetrators while administering integrative punishments like community service. Still other
countries have turned to schemes of vetting, or lustration, as it was called in the Czech Republic,
that bar human rights violators from holding public office. Combinations of punishments are possible,
too. East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Germany, for instance, staged hybrids of trials and truth
commissions.
Blanket amnesties are incompatible with restorative punishment. When political realities force them,
amnesties may be necessary, but they are always less than just. The South African TRC offered
perpetrators, even of atrocities, amnesty in exchange for public testimony, a deal that created space
for other practices like acknowledgment and sometimes apology and forgiveness to occur. But
unequivocally, justicethe justice that restorative punishment enactswas sacrificed. Generally, a
presumption for accountability ought to apply. A peace agreement or a regime transition may demand
forgoing prosecution at the moment, but it need not prevent it from ever occurring. In both Chile and
Argentina, for instance, amnesties granted or upheld amidst a transition from dictatorship to
democracy were later chipped away by human rights lawyers.

Other issues are relevant to restorative punishment as welldue process, questions of culpability, the
problem of prosecuting human rights violations that were not illegal under the law of the regime
where they were committed, and the challenges of carrying out punishment in countries where
judicial institutions are rudimentary or broken down. All must be incorporated into a full-blown
theory of restorative punishment.

Apology
Public apologies, like reparations and truth commissions, are another practice that has become more
common over the past generation. Sometimes individual perpetrators express it; sometimes heads of
states or other political leaders express it in the name of the collectivity that they lead. Political
scientist Barry ONeill assembled a database of 121 apology incidents occurring between 1980 and
1995 in the setting of relations between states.42

An apology is a restorative communication in several respects. Through it, perpetrators express

contrition and assume responsibility for their deeds. (p.111) In doing so, they rejects the message of
injustice and domination communicated through their act of political violence and will the restoration
both of their own soul and of the victims, who continue to be diminished by their message of injustice.
Apology does not nullify deserved punishment; when expressed in conjunction with punishment, it
effectively answers the communitys censure and bolsters its just values. Apology also invites the
victim to forgive, thus begetting a separate restorative practice. In all of the Abrahamic faiths,
contrition on the part of the sinner is a vital step in being restored and forgiven by God.
When apology is practiced by the head of a collectivity, it raises further ethical issues. For instance,
can a group like a state, a nation, or a military unit commit evil? Or can only individuals do so? If
groups cannot precisely commit evil, people acting in the name of the groupwearing its uniform,
acting in the capacity of an employee or otherwise an agentwhether they are leaders or subordinates,
certainly can. When they do, the responsibility for the evil becomes in part collective, even while the
individuals responsibility remains intact. So, too, leaders can apologize for the evil committed in the
name of their group, or at least the collective dimension of that evil. Because that collective dimension
lives on beyond the individual perpetrators, a subsequent leader can apologize for past evil as well.
What leaders cannot do, though, is supplant the perpetrators obligation to apologize for their own
role in the deed or the prerogative of citizens or other group members to endorse or refuse that
apology. These individuals, after all, may have refused to cooperate with the evil, avoided it, or may
simply refuse contrition for one reason or another. There are proper roles, then, for both leaders and
individual group members in apologizing.43

Forgiveness
The practice of forgiveness in political settings has also become more common in the past generation,
though its recorded instances are far rarer than the other practices. South African President Nelson
Mandela is perhaps the only head of state to have practiced it.44 Other presidents and prime
ministersPresident Patricio Aylwin of Chile, for instancehave commended forgiveness to their
citizens. Civil society leaders, especially religious leaders, have encouraged citizens to practice
forgiveness far more often. It is difficult to say just how often victims themselves have practiced
forgiveness. The best available indicator is a proxya discourse of forgiveness, as was present in
South Africa, Northern Ireland, Poland, East Timor, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Rwanda, Sierra
Leone, Bosnia, and Germany.

Of the six practices, forgiveness is the one that most falls outside the liberal peace paradigm and is
most distinctively characteristic of religious traditions. Even in these traditions, though, its pedigree
in politics is not very long. Only in the past generation or so has political forgiveness gained entrance
into the social teachings of the Abrahamic faiths.45

Forgiveness is also the most harshly criticized of the six practices, often at the hands of Western
liberals, who charge it with disrespecting victims, (p.112) robbing victims of their autonomy, risking
wounding victims further, condoning evil, nullifying just retribution, failing to take seriously the value
of resentment, imposing a value that is essentially religious, and being inappropriately promoted
through politics.46 Some of these criticisms, though, are properly ones of bad forgiveness rather than
forgiveness per se. Forgiveness does not condone evil; it is unintelligible apart from naming an evil as
such. Nor is it intelligible as a forgetting of evil; rather, it begins with a recall of it. To forgive is not to
cease to oppose unjust structures or acts of violence, even through force when force is just. It does not
nullify the right to self-defense or require that victims return to a condition of vulnerability to violence
or other serious mistreatment. While heads of states and other leaders may commend forgiveness, the
freedom of victims to decide whether, when, and how to forgive must always be respected. Because it
requires an inward decision and is often most difficult, it must never be forced or pressured.
What exactly is forgiveness? Some define it as a victims relinquishment of justified anger, resentment,
and all claims that a perpetrator owes him something for the deed. Forgiveness, especially as the
religious traditions explain it, does not just cancel; it also constructs. It imitates Gods will not only to
free the wrongdoer of punishment but also to restore him and the surrounding community, as
described in the scriptures of the Abrahamic faiths. Along with relinquishing anger and claims, the
forgiving victim wills new relationships in a host of ways. In naming the evil and seeking to overcome
it, he asserts that the perpetrators message of injustice no longer diminishes him. He looks at the
perpetrator as someone who is no longer a perpetrator but is now in good standing. His memory of
the perpetrators deed may not disappear but is overcome through a subsequent act of mercy. If the
perpetrator has not apologized, he invites this apology and, indeed, the restoration of his soul. In
traveling from being a victim of violence to an active constructer of peace, the victim regains agency
and takes on a kind of strength. Victims can also experience a healing of the debilitating, corrosive
effects of anger and resentment. Inasmuch as the forgiver wills right relationship and achieves some
degree of restoration, he brings about reconciliation, though not the whole of it. Forgiveness may or
may not be accompanied by apology and contrition on the part of perpetrators. A victim may also
decline to reestablish full relationship with a perpetrator, too, perhaps to protect himself or his
property.

Political forgiveness does all of these things in response to a political injustice in particular. It invites
right relationship in the political order, where victims and perpetrators come to respect one anothers
citizenship. Sometimes forgiveness can bring about the secondary restoration of legitimacy and
stability in the political community. When victims and perpetrators of political injustices are no longer
hostile to each other, they may well offer more assent to their political order. Mandelas magnanimous
choice to forgive, for instance, doubtless led South African whites to be less hostile toward the post-
apartheid government than they would have been had he prosecuted their leaders or even remained
hostile in his rhetoric; many blacks were inspired to follow his example. Because all of these
restorations make up the justice of reconciliation, (p.113) forgiveness can be said to be an act of
justiceagain, a surprising and dissonant claim in the liberal tradition.47 Of course, it is at the same
time an act of mercy, reconciliations chief virtue.
Like the five other practices, forgiveness complements the other practices of reconciliation. It begets
apology if apology has not already occurred, just as apology invites forgiveness in the case that apology
occurs first. Nothing about forgiveness negates the justice of reparations or requires relinquishing a
struggle against social injustice. But what about punishment? Are forgiveness and punishment
reconcilable in an ethic of reconciliation? Or are debates around the globe correct in seeing them as
being at odds? In the present ethic, forgiveness and punishment are compatible. Both forgiveness and
punishment enact a division of labor in which each one restores in different respects. A victim could in
fact will both forgiveness and punishment at the same time. Forgiveness wills the restoration of the
perpetrator and the political order in all the ways already described. A call for punishment is a call for
the communication from the community that also defeats the message of the perpetrator, calls him to
remorse, honors the value of the community, and so on. In its own way, each practice wills
restoration. The compatibility of punishment and forgiveness is furthered still by the fact that the
state carries out the punishment. The state can best communicate on behalf of the community. The
state, of course, also performs other important dimensions of punishment like police work, trials, and
imprisonment, all of which have their own sets of ethical norms attached to them. Such a division of
labor, where many parties participate in justice in many ways, is indeed the logic of restorative justice.

Things become a little more complicated when a head of state is the forgiver. If heads of state can
apologize on behalf of groups, why can they not forgive on behalf of groups? The state also has the
duty to enforce law and punish criminals. Maintaining the compatibility of punishment and
forgiveness at this level requires seeing the state as playing two roles. When a leader of a state
forgivesas Mandela didhe forgoes anger, resentment, and hostility toward a wrongdoer or even
another collective people who committed injustices against himself or members of his group. But
individual perpetrators must still face the punishment through which the community communicates
its censure, a punishment whose implementation is the duty of the state. Of course, in the case of
South Africa, few apartheid leaders were prosecuted, in part because of the amnesty provisions of the
agreement that ended apartheid. But in principle, a head of state could both prosecute and forgive.

Conclusion
All of the practices interact, sometimes in tension, sometimes complementarily. Each is in its own way
restorative, seeking to heal one or another dimension of woundedness caused by political injustice.
That is the chief moral accomplishment of an ethic of reconciliationto increase human flourishing by
restoring right relationships in a political order. The participants in the practices have, (p.114) in
some respect, to some degree, traveled from a condition of one or more forms of woundedness to a
condition where they are restored to some degree. Each practice performs the virtue of mercy,
understood in its classical sense. In like spirit, the chief justification for an ethic of reconciliation is
that it restores human flourishing more fully than efforts to address injustices that do not involve the
several distinct practices. Were a societys dealings with its past to lack any one of the practices, were
reconciliation in any of these respects to be peeled back, stripped down, or shorn of a layer, then it
would leave an important moral dimension of restoration unfulfilled. Both together and in isolation,
though, each practice yields moral dilemmas. The descriptions of the practices here only allude to or
briefly explore these dilemmas. Other dilemmas are not addressed at all. The purpose of the chapter,
rather, is to show how each of the practices is restorative in nature, applicable to politics, and
constitutive of a holistic, interwoven ethic of political reconciliation.
Notes

Notes:
(1) . Scholars and other analysts have come to call this question transitional justice, referring to
initiatives to address injustices of the past during the transitional period in which a peace agreement
is implemented or an authoritarian regime has just left the stage. Such a usage is too narrow. The term
can be retained, but only with caveats and widenings. One sort pertains to the adjective transitional.
Transitions are often uncertain. As mentioned in the introduction to this volume and in Jackie Smiths
chapter, peace agreements frequently do not last, nor do movements toward democratization.
Furthermore, trials, truth commissions, reparations, and other activities that are much the same as
those that occur in transitional periods sometimes occur long after (sometimes a generation or more
after) the actual transition. Other emendations of transitional justice pertain to its noun, justice. The
term transitional justice arose amid debates over the prosecution of human rights violators. Justice,
especially as defined in this chapter, involves a far wider range of questions and efforts. Transitional
justice, then, can be redefined as the sum total of activities that states and citizens undertake to
redress past political injustices in order to restore political orders both shortly after peace agreements
or regime transitions have taken place as well as long into the future.

(2) . Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New

York: Basic Books, 1977) , arguably remains the most widely cited contemporary text of the just
war tradition. My own approach to this ethic resonates strongest with John Finnis, The Ethics of War
and Peace in the Catholic Natural Law Tradition, in The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and

Secular Perspectives, ed. Terry Nardin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996).

(3) . This chapter is part of a larger work in progress, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political
Reconciliation.

(4) . Brandon Hamber and Richard A. Wilson, Symbolic Closure through Memory, Reparation and

Revenge in Post-Conflict Societies, Journal of Human Rights 1, no. 1 (March 2002): 40.

(5) . Andr Du Toit, The Moral Foundations of the South African TRC: Truth as Acknowledgment and
Justice as Recognition, in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert I.

Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 133.

(6) . Here I do not mean to adopt a simple ancient hatreds explanation for communal conflict. Such
conflict has complex causes, long-term, intermediate-term, and immediate, and range from the
manipulations of elites, the media, economic inequalities and changes, demographic changes, state
failure, and culture. I do make the more modest claim that the emotions arising from one set of
injustices can be an important cause, among others, of further injustices. Making this case well, in my
view, are Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2006) ; Stuart Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca,

N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001) ; Roger D. Peterson, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear,
Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002) . On the role of emotions in politics, see John Mercer, Rationality and Psychology

in International Relations, International Organization 59 (2005) ; Robert C.

Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2003).

(7) . See, for instance, Mahmood Mamdani, Reconciliation without Justice, South African Review of

Books 46 (1996).

(8) . For arguments falling along these lines, see Timothy Garton Ash, True Confessions, New York

Review of Books 44 (1997) ; Rajeev Bhargava, Restoring Decency to Barbaric Societies,

in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000) ; David A. Crocker, Retribution and

Reconciliation, Philosophy and Public Policy 20, no. 1 (2000) , David A. Crocker, Truth
Commissions, Transitional Justice, and Civil Society, in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth
Commissions, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 2000) ; Kent Greenawalt, Amnestys Justice, in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth
Commissions, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 2000) ; Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, The Moral Foundations of Truth
Commissions, in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and

Dennis Thompson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000) . For the economically

based criticism, see, among others, Mamdani, Reconciliation without Justice.

(9) . See Peter Digeser, Political Forgiveness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001)

; Greenawalt, Amnestys Justice.

(10) . Crocker, Retribution and Reconciliation.

(11) . John W. De Gruchy, Reconciliation: Restoring Justice (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press,

2003) ; Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

(12) . For an excellent survey of concepts of justice, see D. D. Raphael, Concepts of Justice (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2001).

(13) . John Braithwaite, Crime, Shame, and Reintegration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1989) ; John Braithwaite and Philip Pettit, Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal
Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) ; Michael L. Hadley, ed., The Spiritual Roots of

Restorative Justice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001) ; Paul McCold,
Restorative Justice and the Role of the Community, in Restorative Justice: International

Perspectives, ed. Burt Galaway and Joe Hudson (Monsey: Criminal Justice Press, 1996) ; Eugene

McLaughlin et al., eds., Restorative Justice (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2003)
; Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, eds., Restorative Justice and Civil Society (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001) ; Daniel W. Van Ness and Karen Heetderks
Strong, Restoring Justice: An Introduction to Restorative Justice (Atlanta: Anderson Press, 2006)

; Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1990).

(14) . Alasdair C. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the

Virtues(Chicago: Open Court, 1999), 12425.

(15) . My understanding of mercy is informed most by Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia,
1984.

(16) . See Douglas Johnston and Brian Cox, Faith-Based Diplomacy and Preventive Engagement,
inFaith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik, ed. Douglas Johnston (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2003).

(17) . I argue this claim in Daniel Philpott, When Faith Meets History: The Influence of Religion on
Transitional Justice, in The Religious in Response to Mass Atrocity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,

ed. Thomas Brudholm and Thomas Cushman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

(18) . See Daniel Philpott, When Faith Meets History: The Influence of Religion on Transitional
Justice, in The Religious in Response to Mass Atrocity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Thomas

Brudholm and Thomas Cushman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).ibid.

(19) . Irving Greenberg, Religion as a Force for Reconciliation and Peace: A Jewish Analysis,
inBeyond Violence: Religious Sources of Social Transformation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,

ed. James L. Heft (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004) ; Sol Schimmel, Joseph and His
Brothers: A Paradigm for Repentance, Judaism, Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought37,

no. 1 (1988) ; Solomon Schimmel, Wounds Not Healed by Time: The Power of Repentance and

Forgiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) ; Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient

Israel (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1995) ; Perry Yoder, Shalom: The

Bibles Word for Salvation, Justice, and Peace (Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life Press, 1987).
(20) . De Gruchy, Reconciliation, 46, 51.

(21) . Majid Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice (New York: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1984), 312.

(22) . Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam (Gainesville: University

Press of Florida, 2003), 60 ; Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice, 312 ; Carol
Schersten LaHurd, So That the Sinner Will Repent: Forgiveness in Islam and

Christianity, Dialog 35, no. 4 (1996): 288 ; A. Rashied Omar, Between Compassion and Justice:

Locating an Islamic Definition of Peace, Peace Colloquy (Spring 2005): 9.

(23) . Abdulaziz Abdulhussein Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2001), 106.

(24) . Nawal H. Ammar, Restorative Justice in Islam: Theory and Practice, in The Spiritual Roots of
Restorative Justice, ed. Michael L. Hadley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 169

73 . See also Sachedina, Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism.

(25) . Abu-Nimer, Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam; George E. Irani and Nathan C. Funk,
Rituals of Reconciliation: Arab-Islamic Perspectives, Arab Studies Quarterly 20, no. 4 (1998).

(26) . Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious

Convictions in Political Debate (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997) ; John Rawls, The
Idea of Public Reason Revisited, in The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1999) ; Lawrence Solum, Constructing an Ideal of Public Reason,San Diego Law Review 30

(1993).

(27) . See Gutmann and Thompson, The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions.

(28) . Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, Separation of Religion and State in the Twenty-First

Century: Comparing the Middle East and Western Democracies, Comparative Politics (2005).

(29) . See the arguments of Nicholas Wolterstoff in Audi and Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public
Square,Christopher J. Eberle, Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2002) , Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 2004).

(30) . Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth

Century(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 21131.

(31) . Again, MacIntyre comes to our aid. A practice, he explains in After Virtue, is: any coherent and
complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that
form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are
appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to
achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically
extended. His definition identifies crucial components of practices. The good of reconciliation, the
excellence that it achieves, is restoration of relationships in the political order. Alasdair
MacIntyre,After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre

Dame Press, 1984), 187.

(32) . I understand legitimacy to have two primary meanings. One is normative, pertaining to the
intrinsic rightness of laws and institutions. The other is descriptive, pertaining to the degree to which
laws and institutions enjoy assent in the judgments of those who live under them. I deploy the latter
meaning presently.

(33) . The version of the just war theory that I find most compelling is Finnis, The Ethics of War and
Peace. For a prominent attempt to extend the just war framework to humanitarian intervention,
seeResponsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty (Ottawa, Ont.: International Development Research Centre, 2001). For a variety of
perspectives on the justice of self-determination movements, see Margaret Moore, ed., National Self-

Determination and Secession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

(34) . Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman, How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to

Durable Democracy (New York: Freedom House, 2005).

(35) . On knowledge versus acknowledgment, see Du Toit, The Moral Foundations.

(36) . Michael Hayes and David Tombs, eds., Truth and Memory: The Church and Human Rights in

El Salvador and Guatemala (Leominster, U.K.: Gracewing, 2001) ; 34, 107, 25, Paul
Jeffrey, Recovering Memory: Guatemalan Churches and the Challenge of Peacemaking (Uppsala,

Sweden: Life & Peace Institute, 1998), 51 ; Recovery of Historical Memory Project,Guatemala:

Never Again! (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999), xxiiixxix.

(37) . Jeremy Waldron, Superseding Historical Injustice, Ethics 103, no. 6 (1992).

(38) . See J. D. Bindenagel, Justice, Apology, Reconciliation and the German Foundation:
Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future, in Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and
Reconciliation, ed. Elazar Barkan and Alexander Karn (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

2006).
(39) . See Ted Hondereich, Punishment: The Supposed Justifications (Harmondsworth, U.K.:

Penguin, 1971).

(40) . See Christopher D. Marshall, Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime

and Punishment (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001) ; For other philosophers who reason
along similar lines, see R. A. Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2001) ; Jean Hampton, The Moral Education Theory of

Punishment, Philosophy and Public Affairs (1984) ; Marshall, Beyond Retribution, Elizabeth

Moberly, Suffering, Innocent, and Guilty (London: SPCK, 1978) , Herbert Morris, Persons and

Punishment, Monist 52 (1968).

(41) . Ammar, Restorative Justice in Islam. This is not to elide disputed issues of interpretation.
Obviously, some scriptures in the texts of each of the Abrahamic faiths seem on their face to run
against a restorative logic of punishment. The full case for biblical and Quranic restorative
punishment lies in sources like those that I have cited here.

(42) . Barry ONeill, Honor, Symbols, and War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 178

82.

(43) . For a good sociological account of apology, see Nicholas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of

Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991) . For a work on
apology in international politics, see Jennifer Lind, Sorry States: Apologies in International

Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008).

(44) . See Trudy Govier, Forgiveness and Revenge (London: Routledge, 2002), 6872.

(45) . See, for instance, Abu-Nimer, Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam; William Bole, Drew
Christiansen, and Robert T. Hennemeyer, Forgiveness in International Politics: An Alternative Road

to Peace (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004) ; Marc Gopin,Between
Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2000) ; Alan Torrance, The Theological Grounds for Advocating Forgiveness
and Reconciliation in the Sociopolitical Realm, in The Politics of Past Evil(Notre Dame, Ind.:

University of Notre Dame Press, 2006) ; Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological
Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1996).

(46) . For a piece that contains both thoughtful criticism of forgiveness as well as a survey of
criticisms, see Thomas Brudholm, On the Advocacy of Forgiveness after Mass Atrocities, in The
Religious in Response to Mass Atrocity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Thomas Brudholm and

Thomas Cushman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 124156.

(47) . R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation

(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

Whose Strategy, Whose Peace? The Role of International Institutions in Strategic

Peacebuilding
John Paul Lederach (Contributor Webpage)
R. Scott Appleby
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords

In this chapter, Chesterman grapples with the complex challenges facing the United Nations in post-
conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts. He first examines the dilemmas inherent in outside
interventions for peacebuilding, particularly those with expanded UN mandates and/or transitional
administrations. He argues that workable strategies must increase clarity with regard to the following:
the political and strategic objectives of the intervention, the dynamic relationship between
international and local actors, and the political and resource commitments required of international
actors. In examining prospects for improvement, Chesterman evaluates both the challenges and
potential of the Peacebuilding Commission to promote coordination and increase funding for more
strategic peacebuilding.

Keywords: United Nations, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, transitional administration, UN Peacebuilding

Commission,intervention

Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are happy alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way. It is tempting to say the same thing of states, as successful states enter an increasingly
homogenous globalized economy and weaker states slip into individualized chaos. That would be only
partly true. The peacebuilding efforts considered in this volume demonstrate the importance of local
contexthistory, culture, individual actorsbut they also suggest more general lessons as to how
external actors may help states emerging from crisis. This chapter critically examines the lessons
applicable to efforts by international institutionsprominently, but not only, the United Nationsto
support or impose transitions from conflict to durable peace.

In early 1995, chastened by the failed operation in Somalia, the failing operation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and inaction in the face of genocide in Rwanda, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-
Ghali issued a conservative supplement to his more optimistic 1992 Agenda for Peace.
TheSupplement noted that a new breed of intrastate conflicts presented the United Nations with
challenges not encountered since the Congo operation of the early 1960s. A feature of these conflicts
was the collapse of state institutions, especially the police and judiciary, meaning that international
intervention had to extend beyond military and humanitarian tasks to include the promotion of
national reconciliation and the re-establishment of effective government. Nevertheless, he expressed
caution against the United Nations assuming responsibility for law and order or attempting to impose
state institutions on unwilling combatants.1 General Sir Michael Rose, then commander of the UN
Protection Force in (p.120) Bosnia (UNPROFOR), called this form of mission creep crossing the
Mogadishu line.2
Despite such cautious words, by the end of 1995 the United Nations had assumed responsibility for
policing in Bosnia under the Dayton Agreement. The following January, a mission was established
with temporary civil governance functions over the last Serb-held region of Croatia in eastern
Slavonia. In June 1999, the Security Council authorized an interim administration in Kosovo to
govern part of what remained technically Serbian territory for an indefinite period; four months later,
a transitional administration was created with effective sovereignty over East Timor until
independence. These expanding mandates continued a trend that began with the operations in
Namibia in 1989 and Cambodia in 1993, where the United Nations exercised varying degrees of
civilian authority in addition to supervising elections.

Efforts to construct or reconstruct institutions of the state from the outside are hardly new:
decolonization and military occupation are the estranged ancestors of more recent activities in this
area. What was novel about the missions undertaken in Kosovo and East Timor was the amount of
executive authority assumed by the United Nations itself, placing it in the position of an occupying
power. Though this power was presumably understood to be exercised in a benevolent fashion,
problems associated with foreign rule repeated themselves with some predictable results in the cases
examined here.

Postconflict reconstruction through the 1990s thus saw an increasing trend toward rebuilding
governance structures through assuming some or all governmental powers on a temporary basis. Such
transitional administration operations can be divided into two broad classes: where state institutions
are divided and where they have collapsed. The first class encompasses situations in which
governance structures were the subject of dispute with different groups claiming power (as in
Cambodia or Bosnia and Herzegovina) or ethnic tensions within the structures themselves (such as
Kosovo). The second class comprises circumstances in which such structures simply did not exist (as
in Namibia, East Timor, and Afghanistan). A possible third class is suggested by recent experiences in
Iraq, where regime change took place in a territory with far greater human, institutional, and
economic resources than any comparable situation in which the United Nations or other actor had
exercised civilian administration functions since World War II.3

The term nation-building, sometimes used in this context, is broad, vague, and often pejorative. In the
course of the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, Governor George W. Bush used it as a dismissive
reference to the application of U.S. military resources beyond traditional mandates. The word was also
used to conflate the circumstances in which U.S. forces found themselves in conflict with the local
populationmost notably in Somaliawith complex and time-consuming operations, such as those
under way in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. Although it continues to be used in this context,
notably within the United States, nation-building also has a more specific meaning in the postcolonial
context, referring to efforts by new leaders to rally a population within sometimes arbitrary territorial
frontiers. The focus here is on the state (that is, (p.121) the highest institutions of governance in a
territory) rather than the nation (a people who share common customs, origins, history, and
frequently language) as such.4
Within the United Nations, the word peacebuilding is generally preferred. This has been taken to
mean, among other things, reforming or strengthening governmental institutions,5 or the creation
of structures for the institutionalization of peace.6 It tends, however, to embrace a far broader range
of activities than those particular operations under consideration hereat times being used to
describe virtually all forms of international assistance to countries that have experienced or are at risk
of armed conflict.7
Strategic peacebuilding, in the sense used in this volume, is a littlebut only a littlemore specific. It
embraces the set of complementary practices intended to transform a society from a state of violence
or deep injustice to long-term sustainable peace and justice. Key questions to be answered, of course,
are who determines the strategy for a given crisis and who evaluates the sustainability and justice of
the peace that may emerge. One of the strengths of this volume is that it recognizes that the answers to
these who questions will typically not be confined to a single actor, and the answer may change over
time.

It is frequently assumed that the collapse of state structures, whether through defeat by an external
power or as a result of internal chaos, leads to a vacuum of political power. This is rarely the case. The
mechanisms through which political power are exercised may be less formalized or consistent, but
basic questions of how best to ensure the physical and economic security of oneself and ones
dependents do not simply disappear when the institutions of the state break down. Nonstate actors in
such situations may exercise varying degrees of political power over local populations, at times
providing basic social services from education to medical care. Even where nonstate actors exist as
parasites on local populations, political life goes on. How to engage in such an environment is a
particular problem for policy makers in intergovernmental organizations and donor governments. But
it poses far greater difficulties for the embattled state institutions and the populations of such
territories.

International actors, the focus in this chapter, may play a critical roleif only in creating the
opportunity for local actors to establish legitimate and sustainable governance. This relationship
between the international and the local is a central theme in the editors conception of strategic
peacebuilding. Sometimes creating such opportunities means holding back. Humanitarian and, to
some extent, development assistance flows most freely in response to crisis, but it rarely addresses the
underlying causes of either poverty or conflict, as Larissa Fast shows in her chapter. As Jackie Smith
argues, such assistance, if not well managed, may in fact undermine more sustainable recovery by
establishing relationships of dependence and distorting the economy with unsustainable allocations of
resources.

Until recently, there was little strategy in how international actors approached such problems. Indeed,
reflecting Boutros-Ghalis earlier objections, there was no agreement that postconflict reconstruction
was something in which the United Nations should become involved. The fact that such
operations(p.122) continue to be managed by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations is
suggestive of the ad hoc approach that characterized transitional administration. This was evident in
the 2000 Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations, known as the Brahimi Report, which noted the
likely demand for such operations as well as the evident ambivalence within governments and the
UN Secretariat itself concerning the development of an institutional capacity to undertake them.
Because of this ambivalence, it was impossible to achieve any consensus on recommendations, so the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations continued to play the dominant supporting role. 8
The creation in December 2005 of a Peacebuilding Commission, then, was a significant
developmenteven if only as belated recognition that this was an important function of the United
Nations. Established by the General Assembly to (among other things) propose integrated strategies
for post-conflict peacebuilding,9 it remains a work in progress. In theory, this could be the vehicle
that develops and oversees policies embracing the interdependence of issues demonstrated in this
volume. As we will see, however, theory has rarely led practice in the UN experience of peacebuilding.

This chapter evaluates strategic peacebuilding by the United Nations. The section that follows
highlights some of the difficulties inherent in the political project of seeking to lay the foundations of
peace from the outside; the next section explores the prospects for improvement, with particular
reference to the Peacebuilding Commission. A survey of the practice shows significant improvement in
technical areas such as staging elections; the Peacebuilding Commission may remedy some of the
coordination problems and funding gaps that plague postconflict operations. It is far from clear,
however, that the political contradictions inherent in such operations are being adequately
understood, let alone addressed. There has been a good deal of improvement in the tools and the
tactics available, but not much sign of strategy.

Problems
Is it even possible to establish the necessary political and economic conditions for legitimate and
sustainable national governance through a period of benevolent foreign autocracy under UN auspices?
This contradiction between ends and means has plagued recent efforts to govern postconflict
territories in the Balkans, East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Such state-building operations combine
an unusual mix of idealism and realism: the idealist project that a people can be saved from
themselves through education, economic incentives, and the space to develop mature political
institutions; the realist basis for that project in what is ultimately military occupation.

Much research has focused on the doctrinal and operational difficulties experienced by such
operations.10 This is a valuable area of research, but it may obscure three sets of contradictions
between means and ends that undermined such operations: the means are inconsistent with the ends,
they are frequently (p.123) inadequate for those ends, and in many situations they are inappropriate
for the ends.

Inconsistent
Benevolent autocracy is an uncertain foundation for legitimate and sustainable national governance.
It is inaccurate and often counterproductive to assert that transitional administration depends on the
consent or ownership of the local population.11 It is inaccurate because if genuine local control were
possible, then a transitional administration would not be necessary. It is counterproductive because
insincere claims of local ownership lead to frustration and suspicion on the part of local
actors. Clarityis therefore required in recognizing (1) the strategic objectives, (2) the relationship
between international and local actors and how this will change over time, and (3) the commitment
required of international actors to achieve objectives that warrant the temporary assumption of
autocratic powers under a benevolent international administration.

In a case like East Timor, the strategic objectiveindependencewas both clear and uncontroversial.
Frustration with the slow pace of reconstruction or the inefficiencies of the UN presence could
generally be tempered by reference to the uncontested aim of independence and a timetable within
which this was to be achieved. In Kosovo, failure to articulate a position on its final status inhibits the
development of a mature political elite and deters foreign investment. The present ambiguity derives
from a compromise that was brokered between the United States and Russia at the end of the nato
campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, formalized in Security Council
resolution 1244 (1999). Nevertheless, the United Nations is now blamed for frustrating the aspirations
of Kosovars for self-determination. Many national and international observers blamed lack of
progress in resolving the issue of final status as a key factor in fueling the violence that erupted in the
province in March 2004. Martti Ahtisaaris ongoing efforts to broker a final status agreement continue
to be frustrated by the attachment of each side to positionsindependence or integrationthat are
both unambiguous and irreconcilable.12
Obfuscation of strategic political objectives leads to ambiguity in the mandate. Niche mandate
implementation by a proliferation of postconflict actors may further complicate the transition to
durable peace. More than five years after the Dayton Agreement, a recalibration exercise required
the various international agencies present in Bosnia and Herzegovina to perform an institutional audit
to determine what, exactly, each of them did.13 Such dysfunction strongly suggests the need for the
strategic approach called for in this volume and also points to the practical barriers to implementing
it. Subsidiary bodies and specialized agencies of the United Nations should in principle place their
material and human resources at the direct disposal of the transitional administration: all activities
should be oriented toward an agreed political goal, which should normally be legitimate and
sustainable government. Ideally, the unity of civilian authority should also embrace command of the
military. In reality, the reluctance of the United States and other industrialized countries to
put(p.124) their troops under UN command makes this highly improbable. Coordination thus
becomes more important to avoid some of the difficulties encountered in civilmilitary relations, for
example, in Afghanistan.
Clarity in the relationship between international and local actors raises the question of ownership.
This term is often used disingenuouslyeither to mask the assertion of potentially dictatorial powers
by international actors or to carry a psychological rather than political meaning in the area of
reconstruction. Ownership in this context is usually not intended to mean control and often does not
even imply a direct input into political questions. 14 This is not to suggest that local control is a
substitute for international administration. As the operation in Afghanistan demonstrates, a light
footprint makes the success of an operation more than usually dependent on the political dynamic of
local actors. Because the malevolence or collapse of that political dynamic is precisely the reason that
power is arrogated to an international presence, the light footprint is unsustainable as a model for
general application. How much power should be transferred and for how long depends on the political
transition that is required; this in turn is a function of the root causes of the conflict, the local capacity
for change, and the degree of international commitment available to assist in bringing about that
change.15

Local ownership, then, must be the end of a transitional administration, but it is not the means.
Openness about the trustee-like relationship between international and local actors would help locals
by ensuring transparency about the powers that they will exercise at various stages of the transition.
Openness would also help the states that mandate and fund such operations by forcing
acknowledgment of their true nature and the level of commitment required to effect the transition.

Clarifying the commitment necessary to bring about fundamental change in a conflict-prone territory
is, however, a double-edged sword. It would ensure that political will exists prior to authorizing a
transitional administration, but perhaps at the expense of other operations that would not be
authorized at all. The mission in Bosnia was always expected to last beyond its nominal twelve-month
deadline but might not have been established if it had been envisaged that troops would remain on the
ground for a full decade or more. Donors contemplating Afghanistan in November 2001 balked at
early estimates that called for a ten-year, $25 billion commitment to the country. In the lead-up to the
war with Iraq, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army was similarly pooh-poohedand later forced into
retirementby the leadership of the Defense Department when he testified to the Senate that several
hundred thousand soldiers would be required for postwar duties. 16 Political considerations already
limit the choice of missions, of course: not for lack of opportunity, no major transitional
administration has been established in Africa, where the demands are probably greatest. The primary
barrier to establishing transitional administrationtype operations in areas such as Western Sahara,
Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has less to do with the difficulty of such
operations than with the absence of political will to commit the resources necessary to undertake
them.17

(p.125) Resolving the inconsistency between the means and the ends of transitional administration
requires a clear-eyed recognition of the role of power. The collapse of formal state structures does not
necessarily create a power vacuum; as indicated earlier, political life does not simply cease.
Constructive engagement with power on this local level requires both an understanding of culture and
history as well as respect for the political aspirations of the population. Clarity will also help here: the
international presence either exercises quasi-sovereign powers on a temporary basis, or it does not.
This clarity must exist at the formal level, but it leaves much room for nuance in implementation.
Most obviously, assertion of executive authority should be on a diminishing basis, with power
devolved as appropriate to local institutions. The transfer of power must be of more than symbolic
value: once power is transferred to local hands, whether at the municipal or national level, local actors
should be able to exercise that power meaningfully, constrained only by the rule of law. Unless and
until genuine transfer is possible, consultation is appropriate but without the pretense that this is the
same as control. Where international actors do not exercise sovereign powerbecause of the size of
the territory, the complexity of the conflict, or a simple lack of political willthis is not the same as
exercising no power at all. Certain functions may be delegated to the international presence, as they
were in Cambodia and Afghanistan, and international actors will continue to exercise considerable
behind-the-scenes influence either because of ongoing responsibilities in a peace process or as
gatekeepers to development assistance. In either case, the abiding need is for clarity as to who is in
charge and, equally important, who is going to be in charge.

Inadequate
International interest in postconflict operations tends to be ephemeral, with availability of funds
linked to the prominence of a foreign crisis on the domestic agenda of the states that contribute funds
and troops. Both have tended to be insufficient. Funds for postconflict reconstruction are notoriously
supply- rather than demand-driven. This leads to multiplication of bureaucracy in the recipient
country, inconsistency in disbursement procedures, and a focus on projects that may be more popular
with donors than they are necessary in the recipient country. Reluctance to commit funds is surpassed
only by reluctance to commit troops: in the absence of security, however, meaningful political change
is impossible. This was confirmed in the most brutal way possible with the attacks on UN personnel in
Baghdad on August 19, 2003.

The ephemeral nature of international interest in postconflict operations is, unfortunately, a clich.
When the United States overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, President Bush likened the
commitment to rebuild the devastated country to the Marshall Plan. Just over twelve months later, in
February 2003, the White House apparently forgot to include any money for reconstruction in the
2004 budget that it submitted to Congress. Legislators reallocated $300 million in aid to cover the
oversight.18 Such oversights are (p.126) disturbingly common: much of the aid that is pledged arrives
either late or not at all. This demands a measure of artificiality in drafting budgets for reconstruction,
which in turn leads to suspicion on the part of donorssometimes further delaying the disbursement
of funds. For example, $880 million was pledged at the Conference on Rehabilitation and
Reconstruction of Cambodia in June 1992. By the time the new government was formed in September
1993, only $200 million had been disbursed, rising to only $460 million by the end of 1995. The
problem is not simply one of volume: Bosnia has received more per capita assistance than Europe did
under the Marshall Plan, but the incoherence of funding programs, the lack of a regional approach,
and the inadequacy of state and entity institutions have contributed to the country remaining in
financial crisis.19
Many of these problems would be reduced if donors replaced the system of voluntary funding for relief
and reconstruction for transitional administrations with assessed contributions, which presently fund
peacekeeping operations. The distinction between funds supporting a peacekeeping operation and
those providing assistance to a government makes sense when there is some form of indigenous
government, but it is arbitrary in situations where the peacekeeping operation is the government.
Given existing strains on the peacekeeping budget, however, such a change is unlikely. A more
realistic proposal would be to pool voluntary contributions through a trust fund, ideally coordinated
by local actors or a mixed body of local and international personnel, perhaps also drawing on private
sector expertise. At the very least, a monitoring mechanism to track aid flows would help ensure that
money promised at the high point of international attention to a crisis is in fact delivered and spent.
The experience of Afghanistan suggests that there is perhaps some learning taking place in this area,
though even during one of the greatest outpouring of emergency relief fund in recent historyin
response to the tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean region on December 26, 2004Secretary
General Kofi Annan felt compelled to remind donor governments, We have often had gaps in the past
[between pledges and actual donations] and I hope it is not going to happen in this case. 20 The use of
PricewaterhouseCoopers to track aid flows also points to a new flexibility in using private sector
expertise to avoid wastage and corruption.

Parsimony of treasure is surpassed by the reluctance to expend blood in policing postconflict

territories. In the absence of security, however, meaningful political change in a postconflict territory
is next to impossible. Unless and until the United Nations develops a rapidly deployable civilian police
capacity, either military tasks in a postconflict environment will include basic law and order functions
or these functions will not be performed at all. The militaryespecially the U.S. militaryis
understandably reluctant to embrace duties that are outside its field of expertise, but this is
symptomatic of an anachronistic view of UN peace operations. The dichotomy between peacekeeping
and enforcement actions was always artificial, and in the context of internal armed conflict where
large numbers of civilians are at risk, it becomes untenable. Moreover, as most transitional
administrations have followed conflicts initiated (p.127) under the auspices or in the name of the
United Nations, inaction is not the same as noninterference. Once military operations commence,
external actors have already begun a process of political transformation on the ground. As the
Independent Inquiry on Rwanda concluded, whether or not a peace operation has a mandate or the
will to protect civilians, its very presence creates an expectation that it will do so. 21
A key argument in the Brahimi Report was that missions with uncertain mandates or inadequate
resources should not be created at all:

Although presenting and justifying planning estimates according to high operational standards might
reduce the likelihood of an operation going forward, Member States must not be led to believe that
they are doing something useful for countries in trouble whenby under-resourcing missionsthey
are more likely agreeing to a waste of human resources, time and money.22

This view finds some support in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect, which called for the responsibility to rebuild to be seen
as an integral part of any intervention. When an intervention is contemplated, a postintervention
strategy is both an operational necessity and an ethical imperative. 23 There is some evidence of this
principle now achieving at least rhetorical acceptancedespite his aversion to nation-building,
President Bush stressed before and during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq that the United States
would help in reconstructing the territories in which it had intervened.
More than rhetoric is required. Success in state-building, in addition to clarity of purpose, requires
time and money. A lengthy international presence will not ensure success, but an early departure
guarantees failure. Similarly, an abundance of resources will not make up for the lack of a coherent
strategythough the fact that Kosovo has been the recipient of twenty-five times more money and
fifty times more troops on a per capita basis compared with Afghanistan, goes some way toward
explaining the modest achievements in developing democratic institutions and the economy. 24

Inappropriate
The inappropriateness of available means to desired ends presents the opposite problem to that of the
inadequacy of resources. Although the question of limited resourcesmoney, personnel, and
international attentiondepresses the standards against which a postconflict operation can be judged,
artificially high international expectations may nevertheless be imposed in certain areas of
governance. Particularly when the United Nations itself assumes a governing role, there is a
temptation to demand the highest standards of democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and the
provision of services.

Balancing these against the need for locally sustainable goals presents difficult problems. A
computerized electoral registration system may be manifestly ill-suited to a country with a low level of
literacy and intermittent electricity, but (p.128) should an international nongovernmental
organization refrain from opening a world-class medical clinic if such levels of care are unsustainable?
An abrupt drop from high levels of care once the crisis and international interest passes would be
disruptive, but lowering standards early implies acceptance that people who might otherwise have
been treated will suffer. This was the dilemma faced by the International Committee of the Red Cross,
which transferred control of the Dili National Hospital to national authorities in East Timor almost a
year before independence.
Although most acute in areas such as health, the issue arises in many aspects of transitional
administration. In the best tradition of autocracies, the international missions in Bosnia and Kosovo
subscribed to the vast majority of human rights treaties and then discovered raisons dtat that
required them to be abrogated. Efforts to promote the rule of law tend to focus more on the
prosecution of the highest profile crimes of the recent past than on developing institutions to manage
criminal law in the near future. Humanitarian and development assistance are notorious for being
driven more by supply than demand, with the result that projects that are funded tend to represent
the interestsand, frequently, the products and personnelof donors rather than recipients.25 Finally,
staging elections in conflict zones has become something of an art form, though more than half a
dozen elections in Bosnia have yet to produce a workable government.

Different issues arise in the area of human resources. Staffing such operations always takes place in an
atmosphere of crisis, but personnel tend to be selected from a limited pool of applicants (most of them
internal) whose skills may be irrelevant to the tasks at hand. In East Timor, for example, it would have
made sense to approach Portuguese-speaking governments to request that staff with experience in
public administration be seconded to the UN mission. Instead, it was not even possible to require
Portuguese, Tetum, or Bahasa Indonesia because they were not official UN working languages.
Positions are often awarded for political reasons or simply to ensure that staff lists are full; once in
place, there is no effective mechanism to assess an individuals suitability or remove him or her
quickly if warranted. A separate problem is the assumption that international staff who do possess
relevant skills are also able to train others in the same field. This is an entirely different skill, however,
and simply pairing international and local staff tends to provide less on-the-job training than
extended opportunities to stand around and watcha problem exacerbated by the fact that English
tends to be used as the working language. One element of the light footprint approach adopted in
Afghanistan that is certainly of general application is the need to justify every post occupied by
international staff rather than a local. Cultivating relations with diaspora communities may help
address this problem, serving the dual function of recruiting culturally aware staff and encouraging
the return of skilled expatriates more generally.

The can-do attitude of many people within the UN system is one of the most positive qualities that
staff bring to a mission. If the problem is getting 100 tons of rice to 10,000 starving refugees, niceties
of procedure are less (p.129) important than getting the job done. When the problem is governing a
territory, however, procedure is more important. In such circumstances, the can-do attitude may
become a cavalier disregard for local sensibilities. Moreover, many staff in such situations are not
used to criticism from the population that they are helping, with some regarding it as a form of
ingratitude. Where the United Nations assumes the role of government, it should expect and welcome
criticism appropriate to that of the sort of political environment it hopes to foster. Security issues may
require limits on this, but a central element in the development of local political capacity is
encouraging discussion among local actors about these mattersapart from anything else, it enhances
the legitimacy of the conclusions drawn. International staff sometimes bemoan the prospect of endless
consultation getting in the way of their work, but in many ways that conversation is precisely the point
of their presence in the territory.
Just as generals are sometimes accused of planning to refight their last war, so the United Nations
experiments in transitional administration have reflected only gradual learning. Senior UN officials
now acknowledge that to varying degrees, Kosovo got the operation that should have been planned for
Bosnia four years earlier, and East Timor got what should have been sent to Kosovo. Afghanistans
very different light footprint approach draws, in turn, on the outlines of what Lakhdar Brahimi argued
would have been appropriate for East Timor in 1999.

The United Nations may never again be called on to repeat operations comparable to Kosovo and East
Timor, where it exercised sovereign powers on a temporary basis. Even so, it is certain that the
circumstances that demanded such interventions will recur. Lessons derived from past experiences of
transitional administration will be applicable whenever the United Nations or other international
actors engage in complex peace operations that include a policing function, civilian administration,
development of the rule of law, establishment of a national economy, staging of elections, or all of the
above. Learning from such lessons has not, however, been one of the strengths of the United Nations.

Prospects
If there is a single generalizable lesson to be learned from the recent experience of state-building,
whether as transitional administration or preventing state failure, it is modesty. The challenges before
the United Nations now are not, therefore, to develop grand theories or a revivified trusteeship
capacity. Rather, what is required are workable strategies and tactics with which to support
institutions of the state before, during, and after conflict. As indicated earlier, doing this effectively
requires clarity in three areas: (1) the strategic aims of the action; (2) the necessary institutional
coordination to put all actorsespecially security and development actorson the same page; and (3)
a realistic basis for evaluating the success or failure of the action. Clarity in these three areas, if
embraced (p.130) as policy and implemented as practice, would represent a key move toward
something one might call strategic peacebuilding.

Strategy
The accepted wisdom within the UN community, articulated most recently in the Brahimi Report, is
that a successful UN peace operation should ideally consist of three sequential stages. First, the
political basis for peace must be determined. Then a suitable mandate for a UN mission should be
formulated. Finally, that mission should be given all the resources necessary to complete the
mandate.26 The accepted reality is that this usually happens in the reverse order: member states
determine what resources they are prepared to commit to a problem, and a mandate is cobbled
together around those resourcesoften in the hope that a political solution will be forthcoming at
some later date.

Strategic failure may affect all levels of an operation. The most common types of failures are at the
level of overall mandate, in the interaction between different international actors with competing or
inconsistent mandates, and in the relationship between international and national actors on the
ground.

Kosovos uncertain final status, for example, has severely undermined the ongoing peace operation
there, contrasting starkly with the simplicity of East Timors transition to independence. Clarity
concerning the political trajectory of a territory under transitional administration is essential, but lack
of strategy also undermines efforts to prevent the collapse of state institutions. In Afghanistan,
prioritizing the military strategy at times undermined the professed political aimsmost prominently
in decisions to support warlords for tactical reasons in the hunt for al Qaeda even as they undermined
Hamid Karzais embryonic government in Kabul.

A second level at which strategic failure may take place is when different actors have competing or
inconsistent mandates. Security actors are a notorious example of thiswith the independence of the
NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in
Afghanistan at times undermining the authority of the international civilian presence. Ensuring a
single chain of command would be desirable, but it runs against the received wisdom that the United
Nations is incapable of waging war. A more achievable goal would be bringing the political process
into line with development assistance. The United Nations has done this rhetorically in the
term peacebuilding,27but without creating any capacity to focus political attention, design policy and
strategy, and oversee operations in this area. (The Peacebuilding Commission is considered in the
next subsection.)

As indicated by the discussion on political trajectory and ownership, international actors have
sometimes been less than effective at managing expectations and relationships with national actors.
Clarity about respective rolesand about the final authority of the population in question to
determine its own future once a territory is stabilized and no longer regarded as a threat to
international peace and securitywould help. Where there is no existing
legitimate (p.131) governance structure in place, or if there are competing structures, the concept of
shadow alignment may be helpful. This requires an assessment of available formal and informal
policies and systems that can be built on, adapted, and reformed. The aim is to avoid a legacy of
diverted institutions that may undermine the development of legitimate and accountable structures.28
Reference to strategy should not be misunderstood as suggesting that there is some template for
governance that can be applied across cases. Instead, clarity about the purposes of engagement and
the respective responsibilities of international and national actors provides a framework for
developing a coherent strategy that takes the state itself as the starting point.

Coordination and the Peacebuilding Commission

The High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change rightly criticized the UN experience of
postconflict operations as characterized by countless ill-coordinated and overlapping bilateral and
United Nations programs, with inter-agency competition preventing the best use of scarce
resources.29 Its key recommendation to remedy this situation was the call for a Peacebuilding
Commission to be established as a subsidiary organ of the UN Security Council under Article 29 of the
UN Charter.30

This new body was to have four functions. First, it would identify countries that are under stress and
risk sliding toward state collapse. Second, it would organize, in partnership with the national
Government, proactive assistance in preventing that process from developing further. Third, it would
assist in the planning for transitions between conflict and postconflict peacebuilding. Fourth, it would
marshal and sustain the efforts of the international community in postconflict peacebuilding over
whatever period may be necessary. Other guidelines mapped out institutional and procedural
considerations, including the need for the body to be small and flexible, considering both general
policy issues and country-by-country strategies. It was to include representatives of the Security
Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, donor countries, troop contributors, and regional organizations, as well as national
representatives of the country under consideration.31 A Peacebuilding Support Office would integrate
system-wide policies and strategies, develop best practices, and provide support to field operations.
Among other functions, the office would submit twice-yearly early warning analyses to the
Peacebuilding Commission to help it in organizing its work.32

The commission was generally considered to be one of the more positive ideas to come from the High-
Level Panel and appeared likely to be adopted by the membership of the United Nations. When the
secretary general drew on this to present his own vision of the Peacebuilding Commission in his In
Larger Freedom report of March 2005, he specifically removed any suggestion of an early warning
functionanticipating pressure from governments wary that they might be precisely the ones under
scrutiny.33 This essentially dropped (p.132) the first two of the High-Level Panels four functions, but
the secretary general elaborated on how the other two might work in practice:
A Peacebuilding Commission could perform the following functions: in the immediate aftermath of
war, improve United Nations planning for sustained recovery, focusing on early efforts to establish the
necessary institutions; help to ensure predictable financing for early recovery activities, in part by
providing an overview of assessed, voluntary and standing funding mechanisms; improve the
coordination of the many post-conflict activities of the United Nations funds, programs and agencies;
provide a forum in which the United Nations, major bilateral donors, troop contributors, relevant
regional actors and organizations, the international financial institutions and the national or
transitional Government of the country concerned can share information about their respective post-
conflict recovery strategies, in the interests of greater coherence; periodically review progress towards
medium-term recovery goals; and extend the period of political attention to post-conflict recovery.34

Two essential aspects of how the commission would function were left unresolved: what its
membership would be, and to whom it would reportthe Security Council or the ECOSOC. These
issues ended up paralyzing debate on the commission in the lead-up to the September 2005 World
Summit and were deferred for later consideration. The World Summit Outcome document broadly
endorsed the secretary generals view of the Peacebuilding Commission as essentially limited to
mobilizing resources for postconflict reconstruction:

The main purpose of the Peacebuilding Commission is to bring together all relevant actors to marshal
resources and to advise on and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and
recovery. The Commission should focus attention on the reconstruction and institution-building
efforts necessary for recovery from conflict and support the development of integrated strategies in
order to lay the foundation for sustainable development. In addition, it should provide
recommendations and information to improve the coordination of all relevant actors within and
outside the United Nations, develop best practices, help to ensure predictable financing for early
recovery activities and extend the period of attention by the international community to post-conflict
recovery.35

In one sense, the evolution of the Peacebuilding Commission is a fairly typical example of ideas and
norms being diluted as they move through the policy and intergovernmental waters. Early warning
died a fairly quick death even before reaching the summit. A second attempt by the High-Level Panel
to strengthen early warning by creating a deputy secretary general for Peace and Security was dropped
entirely.36 The outcome document of the 2005 summit did resolve to develop early warning systems
for natural disasters, particularly (p.133) tsunamis, but early warning of manmade disasters was the
subject for a more tepid call for the international community to support the United Nations in
developing such a capability at some point in the unspecified future.37
On the postconflict responsibilities of the Peacebuilding Commission, its role in planning and
formulating strategy was more subtly undermined. The High-Level Panel had seen it as assisting in
the planning for the transition from conflict to postconflict.38 The secretary general limited it to
improving United Nations planning for sustained recovery.39 By the summit, it was limited to
advis[ing] on and propos[ing] integrated strategies.40 The Peacebuilding Support Office, meanwhile,
did not receive the requested twenty new staff members or any new responsibilities beyond assisting
and supporting the commission by drawing on existing resources within the Secretariat. 41

The General Assembly formally established the Peacebuilding Commission on December 30, 2005.
Described as an intergovernmental advisory body, its standing members comprise seven members
of the Security Council (ambiguously described as including permanent members), seven members
of ECOSOC, five of the top providers of assessed and voluntary contributions, five of the top troop
contributors, and a further seven elected by the General Assembly for regional balance. 42 Selection of
these members was predictably politicized: in particular, the permanent members of the Security
Council ensured their membership, joined by Denmark and Tanzania. The seven ECOSOC members
were Angola, Belgium, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Poland, and Sri Lanka; those from the top
financial contributors to the United Nations were Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and
Norway; those from the top military contributors were Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Nigeria, and
Pakistan. The seven members elected by the General Assembly were Burundi (which soon became a
focus of the commissions attention, together with Sierra Leone), Chile, Croatia, Egypt, El Salvador,
Fiji, and Jamaica.

Far from being a new Trusteeship Council, then, the Peacebuilding Commission began to look more
like a standing pledging conference, one of the most important forms of coordination for donors that
currently exists.43 If it can succeed in sustaining attention on a postconflict situation beyond the
current limits of foreign policy attention deficit disorder, the commission will have achieved a great
deal. It is less clear that this additional layer of coordination will assist in how these new resources are
spent.44

Problems of coordination tend to arise at three levels: (1) the strategic level (for example, the final
status of Kosovo), (2) the operational level (for example, competing donor agencies in Bosnia), and (3)
the national level (for example, getting international actors to sign onto a national development
framework in Afghanistan). The problem with the Peacebuilding Commission proposal is that its
establishment under the Security Council (or the ECOSOC) may see it fall somewhere between (1) and
(2)lacking the authority to challenge the Security Council in New York and lacking a field presence
to ensure operational cohesion on the ground. Much will, of course, depend on how the commission
functions. If it acts as an operational body that can bring key stakeholdersimportantly, including the
international financial institutions, troop contributors, (p.134) donor governments, and national
representativesonto the same page in terms of the security, humanitarian, political, and economic
priorities and sequencing for a territory, it may avoid the wasted resources seen in previous
operations. At the very least, if it can force the United Nations to speak with one voice on postconflict
reconstructionrather than being represented variously by the departments and specialized
agenciesit will have achieved a significant improvement. The key component is some body that is
able to speak truth to power: unless the commission (or the Peacebuilding Support Office) is able to
advise the Security Council against dysfunctional mandates or unrealistic strategies, it will not fulfill
its lofty aspirations.
If it is to be successful, two additional coordination dynamics need to be addressed. The first is the
problem of coordination across time. This embraces both the conflicting timetables of internationals
(diminishing interest and thus reduced resources after eighteen to twenty-four months) and locals
(increasing absorptive capacity and the ability to use resources most productively only after the crisis
period has passed), as well as the tension between demands for quick impact and gap-filling projects
versus the development of sustainable institutions. The second coordination dynamic is the
emergence of local actors as an independent political force. Consultation through an instrument such
as the Peacebuilding Commission may be helpful, but not if it complicates the more important
consultative mechanisms on the ground that manage day-to-day political life in the postconflict
territory. The most important aspect of this second dynamic is, once again, clarity: clarity about who is
in charge at any given time, and also clarity about who will be in charge once the attention of the
international community moves on. This points to the importance of a strategic framework within
which both international and national actors see their responsibilities as complementary rather than
sequential.

Evaluation and Exit Strategies

In his April 2001 report on the closure or transition of complex peacekeeping operations, UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that the embarrassing withdrawal of peacekeepers from
Somalia should not be repeated in future operations. The report was called No Exit without a
Strategy.45 For the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, elections provided the basis for
transfer of power to local authorities; they also set in place political processes that would last well
beyond the mission and the development assistance that followed. In Kosovo, where the UN operation
was determinedly called an interim administration, the absence of an agreed end-state has left the
territory in political limbo. Reflection on the absence of an exit strategy from Kosovo, following on the
apparently endless operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina,led some ambassadors to the Security
Council to turn the secretary generals phrase on its head: no strategy, the rallying cry went,
without an exit.

East Timor presents two contradictory stories in the history of UN peace operations. On one hand, it is
presented as an outstanding success. In two and a half years, a territory that had been reduced to
ashes after the 1999 referendum (p.135) on independence held peaceful elections and celebrated
independence. On the other hand, however, East Timor can be seen as a series of missed opportunities
and waste. Of the UN Transitional Administrations annual budget of over $500 million, around one-
tenth actually reached the East Timorese. At one point, $27 million was spent annually on bottled
water for the international staffapproximately half the budget of the embryonic Timorese
government, and money that might have paid for water purification plants to serve both international
staff and locals well beyond the life of the mission. More could have been done or done earlier to
reconstruct public facilities. This did not happen in part because of budgetary restrictions on UN
peacekeeping operations that, to the Timorese, were not just absurd but insulting. Such problems
were compounded by coordination failures, the displacement of local initiatives by bilateral donor
activities, and the lack of any significant private sector investment. When East Timor (now Timor-
Leste) became independent, it did so with the dubious honor of becoming the poorest country in
Asia.46 The outbreak of fighting in May 2006 proved to many that warnings of an unduly abrupt
withdrawal were well founded.47
Evaluations of the UN operation in Cambodia (19921993) varied considerably in the course of the
mission and have continued to do so with the benefit of hindsight. Prior to the 1993 election,
prophecies of doom were widespread, with questions raised about the capacity of the United Nations
to complete a large military and administrative operation.48 Immediately after the election was held
with minimal violence, Cambodia was embraced as a success and a model for such future
tasks.49Subsequent events suggested that these initially positive evaluations were premature. Many
commentators outside the United Nations now regard the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia
(UNTAC) as a partial failure, pointing to the departure from democratic norms in the 1997 coup.
Within the United Nations, UNTAC continues to be regarded as a partial success. The important
variable is how one views the political context within which UNTAC operated. If the purpose of the
mission was to transform Cambodia into a multiparty liberal democracy in eighteen months, it clearly
did not succeed. If, however, one takes the view that Hun Senwho had led Cambodia from 1979 and
later seized power from his coalition partners in a coup four years after the 1993 electionswas always
going to be the dominant political force in Cambodia, and that the purpose of the mission was to
mollify the exercise of that power by introducing the language of human rights to Cambodian civil
society, fostering the establishment of a relatively free press, and taking steps in the direction of a
democratic basis for legitimate government, the mission was indeed a partial success.

Two lessons were (or should have been) learned in Cambodia. The first was to underscore the fragility
of complex peace operations. Even though UNTAC was, at the time, the largest and most expensive
operation in UN history, it still faced enormous difficulties in bringing about a fundamental change in
the psyche of the country. Without peace and security, and without the rule of law, democratic
processes may be unsustainable in themselves. Providing these foundations, if it was possible at all,
would have required a more sustained (p.136) commitment to remaining in Cambodia after the
elections. The counterfactual is speculative because there was no willingness before or after the vote
for UNTAC to remain beyond the completion of its mandate.
Second, the aftermath of the UN engagement in Cambodiathe 1997 coup, the flawed elections in
1998began to raise questions about the relative importance of democracy. Though it may not be
directly traceable to Cambodia, a shift began to occur in the rhetoric that saw good governance
sometimes replace democracy in the peacebuilding and development jargon.50

Clarity about the objectives of an operation, then, may be helpfuleven if it requires a retreat from the
rhetoric that justifies the expenditure of resources for a peace effort. Often it will not be possible (even
if it were desirable) to transform a country over the course of eighteen months into, say, Canada.
Instead, perhaps the most that can be hoped for is to create the conditions in which a vulnerable
population can start a conversation about what kind of country they want theirs to be.

Conclusion
In his book In My Fathers House, Kwame Anthony Appiah notes that the apparent ease of colonial
administration generated in some of the inheritors of postcolonial nations an illusion that control of
the state would allow them to pursue as easily their much more ambitious objectives. Once the state
was turned to the tasks of massive developments in infrastructure, however, it was shown wanting:
When the postcolonial rulers inherited the apparatus of the colonial state, they inherited the reins of
power; few noticed, at first, that they were not attached to a bit.51
Given the fraught history of so many of the worlds states, it is not remarkable that some states suffer
basic crises in their capacity to protect and provide services for a populationon the contrary, it is
remarkable that more do not. As indicated in the introduction, discussion of such institutional crises
frequently suggests that, when a state fails, power is no longer exercised within the territory. In fact,
the control of power becomes more important than evereven though it may be exercised in an
incoherent fashion.

Engagement with such states requires, first and foremost, understanding the local dynamics of power.
The much-cited Weberian definition of the state as claimant to a monopoly of the legitimate use of
force is less a definition of what the state is than what it does. The legitimacy and sustainability of
local power structures depends, ultimately, on local actors. Certain policies can helpchanneling
political power through institutions rather than individuals, and through civilians rather than the
military; imposing term limits on heads of state and government; encouraging and regulating political
partiesbut their implementation depends on the capacity of local leaders to submit themselves to the
rule of law and local populations to hold their leaders to that standard.

For international actors, a troubling analogy is to compare engagement with weak states to previous
models of trusteeship and empire. Current efforts at state-building attemptat least in partto
reproduce the better effects of (p.137) empire (inward investment, pacification, and impartial
administration) without reproducing its worst features (repression, corruption, and confiscation of
local capacity). This is not to suggest nostalgia for empire or that such policies should be resurrected.
Only two generations ago, one-third of the worlds population lived in territory considered nonself-
governing; the end of colonialism was one of the most significant transformations in the international
order since the emergence of sovereign states. The analogy may be helpful if it suggests that a realistic
assessment of power is necessary to formulate effective policies rather than effective rhetoric.
States cannot be made to work from the outside. International assistance may be necessary, but it is
never sufficient to establish institutions that are legitimate and sustainable. This is not an excuse for
inaction, if only to minimize the humanitarian consequences of a states incapacity to care for its
vulnerable population. Beyond that, however, international action should be seen as part of a process
complementary to the creation of local processes, providing resources and creating the space for local
actors to start a conversation that will define and consolidate their polity by mediating their vision of a
good life into responsive, robust, and resilient institutions. Strategic peacebuilding, if it means
anything, recognizes this complementarity and the need for policies and practices that see national
and international processes not as competing and sequential but as interdependent and overlapping.

Notes

Notes:
(1) . Supplement to An Agenda for Peace: Position Paper of the Secretary-General on the Occasion of
the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, UN Doc A/50/60-S/1995/1, 3 January 1995, available
at http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agsupp.html, paras. 1314.

(2) . Michael Rose, The Bosnia Experience, in Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain: The United

Nations at Fifty, ed. Ramesh Thakur (New York: St. Martins Press, 1998).

(3) . See generally Chesterman, You, the People.

(4) . Massimo DAzeglio famously expressed the difference in the context of post-Risorgimento Italy:
We have made Italy, he declared. Now we must make Italians. On the creation of states generally,
see James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979)

. On nation-building, see, e.g., Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the

Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983) ; Ranajit Guha, ed., A Subaltern

Studies Reader, 19861995 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) ; Jim

MacLaughlin, Reimagining the Nation-State: The Contested Terrains of Nation-Building (London:

Pluto Press, 2001).

(5) . 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 January 31, 1992, UN Doc A/47/277-S/24111, June 17, 1992, available
athttp://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html, para. 55.

(6) . Supplement to An Agenda for Peace, para. 49. From a UN development perspective,
peacebuilding aims to build and enable durable peace and sustainable development in post-conflict
situations. See, e.g., Role of UNDP in Crisis and Post-Conflict Situations, Policy Paper Distributed
to the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme and of the United Nations
Population Fund, DP/2001/4, UNDP, New York, November 27, 2000, available
athttp://www.undp.org, para. 51. The Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) maintains that peacebuilding and reconciliation
focuses on long-term support to, and establishment of, viable political and socio-economic and
cultural institutions capable of addressing the root causes of conflicts, as well as other initiatives
aimed at creating the necessary conditions for sustained peace and stability: OECD, Helping Prevent

Violent Conflict, Development Assistance Committee Guidelines (Paris: OECD, 2001) , available
at http://www.oecd.org, 86.

(7) . Elizabeth M. Cousens, Introduction, in Peacebuilding as Politics, eds. Elizabeth M. Cousens

and Chetan Kumar, A Project of the International Peace Academy (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner,

2001), 510.

(8) . See Strengthening of the United Nations: An Agenda for Further Change, UN Doc A/57/150,
September 9, 2002, para. 126: To strengthen further the Secretariats work in international peace and
security, there is a need to bring a sharper definition to the existing lead department policy, which sets
out the relationship between the Department of Political Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping
Operations. The Department of Political Affairs will increase its focus in the fields of preventive
diplomacy, conflict prevention and peacemaking. The Department will also intensify its engagement
in policy formulation across the full spectrum of the Secretariats tasks in the domain of international
peace and security. It will continue to be the lead department for political and peace-building offices
in the field. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations will be the lead department for the planning
and management of all peace and security operations in the field, including those in which the
majority of personnel are civilians.

(9) . GA Res 60/180 (2005), para. 2(a).

(10) . See, e.g., Richard Caplan, International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Rule and

Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) ; Roland Paris, At Wars End: Building

Peace after Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

(11) . See further Simon Chesterman, Ownership in Theory and in Practice: Transfer of Authority in

UN State-Building Operations, Journal of Intervention and State-Building 1, no. 1 (2007).

(12) . Nicholas Wood, Serbs Criticize UN Mediator, Further Bogging Down Kosovo Talks, New York

Times, September 2, 2006.

(13) . International Crisis Group, Bosnia: Reshaping the International Machinery

(Sarajevo/Brussels, November 29, 2001), available at http://www.crisisgroup.org, 13.

(14) . See further Chesterman, Ownership.

(15) . Michael W. Doyle, War-Making and Peace-Making: The United Nations Post-Cold War
Record, in Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, eds. Chester A.
Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press,

2001), 546.

(16) . Eric Schmitt, Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Forces Size, New York Times,

February 28, 2003.

(17) . UN envoy James Baker is said to have been asked once by Polisario representatives why the
United Nations was treating Western Sahara differently from East Timor. He replied to the effect that
if the Sahrawis wanted to be treated like the Timorese, they had best go find themselves an Australia
to lead a military action on their behalf.

(18) . Paul Krugman, The Martial Plan, New York Times, February 21, 2003 ; James G. Lakely,
Levin Criticizes Budget for Afghanistan; Says White House Isnt Devoting Enough to

Rebuilding, Washington Times, February 26, 2003 . Aid was later increased further:David
Rohde, US Said to Plan Bigger Afghan Effort, Stepping Up Aid, New York Times, August 25, 2003.

(19) . See, e.g., International Crisis Group, Bosnias Precarious Economy: Still Not Open for Business
(Sarajevo/Brussels, August 7, 2001), available at http://www.crisisgroup.org.

(20) . Scott Shane and Raymond Bonner, Annan Nudges Donors to Make Good on Full

Pledges, New York Times, January 7, 2005.

(21) . Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994
Genocide in Rwanda, UN Doc S/1999/1257, December 15, 1999, available
athttp://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=S/ 1999/1257, 51; Report of the Panel on United
Nations Peace Operations (Brahimi Report), UN Doc A/55/305-S/2000/809, August 21, 2000,
available at http://www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations, para. 62.

(22) . Brahimi Report, para. 59.

(23) . International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to

Protect(Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, December 2001) , available

athttp://www.iciss.ca, paras. 2.32, 5.15.6.

(24) . See James Dobbins et al., Americas Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa

Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2003), 160166.

(25) . See generally Shepard Forman and Stewart Patrick, eds., Good Intentions: Pledges of Aid for

Postconflict Recovery (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

(26) . Brahimi Report, paras. 983.

(27) . See note 5.

(28) . Achieving the Health Millennium Development Goals in Fragile States, High-Level Forum on
the Health MDGs, Abuja December 2004, available
athttp://www.hlfhealthmdgs.org/Documents/FragileStates.pdf, 21.

(29) . A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges, and Change, UN Doc A/59/565, December 1, 2004, available
athttp://www.un.org/secureworld, para. 38.

(30) . Ibid., paras. 261265.

(31) . Ibid., paras. 264265.

(32) . Ibid., paras. 266267.

(33) . In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security, and Human Rights for All, UN Doc
A/59/2005, March 21, 2005, available at http://www.un.org/largerfreedom, para. 115.

(34) . Ibid., para. 115.

(35) . 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, UN Doc A/RES/60/1, September 16, 2005,
available at http://www.un.org/summit 2005, para. 98.

(36) . High-Level Panel Report, paras. 98, 293294.

(37) . World Summit Outcome Document, paras. 56(f), 138.

(38) . High-Level Panel Report, para. 264.

(39) . In Larger Freedom, para. 115.

(40) . World Summit Outcome Document, para. 98.

(41) . Ibid., para. 104.

(42) . GA Res 60/180 (December 30, 2005), paras. 1, 4.

(43) . Stewart Patrick, The Donor Community and the Challenge of Postconflict Recovery, in Good
Intentions: Pledges of Aid for Postconflict Recovery, eds. Shepard Forman and Stewart Patrick

(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 4041 . In the absence of funds that can be disbursed
quickly to a recovery process, significant external resources typically arrive only after such a
conference, which brings donor states, UN agencies, and the international financial institutions
together with local representatives to evaluate proposed reconstruction plans. The relative
transparency of these meetings reduces the temptation of donors to free ride on the efforts of others.
More subtly, by involving disparate actors in providing support for postconflict recovery as a form of
public good, the pledging conference encourages the notion of a donor community, bound by certain
ethical obligations toward the recovering state. Pledging conferences also enable donors to shape and
publicize recovery plans jointly, which may increase domestic support for foreign assistance as part of
an international effort. For recipients, pledging conferences offer the opportunity to focus the minds
of donors on a crisis and gain public assurances that some of their needs will be met. While these
aspects are positive, pledging conferences often bear the trappings of political theater. Donors may
make grand gestures that in reality double-count resources previously committed to a country or that
cannot be delivered promptly. In addition, mediating different donor interests through a conference
does not remove the problems caused by the inconsistency of those interests. Donors continue to
avoid controversial areas like security sector reform, preferring to fund items that will gain
recognition and prestige. Finally, despite the public nature of the pledges made, there is no consistent
monitoring process to ensure that pledges are realistic and transparent.

(44) . See further Simon Chesterman, From State Failure to State Building: Problems and Prospects
of a United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, Journal of International Law and International

Relations2 (2006).

(45) . No Exit Without Strategy: Security Council Decision-Making and the Closure or Transition of
United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, Report of the Secretary General, UN Doc S/2001/394,
April 20, 2001.

(46) . Getting Ready for Statehood, Economist (London), April 13, 2002.

(47) . UN Prepares to Start a New Peacekeeping Mission in East Timor, New York Times, June 14,
2006.

(48) . See, e.g., William Branigin, UN Performance at Issue as Cambodian Vote Nears, Washington

Post, May 20, 1993.

(49) . A UN Success in Cambodia, Washington Post, June 18, 1993.

(50) . Good governance was an intentionally vague term that spoke less to the formal structures of
government than how a state is governed. The term governance itself emerged within the
development discourse in the 1990s as a means of expanding the prescriptions of donors to embrace
not only projects and structural adjustment but government policies. Though intergovernmental
organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are technically constrained
from referring to political processes as such, governance provides a convenient euphemism for
precisely that. See, e.g., Goran Hyden, Governance and the Reconstitution of Political Order,
in State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa, ed. Richard Joseph (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner,

1999).

(51) . Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Fathers House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1992), 266.

How Strategic Is UN Peacebuilding?

Nicholas Sambanis (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter analyzes results from a quantitative study on UN peacekeeping (Doyle and Sambanis) to
assess the extent to which UN peacekeeping operations are strategic. Although UN missions are
important for achieving self-sustaining or participatory peace in the short-term, they fail to
positively influence long-term war avoidance. Sambanis argues that the type of UN mission deployed
often fails to correspond to the peacebuilding ecology of the conflict. In order for UN operations to
become strategic, they must consider the relationship between three key factors in a post-war
environment: the depth of hostilities, local capacity for peacebuilding, and resulting requirements for
international assistance. Along with these three dimensionsthe peacebuilding triangleSambanis
argues that UN interventions must increase their capacity to promote rapid economic growth if they
are to achieve sustainable peace.

Keywords: UN peacekeeping, UN peace operations, peacebuilding, strategic peacebuilding, post-war reconstruction

Today United Nations peacekeeping is the multidimensional management of a complex peace

operation, usually following the termination of a civil war, designed to provide interim security and
assist parties to make those institutional, material, and ideational transformations that are essential to
make peace sustainable. That is a new role for the UN. UN peace operations during the Cold War were
more limited and focused on monitoring or policing the adherence to a truce by hostile parties.

This new, expanded role for the UN represents an effort to respond to complex new challenges to
international security that emerged since the end of the Cold War. An explosion of new internal armed
conflicts led to a similar explosion in UN peacekeeping missions in the mid-1990s. The new
perspective on how to build sustainable peace after civil war is embodied in two landmark reports
the Brahimi and No Exit without Strategy Reports of 2000 and 2001, which built on Secretary
General Boutros Boutros-Ghalis 1992 report Agenda for Peace and its 1995 Supplement. Although
the UN has been generally effective in its new role, important and highly publicized failures have
generated policy debates on how to improve their peacebuilding capacity.

This chapter engages with those policy debates by considering whether the UN peace missions are
sufficiently strategic. Strategic peacebuilding is a concept best described by a set of complementary
practices that are all aimed at achieving self-sustaining peace. Strategy is necessary because the
desired goals of multidimensional peace operations are complex and extend beyond achieving the
absence of armed conflict. Strategic peacebuilding involves a blend of several intervention practices,
including mediation, observation, policing, (p.142) tactical enforcement, conflict resolution,
humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, and institutional transformationall helping create
sustainable peace.
Much criticism of UN peace missions is based on a claim that peacebuilding goals are not sufficiently
adaptive to local contexts and interventions by different actors sometimes have conflicting effects.
Strategic peacebuilding should address those issues. Different intervention practices are
interdependent in complex ways. Whereas one form of intervention may help shore up the
foundations for another intervention strategy, the two together may work better, or in some cases,
they may work well only if they are properly sequenced. Appropriate standards of peacebuilding
success may also vary by context and the proximity to the war. If the goal of peacebuilding
intervention is social justice and political inclusion, then best practices will be different than in cases
where the goal of peacebuilding intervention is simply the absence of war.

For any conflict situation, sustainable peace is the best measure of successful peacekeeping.
Successful and unsuccessful efforts to achieve that measure are influenced by three key factors that
characterize the environment of the postwar civil peace: the degree of hostility of the factions, the
extent of local capacities remaining after the war, and the amount of international assistance
provided. Together, these three constitute the interdependent logic of a peacebuilding triangle: the
deeper the hostility, the more the destruction of local capacities, the more you need international
assistance to succeed in establishing a stable peace. This chapter explains how each of those
dimensions affects the nature of the postwar challenge and highlights the need to foster fast return to
economic growth in postconflict societies to generate private incentives for peace.

The UN is not good at fighting wars, and the effects of UN peace missions are felt more with respect to
what we might call participatory peacea peace that includes not only the absence of war but also
restoration of the states sovereignty over all of its territory and some degree of political openness.
Resolving problems of divided sovereignty is an essential part of state-building that the UN or other
peacebuilding actors cannot afford to ignore. UN missions can have positive and lasting effects by
keeping the peace in the early stages of the peace process, when risks of a return to war are greatest.
They can also have lasting effects if they help set the foundations for political institutions that sustain
the peace in the long run. Over time, however, economic growth and development are the critical
determinants of a low risk of return to civil war. The peacebuilding literature has not yet identified
lessons or best practices to facilitate a closer connection between UN peacekeeping and strategies for
postwar economic reconstruction and development. I address this issue by establishing the
importance of postwar economic growth for sustainable peace and by considering some of the
complexities that arise in trying to coordinate peacebuilding strategies.

Evolving Standards of Peace Interventions

In the early 1990s with the end of the Cold War, the UN agenda for peace and security rapidly
expanded. At the request of the Security Council Summit of (p.143) January 1992, Secretary General
Boutros-Ghali prepared the conceptual foundations of an ambitious UN role in peace and security in
his seminal report, An Agenda for Peace.1 In addition to preventive diplomacy designed to head off
conflicts before they became violent, the secretary general outlined the four interconnected roles that
he hoped the UN would play in the postCold War international politics: peace enforcement,
peacemaking, peacekeeping, and postconflict reconstruction.2 Together, these strategies would offer
the muscle, diplomacy, and technical expertise necessary for rebuilding peace after civil war.
An Agenda for Peace was the culmination of an evolution of UN doctrine and suggests a role for the
organization that is very different from the one initially envisaged in first-generation peacekeeping,
where blue helmets would simply be interposed between forces after a truce had been reached and the
UNs role was designed more to contain conflicts from spreading to other countries than to transform
societies so that new conflicts within those societies would be less likely to occur. 3

The best peacekeeping practices of impartiality and neutrality were developed with the old model in
mind, and new, more flexible ways of interacting with the parties became necessary as peacebuilding
roles evolved. Impartiality and neutrality are frequently used interchangeably. Scholars and
practitioners often speak of peacekeepers as neutral, disinterested, impartial, or unbiased; they
tend to mistake the need for impartiality with a policy of strict neutrality and a disposition of
passivity. Neutrality should instead be defined as a synonym for noninterference with respect to
peacekeeping outcomes and impartiality as equal enforcement of unbiased rules. It is as important
for peacekeepers to be impartial concerning, for example, which party in a freely conducted
democratic election wins the election as it is for them to be nonneutral (i.e., not passive) with respect
to violations of the peace and obstructions to their ability to implement their mandate.

This is closely related to the interpretation of another key principle of UN peacekeepingthe nonuse
of force. Peacekeeping uses soldiers not to win wars but to preserve the peace. Peacekeepers must also
be able to protect their right to discharge their functions, in accordance with the spirit of the parties
initial consent. Emphatic avoidance of the use of force can only limit the peacekeepers impact on the
ground. But use of force must be limited to protect a mandate authorized by a peace treaty or ceasefire
(as happened in Cyprus in 1974, or Namibia in 1989). If peacekeepers find that their role is turning to
war-fighting, then the limits of UN involvement have likely been reached, and the peacekeepers must
withdraw.

Beyond monitoring and interposition of forces, the key strategy of UN missions today is to foster
economic and social cooperation with the purpose of building confidence among previously warring
parties. The UN can do this by helping develop the social, political, and economic infrastructure that is
necessary to prevent future violence. This multidimensional peacekeeping is aimed at capacities
expansion (mainly through economic reconstruction) and institutional transformation (for example,
reform of the police, army, and judicial system, elections, civil society rebuilding).

(p.144) The UN has a commendable record of success, ranging from mixed to transformative, in
multidimensional peace operations as diverse as those in Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia,
Mozambique, and Eastern Slavonia.4 The UN role in helping settle those conflicts has been fourfold. It
served as a peacemaker, facilitating a peace treaty among the parties; as a peacekeeper, monitoring
the cantonment and demobilization of military forces, resettling refugees, and supervising transitional
civilian authorities; as a peacebuilder, monitoring and in some cases organizing the implementation of
human rights, national democratic elections, and economic rehabilitation; and in a very limited way as
peace enforcer when the agreements came unstuck.
The rationale behind these operations is that the roots of the conflict must be addressed to build
foundations for stable, legitimate government. This is not the only way to peace, however. A lesson
learnedor at least suggested by recent literature on civil war is that large-scale armed conflict can
be prevented effectively by boosting the governments counterinsurgency capacity. 5 If rebellion is not
feasible, then peace can be achieved. Possibly the cost to such a strategy is the perpetuation of
repressive regimes, and this understanding of peace is antithetical to the standards currently used by
the United Nations and other international agencies involved in peacebuilding.

What Constitutes a Peacebuilding Success?

Peace can be thought of as a continuum, ranging from no peace (war) to negative peace (absence of
war) to social harmony.6 Social harmony is an elusive goal for most societies. What standard of peace
should be the goal for societies emerging from civil war? Michael Doyle and I in our joint work have
argued that negative peace does not reflect what is needed for peace to be self-sustaining in troubled
societies. Rather, we propose a standard of participatory peace that combines the absence of war with
an end to lower level violence and mass human rights violations, restoration of sovereignty of the
state, and a modest standard of political openness.7

By this definition, peacebuilding success is not very common. In the post-1945 period, there have been
eighty-four failures and thirty-seven successes of participatory peace two years after the end of a civil
war.

Participatory peace is meaningful if it can be sustained after the peacekeepers leave. This corresponds
with extensive discussions in the United Nations Security Council in which sustainable peace was
proposed as the ultimate purpose of all peace operations, and sustainability was defined as the
capacity for a sovereign state to resolve the natural conflicts to which all societies are prone by means
other than war (S/2001/394). Peace-building, the report noted, is an attempt, after a peace has
been negotiated or imposed, to address the sources of present hostility and build local capacities for
conflict resolution. Thus, for example, few observers think that peace has been successfully built in
Kosovo today, even though Kosovo is not at war. NATO forces militarily separate the resident
Kosovars and (p.145) Serbs and deter both a potential attack from Belgrade to reunify the breakaway
province and a potential declaration of formal independence by the Kosovars.
How Can Participatory Peace Be Achieved?
In Making War and Building Peace, Michael Doyle and I evaluate the conditions under which
participatory peace can be attained in the short termtwo to five years after the end of a civil war. We
propose a simple model in which peacebuilding outcomes are shaped by three dimensionslocal
capacities, postwar hostility, and international capacities. The deeper the hostility and the lower the
local capacities for peace, the easier it is for war to resume and the more extensive the need for
international capacities for peace. To test our model empirically, we use a number of measures for
these three dimensions, drawing on common sense and the literature on civil war for possible
measures.

Hostility is measured by the number of deaths and displacements, the number of factions, the signing
of a peace treaty, the type of war (distinguishing ethnoreligious wars from all others), the level of
ethnic fractionalization, and war duration.8 Ethnoreligious wars, high ethnic fractionalization,
absence of a peace treaty, many factions, long wars, and high numbers of deaths and displacements
should all make peacebuilding harder.

We measure local capacities with country-level indicators of socioeconomic development, such as

electricity consumption per capita, real per capita income, and the annual rate of change in real per
capita income.9 Higher levels of economic development should increase the likelihood of
peacebuilding success because they provide private incentives for people to keep the peace. We also
measure the degree of an economys dependence on natural resources. Heavy reliance on natural
resources reduces the likelihood of peacebuilding success because it makes the economy more
susceptible to external price shocks and because resource-rich economies have been associated with
corrupt political institutions.10 Local capacities are measures of institutional quality and of the
economic opportunity costs of returning to war: higher capacities imply higher opportunity costs and
better institutions, hence, a better chance of building peace.

The most important measure of international capacities for our study is the presence and mandate of
UN peace operations. Mandates measure the missions strength, its technical and military capabilities,
and the level of international commitment. Mandates are classified into observer missions (in which
civilian officials or military officers monitor a truce or treaty), traditional peacekeeping (in which
formed military units monitor a truce or treaty), multidimensional peacekeeping (in which a peace
treaty authorizes international civilian officials and military units to help build or rebuild political,
economic, and social institutions), and enforcement missions with or without transitional
administration (in which, in the absence of consent, international military forces intervene to impose
peace). We can also capture all UN missions with (p.146) a binary variable denoting any UN
intervention and also separate facilitative missions that basically offer monitoring and reporting
(observer and traditional peacekeeping operations [PKOs]) from transformational UN missions that
have a more intrusive mandate (multidimensional and enforcement). Another distinction could be
between consent-based missions authorized under Chapter VI of the UN Charter and enforcement
missions.
Another obvious measure of international capacities is foreign economic assistance. Measuring the
amount of economic assistance available to all countries from all sources (bilateral, nongovernmental
organization [NGO], multilateral) is too difficult, so we use instead the amount of net current
transfers per capita to the balance of payments of the country.

The results for the short-term participatory peace model are presented in detail elsewhere (see Doyle
and Sambanis, 2006). Briefly, the data lend support to the model, and we find evidence for the
expected relationships between participatory peace and the explanatory variables mentioned, though
not all results are equally robust. Table 6.1 summarizes those results by presenting estimates of
changes to the probability of success in participatory peace in the short run as a result of changes in
each of the explanatory variables in the model. Table 6.1 gives a sense of the relative importance of
each explanatory variable. The one result we found to be very robust is that UN missions are
extremely important for participatory peacebuilding in the short run.

Table 6.1. Estimates of Changes to the Probability of Peacebuilding Success Two Years after the End of
the War in the Doyle-Sambanis Model of Participatory Peace as a Result of Changes to the
Explanatory Variables

The importance of the UN diminishes as we turn to narrower concepts of peacebuilding, such as the
absence of war. I present some of these results in a later section, where I also turn to the longer term
effects of UN missions. First, I return to the question of whether UN missions are sufficiently
strategic.

(p.147) Strategic Peacekeeping

The extent to which root causes can be addressed adequately depends on available resources and on
the design of an appropriate mandate. Does the UN have the capacity, internal coherence, and
resources needed to field sufficiently strategic peacekeeping missions?

The first concern of strategic peacekeeping is to properly identify the type of conflict underlying the
civil war so as to design appropriate intervention strategies. Political scientists have explored a wide
range of theories about why and how parties enter into and resolve various kinds of conflicts. At the
more abstract level, neoliberal theories explore conflicts among rational actors over absolute goods
valued for their own sakes. Neorealists examine conflicts among rational actors that raise issues of
security and relative gains, based on the assumption that relative power (dominance) alone provides
security and therefore the gains that truly matter. Constructivists relax the assumption that
perceived identities and interests are fixed and explore the circumstances in which conflicts and social
relations more generally constitute and then reshape identities and interests. 11 Aspects of each of these
factors can be found in the peacekeeping record that Doyle and I examined in our joint research.
Factions and their leaders seek absolute advantages as well as relative advantages. Sometimes,
international actors assist the peace process by eliminating old actors (war criminals, factional
armies), introducing new actors (domestic voters, political parties, international monitors, NGOs),
fostering changes of identity (reconciliation), or by all three methods together. A more informative
analytic lens portrays the peace process through two classic game situations, coordination and
cooperation, each of which incorporates neoliberal, neorealist and constructivist dynamics.

Thus, to simplify, conflicts can be over coordination or cooperation, depending on the structure of the
parties preferences over possible outcomes of the negotiations. Each preference structure
characterizes a specific type of conflict, and different intervention strategies are optimal for different
conflict types. Some conflicts are mixed, reflecting elements of both, and conflicts do change over
time, evolving from one to the other and sometimes back again.12 Well-chosen strategies can maximize
the available space for peace, whereas strategies that are poorly matched to the conflict at a particular
time can reduce the space for peace.

Basic game theory has clearly established that coordination problems have a payoff structure that
gives the parties no incentives to violate agreements.13 The best strategy to resolve coordination
problems is information provision and improvement of the level of communication between the
parties.14 Communication gives the parties the ability to form common conjectures about the likely
outcomes of their actions.15 By contrast, cooperation problems create incentives to renege on
agreements, particularly if the parties discount the benefits of long-term cooperation in favor of short-
run gain. In one-shot games of cooperation (of which the prisoners dilemma is a well-known
example), the (p.148) parties will try to trick their adversaries into cooperating while they renege on
their promises. These structural differences between cooperation and coordination problems imply
that different peacekeeping strategies should be used in each case.
Figure 6.1 suggests that different strategies are needed to resolve different types of problems.
Transformational peacekeeping or enforcement with considerable international authority are needed
to resolve cooperation problems, whereas facilitative peacekeeping, such as monitoring and
interposition of troops are sufficient to resolve coordination problems. Facilitative peacekeeping has
no enforcement or deterrence function. Transformational peacekeeping can increase the costs of
noncooperation for the parties and provide positive inducements by helping rebuild the country and
restructure institutions so that they can support the peace. Enforcement may be necessary to resolve
the toughest cooperation problems.16 Not all civil war transitions are plagued by cooperation
problems. Some wars resemble coordination issues, whereas frequently, we find both types of
problems, in which case intervention strategies must be carefully combined or sequenced.

Figure 6.1. Matching Problem Type and Strategy Type.

How can peacekeeping have an impact? The literature suggests that peacekeepers can change the
costs and benefits of cooperation by virtue of the legitimacy of their UN mandate, which induces the
parties to cooperate; by their ability to focus international attention on noncooperative parties and
condemn transgressions; by monitoring and reporting on the parties compliance with agreements;
and by their function as a trip-wire that would force aggressors to go through the UN troops to change
the military status quo.

Ultimate success, however, may depend less on changing incentives for existing parties within their
preferences and more on transforming preferences and even the parties themselvesand thus
turning a cooperation problem into a coordination problem. The institution-building aspects of
peacekeeping are therefore a revolutionary transformation in which voters and politicians replace
soldiers and generals; armies become parties; war economies become peace economies.
Reconciliation, when achieved, is a label for these changed preferences and capacities.17

(p.149) To be sure, the difficulty of a transformative strategy cannot be overestimated. Most societies
even after war look a great deal like they did prewar. But, for example, if those that have committed
the worst war crimes can be prosecuted, locked up, and thus removed from power, the prospects of
peace rise. The various factions can begin to individualize rather than collectivize their distrust and
hostility, and at the minimum, the worst individuals are no longer in control. 18 Here, initiatives that
foster hybrid (local-national-international) institutions can have an important effect by engaging local
actors in the peacebuilding process and ensuring that reforms are not imposed top-down.19
Even where enforcement is used at the outset, the peace must eventually become self-sustaining.
Consensual peace agreements can rapidly erode, forcing all the parties to adjust to the strategies of
spoilers. Their success or lack of success of doing so tends to be decisive in whether a sustainable
peace follows.

How can the peacekeepers know what type of conflict they are facing? A first clue is the peace treaty. If
a treaty has been signed that outlines a postwar settlement, then the parties preferences have been
revealed to some extent (though the fact that some peace treaties are quickly undermined also means
that only by observing the parties compliance with the treaty can we be more certain about their true
preferences). Patterns of compliance with the treaty can help distinguish moderates from extremists.
In other cases, such knowledge cannot be attained until the first (or several) encounters with the
parties. Where a treaty is not in place, all parties can be assumed to be spoilers, and strong
peacekeeping must be used. Subsequent cooperation or conflict with the peacekeepers can help
distinguish those parties who respond to inducements from those who are committed to a strategy of
war. This also means that UN missions must be flexible to adjust their mandate given observations of
cooperation or conflict on the ground and based on the peacekeepers changing assessments about the
nature of the conflict.

A treaty is usually the outcome of a mutually hurting stalemate, which is a necessary (but not
sufficient) condition for successful peace.20 Such a stalemate exists when the status quo is not the
preferred option for any faction, while overturning the status quo through military action is unlikely to
be successful. This condition pushes parties to the negotiating table, and their declared preferences for
peace are more credible as a result of their inability to forcibly achieve a better outcome. 21

However, the parties will not negotiate a settlement unless peace is likely to generate higher rewards
than continued fighting. This condition becomes unattainable if spoilers are present. Spoilers are
leaders or parties whose vital interests are threatened by peace implementation.22 These parties will
undermine the agreement and reduce the expected utility of a negotiated settlement for all parties. In
terms of our previous arguments, the presence of spoilers implies the payoff structure of a prisoners
dilemma or assurance game because spoilers will not coordinate their strategies with moderates.
Thus, if spoilers are present in a peace process, peacekeepers can only keep the peace if they can
exercise some degree of enforcement by targeting the spoilers and (p.150) preventing them from
undermining the negotiations. The dynamics of spoiler problems deserve a closer look.
Spoiler problems were first systematically analyzed by Stephen Stedman, who identified three types
total, greedy, and limitedaccording to their strategies and likely impact on the peace implementation
process. These are behavioral types, and Stedman defines them in terms of their preferences over the
strategies they use to undermine the peace. However, all parties can act as total spoilers if conditions
deteriorate markedly. Parties whose ultimate goals over the outcomes of the peace are more moderate
will have incentives not to spoil the peace process if they can get a reasonable outcome. The difficulty
facing the peacekeepers is to distinguish moderates from extremists, or total spoilers, when conditions
are such as to encourage all parties to defect from agreements.

The principal gain of good UN peacekeeping will be to allow moderateslimited spoilers with specific
stakesand greedy opportunists to act like peacemakers in the peace process without fearing reprisals
from total spoilers, who are unalterably opposed to the peace settlement. Effective strategies must
combine consent from those willing to coordinate and cooperate with coercive carrots and sticks
directed at those who are not. The empirical record suggests that strategically combining
peacemaking, peacekeeping, reconstruction, and enforcement is a valuable way the UN and other
international organizations can help shore up the foundations of a lasting peace.

To have such a positive effect, getting the mandate right is critically important for any UN mission. It
is not sufficient for the UN to send large numbers of troops to the field, if those troops are not given
the rules of engagement and mandate to make peace. The number of peacekeeping troops alone is not
a good predictor of peacebuilding success.23 We show in our supplement that there is no statistically
significant difference in the number of peacekeeping troops per square kilometer in transformational
missions compared with facilitative missions. Thus, it is not the case that transformational
peacekeeping works better because there is more concentrated force.24 This also indicates that the
Security Council often underfunds and underresources transformational missions because they
should, on average, have more troops to deal with more difficult peacebuilding ecologies.

Moreover, the effects of peacekeeping troops per square kilometer on the probability of participatory
peace success are negative (though nonsignificant).25 This might seem jarring, but it is actually
consistent with our theory. A large troop deployment with a weak mandate is a sure sign of lack of
commitment by the Security Council and creates an impediment for effective intervention. This result
is influenced by one observationRwandawhere there was a large troop deployment (in per capita
terms) with no authority to intervene to stop the violence. Large numbers of troops per capita in
monitoring missions (observer missions and traditional PKOs) actually reduce the chance of
peacebuilding success (examples are Cyprus, Lebanon, Rwanda). Such deployments are inefficient
and potentially counterproductive. The large troop deployment with a narrow mandate in monitoring
operations indicates, on one hand, that (p.151) the Security Council recognizes the severity of the
conflict and, on the other hand, that it is unwilling or unable to give those troops an adequate mandate
to resolve the conflict. Thus, there is often a mismatch between the problem and the treatmentbetter
targeted mandates should improve the effectiveness of UN missions. There is room for improvement
in the design of strategic missions in the UN.
Related to this discussion is the empirical result, reported in Doyle and Sambanis (2006), that
observer missions have been more effective than traditional peacekeeping. Traditional peacekeeping
is used in cases that are not as ripe for resolution as those where the UN dispatches monitors to verify
the implementation of a peace agreement. But the effectiveness of observer missions is not enough to
suggest that the UN is good at detecting a coordination type of problem. Many of the cases where
traditional peacekeeping is used are too complex and the conflict remains unresolved. The mismatch
between the underlying peacebuilding ecology and the type of treatment in the cases where traditional
peacekeeping is used might suggest an inability to fully assess the factions preferences, or it might
indicate that in many cases there is just not sufficient political will to address difficult peacebuilding
challenges.

Indeed, if we look at the average levels of the explanatory variables in Doyle and Sambanis that have a
negative effect on the probability of peacebuilding success (ethnic war, deaths and displacements,
primary commodity exports), we see that they are higher in cases where traditional peacekeeping was
used as compared to cases where observer missions were used. By contrast, the averages of variables
that have a positive influence on peacebuilding (transfers and development level) are lower. Hence,
the cases where traditional peacekeeping was used were harder to resolve, but the type of UN
treatment was not much different. This could help explain the higher failure rate of traditional
peacekeeping.

At the same time, there is no clear evidence that the peacebuilding ecology is harder in cases where
transformational UN peacekeeping is used. On the one hand, transformational UN missions are sent
less frequently to ethnic wars, more frequently to cases where there is a peace treaty, and more
frequently to countries where primary commodity exports are a smaller percentage of the economy.
This might explain the higher success rate of those missions. On the other hand, transformational UN
peacekeeping is used more in cases with higher levels of deaths and displacements, more factions, and
much lower levels of economic development levels and net current transfers, all of which should lower
the probability of peacebuilding success. Thus, what we see is that the peacebuilding ecology does not
differ markedly in cases where facilitative as opposed to transformational peacekeeping is used, which
points to an absence of clear strategy in the design of UN peace missions.26

UN responses are not always well calibrated to peacebuilding challenges. The UN seems to respond
with the right mandate in those cases where it dispatches monitors and where it sends
transformational UN peacekeeping missions, but in some of the cases where it may be using the
wrong mix of resources and mandate, it dispatches traditional peacekeeping missions.
Or, (p.152) more plausibly, traditional peacekeeping in the context of civil wars is a stopgap measure,
sent to help contain or moderate but not cure a conflict. When the great powers and the Security
Council are not prepared to confront the true dimensions of a conflict and send an enforcement
mission, lightly armed peacekeepers are too often sent to places such as the former Yugoslavia where,
in the words of one UN official, there is no peace to keep.27
How Can the UN Be More Strategic?
Effective transitional strategy must take into account levels of hostility and factional capacities.
Whether it in fact does so depends on strategic design and international commitment. Designs for
transitions incorporate a mix of legal and bureaucratic capacities that integrate in a variety of ways
domestic and international commitments.

Important lessons can already be drawn from efforts to establish effective transitional
authority.28First, a holistic approach is necessary to deal with the character of factional conflicts and
civil wars. Successful exercises of authority require a coordinated approach that draws in elements of
peacemaking (negotiations), peacekeeping (monitoring), peacebuilding, reconstruction, and discrete
acts of enforcement, when needed, to create a holistic strategy of reconciliation. 29

Transitional strategies should first address the local causes of continuing conflict and, second, the
local capacities for change. Effective transitional authority is the residual dimension that compensates
for local deficiencies and the continuing hostility of the factionsthe (net) specific degree of
international commitment available to assist change.

Local root causes, domestic capacity, and effective transitional authority are three dimensions of a
triangle whose area is the political spaceor effective capacityfor building peace. This metaphor
suggests that some quantum of positive support is needed along each dimension but that the
dimensions also substitute for each othermore of one substitutes for less of another, less deeply
rooted causes of war substitute for weak local capacity or minor international commitment. In a world
where each dimension is finite, we can expect, first, that compromises will be necessary to achieve
peacekeeping; second, that the international role must be designed to fit each case; and, third, that
self-sustaining peace is not only the right aim, it is the practically necessary aim of building peace
when the international community is not prepared to commit to long-term assistance.

International peace operation mandates must take into account the characteristics of the factions and
whether the parties are prepared to coordinate or must be persuaded or coerced into cooperation.
These mandates operate not on stable states but, instead, on unstable factions. These factions (to
simplify) come in various dimensions of hostility. Hostility, in turn, is shaped by the number of
factions, including the recognized state as one (if there is one). Numerous factions make it difficult for
them to cooperate and engender (p.153) suspicion. In addition, few or many factions complicate both
coordination and cooperation. In addition, harm donecasualties and refugees generatedcreates the
resentment that makes jointly beneficial solutions to coordination and cooperation more difficult to
envisage. The more hostile and numerous the factions, the more difficult the peace process will be,
and the more international assistance/authority will be needed if peace is to be established.
In less hostile circumstances (with few factions, a hurting stalemate, or less harm done), international
monitoring and facilitation might be sufficient to establish transparent trust and self-enforcing peace.
Monitoring helps create transparency among partners lacking trust but having compatible incentives
favoring peace. Traditional peacekeeping assistance can also reduce trade-offs (for example, helping
fund and certify the cantonment, demobilization, and reintegration of former combatants). In these
circumstanceswith few players, some reconciliation, less damageinternational coordination and
assistance can be sufficient to overcome hostility and solve implementation problems. An
international peacekeeping presence itself can deter defections from the peace treaty, because of the
possible costs of violating international agreements and triggering further international involvement
in an otherwise domestic conflict. International capacity-buildingsuch as foreign aid, demobilization
of military forces, institutional reformwill assist parties that favor the peace to meet their
commitments.

In more hostile circumstances, international enforcement can help solve commitment and
cooperation problems by directly implementing or raising the costs of defection from peace
agreements. International enforcement and long-term trusteeship will be required to overcome deep
sources of distrust and powerful incentives to defect from agreed provisions of the peace. As in other
conflict-cooperation situations, such as prisoners dilemma and mixed motive games,30 the existence
of deeply hostile or many factions (or factions that lack coherent leadership) complicate the problem
of achieving self-enforcing cooperative peace. Instead, conscious direction and enforcement by an
impartial international agent to guarantee the functions of effective sovereignty become necessary,
and peacekeepers must include activities such as conducting free and fair elections, arresting war
criminals, and policing and administering a collapsed state. The more difficult it is for the factions to
cooperate, the greater the international authority and capacity the international peacekeepers must
wield. In addition to substantial bodies of troops, extensive budgets for political reconstruction and
substantial international authority need to be brought to bear because the parties are unlikely to trust
each other and cooperate. International mandates may need to run from monitoring to administration
to executive authority and full sovereign trusteeship like supervision if peace is going to be maintained
and become eventually self-sustaining.

War-torn countries also vary in economic and social capacity. Some started out with considerable
economic development (the former Yugoslavia) and retain levels of social capacity in an educated
population. Others began poor and the war impoverished them further (Angola, Sudan, Cambodia).
For both types of cases, reconstruction is vital; the more the social and economic devastation,
the (p.154)larger the multidimensional international role must become, whether consent-based
multidimensional peacekeeping or nonconsent enforcement followed by and including
multidimensional peacekeeping. International economic relief and productive jobs are the first signs
of peace that can persuade rival factions to truly disarm and take a chance on peaceful politics.
Institutions need to be rebuilt, including a unified army and police force and the even more
challenging development of a school system that can assist the reconciliation of future generations. In
countries with low levels of local capacities, competition over resources will be intense at the early
stages of the peace process, and this can further intensify the coordination and collaboration problems
that the peacekeepers will be asked to resolve.
There should therefore be a relation between the depth of hostility (harm and factions) and local
capacities (institutional and economic collapse), on one hand, and the extent of international
assistance and effective authority, from monitoring to enforcing, needed to build peace on the other
hand. In a world where each dimension is finite, we can expect, first, that compromises will be
necessary to achieve peacekeeping success and, second, that the international role will be significant
in general and successful when it is designed to fit the case. The extent of transitional authority that
needs to be delegated to the international community will be a function of the level of postwar
hostility and local capacities.

The relations among the three dimensions of this peacebuilding triangle are complicated. The
availability and prospect of international assistance and the existence of extensive local capacities, for
example, can, if poorly managed, both raise the gains from victory (spoils of war and rebuilding
assistance) and reduce the costs of fighting (as the assistance serves to sustain the fighting). Deep war-
related hostilities can also have dual effects. They increase rational incentives to end the conflict but
make peace harder to achieve.

Two Important Problems with Current Approaches to Peacebuilding

Recent policy debates on UN peacebuilding have highlighted two possible weaknesses in current
approaches. The first weakness has to do with the UNs promotion of democratic solutions to conflicts.
Multiparty democracy may work well in some contexts and poorly in others. The second weakness is
less about the goals and more about the operational implementation of peacebuilding interventions,
which are often poorly coordinated with other peacebuilding activities occurring alongside UN
intervention. I take up these issues briefly but do not resolve the debates, as there is inadequate
evidence for an adjudication of the different perspectives.

Too Much Emphasis on Democratization?

In recent years, the UNs capacity to organize and hold elections in postcivil war states has increased
dramatically, and political liberalization has been a (p.155) component of most multidimensional
missions. There is a lot of criticism of that approach in the literature, with most opposition
concentrating on the question of the timing of elections, arguing that elections should be held only
after political institutions have matured. There are several cases that illustrate the risks associated
with moving to multiparty democracy in countries with weak political institutions. Bruce Jones makes
a convincing argument that pressure to transition to multiparty democracy in Rwanda was one of the
key reasons behind conflict escalation and contributed to the genocide. Jack Snyder argues similarly
that multiparty transition in Burundi had negative effects by encouraging conflict among
warlords.31Roland Paris argues along the same lines that liberalizationeconomic or politicalmay be
too ambitious a standard for most states emerging from civil war and, if we were to use such an
ambitious standard, most UN peace missions would be judged to be failures. 32
Although the dangers highlighted by these studies seem well founded, there are few (if any)
alternatives that seem clearly more viable and less conflict-inducing than a strategy of promoting
elections. Most casual observers of the news from Iraq will remember the strong local opposition to
the delays in handing over sovereignty of that country to Iraqis after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Getting the people to vote peacefully and express their political voice is a peacebuilding goal and sign
of progress in its own right.33 Simply waiting will not necessarily create the political and civil
structures that critics of elections argue are necessary to avoid a hijacking of the political system by
warlords and spoilers. The same dangers that can undermine elections can also undermine any other
interim arrangement short of outright military occupation or the imposition of a repressive regime
that can quell opposition. Elections are clearly better at offering more legitimate local solutions than
interim governments that are controlled by outsiders.

Because democracy is usually seen as a relatively good long-term outcome in most cases, the question
then becomes how might a society ruled by decree transition smoothly to democracy, how long will
such a transition take, and at what cost? As far as I know, there are no satisfactory answers to these
questions in the literature. No empirical study to date has shown unequivocally that elections have a
negative causal effect on peace processes and that other political strategies that do not involve
elections have a clearly superior outcome. One theoretically interesting alternative articulated by
Michael Barnettencouraging deliberation to build what he calls a republican peaceseems to
suffer from the same problems as any democratization strategy because it assumes the willingness of
local actors to cooperate.34 One lesson that seems to be emerging from the literature is that
democratization is more likely to succeed if countries are integrated quickly in the international
system by, for example, becoming members of other multilateral and regional organizations that have
a high concentration of other democracies.35 Democratic norms and networks can flourish more easily
in such an environment.

(p.156) Lack of Coordination of Peacebuilding Activities?

An argument frequently seen in the literature is that fragmented approaches to peacebuilding
interventions by the international community create obstacles to successful peace transitions. 36 UN
missions have not had the best record of strategic coordination with other actors.

There can be a number of causes of coordination failure: different parties are engaged in the
mediation and the implementation phase of a peace agreement,37 many actors with overlapping
mandates or conflicting agendas are involved in the process,38 diffuse intervention efforts generate
spoiler problems. Bruce Joness thoughtful assessment of these issues suggests that effective missions
will be characterized by a continuity of actors, the use of the friends mechanism (i.e., the UN will be
assisted by important regional actors interested in a positive outcome), and by coordination of
international operations that avoids conflict or duplication of effort.

Creating an integrated mission is often easier said than done. Most studies on the topic seem to
conclude that what is needed is an actor to take the lead and coordinate a committee of interested
actors, each offering different expertise. The key challenge, therefore, would be to determine who that
lead coordinator should be. One recommendation might be to assign that role to the party
undertaking the most difficult taskthe provision of security. Another recommendation might be to
have the international financial institutions follow (rather than lead) in civil war transitions, with the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund pledging resources to countries that invite UN
peacekeepers to create mutually reinforcing incentives for peacebuilding. The creation of the
Peacebuilding Commission is a step in the right direction toward creating the capacity to better
integrate UN missions. The General Assembly established the commission as an intergovernmental
advisory body, and its membership reflects current debates about the need to include the largest
contributors (of funds and troops) in decision making while also achieving a regional balance that is
not always easy to achieve in the Security Council after several failed efforts at reform.
A related and even more difficult question is how different interventions should be sequenced: does
security come first and everything else second? Does the economy come first? Or should all reforms be
tried simultaneously? Although opinions on sequencing in the policy literature abound, there is to
date no useful guide to answer these questions if we look for strong empirical evidence in support of a
specific sequencing plan. Several rules of thumb exist, and some times they are conflicting because
they are generalizations that derive from the experience of a single or a few cases. The generalizations
run into problems when applied to different contexts. In light of the fact that the literature is not yet
mature enough to provide definitive answers and the necessary data for such assessments are not
available, I argue that a rule of thumb that seems commonsensical is that sequencing patterns should
be different in difficult as opposed to easy peacebuilding ecologies. Where the factions are
few, (p.157)coherent, and reconciled, then extensive interventions that combine political reforms
with reconstruction and development assistance can be implemented on the basis of a settlement
while security is being provided by lightly armed peacekeepers. In harder ecologies, harder choices
must be made, and political liberalization may have to be delayed to avoid sparking new conflict over
the design of political institutions. In such cases, however, it is hard to see how progress can be made
without a heavy footprintsecurity provision that is not limited to peacekeeping.
UN Missions Impact on Long-Term War Avoidance
Much of the discussion up to this point has focused on a broad standard of peacebuilding success that
does not privilege the absence of war over other considerations. This definition of peacebuilding is not
uncontroversial. In some cases, this standard may be too high for what can reasonably be expected
within a short period. In the long term, the effects of UN missions or other peacebuilding
interventions may best be measured against a more modest standardwar avoidance.

How have UN missions fared against such a standard? We can get a sense of this by looking at a
statistical analysis of the effects of the UN on peace duration. For such an analysis, I use a survival
model, which estimates the hazard (or risk) of peace failure at time t given that the peace has not
failed until that point. These models can account for what is called right-censoring in the statistical
literature (the fact that a peace that has not failed up to the end of analysis time can fail in a
subsequent period).39 The dependent variable is peace duration, and I code it by measuring months at
peace from the end of the war until either the peace fails or up to a censoring point, which in this case
is the end of December 1999. Peace failure implies that a new civil war starts in the country and that
that war is connected to the previous one.40

In the single-record, single-failure data set used previously, we have seventy-three peace failures with
mean peace duration of fifty-three months. Failures cannot occur at time t = 0, but there are several
failures of the peace in the first month. The model used earlier to study short-term peacebuilding can
now be estimated differently to study long-term peacebuilding. Given its greater versatility, the Cox
model is a better initial choice than the more frequently used Weibull model or other parametric
hazard models.41

Model 1 in table 6.2 is the core model with controls added for real per capita income, the rate of
growth of real per capita income at the end of the war, and the level of ethnic fractionalization. These
three variables did not have a significant association to participatory peace in the short run, so they
were excluded from table 6.2. Because I am now using a different concept of peacebuilding and there
are several arguments in the literature that link those variables to civil war, I add them to the model.

Table 6.2. Duration Models of the Hazard of War Recurrence

(p.158) UN intervention is significant (p = 0.039) and reduces the risk of peace failure by about 50
percent.42 But the strongest result in this analysis, consistent with much of the literature on civil war
onset, is that local capacities are critical in determining proneness to a new war outbreak. Local
capacity (p.159) variables now take away some of the effect of the hostility variables (only deaths and
displacements is significant, and this is not very robust). Countries with higher levels of income, fast-
growing postwar economies, and lower dependence on natural resource exports are far more likely to
experience longer peace durations despite the negative effects of postwar hostility. The effects of
variables like the number of factions or the nature of the war (was it ethnic or not?) are nonsignificant
as we might expect any impact that they have to be limited to the immediate postwar period. High
fractionalization has a significant (p = 0.007) negative effect on peace duration, which lends support
to the hypothesis about the difficulties of achieving long-lasting peace in fractionalized countries after
civil war.
The results on local capacities are quite robust to small specification changes. By contrast, the effects
of UN intervention are less robust. One problem is that UN enforcement missions seem to have
negative effects on peace duration, probably due to the very challenging circumstances in which they
are employed and because they are designed to end wars and not build long-lasting peace. Thus, in
model 2, I use a variable that identifies only consent-based UN missions (I drop enforcement
missions) and find that they are significant (p = 0.044) and have a positive effect on peace duration
(the odds ratio in model 2 for Chapter VI missions is under 1, reducing the risk of peace failure by
about 50 percent). This effect is not mitigated when I control for other variables, such as war
outcomes (both negotiated settlements and military victories lead to longer peace durations than less
decisive outcomes, such as truces or military stalemates). In model 2, I have also measured local
capacities with the log of per capita real income measured before the start of the war to avoid
confounding with other variables that measure wartime damage, such as deaths and displacements.
Income is positively associated with longer peace durations (p = 0.054) and this is consistent with the
results from the larger literature on civil war onset. A test of the proportional hazard (PH) assumption
now shows that it is not satisfied in model 2. Reestimating the model using Weibull regression (model
3) produces substantively similar results and showed that the risk of war recurrence has negative
duration dependence (i.e., peace becomes more stable as time passes). To account for the fact that
exposure to the risk of peace failure is higher in countries where the war ended early in the analysis
period, I added controls for the decade during which the peace process started (model 4). This
marginally satisfied the PH assumption underlying the Cox model and improved some of the results
and made deaths and displacements highly significant (p = 0.008).

These results highlight the importance of including economic rehabilitation in a peacebuilding

mandate and dovetail with recent findings in the literature on civil war that demonstrate the power of
these variables in influencing the risk of war onset. Scholars of civil war use income per capita as a
measure of state strength, and it has been shown that heavy dependence on oil results in authoritarian
state structures. Thus, the results may suggest that postwar authoritarianism and state weakness
increase the risk of war recurrence. Consent-based UN missions have a positive impact, but this is
overshadowed (p.160) by local capacity variables. Thus, a war-prevention strategy for the UN in
countries that are emerging from civil war should be to help build institutions that resist the
corrupting pressures of resource-dependent economies and allow fast economic growth. The UNs
impact in rebuilding institutions will be particularly important in ethnically divided societies that are
at higher risk of a return to civil war.
This analysis is corroborated by a survival analysis using time-series cross-section data. I do not
present that analysis here but summarize the results.43 The presence of any UN mission increases the
chances of long-lasting peace, and this is particularly true if we split the sample in a way that allows us
to drop some of the early peace processes, when the UN had not yet developed sufficiently
multidimensional approaches to peacebuilding. I find evidence that the UN has actually become better
at peacekeeping over time, because by dropping cases with peace durations longer than ten years, I
find that the significance of the UN variable improves.

To explore further the lasting influence of UN operations, I used several time lags and coded another
version of the UN variable that allows me to study the effect of only those missions that have departed.
Using Weibull regression due to an identified positive time-dependence of peace, I found that UN
interventions are weakly significant over time, but that their effect dissipates after a few years. The
effect of local capacities remains strong, but sorting out the long-term effects of UN missions in this
case is harder because the presence of the UN in the early days of a mission may facilitate a return to
growth, so some of the effects of missions will be captured by the local capacity variables. What that
analysis suggests, however, is that a strategy of multidimensional peacekeeping combined with
interventions that foster economic growth represents the best chance of postcivil war societies to
achieve lasting peace.

The Importance of Economic Growth in Peace Transitions

The results reported here on the importance of economic growth for sustainable peace are consistent
with other studies that have looked at the link between economic development and civil war onset.
Several empirical studies have established that civil wars have high economic costs. 44 These costs are
incurred through several channels. For example, Ghobarah, Huth, and Russet argue that health
standards decline in a civil war country and neighboring countries, and this reduces available human
capital for economic production and creates high health costs for the state. 45 Montalvo and Reynal-
Querol show empirically that refugee flows, which are often caused by civil wars, increase the
prevalence of certain diseases in neighboring countries.46

How can fast growth resume after civil war? Some authors have argued that economic growth actually
rebounds quickly after wars and that there are (p.161) no negative long-term effects of war on
economic growth.47 Chen, Loayza, and Reynal-Querol argue that although civil war has a negative
impact on countries levels of political development, health, and educational achievement, once peace
is established, economic recovery is possible.48 Their analysis shows that progress in social
development indicators occurs as per capita income rises and public spending shifts away from
military expenditures. They find that economic growth, mortality rates, and education levels in civil
war countries improve significantly postwar relative to the prewar period, and these gains are actually
greater than those made in comparable periods in countries not affected by civil war. 49 The reasons for
these increases are likely to be connected to the economic and humanitarian assistance that most civil
war countries receive during their transition to peace. But control group countriesthat is, countries
not affected by civil warhave greater gains in political openness relative to postcivil war countries.
Thus, available evidence points to a useful role that UN peace missions can play by filling in the
institutional and democratic deficit in postcivil war countries. Such a role is likely to enhance the
prospects of economic recovery.
Although there is not much contestation of the idea that faster growth improves the prospects for
peace, several authors have criticized the economic strategies used by the UN and other agencies and
organizations involved in peacebuilding. Economic liberalization policies are seen as imposing
unreasonable strain on countries emerging from civil war. As a more prudent strategy, authors have
proposed a more gradual pace of economic reform and greater protections for war-affected groups.
These arguments are summarized well in Roland Pariss book, which effectively points to the need for
greater institutionalization before liberalization.50

Paris argues that peacebuilding missions promote Western liberal democracy as a cookie-cutter
solution along with principles of economic liberalism that are not always compatible with local norms
and traditions in the war-affected countries.51 He does not reject the idea that liberal institutionalism
is a good way to promote positive peace, but advocates for a gradual introduction of liberal
principles to avoid social conflict.

In a similar vein, Smith (see chapter 10 in this volume) makes the argument that peacekeeping has an
economic imperialist dimension because peace missions are designed to protect the interests of
Northern states. The goal of economic liberalization is often to integrate postcivil war countries to
the world economy, but Kaldor and Luckham, among others, argue that economic globalization
delegitimates state authority and this is one of the causes of new wars. 52 The argument here is that
the standard economic policy package in peacebuilding operations that is supported by funds from
the international financial institutions undermines the state in ways that make it more vulnerable to
future conflict.

It is hard to see, however, how the task of rebuilding the political economy of a state where the
population is divided into hostile factions can involve measures that do not temporarily reduce the
governments regulatory and policy-making capacity. This is needed to create assurances that there is
external (p.162) oversight of government policies. Though there is little doubt that local ownership
is necessary for sustainable peace, in some transitions this is a goal that should be postponed. Where
the risks of renewed warfare are great and transitional administration is necessary, there cannot be
local ownership because locals cannot be trusted to work out an equitable, sustainable solution. 53 In
the economic sphere, policies to attract foreign investment are, in fact, critical for a return to fast
economic growth, because in large wars local financial capital will have migrated to safe havens
overseas, and some incentive and assurance is necessary for that capital to come back.
There is now a growing understanding in the relevant international organizations that standard
policies of structural adjustment and economic liberalization like reductions in public spending,
privatization of public assets, and elimination of wage and price controls and subsidies are not
applicable to the first stages of postcivil war recovery. Yet critics of international economic
involvement must go beyond these simple arguments that are now less controversial than they were
ten or twenty years ago and propose alternative pathways for a quick return to economic growth. Basic
things like provision of services to the population can be quickly achieved and are important as
confidence-building measures.54 An equitable division of the peace dividend is also a reasonable
goal, despite the fact that there is no clear evidence linking economic inequalities (between individuals
or groups) to the onset of large-scale internal armed conflict. In many peace transitions, land
redistribution or provision of basic services like education to large segments of the population were
important components of successful peacebuilding, according to many careful observers.

The legitimation of property rights, needed to transform a war economy into a peace economy, will
require some form of political liberalization, despite the risks of such reforms highlighted by Paris and
others. Revitalizing the export industries of the country and redirecting government expenditures
toward productive investment and away from military expenditures are also reasonable economic
goals in a peace transition. In such an economic transition, lessons learned from the past ten years
suggest that there is a need for separate humanitarian assistance and economic development
assistance.55 Humanitarian assistance targets affected individuals and groups with no necessary link
to the economic reconstruction policy. Other emergency grants and assistance will also be necessary to
rebuild the civilian administration, demobilize ex-combatants and reintegrate them in society, and
find employment for all war-affected populations. But the criticisms of international financial
institutions rigidity and their proclivity toward financial restraint must also be informed by the risk
that humanitarian assistance and development aid can easily become prizes over which the factions
can fight in societies that are politically unstable.
Although rapid immersion into the wild world of economic globalization will undoubtedly create
strain in postcivil war societies just as it does in every society, are there any viable, practical, and
clear economic alternatives beyond vague calls for a better global systemic framework for
peacebuilding? Smith (p.163) (this volume) seems to argue that the problem is that the UN is
subordinate to the international financial institutions and that a better approach would be to promote
a global culture of solidarity and human rights.56 Direct espousal of such a goal would undoubtedly
be difficult for the international financial institutions, whose articles of agreement impose a doctrine
of economic neutrality with respect to political agendas. Everyone appreciates, of course, that
economic targets have political consequences, and there can be several ways to improve the
coordination of activities of the international financial institutions with agencies such as the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which have an explicitly political mandate. My proposal
earlier in this chapter is for the international financial institutions to commit resources where the UN
is willing to commit peacekeeping troops and technical expertise in institutional rebuilding.
Conclusion
Participatory peace that lasts depends on heavy international involvement in the immediate postwar
period and a rapid return to a growing economy. The more we move away from a negative definition
of peace and toward an understanding of peace that has an element of participation, the more we will
need extensive and often muscular third-party intervention to deter spoilers, build transformative
political institutions, and provide guarantees that the peace will not collapse soon after the
peacekeepers leave.

Rebuilding local capacities in ways that allow countries to grow economically reduces the risk of a new
war, as do economic reforms that lower countries dependence on natural resources. Over time, the
positive effect of UN peace missions only works in indirect ways, if it helps countries build the
institutions needed for self-sustaining peace.

The UN has had a good record in its peacebuilding interventions, but there is room for improvement.
The empirical record shows that UN missions are not always sufficiently strategic. Better matching
between the underlying peacebuilding ecology and the UN mandate and resources is likely to improve
the prospects for peacebuilding success. What is also missing from current missions is a clear plan on
how to integrate economic development as a key goal of the transition process.

Integrated mission strategies are now a necessity, given the wide range of policy objectives that
peacebuilders are asked to achieve. The difficultand still unansweredquestion is who should be in
charge of coordination of an integrated, multidimensional peace mission. Should it be whoever
provides security? Should military agencies be subordinated to civilian agencies? Should local leaders
take control of the process, or should the transition be governed by external actors?

The areas of policy intervention are multiplying: demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration of
ex-combatants; refugee repatriation; elections; economic reconstruction; humanitarian assistance;
security provisionthese (p.164) are all areas of policy intervention that are important, and different
agencies have expertise and resources that they can bring to bear on each one. Beyond the fairly
obvious calls for better integration of operational strategies from these agencies, there is no clear
sense of how to achieve all these objectives of postwar peacebuilding in ways that create no new social
tensions and waste the least amount of financial resources. This is because we do not yet know how
much each of those objectives contributes to peace (or even what the right definition of peace should
be) or what the best practices to achieve each of those objectives are. Part of the problem is that
outcomes we can study are so highly case-specific that it is hard to generalize about best practices of
peacebuilding. Another part of the problem is that there are inherent tensions in peacebuilding
processes: restoring state sovereignty may (in some cases) undermine minority rights; promoting
human rights and reconciliation as a peacebuilding standard may make it harder for parties to reach a
peace settlement in the first place; fostering growth of local or informal institutions may be impossible
in situations where a heavy international presence and an enforcement mandate are needed to impose
a peace; and creating the conditions for a return to economic growth may require political
liberalizations that, in some societies, may trigger new social conflicts. Though there is no clear or easy
answer on how to address these complex challenges, the UN has shown that it is best suited to take the
lead in future peacebuilding initiatives. UN missions must take advantage of the formative role that
they can play in the early stages of peace transitions and set the stage for self-sustaining peace by
creating incentives for the transformation of war economies into peace economies. They can do this
more effectively if they assume the role of coordinator of integrated peace missions that involve the
World Bank and other donors as well as bilateral actors who can provide security in the most difficult
situations.
Notes

Notes:
(1) . Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Agenda for Peace: Report of the Secretary-General, UN document

A/47/277-S/24111, June 17, 1992. Quotes are from paras. 2021 and 5599.

(2) . For a discussion of each of these strategies see, among others, Michael Doyle and Nicholas
Sambanis, Peacekeeping Operations, in The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by

Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

(3) . For a relevant discussion of the evolution of standards of peacebuilding, see Simon Chestermans
contribution to this volume (chapter 5).

(4) . Success is, of course, an ambiguous and contested term. We discuss its various meanings and
how to measure it in Making War and Building Peace in both the data analysis and case studies.

(5) . See James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War, American

Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 7590.

(6) . See Kenneth Boulding, Toward a Theory of Peace, in International Conflict and Behavioral

Science, edited by Roger Fisher (New York: Basic Books, 1964), 7087.

(7) . This is consistent with (though possibly less expansive than) the definition of peacebuilding
proposed by John Paul Lederach and Scott Appleby in this volume (chapter 1): Peacebuilding that is
strategic draws intentionally and shrewdly on the overlapping and imperfectly coordinated presences,
activities, and resources of various international, transnational, national, regional, and local
institutions, agencies, and movements that influence the causes, expressions, and outcomes of
conflict. Strategic peacebuilders take advantage of emerging and established patterns of collaboration
and interdependence for the purposes of reducing violence and alleviating the root causes of deadly
conflict. They encourage the deeper and more frequent convergence of mission, resources, expertise,
insight, and benevolent self-interest that characterizes the most fruitful multilateral collaborations in
the cause of peace.
(8) . Details on the measurement of all the variables included in the model can be found online
athttp://pantheon.yale.edu/~ns237/index/research/SupplementforDS2006.pdf.

(9) . We measure electricity consumption and real income the year before the war started because the
hostility variables would have a direct effect on these measures after the war. Real income growth may
have the same problem, but it has tremendous variability in postcivil war countries, and it seems
much more responsive as a measure of postwar developments.

(10) . We use two measures: primary commodity exports as a percent of GDP and oil export
dependence, a binary variable coded 1 if a countrys fuel exports make up more than 33 percent of its
total merchandise exports. For results using the oil variable, see our supplements.

(11) . The literature expounding the three is vast, but for central differences see Robert Keohane, After

Hegemony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984) ; Joseph Grieco, Anarchy and the
Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,International

Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 485507 ; and Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, Taking
Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative

Politics, Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001): 391416.

(12) . For a theoretical discussion of the problem of providing assurance and building trust in conflicts
that combine elements of both coordination and cooperation games, see Andrew Kydd, Trust,

Reassurance, and Cooperation, International Organization 54, no. 2 (2000): 325357.

(13) . For a precise game-theoretic definition of coordination and collaboration games, refer to James

Morrow, Game Theory for Political Scientists (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994)

; and David M. Kreps, Game Theory and Economic Modeling (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

(14) . A useful summary of the literature is Robert Axelrod and Robert Keohane, Introduction and
Conclusion, in Cooperation under Anarchy, edited by Kenneth Oye (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1986).

(15) . Morrow, Game Theory, 222.

(16) . Transformative peacekeeping is different from peace enforcement. The former can only deter or
punish occasional violations. If the violations are systematic and large-scale, a no-consent
enforcement operation might be necessary.

(17) . On the role of reconciliation in peacebuilding process, see chapter 4 in this volume.

(18) . See Gary Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000)

; for the difficulties, see Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, Trials and Errors: Principle and
Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice, International Security 28, no. 3 (2003/2004): 5
44 ; and Chandra Sriram, Confronting Past Human Rights Violators (Oxford: Hart, 2004) .
See also chapter 9 in this volume on the importance of human rights and justice in peacebuilding
processes.

(19) . Roht-Arriaza (see chapter 9) discusses the Truth Commissions in Haiti and Guatemala as good
examples of such hybrid institutions.

(20) . The mutually hurting stalemate is from I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1985) , where he discusses ripe conflicts. Additional conditions for
conflict ripeness in Zartmans theory are a sense of crisis, a deadline for negotiations, a reversal in the
parties relative strength, a leveraged external mediation, and a feasible settlement that can address all
the parties basic needs.

(21) . The settlement of El Salvadors civil war is a good example of a hurting stalemate.

(22) . Stephen John Stedman, Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes, International Security 22, no. 2

(1997): 7.

(23) . The statistical analysis that supports the discussion in this section is presented in the online
supplements of Making War and Building Peace.

(24) . A comparison of the means cannot reject the null hypothesis of no difference (p = 0.94).

(25) . These results are reported in the supplements.

(26) . UN missions, however, do go to cases that are overall harder to resolve than cases without UN
intervention. These selection effects and the issues that they generate for estimating the effects of UN
missions on peacebuilding are discussed in the supplement to Making War and Building Peace and in
Nicholas Sambanis, Short-Term and Long-Term Effects of United Nations Peace Operations, World
Bank Economic Review (forthcoming).

(27) . See Shashi Tharoor, Should UN Peacekeeping Go Back to Basics? Survival 37, no. 4 (1995

1996): 5264.

(28) . See Thomas Franck, A Holistic Approach to Peace-building, in Peacemaking and

Peacekeeping for the New Century, edited by Olara Otunnu and Michael W. Doyle (Lanham, Md.:

Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 275295 ; and Elizabeth Cousens, Chetan Kumar, and Karin

Wermester, eds., Peacebuilding as Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

(29) . See Alvaro DeSoto and Graciana del Castillo, Obstacles to Peacebuilding in El

Salvador, Foreign Policy 94 (1994): 6983 . This is the coordinating role that Japan, for
example, played in Cambodia in organizing the Tokyo conference and the International Committee on
the Reconstruction of Cambodia.
(30) . Axelrod and Keohane, Introduction and Conclusion; Kenneth Oye, Explaining Cooperation

under Anarchy, World Politics 38, no. 1 (1985): 124.

(31) . Bruce D. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne

Rienner, 2001) . Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence (New York: Norton, 2000).

(32) . Roland Paris, At Wars End: Building Peace after Conflict (New York: Cambridge University

Press, 2004).

(33) . This point is made well by Terence Lyons, The Role of Postsettlement Elections, in Ending

Civil Wars, edited by Stephen Stedman et al. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 215235.

(34) . Michael Barnett, Building a Republican Peace: Stabilizing States After War, International

Security 30, no. 4 (2006): 87112.

(35) . For an empirical analysis of this issue, see Jon Pevehouse, Democracy from Outside?
International Organizations and Democratization, International Organization 56, no. 3 (2002): 515

549.

(36) . Good examples of this argument are Bruce Jones, The Challenges of Strategic Coordination,
inEnding Civil Wars edited by Stephen Stedman et al. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 89116

; and Barnett R. Rubin, Constructing Sovereignty for Security, Survival 47, no. 4 (2005): 93

106.

(37) . See Jones, The Challenges of Strategic Coordination.

(38) . For a view that interagency competition contributes to poor coordination of UN missions, see A
More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges, and Change, UN Doc A/59/565, December 1, 2004, http:/www.un.org/secureworld.

(39) . For a methodological discussion, see Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier and Bradford S. Jones, Timing
and Political Change: Event History Modeling in Political Science (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 2003).

(40) . It is not straightforward to have a similar long-term analysis of the more ambitious
participatory peace standard. There are a number of problems with coding the dependent variable:
there are no reliable data on levels of residual violence over time; levels of political openness can vary
over time, so it is possible that some cases would fail one year, then succeed years later if they
become more democratic; and a deadline is needed to code undivided sovereignty because peace
processes are often designed to resolve problems of divided sovereignty gradually, and we must have a
uniform standard on how long it should take for a peace mission to succeed in resolving problems of
divided sovereignty.
(41) . In each model, I test the proportional hazard assumption and, if it is not satisfied, I use a
Weibull model, which is appropriate if the hazard rate is monotonically increasing or decreasing.

(42) . This effect is robust to controlling for non-UN missions. Hazard ratios under 1 indicate a
negative coefficient (i.e., a negative effect). Ratios above 1 indicate a positive effect.

(43) . For results and discussion, see Sambanis (forthcoming).

(44) . See James C. Murdoch and Todd Sandler, Economic Growth, Civil Wars, and Spatial

Spillovers,Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (2002): 91110 , for a cross-country study of the

economic growth spillover effects of civil war; and R. Soares, The Welfare Cost of Violence across

Countries, Journal of Health Economics 25, no. 5 (2006): 821846 , for country-specific
analyses of the economic effects of political violence.

(45) . P. Ghobarah Hazem, Paul Huth, and Bruce Russett, Civil Wars Kill and Maim People, Long

after the Fighting Stops, American Political Science Review 97, no. 2 (2003): 189202.

(46) . Jose G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol, Fighting against Malaria: Prevent Wars while
Waiting for the Miraculous Vaccine, Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming).

(47) . See Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando
Limongi,Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Wellbeing in the World 1950

1990(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) . For an analysis of the economic effects of
the world wars, see A. F. K Organski and Jacek Kugler, The Costs of Major Wars: The Phoenix

Factor, American Political Science Review 71, no. 14 (1977): 13471366 . For an analysis of the
effects of the war in Vietnam, see Edward Miguel and Gerard Roland, The Long Run Impact of
Bombing Vietnam, NBER Working Paper No. W11954, January 2006.

(48) . This conclusion is reached through an event-study methodology that compares prewar and
postwar levels of economic and political variables of interest in forty-one countries. See Siyan Chen,
Norman Loayza, and Marta Reynal-Querol, The Aftermath of Civil War, World Bank Working Paper

(2007).

(49) . There can be several mechanisms for fast growth recovery after war. One is the growth that
results from international aid. Another is that war affects some production factors more than others,
increasing rates of return for relatively less affected factors, thereby propelling forward the
mechanism of economic convergence that leads to higher growth. For a discussion of the latter
mechanism, seeRobert Barro and Xavier Sala-I-Martin, Economic Growth (New York: McGraw-Hill,

1995) , cited in Chen, Loayza, and Reynal-Querol (2007).

(50) . Paris, At Wars End.

(51) . A similar argument with reference to Nicaragua and Haiti is made by William
Robinson,Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention and Hegemony (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996).

(52) . Mary Kaldor and Robin Luckham, Global Transformations and New Conflicts, IDS Bulletin 32

(2001).

(53) . For a discussion of this point, see Simon Chestermans contribution to this volume (chapter 5).

(54) . See Susan L. Woodward, Economic Priorities for Successful Peace Implementation, in Ending

Civil Wars, edited by Stephen Stedman et al. (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 183213.

(55) . Ibid. ; see also chapter 11 in this volume.

(56) . This paradigm derives from Benhabib Seyla, On the Alleged Conflict between Democracy and

International Law, Ethics and International Affairs 19 (2005): 85100.

Targeted Sanctions, Counterterrorism, and Strategic Peacebuilding

George A. Lopez (Contributor Webpage)
David Cortright (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0007
Abstract and Keywords
The development and reform of smart sanctions makes them a critical element of strategic
peacebuilding, specifically in their ability to restrict war and to counter terrorism. Lopez and Cortright
examine the shortcomings and lessons learned from counter-terrorism efforts, in particular those led
by the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) and Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate
(CTED). To address the root causes of terrorism, they argue, efforts must promote good governance,
economic development, and human rightsall of which are central aims of strategic peacebuilding.
The authors provide recommendations for increasing regional capacities and decreasing redundancy
and overlap in UN Security Council counter-terrorism efforts.

Keywords: terrorism, United Nations, smart sanctions, targeted sanctions, economic sanctions, peacebuilding, human
rights,governance, UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate

With the imposition of comprehensive trade sanctions on Iraq in August 1990 through resolution 661,
the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) ushered in a new era in the use of collective coercive
economic measures as a means of fulfilling its mandate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to
protect international peace and security.1 The next seventeen years witnessed an active phase of
UNSC-imposed sanctions, with dozens of resolutions levied against nearly twenty distinct targets,
including myriad national and subnational actors who would disturb attempts to build peace in war-
torn nations and the new brand of transnational terrorism that has arisen in al Qaeda. As documented
in this volume, alongside these unfolding global actions and realities, modern peace researchers and
practitioners were developing the cases and the conceptual contours necessary for a deeper meaning
of protecting international peace and security through strategic peacebuilding.
To some analysts and practitioners, United Nationsmandated and enforced sanctions, including
the more narrowly targeted smart sanctions that are the subject of much of this chapter, epitomize a
top-down, unequal, violent, and ineffective tool for enhancing peace and security. 2 Our own study,
research, and experience, however, teaches us that the evidence of sanctions development,
implementation, and reformas well as their versatility in restraining war, curbing norm violations
and constricting terrorismqualifies them to be an integral part of peacebuilding, both conceptually
and strategically. This is not to suggest that the UN sanctions policy is flawless or to deny their many
impacts, sometimes adverse, in various aspects of local and global life. Rather, on balance, and
especially if we employ (p.170) the Lederach-Appleby framework for strategic peacebuilding outlined
in this volume (see chapter 1), we believe a reasonable case can be made for the use and scrutiny of
sanctions as a significant component of strategic peacebuilding. A number of reasons support our
claim.
First, sanctions pressure a target by altering the costs and benefits for continuing to pursue the
behavior labeled unacceptable by the international community. At their best, sanctions establish a
new bargaining dynamic between target and imposers. Thus, sanctions contribute to the
transformation of a conflict to a new state of affairs; when successful, new and sustained dialogue
toward conflict resolution will emerge, even if it is forced by sanctions coercion. Sanctions research
details that this occurs outright in at least one-third of sanctions cases, and our own work illustrates
how even partial compliance with sanctions by targets can lead to positive endings of disputes.3

Because UN sanctions are strongly coercive, some would claim they do economic violence to nations,
targets, and the innocents. Yet because economic sanctions offer a middle course between war and
words,4 they fit with much of the nonviolent social change criteria crucial to strategic peacebuilding.
Sanctions are meant to avoid the costs of military action, yet they provide a more forceful option
beyond diplomatic remonstrance. When employed effectively, they can exert significant pressure on
those targeted. When designed and applied astutely, sanctions can serve as the basis for a bargaining
dynamic in which the promise of lifting sanctions becomes an incentive to encourage political
concessions and cooperation.5 In this sense, they also reinforce the conflict transformational aspect of
strategic peacebuilding.

Finally, Lederach and Appleby highlight the need for peacebuilding to include transnational
phenomena and movements, as well as aim toward institutional change to contribute to greater peace
and justice. Although economic sanctions have an imperfect record in some aspects of these criteria,
the process of sanctions reform, particularly constricting trade in blood diamonds or denying travel
and banking access to human rights violators, emerged from the research and praxis work of various
transnational actors, such as Human Rights Watch, International Alert, and International Crisis
Group. Moreover, in increasing the institutional capacity of various actors to close borders during
arms embargoes or capture terrorists assets, the UN and member states have forged coalitions of
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and various national institutions, as well as governments and
regional intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). In some cases, these developments have spawned
new arrangements for how local and global political actors work together in creating peace and justice.

To understand in some detail the contribution of United Nationsimposed economic sanctions to

strategic peacebuilding involves a number of critical themes, which this chapter addresses. The first
theme regards how the often contentious development of sanctions, specifically their reform from a
reinvigorated peace and security technique of the early 1990s to a major component of the global
struggle against terrorism, contributes to vigorous and sustainable peace on the ground in situations
of violence. The second theme includes the manner in which sanctions policy formed at the highest
levels of international authority (p.171) works its way through the multiple layers of international
actors and across time to insert itselfsometimes successfully and other times less sointo the
strategic peacebuilding equation. Finally, the recent evolution of the UN institutional network, which
has employed targeted sanctions as its central coercive tool in counterterrorism policy, illustrates how
complex the challenges are for ensuring that UN Security Council action can be a positive component
of strategic peacebuilding in this most difficult peace and security dynamic.
Sanctions, Smart Sanctions Reform, and Strategic Peacebuilding
The record of Security Council sanctions since 1990 and their relationship to aspects of strategic
peacebuilding reveals a pattern of institutional learning, adaptation, and occasionally, innovation. Not
surprisingly, the early phase of the UNSCs use of sanctions as a means for advancing the UN mandate
to preserve peace and security (19901994) was dominated by the influence of the five permanent
members of the council. Although sanctions provided the major powers with a powerful tool for
collective action within the UNSC, the wide-ranging social impacts of these measures resulted in
declining consensus on Iraq and disagreements on the appropriateness of sanctions for attaining
council goals of peace and security.

The devastation caused by sanctions to the social and economic infrastructure of Iraq, as well as
further concerns about adverse humanitarian impacts of sanctions there and in Haiti, meant that
various nongovernmental actors joined numerous UN member governments to condemn sanctions for
undermining the second pillar of the UN core mandate: to enhance the human condition. Herein lay
the important bridge between the post-1990 emergence of the sanctions tool and sanctions reform
toward strategic peacebuilding. Although UN sanctions initially reflected a top-down approach, most
members and especially the Secretariat quickly recognized that unless sanctions were formulated with
human rights and humanitarian concerns in mind, they would be short-lived and ineffective.
Furthermore, unless sanctions implementation involved a plethora of global, regional, and national
actors committed to uphold international norms and the development of authentic peace with security
(what authors in this volume would call strategic peacebuilding) sanctions would quickly fall out of
favor in the international community.

As we have documented extensively in our prior research work, by 1994 the UNSC had learned
numerous lessons from these early, flawed sanctions episodes. The council moved to adapt its
measures to mitigate unanticipated consequences and explored prospects for improving sanctions
implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.6 An era of sanctions reform then ensued as the council
shifted its focus from comprehensive to more selective measures. Much of that process, and its smart
sanctions products, are significant for strategic peacebuilding because they broadened the number of
global actors involved in sanctions and, more directly, related sanctions goals and means to
peacebuilding.

(p.172) Aided by a series of international expert processes chaired by Switzerland (financial

sanctions), Germany (arms embargoes and travel bans), and Sweden (the implementation of smart
sanctions) the UNSC abandoned the use of general trade sanctions and relied instead on targeted
measures. These so-called smart sanctions included financial assets freezes, travel bans, aviation
sanctions, commodity boycotts, and arms embargoes. As the UN counterterrorism program developed
after September 2001, the council mandated the application of these more precise tools to disable
terrorist networks.7
In conjunction with the move to smart sanctions, efforts to assess the humanitarian impact of
particular sanctions cases became a regular feature of UN sanctions policy. In 1995, the Department of
Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) commissioned a report on the impact of sanctions on humanitarian
assistance efforts.8 Two years later, the DHA developed a methodology and series of specific indicators
for assessing humanitarian impacts.9 Many of the recommendations in these studies became the basis
for an ongoing humanitarian assessment methodology developed by DHAs successor, the Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In 2003, OCHA updated its indicators and
methodology in light of recent cases and based on the success of the earlier venture.10 Assessment
reports and missions to examine the impact of sanctions are now a routine feature of sanctions cases,
and they are complemented by the work of the NGO humanitarian community, which monitors
sanctions cases and issues reports designed to prevent potential humanitarian problems.

In each of the categories of targeted sanctionsfinance, travel, arms, and commoditiesthe Security
Council introduced important innovations that increased the prospects for the UN to help set better
conditions in a crisis for stable peace by crafting more focused and more humane sanctions. In the
area of financial sanctions, the council moved beyond freezing the assets of governments alone. In the
early cases of Iraq, Libya, and Yugoslavia, it imposed financial sanctions only on government assets.
Beginning in 1994, with action against the military junta in Haiti, the Security Council applied
financial sanctions against designated individuals and entities as well. This pattern continued through
the Angola and Afghanistan cases in the latter part of the decade. In the cases of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Cte dIvoire, the UNSC was authorized to apply targeted measures
on designated individuals.

As the Security Council shifted toward imposing targeted sanctions in cooperation with member
states, it developed the capacity to develop and publish lists of designated sanctions targets. The
entities and individuals on these designation lists were subjected to asset freezes and travel bans. This
technique was used extensively and seemingly effectively, with financial sanctions and visa bans
imposed on lists of designated targets in the cases of Angola, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Liberia, DRC,
Sudan, and Cte dIvoire. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, this practice was expanded
and improved in significant ways as the council attempted to constrain the activities of terrorists.

Less successfully, but rather important to the prospects for peacebuilding, the council also attempted
to make improvements in the design and implementation of arms embargoes. In the four instances
where arms embargoes (p.173) were imposed as stand-alone measuresSomalia, Rwanda,
Ethiopia/Eritrea, and Yugoslavia 19982001the impact of these measures was minimal. Only in the
case of Iraq, where the United States and other countries made a major commitment to enforcement,
did the continuing restrictions on the supply of arms and dual-use technologies have a significant
military-political impact.11
To overcome the problems resulting from inadequate implementation of arms embargoes, the
Security Council adopted a number of policy innovations. Arms embargo resolutions included
prohibitions against not only the supply of arms and ammunition but also training, military
cooperation, and various support services, including air transportation. More vigorous efforts also
were made to monitor compliance with arms embargoes. The most extensive effort, involving a wide
array of regional, transnational, and private actors, occurred during the 19911995 UNSC sanctions
imposed on the Belgrade government. A network of sanctions assistance missions (SAMs) was
organized by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (predecessor of the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe) and the European Community (EC).

In no other UNSC sanctions episode has the extensive involvement of transnational actors occurred to
this degree. In October 1992, customs officials (primarily from France) were dispatched to Bulgaria,
Hungary, and Romania to form the first SAMs. SAMs were also established in Albania, Croatia, the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Ukraine. The EC established a Sanctions Assistance
Missions Communications Center (SAMCOMM) at its headquarters in Brussels and created the post
of sanctions coordinator. By March 1995, the SAMCOMM staff had grown to twenty-six
people.12 These measures established a substantial institutional capacity for monitoring and enforcing
sanctions. It was the first time major regional organizations stepped in to assist the United Nations in
providing staff and financial resources for the implementation of UN sanctions. Because little detailed
analysis has been done of the SAMs successes and shortcomings, such border control mechanisms
constitute a ripe area for further analysis for those interested in the way peacebuilding can benefit
from the power of regional and international organizations.

Efforts have also been made to encourage member states to criminalize violations of UN arms
embargoes and strengthen export control laws and regulations. These initiatives helped create a
firmer foundation in the domestic law of member states for penalizing companies and individuals who
supply arms and military related goods in violation of UN arms embargoes. In 2004, the UNSC
directed UN peacekeeping forces in the DRC and Cte dIvoire to assist with monitoring arms
embargoes in these countries. This added significant new responsibilities to the mission of UN
peacekeepers in these countries. It brought into direct, strategic interaction the UN role in resource
constriction via sanctions and traditional peacekeeping. Recent studies confirm that even modest
attention by peacekeepers to issues of arms restrictions can enhance both the peacekeeping mission
and the embargo itself.13

Another important innovation for strengthening the peacebuilding role of sanctions was the creation
of special investigative and expert panels, which (p.174) helped the UNSC overcome its lack of
monitoring capacity for assessing sanctions cases.14 The first panel was established in conjunction
with the arms embargo against Rwandan Hutu rebels by Resolution 1013 in 1995. The Council created
the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry (UNICOI), which issued six reports from
1996 through 1998 documenting the illegal supply of arms to the rebel groups in eastern Zaire.
UNICOI reports provided voluminous evidence of wholesale violations of the arms embargo and
contained numerous recommendations for cracking down on arms smuggling in the region. A
breakthrough toward more effective monitoring came in the case of Angola. In 1999, the Angola
sanctions committee became more active in monitoring sanctions violations and encouraging greater
implementation efforts. The UNSC also appointed a panel of experts and a subsequent monitoring
mechanism to improve compliance with the Angola sanctions. The panel of experts and monitoring
mechanism issued a series of reports that focused continuing attention on sanctions implementation
efforts.15
The Angola panel of experts and the monitoring mechanism were followed by similar investigative
panels for Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Liberia. An investigative panel was also created to examine
the exploitation of mineral wealth and natural resources in DRC and to monitor compliance with
sanctions after 2003. Panel reports were also commissioned in 2003 for Somalia and in 2004 for
Sudan and Cte dIvoire. In each of these settings, the investigative panels produced detailed reports
on sanctions violations and smuggling activities. The Sierra Leone panel of experts focused on the link
between arms trafficking and diamond smuggling and found a pattern of widespread violations of UN
sanctions. The panel issued numerous policy recommendations, the most important of which was that
sanctions be imposed on the government of Liberia for its role in undermining sanctions
implementation and providing support for the rebels in Sierra Leone. 16 Sanctions on the Charles
Taylor regime soon followed.

The UNSC created a monitoring mechanism for Afghanistan in July 2001, through Resolution 1363,
and established an associated Sanctions Enforcement Support Team to strengthen the
implementation of the arms embargo, travel sanctions, and targeted financial sanctions imposed
against the Taliban regime. After the overthrow of the Taliban, in 2002 the UNSC altered the mission
of the monitoring group through Resolution 1390. It later created a new Analytic Support and
Sanctions Monitoring Team to investigate and provide support for the continued financial, travel, and
arms sanctions on former Taliban leaders and members of al Qaeda. The Liberia panel of experts
report confirmed allegations of the Monrovia governments extensive involvement with and support
for the armed rebellion of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone. The panel
recommended a series of measures for strengthening the enforcement of the arms embargo, diamond
embargo, and travel sanctions against Liberia.17

What may prove to be the most noteworthy development of the 1990s was the emergence of
commodity-specific sanctions. Oil embargoes were imposed as part of the comprehensive sanctions
against Iraq. Oil was also named specifically in sanctions imposed on governments in Yugoslavia,
Haiti, the National (p.175) Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) group in Angola,
and the military junta in Sierra Leone. An embargo on the export of logs was imposed against the
government of Liberia. Diamond embargoes were introduced in 1998 with the case of Angola. The
latter two commodities had taken on labels, the logs of war and blood diamonds, respectively, as
appropriate indicators of how detrimental the illicit trade in each has become for disrupting the
prospects for stable peace in a war-torn area.
As nongovernmental agencies and human rights groups documented the role of diamond smuggling
in financing the armed rebellions in Angola and Sierra Leone, the UNSC took action to interdict the
trade in blood diamonds. The council imposed diamond embargoes against UNITA in 1998 through
Resolution 1173, the RUF areas of Sierra Leone in 2000 through Resolution 1306, and the government
of Liberia in 2001 through Resolution 1343.

As a means of enforcing these measures, the UN worked with diamond-exporting countries, the
diamond industry, and NGOs to establish the Kimberley Process, an international agreement among
dozens of countries to combat the trade in conflict-related diamonds. Governments created certificate-
of-origin systems designed to protect the legitimate diamond trade by screening out blood diamonds.
Targeted diamond sanctions became a tool for the UNSC to shrink the financial base sustaining armed
conflict in Africa, and they became a model for commodity-focused embargoes of the future.18

This survey of expanded UN sanctions policy through smart sanctions demonstrates that multilateral
economic sanctions have matured significantly since 1990, as UN diplomats, expert investigators,
academic scholars, nongovernmental analysts, and many others have contributed to a process of
learning, adaptation, and reform. The result has been a substantial transformation of sanctions policy
making and increased likelihood that sanctions will be humane and effective and will contribute to
greater prospects for strategic peacebuilding.

The targeted, more selective sanctions of recent years, supported by humanitarian assessment
missions and expert panel reports, bear little resemblance to the poorly monitored, often blunt
measures imposed in the early 1990s. Although many problems remain in the implementation of
UNSC sanctions, the substantial progress of this period has evolved sanctions into a more viable
means of reinforcing other efforts made by the UN or more directly in local communities to engage in
strategic peacebuilding.

Smart Sanctions, Counterterrorism, and Strategic Peacebuilding

There are many ways in which terrorism has been an integral part of international and internal wars
for decades. Whether in resolved conflicts, as in Northern Ireland or South Africa, or in any of the
fourteen ongoing violent conflicts in which at least one of the contending parties has been labeled a
terrorist group, dealing with terrorists past and present poses a complex and challenging issue for
strategic peacebuilding. The deadly and changing parameters of this age of (p.176) new terrorism
are becoming more starkly defined. So are questions about the appropriateness and effectiveness of
current strategies of counterterrorism.
At the core of this debate, and a central factor that makes counterterrorism related to peacebuilding,
are concerns regarding the utility of military force and the need for a level of cooperation that spans
from the local to the global in the elimination of terrorism. Various reports indicate that despite
relative successes in the global campaign against terrorism, more attacks from al Qaeda and related
groups have occurred since September 11, 2001, than in the years prior to that date. 19 Doubts have
been raised about Western strategy, particularly U.S. action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its
overreliance on military solutions (and undervaluation of nonmilitary mechanisms) for
counterterrorism.

Military force can be useful, and may well be necessary for some counterterrorism missions. But in the
medium to long-term time period, heavily armed troops are rarely able to penetrate terrorist
networks, and their continued occupation of areas where terrorism exists is likely to breed more
resentment and terrorism. When military force is used excessively, it galvanizes support for the
jihadists and has the direct opposite effects from those intended. A growing number of analysts agree
that defeating al Qaeda and related networks will require a multifaceted strategy encompassing a wide
range of policy tools and forms of international cooperation.20

Countering this multifaceted and complex terrorist threat requires many of the same structural
arrangements for international cooperation and engagement in specific substantive issues that are
required in strategic peacebuilding. Organizationally, both counterterrorism and strategic
peacebuilding succeed if they entail a broadly cooperative effort involving legal, economic, political,
and social cooperation from virtually every nation in the world, and from civil society sectors, both
internal and transnational. For each, actions taken and policies that are prioritized should focus on
concerns for good governance, economic development, and the protection of human rights.

The United Nations is particularly relevant and important to this counterterrorism effort as it is the
primary source of international political legitimacy and legal authority for many nations. Although the
recent history of the United Nations taking up this responsibility reveals how it frequently lacks
resources and operational capacity, it is indispensable in developing political consensus for the
international cooperation required to counter the terrorist threat. Examining the successes and
shortcomings of the UN role in counterterrorism since 9/11 can help determine the prospects of
strategic peacebuilding taking root in particular war-torn locales.21

The modern era of UN involvement against terrorism began in the 1990s, when the UNSC adopted
Resolution 748 (1992) calling on Libya to cease its support of terrorism and turn over suspects wanted
in connection with the bombings of Pan Am flight 103 and French UTA flight 772. Targeted UN
sanctions against Libya, in combination with more comprehensive measures by the United States,
were successful in dissuading the country from further support for terrorism and eventually led to the
extradition of the bombing suspects for trial at The Hague. UN sanctions against Libya were
accompanied by (p.177) extensive diplomatic dialogue and the promise of economic benefit to
encourage Libyan reengagement with the world community. This led to Tripolis agreement, in 2003,
to dismantle its programs for the development of weapons of mass destruction.
UNSC sanctions to counter terrorism were also employed against Sudan (Resolution 1054 in 1996) for
harboring Osama bin Laden and what later evolved into al Qaeda. In 1999, Afghanistan (Resolution
1267) was also a target for sanctions as the United Nations became more active in applying pressure
on regimes that supported or harbored terrorist operations. These UNSC sanctions efforts were
closely integrated with intelligence and diplomatic efforts by the United States and other countries
and played an important (if little noticed) role in mobilizing international pressure against state
support of terrorism.22

In the wake of the September 2001 attacks, the United Nations launched a second, more expansive
phase of its campaign against international terrorism. Targeting the diverse and widely dispersed
transnational networks of al Qaeda and other related nonstate actors, the Security Council adopted
resolution 1373 (2001) mandating a worldwide campaign by all 191 UN member states to deny
finances, travel, or assistance of any kind to terrorists and those who support them. Resolution 1373
created the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), and three years later the council adopted SCR1535
(2004) to strengthen the CTC through the creation of an unprecedented Counter-Terrorism Executive
Directorate (CTED). To complete its cluster of constraints on terrorism operations, the UNSC also
adopted resolutions 1540 and 1566 (both in 2004), prohibiting the transfer of weapons of mass
destruction or related materials to nonstate actors and calling on UN member states to strengthen
their cooperation with UN counterterrorism mandates.

These efforts have produced an unprecedented expansion of UN counterterrorism activities and a

parallel increase in counterterrorism committees and professional staffing. They stimulated
significant international action to build counterterrorism capacity, particularly in the former Soviet
bloc and in the global South. The UN counterterrorism program has also sparked greater international
cooperation and coordination among regional and subregional organizations, along with specialized
international agencies. These UN counterterrorism efforts face numerous challenges and
contradictions, as we examine shortly, but they have been partially effective in establishing global
legal requirements and building international cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

As was the case in the increased resort to sanctions in the UNSC after 1990, after the adoption of
Resolution 1373, and when faced with the kind of national security challenge that terrorism poses,
there has been a natural tendency for large and powerful states to want to go it alone in countering
the danger or to overmanage whatever cooperation institution they use to counter terror. The result
has been that the multifaceted strategies needed to actually succeed in counterterrorism have been
slow to develop, especially regarding the effective use of regional and international organizations
among other actors. In fact, there have been some significant differences among the powerful
democratic (p.178) states that have retarded the possibilities for effective peacebuilding via
counterterrorism.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, and again at the G8 summits in 2005 and 2006, European and
U.S. leaders acknowledged their shared vulnerability and vowed to work together in the global fight
against terrorism. Over time, however, the underlying counterterrorism strategies of the United States
and Europe diverged. Most notably, the European community has adopted a more institutionalized,
rule-based approach, as opposed to the ad hoc and extralegal efforts employed by the United States.
On the continent, information sharing and cooperation among a wide range of agencies are the norm.
Europes open society and removal of border controls make it easier for extremists to operate, but the
high degree of law enforcement cooperation among dozens of countries is more easily facilitated by
the same openness, and it provides important protections. Many terrorist operations have been
disrupted and militant suspects arrested through the cooperative efforts of European law enforcement
agencies.23

Another major difference between the United States and Europeindeed, between the United States
and most of the worldis the degree of importance accorded the United Nations as a principal actor.
In Europe and most other regions of the world, the legal authorization and political leadership of the
United Nations are indispensable for cooperative international action against terrorism. UNSC
Resolution 1373 (2001) and other counterterrorism measures provided the essential legal and political
authorization permitting nations and regions to act. In the United States, by contrast, there is greater
disdain for international legal agreements and a more critical view of the United Nations. The
significant institutional mechanisms of the CTC and CTED in particular warrant more detailed
analysis because their effectiveness and relationship to strategic peacebuilding can be more readily
assessed than was possible earlier.24

Advancing the Shared Tasks: Good Governance, Development, and Human Rights
As the international community has gained more experience in the strengths and shortcomings of
varied approaches to counterterrorism, especially those measures that rely heavily on the integration
of global mandates with local implementation, it has become increasingly clear that capacity-building
and institutional development of civil society organizations and of good government itself are critical
to success. Moreover, counterterrorism in its best form correlates directly to strategic peacebuilding in
that the most significant CTC and UN successes in the former have been efforts to increase the
capacity of national elites and institutions, as well as sectors of civil society, to improve their
contribution to good governance. In addition, the development of successful counterterrorism,
especially when the concerns of the global South and transnational civil society are heard, addresses
issues of economic development and considers the enhancement of human rights, not their
compromise, (p.179) as both a means and a goal. This integrates many of the ends and means of
sanctions and incentives-based counterterrorism with those of strategic peacebuilding.
Many of the measures required by UNSC Resolution 1373creating more effective law enforcement
capabilities; improving border, immigration, and customs controls; regulating banks and financial
institutions; enhancing security at ports and border crossingsparallel the steps needed to strengthen
good governance. These steps are increasingly recognized as essential to economic development and
the expansion of social and economic opportunity. Trade and investment depend on stable
government and the rule of law. Thus, technical assistance programs that build governance capacity
also advance the prospects for economic development. There are ways diverse multilateral agencies
have engaged in counterterrorism, and the CTC/CTED as facilitating organizations, have learned
important lessons in these areas.

This linkage between technical assistance and economic development indicates that multilateral aid
strategies need to be focused on both integrated economic development and the provision of technical
assistance to meet counterterrorism requirements and long-term peacebuilding needs. Recent policy
papers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Development Assistance
Committee (OECD/DAC) have highlighted the links between development cooperation and terrorism
prevention.25 The DAC has argued that the fundamental goal of poverty reduction shared by all
development agencies can help prevent an environment hospitable to terrorism. Certainly the
legitimacy of development objectives should not be threatened, but it is evident that development
funders can do much to contribute to the basic goal of enhancing counterterrorism capacity and the
potential of strategic peacebuilding. Moreover, greater development assistance can help address the
root causes of terrorism. Many of the adverse social conditions in which terrorists thrive fall within
the realm of primary concerns for development cooperation.

To realize these goals, greater direct dialogue is needed between security officials and the staff of
development agencies, with the goal of identifying where counterterrorism and good governance
agendas overlap and are mutually reinforcing.26 Counterterrorism activities are traditionally viewed
very differently by the security and development communities, paralleling similar tensions between
the security and the peacebuilding communities. As it often unfolds, the former tend to be mainly
concerned with enforcement and protection, whereas the latter have a focus on more fundamental
structural issues. The close relationship between security and development is increasingly
acknowledged as the development community aims to support the optimum functioning of civil
society institutions.27 Conversely, there is also recognition among security sector actors that short-
term operations related to counterterrorism will not bring sustainable benefit without corresponding
attention to underlying longer term development work.

The brief history of global counterterrorist efforts underscores the imperative that various actors must
reinforce development and good governance goals as well as security capacity in government in a
mutually beneficial cycle. These (p.180) aims are interdependent and rely on the same factors for
success, including participatory processes, transparency, and accountability. Technical aid and advice
have become significant aspects of development assistance for many nations, particularly those with
low levels of state capacity to meet the requirements of global counterterrorism mandates. The
prospect of increased development aid and capacity-building assistance could be an inducement for
many states to implement more completely UN mandates. A program of providing increased
development assistance in combination with security-related capacity-building efforts could be highly
attractive to many developing nations.
The CTC has been tasked with facilitating the provision of technical assistance to help nations of
goodwill comply with UN counterterrorism requirements. What the CTC has learned in this process
has been both enlightening and discouraging regarding the depth of the need for linking good
governance with development aid. These lessons include the following.

Relatively few countries have the extensive legal, administrative, and regulatory capacities
needed to freeze financial assets, prevent the travel of designated individuals, deny safe haven
to terrorists and their supporters, and suppress the recruitment and military supply of
terrorist groups.28
Many states face deep deficiencies in their operational and administrative capacity to
implement UNSC counterterrorism mandates. Moreover, many states lack expertise even to
determine their deficiencies in implementation capacity. These nations need improvements
in legislation and legal authority, as well as better administrative machinery and equipment
to implement legislative mandates. Their bureaucrats need training and performance
guidance in meeting the standards.
A significant number of states need help improving policing and law enforcement systems
and creating financial regulatory mechanisms and financial intelligence units. Assistance may
also be needed for the development of computerized links among security-related units,
improved systems for identifying fraudulent travel documents, better mechanisms for
controlling customs and immigration, and computerized equipment to screen passengers and
cargo at border entry points.
The demand for this kind of assistance far outpaces supply. Nearly 100 countries have
expressed an interest in technical assistance from the CTC,29 although the actual number of
states needing assistance is greater.
Acting as a global switchboard of sorts, the CTC made some headway in connecting needy national
bureaucracies with states, institutions, and professional groups that might assist them. The primary
international organizations providing various types of assistance have been the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime/Terrorism Prevention Branch, the Commonwealth (p.181) Secretariat, and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). Member countries of the OECD have also provided legislative
drafting assistance on a bilateral basis. The IMF has been the main source of assistance for drafting
legislation to counter the financing of terrorism.30
In the last area of concern for peacebuilding and counterterrorismhumanitarianism and human
rightsthe experience of the recent past reveals deep divisions among various actors. In some cases,
including UNSC permanent members Russia, the United States, and China, national government
officials have used the fight against terrorism as a justification for limiting democratic freedoms and
suppressing dissident and minority groups or targeting specific individuals. The human rights NGO
community has been aggressively defending human rights, often by condemning counterterrorism
strategies and actions. IGOs, especially the UN, have attempted to articulate not only a defense of
human rights in a time of terrorism but the argument that these two policy goalsenhanced human
rights and effective counterterrorismare not in a zero-sum relationship. Thus, Secretary General
Kofi Annan stated in 2003:

There is no trade-off to be made between human rights and terrorism. Upholding human rights is not
at odds with battling terrorism: on the contrary, the moral vision of human rightsthe deep respect
for the dignity of each personis among our most powerful weapons against it. To compromise on the
protection of human rights would hand terrorists a victory they cannot achieve on their own. The
promotion and protection of human rights should, therefore, be at the centre of anti-terrorism
strategies.31

Two years later, in his address at the Madrid summit in March 2005, Annan expressed regret that
many measures which States are currently adopting to counter terrorism are infringing on human
rights and fundamental freedoms.32 This theme was echoed in the UN High-Level Panel, which
cautioned that approaches to terror focusing wholly on military, police and intelligence measures risk
undermining efforts to promote good governance and human rights.33 Annan included the defense of
human rights as one of the five pillars of global counterterrorism strategy. 34 UNSC Resolution 1456
stated: States must ensure that any measure taken to combat terrorism comply with all their
obligations under international law, and should adopt such measures in accordance with international
law, in particular international human rights, refugee, and humanitarian law.35

A strong case can be made that protecting human rights and strengthening democracy are essential
over the long run to the fight against terrorism. Protecting human rights and guaranteeing the
freedom to voice dissenting views without government interference can help prevent the rise of
political extremism.36 This claim is not a political preference as much as an empirical trend worth
noting. For example, a National Academy of Sciences study in 2002 noted, terrorism and its
supporting audiences appear to be fostered by (p.182) policies of extreme political repression and
discouraged by policies of incorporating both dissident and moderate groups into civil society and the
political process.37 The 2002 UN Policy Working Group observed that a lack of hope for justice
provides breeding grounds for terrorism.38 People without an opportunity to voice their opinions and
organize politically often turn to violence as the only way of expressing grievances. As Alan Krueger
observed in the New York Times, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully without
interference from the government goes a long way to providing an alternative to terrorism. 39
Human rights organizations have lobbied for greater UN efforts to uphold these standards, arguing in
2006 that the CTC has an obligation to ensure respect for human rights in counter terrorism efforts
by member states.40 In April 2005, the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
decided to appoint a special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and
fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.41 The first report of the rapporteur, in December
2005, stated that States are not receiving a clear enough message from the [Counter-Terrorism]
Committee concerning their duty to respect human rights while countering terrorism. 42 The report
also expressed a desire to continue dialogue with the Committee and the Counter-Terrorism
Executive Directorate including, in particular, the joint identification and compilation of best
practices in the field of effective and human rights compatible responses to terrorism. As a result, the
CTED now includes an expert on human rights on its staff, which will enhance the ability of the CTC to
ensure that counterterrorism best practices are compatible with respect for human rights. Many
observers believe that this progress would not have occurred if the transnational human rights
community had not mobilized so strongly, and for so long, to attain this objective.43

Coordination, Redundancy, and the New Reform Process in the UN Counterterrorism

System
We began this chapter by describing the evolution of United Nations sanctions as more humane,
smarter policy tools to complement strategic peacebuilding. We then discussed how the UNSC
decided to employ such smart sanctions techniques in the battle against global terrorism and
discussed the new procedures and institutional actors the UN created for that task. As these processes
unfolded, what became clear was that effective counterterrorism, whether via smart sanctions or
through the work of special agencies, needed to include strategic assistance provided by the UN and
related actors. This work aimed to support the emergence and sustenance of good governance,
increased economic development, and the enhancement of human rights. Coming full circle, these
very policy goals for counterterrorism strategy have historically been associated with the creation of
sustainable peace and, thus, are central to strategic peacebuilding. In the previous section, we further
explicated how these goals relate mostly to positive developments that unfolded under the
auspices (p.183) of the work of the CTC and CTED, as well as the organizations they drew into their
cooperative orbit.
The achievements we have noted, although authentic, are short-lived. If the UN system is to play a
lead role in the type of counterterrorism that fosters good governance, economic development, and
human rights, substantial additional adaptation and innovation must be forthcoming. 44 Next we
outline the problems that have developed that stifle effective counterterrorism action and provide a
series of recommendations for improvement. As with the earlier discussion, we note how such
changes enhance or restrict the prospects for successful strategic peacebuilding.

The range of regional and international organizations with actual or potential involvement in the UN
counterterrorism mission is vast. Thus far, the CTC has made important strides in encouraging
regional organizations to strengthen their counterterrorism capacity. Some regional organizations
have created their own counterterrorism units, which share information with the CTC and attend
semiannual regional coordination meetings. The Organization of American States (OAS) has played a
leading role and has established a counterterrorism secretariat within the Inter-American Committee
against Terrorism (CICTE). During 2002, the secretariat designed and deployed the CICTE online
antiterrorism database. CICTE also participated in the drafting of model regulations for the
prevention of terrorist financing and in meetings of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force. The
OAS Convention against Terrorism entered into effect in July 2003 and, as of February 2004, was
signed by thirty-three of thirty-four member states.

After the Madrid bombings of March 2004, the European Council adopted the Declaration on
Combating Terrorism and created the position of European coordinator for counterterrorism. 45 The
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum had already established a Counter-Terrorism Task Force in
February 2003. Similar regional bodies exist within the Commonwealth of Independent States and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The CTC has worked with these and other regional bodies to
enhance overall international coordination in the campaign against terrorism.

Other geographic regions continue to lag behind. Much of South Asia and large parts of Africa have
not adequately developed the necessary regionally coordinated mechanisms to facilitate local state
implementation of counterterrorism resolutions mandated by the UNSC. Progress has been made
among fourteen Arab states with the creation of a Middle East and North Africa FATF-style regional
body, which was formally established in November 2004. Similar efforts are needed in North Africa
and other regions to more effectively address other key issue areas covered in Resolution 1373,
including border control, law enforcement, and judicial practice. Convening regional and subregional
workshops to develop best practices, facilitated by the CTC and coordinated by local bodies, would be
an important step toward achieving this task.46

Coordination among international and regional organizations has lost ground during the past few
years, and the CTC has not been able to play as effective a coordinating role among states and
organizations as it did at the (p.184) outset of its tenure. Its declining ability to fulfill that function is
partly due to administrative and other limitations imposed by operating within the UN headquarters
in New York, which gravitates toward bureaucratic procedural approaches to the issues it faces to
avoid potential political disagreements. As primarily a set of political bodies (or purely a political body
in the case of the UNSC), the UN in its grand form is less well suited over time to the task of
implementing many of the technical aspects of the resolutions it adopts. More effective might be the
development of a narrowly defined, specialized agency, rather than a committee of the council, located
in Vienna or Geneva with like-minded agencies, rather than in New York.47
Coordination and cooperation within the UN system also needs improvement. Of special concern is
the relationship between the CTC and the UNSC committee and monitoring team established to
enforce sanctions against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The monitoring team established by Resolution
1526 consists of eight staff members, yet it was tasked with the job of investigating and reporting on
member state efforts to implement the sanctions measures. Coordination between the monitoring
team and the CTED has been strained at times.

Inadequate cooperation between the monitoring team and CTED is part of a larger problem of overlap
and poor coordination among the dozens of UN bodies addressing terrorism-related issues. There are
now four special UNSC bodies working on counterterrorism issues, each with its own staff of experts:
the CTC and the CTED, the al Qaeda and Taliban committee and monitoring team, the Resolution
1540 committee and staff experts, and the Resolution 1566 committee and working group. These
bodies have a combined staff of forty professional experts. Although the mandates of the various
committees are separate, they have many overlapping purposes and responsibilities. UN member
states have obligations with respect to all four committees. The potential for the duplication of efforts
and bureaucratic inefficiency under these circumstances is considerable. Reforming these
inefficiencies and tackling the future challengesas we outline shortlyare critical to the long-term
viability of a counterterrorism policy that would actually contribute to peace and peacebuilding.

A long-term consideration for the future of the UN counterterrorism programand for linking it more
demonstrably to the UN purpose of building peaceis the prospect of creating a new international
agency to combat terrorism. Monitoring the implementation of states counterterrorism obligations
requires a long-term and unwavering commitmentone that will not diminish as the memories of the
most recent horrific terrorist attack fade or if the UNSC is seized with specific threats to international
peace and security that require its urgent attention. Some states may take decades to develop their
infrastructure to fully implement the counterterrorism obligations imposed by the UNSC and
international treaties. Given the importance and long-term nature of the task, and the above-
mentioned political and institutional limitations of working within the UN, serious consideration
should be given to studying alternative models to the current approach, including the establishment of
a dedicated counterterrorism organization outside of New York.

(p.185) Creating a new agency would also be a means of giving greater priority and more permanence
to the global fight against terrorism. Counterterrorismone of the key security tasks of our erais one
of the few issues for which there is not a dedicated international agency. Human rights, refugees,
chemical weapons, childrens rights, and many other issues allquite appropriatelyhave specialized
agencies that are reasonably well resourced and operate within the UN system. It seems appropriate
that a similar agency be created in the field of counterterrorism.48
It is conceivable that the CTED might create a precedent for and eventually evolve into a larger
counterterrorism agency. Combining CTED with the staffs of the sanctions monitoring team and the
two other counterterrorism expert groups would immediately create a sizable agency, one that then
could be expanded on as nations determine the need. Ideally, such an agency should function within
the UN system and operate under the authority of the UNSC, as is the case with the International
Atomic Energy Agency. This would enable the proposed agency to bring matters to the attention of the
council. It would give greater political weight to its operations and link it to potential enforcement
authority.

Whether other UN member states will support an expansion of CTC/CTED capacity or the creation of
a new international organization remains uncertain. The debate on these issues has yet to be joined.
What has been agreed by many, as illustrated by this chapter, is that the structure and function of
global counterterrorism efforts need to be dynamically integrated. As is the case in strategic
peacebuilding, the structural underpinning that authoritatively administers a set of policies must do
so in a manner that is inclusive of all relevant actors affected by policy. In addition, the form and the
function of this inclusivity should produce greater peace and justice in dealing with difficult conflict
situations. These are but a few of the critical issues that need to be addressed as the UNSC considers
future options for creating greater organizational capacity in the struggle against international
terrorism.

Achieving these ambitious objectives will be a difficult and long-term process. Preventive strategies
pose enormous challenges for the United Nations and for the worlds leading countries. A
comprehensive approach includes not only coercive measures but also persuasive policies that seek to
win hearts and minds. Like the other dimensions of successful counterterrorism strategy and strategic
peacebuilding, this longer term preventive effort depends on a greater commitment to cooperation,
multilateral action, the rule of law within good governance, and, particularly, a deep respect for
human rights.

Notes

Notes:
(1) . Though some observers view the active use of Security Council sanctions as a fulfillment of
functions envisioned by the founding members of the UN, skepticism regarding the legal basis of
comprehensive UN sanctions and controversies regarding the reach of Chapter VII authorization have
been a concern to a number of analysts. See Paul Conlon, United Nations Sanctions Management: A
Case Study of the Iraq Sanctions Committee, 19901994, Procedural Aspects of International Law

Series (Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers, 2000) ; and Vera Growlland-Debbas, ed., United
Nations Sanctions and International Law. The Graduate Institute of International Studies, vol. 1

(The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2001) .

(2) . The most articulate and consistent of these analysts is Joy Gordon, Sanctions as Siege

Warfare,The Nation, March 1999 ; and Cool War: Economic Sanctions as a Weapon of Mass
Destruction, Harpers, August 2, 2002.

(3) . David Cortright and George A. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Security Council

Sanctions in the 1990s (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000), pp. 1432 .

(4) . Peter Wallensteen and Carina Staibano, eds., International Sanctions: Between Words and Wars

in the Global System (New York: Frank Cass, 2005) .

(5) . Our past research confirms this mix of coercion and the promise of its release as a bargaining tool
that increases the likelihood of sanctions success. See David Cortright and George A. Lopez, The

Sanctions Decade, especially chapter 2.

(6) . We provide a more detailed account of this history in David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and
Linda Gerber-Stellingwerf, Sanctions, in Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws, eds., The Oxford

Handbook on the United Nations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 349369 .

(7) . For an overview of these targeted sanctions see, David Cortright and George A. Lopez, eds., Smart

Sanctions: Targeting Economic Statecraft (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) ;

and Wallensteen and Staibano, International Sanctions .

(8) . Claudia Von Braunmhl and Manfred Kulessa, The Impact of UN Sanctions on Humanitarian
Assistance Activities, Report on a Study Commissioned by the United Nations Department of
Humanitarian Affairs (Berlin: Gesellschaft fr Communication Management Interkultur Training,

December 1995) .

(9) . Larry Minear et al., Toward More Humane and Effective Sanctions Management: Enhancing
the Capacity of the United Nations System, Occasional Paper 31 (Providence, R.I.: Thomas J. Watson

Jr. Institute for International Studies, Brown University, 1998) .

(10) . Manuel Bessler, Richard Garfield, and Gerard McHugh, Sanctions Assessment Handbook:
Assessing the Humanitarian Implications of Sanctions (New York: United Nations Inter-Agency

Standing Committee, 2004) .

(11) . For more detailed analysis of arms embargoes, see Andy Knight, The United Nations and Arms

Embargoes Verification (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998) ; and Michael Brzoska and

George A. Lopez, eds., Putting Teeth in the Tiger (forthcoming) .

(12) . United Nations Security Council, Letter Dated 24 September 1996 from the Chairman of the
Security Council Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 724 (1991) Concerning Yugoslavia
Addressed to the President of the Security Council, Report of the Copenhagen Roundtable on United
Nations Sanctions in the Case of the Former Yugoslavia, Held at Copenhagen on 24 and 25 June
1996, S/1996/776, New York, September 24, 1996, paras. 33 and 34.

(13) . See Damien Fruchart et al., United Nations Arms Embargoes, SIPRI and SPITS of Uppsala

University, November 2007 .

(14) . Much of the analysis that follows is drawn from our earlier work, especially Cortright et al.,

Sanctions, and Cortright and Lopez, Sanctions and the Search for Security, pp. 204217 .

(15) . United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts on Violations of Security
Council Sanctions against UNITA (UN document S/2000/203), March 10, 2000; Interim Report of
the Monitoring Mechanism on Angola Sanctions Established by the Security Council in Resolution
1295 (2000) of April 2000 (UN document S/2000/1026), October 25, 2000; Final Report of the
Monitoring Mechanism on Angola Sanctions (UN document S/2000/1225), December 21,
2000;Addendum to the Final Report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions against UNITA (UN
document S/2001/363), April 11, 2001; Supplementary Report of the Monitoring Mechanism on
Sanctions against UNITA (UN document S/2001/966), October 12, 2001; Additional Report of the
Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions against UNITA (UN document S/2002/486), April 26, 2002;
andAdditional Report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions against UNITA (UN document
S/2002/1119), October 16, 2002.

(16) . United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts Appointed Pursuant to Security
Resolution 1306 (2000), Paragraph 19, in Relation to Sierra Leone, (UN document S/2000/1195),
December 20, 2000.

(17) . United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts Pursuant to Security Council
Resolution 1343 (2001), Paragraph 19, Concerning Liberia (UN document S/2001/1015), October 26,
2001.

(18) . David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Linda Gerber, The Viability of Commodity Sanctions:
The Case of Diamonds, in Cortright and A. Lopez, Sanctions and the Search for Security, pp. 181

200 .

(19) . Richard A. Clarke et al., Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action (Washington, D.C.:

Century Foundation Press, 2004) .

(20) . See, for example, Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State

Response(London: Frank Cass, 2003) .

(21) . Much of the discussion that follows relies heavily on David Cortright and George A. Lopez,

eds.Uniting against Terror (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 312 .

(22) . The history and details of these cases are chronicled in Cortright and Lopez, The Sanctions
Decade and Cortright and Lopez, Sanctions and the Search for Security.
(23) . Karen Greenberg, From the Editor: European Counterterrorism and Its Implications for the

U.S. War on Terror, Special Edition, NYU Review of Law and Security 2 (Summer 2005): 23 .

(24) . Our own policy work in this area led us to write a series of interim reports on the CTC and
CTED. Some of the material in the sections that follow are drawn from those reports as well as
from David Cortright et al., Global Cooperation against Terrorism, in Cortright and Lopez,

eds., Uniting against Terror, pp. 2346 .

(25) . Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, A Development Co-operation Lens
on Terrorism Prevention: Key Entry Points for Action. DAC Guidelines and Reference Series (Paris:

OECD, 2003) .

(26) . Steven Monblatt, Executive Secretary, Inter-American Committee against Terrorism,

Organization of American States, Developing Regional Cooperation (statement at the CTC special
meeting, Almaty, Kazakhstan, January 2627, 2005).

(27) . A recent example is DAC/GOVNET, The Challenge of Capacity Development: Working towards
Good Practice, February 1, 2006.

(28) . United Nations Security Council, Security Council Resolution 1377 (2001), S/RES/1377, New
York, November 12, 2001.

(29) . Curtis Ward, personal communication with authors, June 16, 2004.

(30) . Curtis A. Ward, Purposes and Scope: Technical Assistance Activities in the Counter-Terrorism
Committee (unpublished paper, 2004), p. 16.

(31) . Kofi Annan, Conference Report (keynote address, conference on Fighting Terrorism for
Humanity, International Peace Academy, New York, September 22, 2003), p. 10.

(32) . United Nations, Secretary General Offers Global Strategy for Fighting Terrorism, in Address to
Madrid Summit, SG/SM/9757, press release, Madrid, Spain, March 10, 2005.

(33) . United Nations, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility: Report of the Secretary-
Generals High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A/59/565, para. 147.

(34) . Report of the Secretary-General, Uniting against terrorism: recommendations for a global
counter-terrorism strategy, A/60/825. New York, United Nations General Assembly, April 27,
2006,http://www.un.org/unitingagainstterrorism/sg-terrorism-2may06.pdf (accessed May 18,
2006), section VI, paras. 110118.

(35) . United Nations Security Council, Security Council Resolution 1456 (2003), S/RES/1456, New
York, January 20, 2003, para. 6.

(36) . Alan Krueger, Economic Scene, New York Times, May 29, 2002 .

(37) . John Gershman, A Secure America in a Secure World, Foreign Policy in Focus Special Report,
FPI Task Force on Terrorism, September, 2004.
(38) . United Nations General Assembly, Security Council, Report of the Policy Working Group on the
United Nations and Terrorism, A/57/273-S/2002/875, New York, August 6, 2002, para. 16.

(39) . Krueger, Economic Scene.

(40) . See, for example, Human Rights Watch, Open Letter to the United Nations Counter-Terrorism
Committee, January 25,
2005, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/25/uzbeki10074_txt.htm(accessed May 9, 2006).

(41) . Human Rights Resolution 2005/80, Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
While Countering Terrorism, http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/CHR/resolutions/E-CN_4-RES-
200580.doc (accessed June 21, 2006).

(42) . Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and
fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, E/CN.4/2006/98. December 28,
2005,http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G05/168/84/PDF/G0516884.pdf?OpenElement(
accessed June 21, 2006)

(43) . Rosemary Foot, The United Nations, Counterterrorism, and Human Rights: Institutional
Adaptation and Embedded Ideas, Human Rights Quaterly 29 (2007): 489514.

(44) . For a full explication of these reforms, see Cortright and Lopez, Uniting against Terror, pp.

237272 ; and Eric Rosand, Global Terrorism: Multilateral Responses to an Extraordinary

Threat, Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series (New York: International Peace Academy, April

2007) .

(45) . The text of the declaration is available online at the European

Union,http://www.eu2004.ie/templates/document_file.asp?id=10707 (accessed August 20, 2004).

(46) . Reports received by the CTC show deficiencies in regions with less developed regional
organizational capacity to assist states in implementing Resolution 1373. More information on the
Eastern and Southern African Anti-Money Laundering Group is available online at the
OECD,http://www1.oecd.org/fatf/Ctry-orgpages/org-esaamlg_en.htm (accessed June 15, 2004).

(47) . This recommendation also appears in Rosand, Global Terrorism.

(48) . See Eric Rosand, The UN Security Councils Counter-Terrorism Efforts, in Roy S. Lee,
ed.,Swords into Plowshares: Building Peace through the United Nations (Leiden: Nijhoff, 2006), pp.

7383 .

Peace and Justice?

The Contribution of International Judicial Processes to Peacebuilding

Robert C. Johansen
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the complex interplay between international judicial processes and peace.
Johansen engages the debate on international judicial activism, evaluating specific cases, especially
the International Criminal Courts indictment of leaders of the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda.
Judicial proceedings have complex consequences for a wide range of conflict issues, including
negotiating ceasefires, deterring future crimes, and prospects for post-conflict reconciliation. The
author proposes guidelines for employing judicial processes to promote an end to conflict, based on a
utilitarian ethic that gives priority to saving as many lives as possible. The guidelines consider how to
advance peace and justice not only through judicial proceedings, but also when judicial proceedings
are suspended.

Keywords: International Criminal Court (ICC), genocide, LRA, northern Uganda, post-conflict reconciliation, peace
processes,justice versus peace

In discussions about how to end armed conflicts and nurture peacebuilding, some observers argue
that pursuing justice by trying to bring political leaders accused of horrible crimes to trial often
interferes with achieving a cease-fire agreement and sustaining peace thereafter.1 On the other hand,
human rights advocates claim there can be no lasting peace without justice and no deterrence of
crimes without judicial action against perpetrators. Yet in Michael P. Scharfs words, history appears
to be replete with many instances of peace based on injustice, as well as situations where pursuing
justice has thwarted the quest for peace, and where justice has been successfully traded for
peace.2Investigations of mass murder and prosecutions of those responsible for it may increase
instability and deepen hostility among adversarial groups in one society but contribute to a sense of
political catharsis that relaxes tensions, enables social healing, and opens the door to restorative
justice in another. Context matters.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has brought the possible trade-off
between justice and peace more directly to the forefront because of the increased possibility that
political leaders may be indicted for war crimes or crimes against humanity, thereby motivating them
to resist a peace agreement unless and until it offers them amnesty from future prosecution. On one
hand, arguments for seeking justice and disallowing impunity for wrongdoers are compelling, not only
because justice, impartially pursued, is desirable in itself and may deter future crimes, but also
because the truth-revealing function of trials and the public act of assigning moral responsibility for
crimes may contribute to sustainable peace (p.190) and reconciliation in the long run. On the other
hand, arguments for achieving an immediate peace in a society being torn apart by ongoing war and
for providing incentives to stop fighting are also compelling. If at times it seems that trade-offs
between the two values are necessary, what should be done?3
In this chapter I argue that to maximize both peace and justice, international judicial institutions, the
United Nations, national governments, and human rights organizations should adopt a rule-based
utilitarian ethic in which lessons learned from past judicial proceedings to enforce human rights law
and prudential political bargaining for peace should be synthesized to achieve the lowest possible
(estimated) loss of life, considering both the short and the long term.4 Although this thesis is
necessarily imprecise because it is impossible to predict accurately the future of conflict, especially in
strife-ridden societies, it offers a clear guideline that can be helpful in decision making, for judicial
officers and political negotiators as well as the public at large. Moreover, this thesis encourages a more
creative synthesis of lessons learned from both judicial proceedings and political negotiations for
cease-fires than has been developed up to now.

The central question of this analysis is: to what extent and in what ways do international judicial
processes contribute to peace and peacebuilding? The discussion begins with a look at the meaning of
peacebuilding, followed by some cautionary comments about the difficulties of drawing causal
connections between judicial proceedings and peacebuilding. Second, the discussion explores
common consequences of judicial activismthat is, arguments for and against investigating and
prosecuting those who are accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Third, I
suggest guidelines for designing and conditionally employing judicial proceedings to encourage an
end to ongoing violent conflict and discourage the resumption of violence after a cease-fire. These are
based on lessons drawn from recent conflicts and international judicial practice. Fourth, the analysis
closes with a discussion of how to maximize both peace and justice in peacebuilding strategies.

This analysis confirms the idea that international judicial practices are most conducive to
peacebuilding when they are understood to be only one of many factors in strategic peacebuilding and
when they are deliberately employed as part of an overall strategy thoughtfully orchestrating a wide
range of related legal, political, economic, and public education practicesa central theme advanced
by John Paul Lederach and Scott Appleby in their Overview, by Daniel Philpott in the Introduction,
and by the contributors to this book more generally. For instance, judicial practices can easily be
discredited and thought to be divisive if they are viewed in isolation and expected to do much more
than they are able to do. But they can do well in establishing accountability for wrong-doing and in
reaffirming socially constructive norms for conduct, while receiving approval from local people for
these contributions, if other initiatives, perhaps from a truth commission, a legislature, educational
media, religious organizations, or well-trained police and national judicial processes take up other
tasks that international judicial institutions cannot manage but which do need to occur for healing to
result.

(p.191) Definitions, Causality, and Assumptions

Definitions
It is useful to note at the outset that the two concepts of peacebuilding and justice-seeking share
several goals: to prevent future violations of fundamental human rights norms, strengthen the rule of
international and national law, address the consequences and injustices of past abuses, promote
understanding and reconciliation in a violence-ridden society, and reshape the international system in
ways that will increase compliance with norms of peace and human rights in the long run.

Ones definition of peacebuilding heavily influences ones calculus of the contribution of

international judicial proceedings to peacebuilding. Within this chapter, peacebuilding means social
integration. Within social I include political, economic, legal, and other dimensions of social life.
Social integration can occur in a tiny village community, a city, a state, or the international
community. If social integration can occur in international society, as I think it can, then
peacebuilding can also occur in the international community among national societies, as well as
among different groups inside a state. The latter locus for peacebuilding is widely accepted; the former
is often ignored. A concept of peacebuilding that includes the former takes account of cross-border
interactions and international norms and institutions that promise to increase the willingness and
ability of states to prevent violence among themselves and within their societies.

Globalization may bring either social integration or disintegration. It may increase transnational
cross-cutting social cleavagesan integrative function of social conflictsor decrease them, in which
case it could eventually build a global apartheid system. The peacebuilding (social integration)
discussed in this chapter includes both horizontal and vertical dimensions of integration. Strategic
peacebuilding includes all dimensions of social integration from the local to the global. At their best,
international judicial proceedings contribute to peacebuilding at every level, from the smallest village
that suffered an atrocity to the system of global order. Peacebuilding as processes of social integration
includes efforts to establish effective governance institutions, strengthen the rule of law, encourage
sustainable development, and build trust between citizens and the state, as well as among citizens
themselves.5 Thus, all the main issues in the choices over how to make peace and whether to pursue
justice through judicial proceedings are relevant to the peacebuilding strategist.

As suggested, for purposes of careful analysis, peacebuilding needs to be defined to include not only
its impact within a state but also its impact on interstate relations, and its possible impact on the
nature of the global order itself. If international judicial processes contribute to intrastate
peacebuilding by deterring crimes in a particular society, for example, these processes may indirectly
affect other societies as well. In addition, these processes may influence military
conduct between countries by reinforcing, for example, the expectation that (p.192) violations of the
Geneva Conventions will receive international attention if a national government does not honor the
conventions or if alleged violations are not handled in an appropriate way by domestic judicial
institutions. There is some evidence, for example, that the number and scope of atrocities in Darfur
declined, although they were not totally halted, after word spread that the ICC would attempt to
prosecute crimes there.6 In the long run, recurring expectations among countries that international
legal procedures are an ever-present reality can modify state conduct and eventually the structure of
international relations. Constructivist studies of the role of international norms have also shown that
norms may influence peoples identities, because the internalization of norms constitutes identities as
well as shapes the legitimacy of major political institutions.7 In a genuine sense, expanding the rule of
law among nations through international judicial proceedings can help domesticate the
international system.8 The domestication process can be viewed as (global) systemic peacebuilding,
transforming the global order into a more effective rule-of-law society.
Because the boundary between domestic and international politics is increasingly porous, and because
relevant actors are not limited to states, either in terms of upholding human rights or violating them,
we ought not to take a primarily state-centric perspective in studying peacebuilding. Transnational
political and economic relations may affect peacebuilding as much as international political and
economic relations, as this examination of the role of international judicial processes will
demonstrate.

When I speak of the rule of law or of a rule-of-law society, I mean to invoke a society in which a
broad range of democratic values and time-honored judicial practices are present, including fair
elections; freedom of speech, press, and assembly; robust guarantees for minority rights that limit
majority rule to ensure respect for nonderogable human rights; checks and balances; widespread
support for the belief that law should be impartially implemented and adjudicated, with due process
protections, and that law should be no respecter of persons. This kind of a rule-of-law society is
certainly conducive to realizing the values of human dignity and is a primary manifestation of
peacebuilding. As defining the rule of law can be controversial, my description is intended to be fully
consistent with the UN Secretary Generals definition of the concept as a principle of governance in
which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the state itself, are
accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated,
and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards.9 It includes
measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of law, equality before the law,
accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in
decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness and procedural and legal transparency.10

Causal Connections
The purpose of this analysis of international judicial processes and peacebuilding arises from a desire
to identify ways that judicial proceedings focused on (p.193) assessing the responsibility for gross
violations of human rights may contribute to social integration or sustainable peace. Implementing
justice through judicial proceedings, of course, may be desirable in itself, without regard for whether it
contributes to peacebuilding in the short run. Yet it does not make sense to pursue justice without
some regard for its impact on peacebuilding, because a failure to contribute to the latter could
undermine justice as well as peace further down the road. Thus, we are interested in how the two
interact. In the long run, justice pursued through exemplary judicial processes normally contributes to
peacebuilding.
Of course, the ways that judicial processes may contribute to peacebuilding are extremely complex
and influenced by the consequences of other peacebuilding measures. This study begins with three
explicit assumptions. First is the relatively uncontroversial assumption that enforcing the law
discourages illegal conduct. This is widely assumed to be true in domestic legal systems and no doubt
has an analogue in the international legal system, despite the latters highly decentralized nature. Of
course it is difficult to prove that law enforcement increases legal conduct because it is difficult to
know how many people would have broken the law in the absence of enforcement. Thus, it is difficult
to know how many lives might be saved by international enforcement of human rights law,
particularly if one attempts to consider the long-term life-saving benefits of weaving a stronger fabric
of international law. But we can conjecture how many lives might have been saved by international
enforcement of human rights law. Political leaders orchestrated the killing of more than 2 million
people in Cambodia. Hutu leaders massacred an estimated 800,000 Rwandans in a few weeks.
Effective enforcement of agreed-on international law could have saved most of these lives in what are
only two of many examples where law enforcement could make dramatic differences.

A second, related assumption is that reducing illegal conduct in the form of gross violations of human
rights contributes to peacebuilding. If many laws in a society are rights affirming, then legal,
predictable conduct dignifies human life in a rule-of-law society and enhances social integration
(peacebuilding).

A third assumption is that exemplary law enforcement processes contribute more to peacebuilding
than deeply flawed processes. Not all law enforcement is the same. Obviously, some judicial processes
come much closer to ideal expectations than others. Flawed processes do not teach the desired rule-
of-law message. Bad laws or bad legal practice can even undermine respect for the law. Apartheid, for
example, had an elaborate legal framework in South Africa, yet enforcing its laws did not contribute to
peacebuilding. Dictators and leaders in authoritarian political systems may use judicial prosecutions
to eliminate their opponents and ensure their own power. Although authoritarian legal systems in
China and Vietnam, for example, stabilized those societies, prevented their fragmentation, and
organized effective economic development programs, these exceptions to the assumption advanced
here do not negate the general principle that the more legal processes appear to be unfair,
partisan, (p.194)manipulative, truth-denying, one-sided, and corrupt, the less likely they are to
contribute to peacebuilding.
To consider another example, if a revolutionary process is brewing in a society, law enforcement by a
hated government may contribute to violence and social disintegration, not peacebuilding. Of course
even deeply flawed, draconian legal processes may increase peoples compliance with the law (if not
respect for it) because they are intimidated. To illustrate the complexities, it seems that Saddam
Husseins totalitarian political system prevented Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis from civil war, but such a
system did not contribute much to peacebuilding in a comprehensive sense. In the present analysis,
peacebuilding should not be construed as merely synonymous with maintenance of order among
potentially adversarial groups, although peaceable relations among all are essential. Here the concept
also includes steps toward genuine social integration in a democratizing society.
A fourth assumption is that to assess the overall impact of judicial practices on peacebuilding, it is
necessary to examine peacebuilding over one or preferably several decades of time. Good judicial
processes not only render a verdict on a specific case, they also teach the society to respect law and to
support a culture of respect for human rights.

To complicate assessment further, we might ask about the timing of initiatives: does peacebuilding
begin with efforts to arrange a cease-fire among warring parties, or does it begin only after achieving
peace? Some of the same factors that contribute to peacebuilding before a cease-fire in phase one may
not contribute to peacebuilding after a cease-fire in phase two. To illustrate, two warring groups in
intrastate conflict may advance a cease-fire arrangement by agreeing that there shall be an amnesty
for all belligerents. Subsequently, having no investigations or prosecutions may cause resentment and
social unrest, especially if a large number of persons in the society were victimized by criminal
conduct of one or both parties before the cease-fire. We must acknowledge that what advances
peacebuilding may vary from time1 to time2, and so on.

Because the prospects for peace are sometimes affected by anticipations of judicial processes begun
before a cease-fire is arranged, it is necessary to examine (1) conditions under which the prospect of
investigations and prosecutions of crimes apparently help end war and (2) other conditions under
which they appear to prolong the fighting. Some ways of ending a war contribute far more to
peacebuilding than others. Even if we focus on the same time period in a conflict cycle to compare two
conflicts, peacebuilding in one society may be helped by truth telling (postapartheid South Africa) or
by prosecutions (postWorld War II Germany), whereas these do not help or are not needed in
another society (post-Franco Spain).

Indeed, postconflict peacebuilding can be advanced or undermined by conduct before a war ends, so
a focus on postconflict events alone is too limited. As experience in the former Yugoslavia
demonstrates, certain conduct during fighting, such as ethnic cleansing, can irretrievably embitter
relations among people who previously lived amicably together and frequently (p.195) intermarried.
Insufficient attention has been given to such peace-unbuilding or peace-dismantling, perhaps
because those elites who exercise military power do not like to acknowledge that the application of
violent means often makes matters worse, even if one achieves military victory. There are many
reasons why violent conduct today, which usually kills more civilians than soldiers and rips time-
honored social fabrics quickly to shreds, might be considered uncivilized: it can easily destroy civility
among human groups. In so doing, it forces peacebuilding to start at a far more difficult,
disadvantageous point than before the collective violence began.
Arguments For and Against Judicial Activism
The Rome Statute proclaims a purpose that provides perhaps the best argument for using
international judicial processes: to guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international
justice.11Insofar as international judicial processes contribute to lasting respect for justice they
also contribute to peacebuilding because citizens will begin to trust the capacity of judicial
institutions, and the willingness of others, to protect them through legal means, thereby rendering
resort to armed conflict undesirable. Especially in societies with effectively functioning legal and
political institutions, progress in justice-seeking contributes to progress in peacebuilding and vice
versa.

Assessing the contributions of international judicial proceedings to peacebuilding requires answers to

the following seven questions.

1. 1. Do international judicial proceedings help reduce atrocities or establish cease-fires?

2. 2. Do international judicial proceedings curtail impunity and help deter future crimes?
3. 3. Do international judicial proceedings bring out the truth and discourage collective guilt?
4. 4. Do international judicial proceedings provide due process for defendants, reduce the power
of perpetrators, and limit their future political roles?
5. 5. Do international judicial processes aid domestic legal processes and bring nonpartisanship
and desirable external expertise and support into peacebuilding efforts to establish a rule-of-
law society?
6. 6. Do international judicial proceedings encourage reconciliation?
7. 7. Do international judicial proceedings help domesticate the international system and move
it toward a global rule-of-law society?
Because of the limited scope of this chapter and the short time periods that have passed since
international tribunals have been used following the end of the cold war, final answers to these
questions cannot be provided, but the discussion illustrates preliminary findings and how detailed
case studies could explore the ways that judicial action influences peacebuilding.

(p.196) Do International Judicial Proceedings Help Reduce Atrocities or Establish

Cease-Fires?
ICC indictments may encourage both reductions in atrocities during ongoing fighting and the
willingness of leaders to enter negotiations for cease-fires. In the ICCs first case, involving the Lords
Resistance Army (LRA), which has been fighting the Ugandan government for two decades, available
evidence indicates that the indictments of five leaders of the LRA added significantly to the
psychological, legal, and political pressure on LRA leaders, pushing them toward fewer abductions of
children, a reduction of their violent attacks, and willingness to enter cease-fire negotiations.12 Prior to
the indictments, the LRA had continued bloody atrocities for nearly twenty years. The conflict in
northern Uganda received very little international attention until the ICC became involved. The
courts indictments of LRA leaders raised the international communitys awareness of the conflict and
focused the spotlight of public opinion on the leaders atrocities.

The indictments seemed to discourage the leaders from continuing the war, because continuation of
their way of fighting, which included widespread abduction of children for soldiers and sex slaves,
would have provided additional and fresh evidence of their atrocities. This evidence would, of course,
be consequential if they ever faced a prosecutor. The Courts activities drew greater international and
regional attention to the conflict and put pressure on both sides to resolve it. 13 Soon after the
indictments, the LRA began to seek a cease-fire agreement. The LRA leaders insistence that amnesty
for themselves must be included in a peace accord reveals the importance of indictments.

In another major case for the ICC, Osman Hummaida, the former director of the Sudanese
Organization Against Torture, has noted that following the United Nationss referral of atrocities in
Darfur to the ICC in March 2005, for the very first time, there was a decline in aerial bombardment
and Janjaweed attacks on civilians. Those committing the crimes took the ICC investigation
seriously.14 Salih Mahmoud Osman, a member of the Sudanese Parliament, further indicated that
accountability has been an important element in providing protection to survivors in Darfur and
preventing further depopulation and ethnic cleansing. Soon after the situation was referred to the
ICC there were no attacks for three months.15 Although the impact seemed to decline somewhat as
progress slowed in prosecuting the accused, the impact might have deepened if judicial processes
would have been more effectively carried forward.

Although these cases demonstrate a peacebuilding benefit from ICC action, the Ugandan case suggests
that the first phase of judicial influence provided an incentive for LRA leaders to decide to seek a
cease-fire agreement, but in a second phase, the indictments slowed progress in finding terms for an
agreement that would be accepted by all. The ICC was not ready to quash the indictments, and the
LRA indictees would not accept a cease-fire without amnesty. They feared prosecution if the war
ended without first having amnesty in place. As the UN Secretary Generals Special Adviser on the
Prevention of Genocide, (p.197) Juan Mndez, acknowledged, the threat of prosecution can be a
clear disincentive for actors in an armed conflict to give up their resort to violence. 16 The Catholic
Archdioceses Justice and Peace Commission of Gulu in the northern district of Uganda issued a
strong criticism of the ICC for accepting the Ugandan governments referral of LRA atrocities: To
start war crimes investigations for the sake of justice at a time when the war is not yet over, risks
having, in the end, neither justice nor peace delivered. 17 Some Ugandan church leaders saw the ICCs
investigation and indictments as disruptive to peace processes. They claimed that judicial
prosecution discourages LRA members from seeking amnesty pursuant to a Ugandan law passed in
2000.18 The archdiocese also said the ICC initiative potentially undermines traditional mechanisms
of reconciliation and reintegration. The threat of prosecution may serve as a stick, but the carrot of
amnesty and reconciliation must be retained in order to reinforce the peace process.19
In the face of criticism, Yves Sorokobi, an ICC spokesman, stated that if it is in the interest of justice
to proceed with a peace agreement, the ICC is ready to suspend its investigation. In addition, the ICC
prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, was reported by international media as saying if a solution to end
the violence was found, and continuing the investigation did not serve the interests of justice, then the
ICC would stop the probe.20

Those policy makers and observers who seem to prefer amnesty to indictments as an inducement to a
cease-fire should recall that for more than fifteen years the LRA showed no interest in a cease-fire.
The Ugandan government had tried an amnesty program before the ICC indictments, but without any
success in bringing the war toward an end. Not one commanding officer sought amnesty. It appeared
that, in the words of one close observer, nothing short of effective military action against the LRA
would drive its leaders to opt for negotiation.21 It was in the face of persistent international
indifference to the war and the exhaustion of other alternatives that focus turned to calling on the ICC.
For the Ugandan government to refer the LRA atrocities to the ICC was a strategy for engaging the
international community by committing ICC proponents to the arrest and prosecution of top LRA
leaders, just as the United Nations had earlier proposed.22 By excluding top leaders from amnesty,
those most responsible might be brought to justice.

International cooperation was also necessary to press Sudanese leaders to quit giving sanctuary to the
LRA in camps in Sudan. According to Payam Akhaven, empirical evidence shows that the Ugandan
governments referral of atrocities to the ICC has contributed to the LRAs incapacitation. In
addition, Sudan has been persuaded to end its support of the LRA. 23 These developments weakened
the LRAs military capability, encouraged significant defections among LRA commanders, and forced
otherwise defiant leaders to the negotiating table.24 These results were in sharp contrast to the
period preceding the referral, during which LRA atrocities reached a new peak. New willingness to
negotiate is linked to the LRAs political isolation and military containmentboth of which are linked
to the new context created by the ICC referral. In this respect at least, it would not be unreasonable to
suggest that (p.198) even without a single prosecution, the LRA referral has already been a
success.25 Yet many observers downplayed the ICCs initial peacebuilding benefits as time passed and
the LRA leaders continued to resist a cease-fire without the lifting of their indictments.
Given the possibility that ICC indictments and arrest warrants might contribute to saving lives one
day but impede achieving a signed cease-fire agreement the next, it is useful to look more closely at
the Ugandan case and what the people most affected by LRA atrocities have thought about how to
proceed. When the evidence is ambiguous regarding humanitarian benefits that might flow from
prosecution in a peacebuilding strategy, the preferences of the people most affected should be given
additional weight, as long as those preferences are within the law and not aimed at revenge. Usually it
is difficult to know their preferences because their opinions are inaccessible. In this case, a highly
professional survey of Ugandan opinion at the village level is available for examination. This opinion
study shows some pluralism among those living in the four districts of northern Uganda most affected
by the war, and also some substantial agreement by sizable majorities of the population.

The opinion study was prepared against the backdrop of knowledge that some, both within Uganda
and in humanitarian and governmental agencies outside, argued that the ICCs involvement might
prolong the conflict and undermine peace talks between the LRA and the governments mediator,
Betty Bigomge, as well as other local initiatives, such as the work of the Ugandan governments
Amnesty Commission and the exploration of using traditional tribal methods to deal with past
crimes.26 On the other hand, proponents of international judicial processes said that pursuing peace
at the expense of justice is not a viable long-term option.27

In the four northern districts, 45 percent of all people had witnessed the killing of one of their own
family members.28 In the face of such general trauma, their top priorities were clear: food and peace.
Yet most people viewed peace and justice as a complex relationship that was not necessarily mutually
exclusive.29 Most sought both, including reparations for victims.

Three-fourths (76 percent) said those responsible for abuses should be held accountable for their
actions. Even when asked whether they would accept amnesty if it were the only road to peace, 29
percent still said no.30 A majority gave high priority to accountability for crimes committed by all
sides. Sixty-six percent favored trials and punishment for the LRA; an even higher percentage (76
percent) said the Ugandan (government) Defense Forces should be held accountable for atrocities
they committed.31 Even in regions where people were assumed to prefer traditional justice measures,
most respondents (66 percent) believed that LRA members should face punitive and/or formal legal
processes and that community-oriented options for dealing with perpetrators would only be
appropriate for low-level LRA members.32 These preferences are quite understandable. Many of the
LRA fighters were children, abducted and taken away to be used as child soldiers to commit atrocities.
Many people wanted their children to return to their villages and were ready to forgive them if they
returned. But many believed that the leaders, more culpable for heinous (p.199) crimes, should face
some accountability proceedings and should acknowledge the crimes they committed. Up to now, the
LRA leaders have denied any wrongdoing, despite their refusal to stand trial and their insistence on
amnesty.
Although 65 percent of the people supported some amnesty processes for the LRA, only 4 percent said
amnesties should be granted unconditionally. Most said that the governments blanket amnesty
should be reformed and that some form of acknowledgement [of misconduct] and/or retribution
should be required of all those granted amnesty.33

Although 84 percent believed that the international community should be involved in holding
accountable those responsible for human rights violations, 34 73 percent knew nothing or very little
about the ICCs existence and work. Of the people who had heard of the court, a majority attached
high expectations to it, believing that the ICC would contribute both to peace (91 percent) and justice
(89 percent).35 Of those who knew about the court, 94 percent supported its involvement in response
to atrocities.36

The authors of the opinion survey concluded that peace and justice will be achieved in Northern
Uganda only through an inclusive process that involves a wide range of stakeholders, including
victims, bystanders, and perpetrators.37 Clearly, those who have been most affected by the violence
should have a voice in determining the processes for moving beyond it, not only in deference to the
democratic principle but also because meeting the peoples desires and expectations, insofar as they
are humane, contributes to peacebuilding and reconciliation. It seems that an effort aimed at
providing some justice without delaying peace too long could attempt to prosecute the top leaders and
offer amnesty, with some conditions, such as acknowledgment of wrongdoing, for all the rest. (The
ICC indicted only five of the LRAs top leaders and promised not to indict others to enable the
amnesty program to encourage a stop to the fighting.)

This approach is confirmed by a subsequent study conducted by the UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights in Acholiland, Lango, and Teso subregions of northern Uganda:
The population broadly believes that both the LRA and the Government, and specifically their
leaders, should be held accountable for the harms they have caused during the conflict. 38

Do International Judicial Proceedings Curtail Impunity and Help Deter Future Crimes?
States widely shared determination to eradicate impunity for heinous crimes finds explicit expression
in the Rome Statutes provision to put an end to impunity for perpetrators and to contribute to the
prevention of [genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes].39 In a more general UN context,
all fifteen members of the Security Council have committed themselves to ending impunity and
establishing accountability for such crimes.40 In a recent assessment of the genocide in Sudan, Osman
Hummaida said that ending the culture of impunity is key to protection of civilians. 41

(p.200) Most international legal experts believe that the ICCs existence and future work will reduce
impunity, a peacebuilding achievement in itself, and also increase the deterrence of future crimes.
However, there is little agreement about the degree to which these consequences will occur. Clearly,
the possibility that international legal proceedings might be mounted against violators of international
humanitarian and human rights law, especially the law against genocide, arises now as never before,
in the minds of political leaders everywhere.42 Exponents of retributive justice have a strong argument
that international judicial proceedings to punish war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide
do indeed contribute to the pursuit of justice and the saving of lives.
The creation and continued backing of the ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the
establishment of the ICC, all of which draw on the concept of extraterritorial jurisdiction (including
universal jurisdiction), plus the establishment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and other mixed
tribunals for Cambodia, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste, together produce a new international reality: a
general presumption against impunity.43 Of course such a presumption does not mean there will be
perfect compliance.

To buttress compliance, the United Nations has helped establish all of the mixed tribunals, and the
secretary general has said that UN-endorsed peace agreements cannot give amnesty for genocide, war
crimes, crimes against humanity, or other gross violations of human rights. Moreover, amnesties
given by other actors cannot, in his view, prevent prosecutions by UN-created or -assisted
courts.44 The UN Human Rights Committee also has said that blanket amnesty laws and pardons are
inconsistent with the Covenant [on Civil and Political Rights] because they create a climate of
impunity and deny the victims this right to a remedy.45 Of course, the Genocide Convention, which
is nearly universally endorsed, obligates states to punish wrongdoers.46

General principles of international law obligate states to carry out these tasks in response to crimes
against humanity:

1. 1. to investigate, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators;

2. 2. to disclose to the victims, their families, and society all that can be reliably established
about those events;
3. 3. to offer the victims adequate reparations; and
4. 4. to separate known perpetrators from law enforcement bodies and other positions of
authority.47
Corresponding to these state obligations are an emerging set of rights that make impunity
unacceptable, including a right to know the truth and a right of the victim to see justice
done.48Indeed, the right to know the truth has achieved the status of a customary international law
norm.49

Leila Nadya Sadat challenges conventional wisdom that swapping justice for peace, is morally and
practically acceptable. Several longitudinal studies, she notes, indicate that in the long run amnesty
deals foster a culture of impunity in which violence becomes the norm, rather than the
exception.50She cautions against letting the South African success with conditional (p.201) amnesty
confuse the picture. This exception to the general rule, she concludes, should not be substituted for
the rule: both state and international practice now suggest that exile and amnesty is a largely
unacceptable response to the commission of jus cogens crimes.51 The law against impunity seems
clear and the culture of support for the law is rising.

Deterrence
The extent to which reducing impunity and prosecuting gross violations of human rights will deter
future crimes is widely debated and no doubt influenced by many factors,52 including the extent to
which would-be criminals expect that they might be prosecuted. Before the creation of the two
temporary international tribunals in the 1990s (the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), the permanent ICC, and more
recently the hybrid tribunals, most perpetrators could reasonably expect that they would never face a
trial or any form of accountability. From that low point of accountability, the creation of the
permanent ICC is a major step forward in establishing conditions conducive to peacebuilding. The ICC
ensures that the international community will give increased attention to gross violations of human
rights. The Court clearly increases the possibility that law-breakers will be held accountable,
particularly in weak states. As Patrick Hayden has written, because the ICC is a permanent criminal
court, it will serve as a greater deterrent to those who might otherwise be tempted to commit war
crimes and other egregious human rights abuses. Knowledge that the ICC is always on watch may
deter individuals from acting with a sense of impunity and thereby decrease the occurrence of future
atrocities.53 M. Cherif Bassiouni concludes that fair trials affirm that atrocities are wrong and
unacceptabledrawing a clear line for all to seeand incarceration prevents the guilty from repeat
offenses and potentially serves as a deterrent to others.54

A court indictment affirms the international communitys interest in upholding fundamental human
rights norms and publicizes both the norms and major alleged violations of them. This helps educate
people about the importance of the norms and of compliance with them even if there are not
immediate arrests or trials. Because people do not want to be indicted, they are more likely to conduct
themselves in ways that a court would not find objectionable, thus demonstrating benefits of
international judicial processes in publicizing and applying existing norms, building new norms, and
setting legal precedents.

In addition, an indictment might be viewed as a de facto smart sanction. 55 An indictment has an

admirable specificity that economic sanctions seldom have achieved. The indictment identifies the law
that may have been violated and the individual person who is accused of wrongdoing. The indictment
applies only to that person. Although the accused should be considered innocent until proven guilty, if
the person refuses to stand trail, his or her ability to travel is greatly reduced after an arrest warrant is
issued. The person must limit travel to places in the world where the ruling authorities are willing
to(p.202) shield the accused. Significantly, the top LRA leadership indicted by the ICC chose not to
travel to Juba, Sudan, in 2006, where peace talks were being held, because of fear that someone might
arrest them. As a result, others needed to play an enhanced leadership role, perhaps opening the door
eventually to displacement of the indictees. Thus indictment may limit freedom of movement and
possibly the power of the accused because of their need to maintain low visibility to avoid arrest.
More generally, deterrence is enhanced by the extent to which international judicial proceedings can
gather evidence promptly, archive it, and identify and protect witnesses. As an aid to peacebuilding,
the ICC strengthens accountability, transparency, and legal compliance. It reinforces the legal duty
imposed on all states to address atrocities like genocide, mass murder, and rape.56 Even potential law-
breakers who reside in states that have not ratified the Rome Statute might be deterred by knowledge
that they could be investigated by the ICC if the Security Council decided to refer their case to the
court.57 Only the five permanent members of the Security Council have the direct opportunity to stop a
possible UN referral of crimes to the ICC for review of their own nationals conduct. As a consequence,
the ICC and the UN together can contribute significantly to the rule of law internationally and thereby
to the deterrence of gross violations in the areas under court jurisdiction.

Numerous international experts support this conclusion: Catherine Lu has noted that the work of the
ICC promotes deterrence of future crimes because it punishes perpetrators.58 Steven R. Ratner and
Jason S. Abrams emphasize that accountability serves a preventive purpose. It can signal to future
violators of human rights that their actions will not simply be forgotten in some political
compromise.59 Bruce Shapiros work demonstrates that establishing the facts of atrocity and
accurately laying out lines of accountability aid in democratic transition [and] help dampen cycles of
generalized revenge.60 Sadat reports evidence that the credible threat of punishment may in time
affect the behavior of perpetrators, making international criminal justice an important component of
constraining inter- and intra-state violence and the commission of atrocities.61 Many other legal
experts emphasize the existing global responsibility to ensure that crimes are properly punished and
wrongdoing is carefully examined to identify abuses when they occur and to uphold the norms for
appropriate conduct.62

International judicial proceedings are more likely than national proceedings to have a spill-over effect
in deterring peoples illegal conduct in other states.63 However, where criminal prosecution is not
feasible in the foreseeable future, investigatory or truth commissions can provide a method of
accountability. Reports can be detailed, authoritative, and unbiased, including identification of
perpetrators and victims. Their work can foster social and spiritual healing, encourage legislation for
reparations, support future trials or nonpenal sanctions (such as disqualification from public office),
provide a record for future generations, and recommend reforms and compensation or other
corrective measures.64 Truth commissions also usually require fewer resources than domestic or
international trials meeting full due process standards. 65

(p.203) Do International Judicial Proceedings Help Bring out the Truth and Discourage
Collective Guilt?
Whenever someone grossly violates human rights, the victims, their families, and the society at large
are all entitled to learn the truth about what happened and have a recognized authority acknowledge
what occurred and who was responsible. International judicial proceedings usually do help establish
an authoritative picture of what happened in the commission of a particular crime. Sentencing may
also include some reparations for injuries. Insofar as they help provide facts for informing a societys
memory of conflict and a basis for settling human rights accounts, they can be part of the formula
for a lasting peace, as opposed to a lull in the fighting. 66 But trials are insufficient to provide a full
picture of events. For strategic peacebuilding, they need to be supplemented with truth commissions
or other instruments of accountability, especially where atrocities are widespread.

If a trial is poorly conducted or designed to cover up the truth and allow impunity for political leaders,
it may in fact do so.67 Such an outcome may be worse than no trial at all, particularly if it is a national
tribunal whose proceedings preclude, delay, or complicate action by the ICC, limited by the principle
of complementarity, even though the national proceeding may be less than satisfactory.

In addition to the truth-disclosing benefit of international judicial processes, they also demonstrate
that although some people are guilty of horrendous crimes, not all people of a particular ethnicity,
religion, or nationality are guilty of such misdeeds. Guilt can be denationalized so that individuals,
rather than an entire group, bear its burden. This ability not to condemn or express hostility toward
an entire group is obviously helpful in peacebuilding strategies, where relationships need to be
transformed and past prejudices overcome.

The secretary generals Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide, Juan Mndez, argues
that judicial processes are the most effective means of separating collective guilt from individual
guilt, and thus to remove the stigma of historic misdeeds from the innocent members of communities
that are collectively blamed for the atrocities committed on other communities. 68 This is especially
important for peacebuilding strategies that need to break the cycle of ethnic violence, because trials
would allow the victimized communities to distinguish between ordinary members of rival ethnic
groups and those who manipulate their fears for political ends. 69

Do International Judicial Proceedings Provide Due Process for Defendants, Reduce the
Power of Perpetrators, and Limit Their Future Political Role?
If international judicial proceedings provide due process protections equivalent to those that are now
widely expected of and generally practiced by international jurisprudence, the rights of the accused
are likely to be better protected (p.204) in international tribunals than in many national judicial
processes. The high international standards are likely to have a salutary influence on national and
local judicial processes as well, although at times national public opinion seems vengeful and likely to
favor less impartiality, less due process, and more harsh punishments than provided by international
proceedings. Yet in the long run, even in societies where criticism of the international tribunals runs
strong, the positive influence of such tribunals is likely. All international tribunals from Nuremberg to
the present appear to have met high standards of due process for defendants. This conclusion applies
to penal systems, prosecution, defense, court processes, and, since the Nuremberg and Tokyo
tribunals, punishment. Exemplary legal procedures affirm the values and demonstrate the practices
that provide a solid basis for peacebuilding and nurturing a rule-of-law society.70
If, following due process, those accused of major crimes are indicted and can be arrested and tried,
and if they are convicted, then those officials obviously will have been removed by international
judicial processes from positions of political or military power, at least during the time they serve their
sentences. International judicial processes are better able to achieve such results than either
diplomacy or truth commissions. In addition, the conviction of the guilty is likely to reduce the
prospects that they will ever return to public office or be empowered to commit more violations of
human rights. These are clear benefits for peacebuilding strategies.

Of course, major hurdles include finding sufficient evidence and witnesses to indict and convict, and
being able to make arrests and hold international trials, even if evidence is uncovered. The fact that
President Slobodan Milosevic was indicted while head of government and later brought to trial,
despite the difficulties and idiosyncrasies of his situation, indicates that international judicial
processes can aid in discrediting and removing perpetrators from power.
Even if an arrest is not imminent and a trial cannot be held, an indictment by the ICC may handicap
indictees who refuse to stand trial, thereby increasing pressure on them to stop gross violations,
discrediting them in office, emboldening possible critics, and preventing them from traveling or
representing their government abroad. The indictments by the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY), for example, demonstrate some peacebuilding benefits even when no one
was willing to arrest Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. They were barred from holding further
public office because the Dayton Accords explicitly said that no one who was indicted and refused trial
could hold public office. To be sure, political and diplomatic leverage, not a judicial proceeding shaped
the relevant provisions, but they were made possible and influential by the indictment of the ICTY.

Plausibly, an indictment by an external court could increase domestic political support for an indictee,
stimulated by a rally-around-the-flag response from local supporters, particularly if the court is seen
as prejudiced against their society. Yet these counterproductive consequences are not normal nor are
they likely to be long-lived if the ICC enjoys a good reputation throughout the world.

(p.205) Do International Judicial Processes Aid Domestic Legal Processes and Bring
International Nonpartisanship and Desirable External Expertise and Support into
Peacebuilding Efforts?
International judicial processes usually set a positive example for domestic judicial institutions and
the local legal culture, although the extent to which the example actually changes local practice may
vary enormously from place to place. When a proceeding occurs in The Hague and little is
communicated about what may seem to most people to be a process far removed from local realities, it
may have little impact. In the best of circumstances, international judicial processes potentially can
inform domestic legal practice while highlighting the importance of the international norms that
should guide conduct and domestic judicial practice. International tribunals can conduct trials that
national judicial institutions often lack the capacity to carry out, either because of local biases,
potentially disruptive political tensions, security threats to witnesses and the families and legal
counsels of the litigants, or limited jurisprudential expertise and independence. The ICC can spare
national judicial institutions from excessive political strain during a postwar transition, while offering
exemplary experience in legal processes. International judges have provided important balance,
independence and expertise in Bosnia and other countries in proceedings that otherwise would have
test[ed] local judges disinterestedness and ability to resist political and tribal pressures.71

International trials help bring international law into the domestic political arena and offer a plumb
line useful for protecting minorities and upholding fundamental human rights in domestic politics. If
the ICC maintains a reputation for integrity and impartiality, people who want to be good citizens of
the world community as well as of their national society will be able to stand with the Courts verdicts
against criminal conduct by citizens of their own society in the face of possible criticism by fellow
nationals who are more committed to the accused than to impartial application of the law. This
clarification of values and the law may enable reconciliation to arise more successfully than if trials
were imposed by an occupying government or domestic institutions if those were dominated by a
revenge-seeking hostile party.

Yet when considering an overall strategy of peacebuilding aimed at nurturing a rule-of-law society,
no single mechanism or approach can satisfy the many goals of justice, truth, prevention and
deterrence, reconciliation, and domestic capacity-building in the aftermath of severe
atrocities.72Multiple means are needed to achieve multiple goals. Trials can coexist with truth
commissions, international trials can coexist with national judicial processes, and these both with
political processes and economic policies aimed at reconciliation. The more deeply rooted the
atrocities, the more likely the need for external help to withstand pressures on the accountability
processes and to give the appearance (as well as the reality) of impartial proceedings. In sum, the
presence of some international legal proceedings in a weak state provides invaluable opportunity for
capacity-building with local litigators and judges.

(p.206) In many ways, hybrid courts may have a more extensive positive influence on local legal
processes than a distant ICC, particularly in building local judicial capacities, because the hybrids are
less distant, psychologically and politically, from the society in question than is The Hague. A hybrid
court may be better able to communicate both the importance of accountability and the fairness of a
proceeding.73 It can include local judicial officials in the proceedings and, after its work is completed,
leave behind people and institutions that gradually move more fully into local processes. Its
proceedings occur in the geographic vicinity of the crimes and the locus where social healing may
begin.
The hybrid courts in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia help bring justice to the people that the
ICC seeks to serve but has had difficulty reaching, because the hybrids are linked to their respective
countries and offer more physical and linguistic accessibility to the local media, population, and
professional elites.74 They may be better at communicating effectively, although this function is one in
which the ICC can presumably improve. A hybrid court usually will have an easier opportunity to
convince indigenous populations of the merit of their mission and gain access to local media. They
foster a sense of local ownership, which can mobilize popular support and in turn can give rise to a
sense of legitimacy within the society and the court itself. In a sense, the population is better able to
participate and feel a stake in the trials, yet the international personnel and accountability provide
safeguards against judicial improprieties or inappropriate governmental interference.

This is well illustrated in the hybrid court in Timor-Leste and its ability to provide international
expertise and opportunity to absorb fundamental international human rights values. In contrast, in
Uganda, many local people do not feel that a tribunal in The Hague is their court. The Court in the
Netherlands may be benevolent, but it seems to some to be a neo-colonial interference that is poorly
informed about local customs when it comes to accountability, forgiveness, and reconciliation. 75

Because of the advantages of having a judicial proceeding close to the locus of the crime, particularly
when it comes to building domestic legal capacities and popular support for the judicial proceeding
and the law, where possible the ICC should consider holding sessions nearer to where the violations
occurred.76 It might also experiment with establishing judicial panels that include local as well as
international jurists. In addition, the court should expand its capacity and budget for communicating
with people in the society most directly affected by a particular trial.

If a state asks for international support for its efforts to investigate and prosecute gross violations of
human rights, the global community should offer assistance. It can do so quickly and at relatively low
cost (compared to violent conflict) by providing help with international judges, law enforcement
officials, forensic experts, legal advisors, and other specialists.

To the extent that international judicial processes are able to render impartial verdicts and
communicate their processes and verdicts well, they will aid peacebuilding in the long run, not only
because they assign legal responsibility to individuals for illegal conduct but also because they uphold
the rights of (p.207) all others, regardless of ethnicity, race, class, or religion, and they do this by
employing legal processes rather than military instruments. Moreover, shining a globally authoritative
international spotlight on heinous crimes and the universal norms prohibiting them will strengthen
the norms over time, gradually expand peoples willingness to comply with them, and teach national
citizens that an impartial global rendering of justice is possible.
Do International Judicial Proceedings Encourage Reconciliation?
The issue of whether international judicial processes encourage reconciliation is a vexing and difficult
question to answer, perhaps equal in importance to the question of whether they encourage cease-
fires. International trials, if well conducted and accurately perceived by the people affected, help
resolve questions of innocence and guilt, provide some redress for injuries, and encourage some
closure to social disruption, thereby enabling societies to heal and reconcile. 77 In some cases,
international proceedings may even lay the groundwork for encouraging restorative justice and
forgiveness. Rwanda may be a case in point. Despite the difficulties, criticisms, and mixed results of
the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda (ICTR), it focused on a few high-level officials,
enabling or forcing domestic actors to focus on the rest and on restorative justice and reconciliation
rooted in traditional culture. In South Africa, of course, there were no international trials, yet an
alternative instrument of accountability, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, laid the
groundwork for some reconciliation and even occasional forgiveness.

On the other hand, international trials that are unfair or that are widely perceived to produce one-
sided consequences, even if reasonably fair, may keep a society divided or antagonize hostile
opponents. In the case of East Timor, the healing process is impeded because many of those accused
of crimes are now living in Indonesia and are beyond the reach of the UN-supported hybrid court that
was established. A wall of Indonesian sovereignty is protecting some of the allegedly biggest culprits.

Political realists and advocates of a rights-based approach strongly disagree on the political utility of
amnesties for those accused of gross violations of human rights. But the normative inutility of
amnesties for leaders who have ordered or acquiesced in serious offenses can hardly be denied.
Strategic peacebuilding should take into account both political and normative utilities. As indicated,
even those Ugandan villagers eager to have peace and the return of their child soldiers did not want
the leaders of the LRA to avoid some truth telling and accountability. Moreover, when the leaders of
the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan proposed amnesty that would include its adversaries, such
provisions were not included in the Bonn Agreement because a majority of Afghans surveyed
oppose[d] amnesties for serious offenses.78 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that United
Nationsendorsed peace agreements can never promise amnesties for genocide, war crimes, crimes
against humanity or gross violations of human rights.79 A report of the UN (p.208) High
Commissioner for Human Rights stated that a blanket amnesty, particularly where war crimes and
crimes against humanity have been committed, promotes a culture of impunity and is not in
conformity with international standards and practice.80
In any case, to devise amnesty arrangements that will effectively remove spoilers and genuinely help
to create conditions for strengthening the rule of lawrather than just permitting impunityis
enormously difficult in practice.81 Clearly, the consequences of amnesties or international trials may
vary from case to case and should be assessed accordingly. Generally speaking, an unconditional
amnesty, which excuses people from breaking universally agreed-on laws, is an unlikely way to lay the
foundation for building a rule-of-law society. Although an international trial at The Hague may do
little to strengthen the domestic rule of law in a postconflict society with weak political
institutions,82 when trials are compared to national amnesties, a trial will at the least advance
international standards of justice, whereas amnesty will undermine it and often make reconciliation
more difficult.

Because reconciliation must ultimately rely for progress on a rule-of-law society and because
international judicial processes usually nurture the rule of law, they play a key role in national
peacebuilding and reconciliation. They also influence global peacebuilding, which brings us to our
final question.
Do International Judicial Proceedings Help Domesticate the International System and
Move It toward a Global Rule-of-Law Society?
International judicial processes are likely to have a profound impact on the global order, albeit one
that is difficult to quantify or even to detect over a short period of time.83 In the short run, recent
actions by international tribunals have assisted in bringing some criminals to justice, promoted the
development and acceptability of both substantive and procedural international criminal law, and at
least sustained, if not reinforced, the general international notion of the unacceptability of serious
violations of human rights.84 In the longer run, every time that the international community
emphasizes accountability, it nurtures the rule of law in global society. It helps build a culture of
respect for human rights and [to] highlight the dangers of individuals and groups espousing
philosophies of hatred.85 Accountability not only addresses wrongdoing in a particular case with a
particular perpetrator and victim, it also serves goals for the international community as whole. It is
of fundamental importance to recall that the crimes discussed in this chapter violate the most central
norms of humanity, and all states have a moral and political interest in seeing an effective
remedy.86On the moral and political interests of states lies the promise for actions that will turn legal
norms into lived realities through successful global peacebuilding.

For two reasons, the judgments of the ICC and other international judicial processes are of such
fundamental significance that they are likely to change the structure and functioning of the
international system in the long run.87 To (p.209) begin with, for the first time in human history, a
permanent criminal court, whose basic constitution has been ratified by 108 states, exists to hold
individuals personally responsible for international human rights crimes, even if they are government
officials. Second, defendants may not use as a defense argument a claim that they are acting on behalf
of their state, their national government, or simply following superior orders (that are illegal).88 The
value of holding individuals accountable, which the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg first
officially recognized in affirming that individuals do have obligations that extend beyond those owed
to the state,89 appears to be so momentous90 as to override most negative criticisms of international
judicial processes, such as the failure of an indictment to lead to an immediate arrest or the failure of
the court to deter crimes in the short run. A court established to render decisions about individual
legal responsibility of persons acting as government officials suggests a reduction in state
sovereignty because in these proceedings individuals have obligations not only to domestic law
but also to a higher international law, and because they can no longer hide behind the shield of
immunity of state agencies.91 In international judicial processes, universal humanitarian norms in
international law are, in some cases, beginning to take primacy over domestic law.92
Guidelines for Researchers and Policy Makers

Reducing Loss of Life

The overall goal of saving as many lives as possible should be the fundamental guideline in deciding if
and when to employ international judicial processes in the service of peacebuilding. This life-saving
guideline is rooted both in internationally endorsed human rights norms and the morality of most
religious and ethical traditions.93 It postulates a simple goal, yet it is not simple to calculate how many
lives may be lost or saved from a particular course of action, particularly if one considers both the long
and the short run, as well as the future benefits from nurturing a global culture of compliance with
international humanitarian and human rights law. Nor is it simple to implement life-saving policies
once they are chosen. Nonetheless, this is a reasonable place to begin in formulating proposals for
political decision making and future research. With this guideline in mind, the international
community should proceed with as many warranted international judicial processes as a society
coming out of gross violations is able to tolerate without increasing loss of human life.
Table 8.1 indicates the need to calibrate the use of judicial proceedings with the strength and
cohesiveness of the society where its impact will be primarily felt. Of course Table 8.1 includes the
possibility that judicial proceedings might be pursued in national courts or in a hybrid of national and
international judicial processes. One hopes that ICC proceedings would always be of high quality and
function at the level of highly professional judicial proceedings. For national tribunals to succeed, a
countrys judicial culture needs what Ratner (p.210) and Abrams consider the four critical
prerequisites for the administration of justice. These include a legal framework of criminal law and
procedure; a trained cadre of judges, lawyers, and other experts; adequate infrastructure; and a
culture of respect for the fairness and impartiality of the process. 94 Without these, certainly some
international participation is required to ensure that trials do not simply facilitate revenge or
vendettas that will impede peacebuilding.
Table 8.1. Prospects for Judicial Success in Peacebuilding

Table 8.1 assesses only the domestic component of peacebuilding impact from judicial proceedings.
No attempt is made to include the global peacebuilding impact. From the vantage point of
international society, there is a presumption for trials: in most cases it would be desirable to prosecute
those accused of heinous crimes. Impunity undermines the rule of law in global society. But in
looking, for the moment, through national lenses, one might conclude that where political institutions
are as uncertain as those described in the two right-hand columns of Table 8.1, any prosecutions
should be attempted by the ICC or hybrid courts, not by national courts.

Because judicial practices are sometimes deeply flawed and attempted where institutions and local
culture are not prepared to sustain the rule of law, they will fail to achieve most of the desired ends of
legal enforcement. From these flawed procedures, it is easy to conclude that law enforcement fails to
contribute to peace, justice, and the deterrence of future crimes. Drawing such conclusions from a
partial picture of practice should be guarded against because to do so is not a fair test of what
international enforcement can achieve under more favorable conditions, nor does it include the
benefits of global (as differentiated from national) peacebuilding. International diplomacy should
focus on how to create those more favorable conditions rather than quickly dismiss possible benefits
of international legal enforcement.95 Nonetheless, under the anticipated outcomes specified in the
lower right-hand part of the table, it would be inadvisable to hold trials until conditions have
improved.

One particularly troubling feature of international judicial proceedings is that those who are
investigated, indicted, and tried often feel that they are treated unfairly because not all states are
subject to the same standards. The United States, Russia, and China, for example, are not parties to
the Rome (p.211) Statute and can prevent their nationals from being brought before the ICC by a UN
Security Council decision because of their veto power there. Sudanese officials claim that they are
being subjected to ICC proceedings without their consent and are being treated unequally before the
law because they are politically weak. The ability of international judicial processes to contribute
positively to peacebuilding is limited by both the perception and the reality that some societies are
being bullied into accepting international enforcement while others evade the same standard. As
former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who was the U.S. chief prosecutor at the
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, acknowledged, unless those who sat in judgment accepted for
themselves the same standards of accountability as were imposed on the German defendants, the
Nuremberg Judgment would be deeply discredited from both a legal and political point of view. 96
Because politically selective, inequitable enforcement can never contribute to domestic or global
peacebuilding as effectively as would equitable legal obligations for enforcement, one way to increase
the peacebuilding contribution of the ICC would be to expand its jurisdiction to cover more countries,
including the United States, Russia, and China.

Advancing Peace, Justice and Reconciliation through Judicial Processes

One benefit of the ICC is that it is always in place and able to gather evidence promptly and
authoritatively, although as presently constituted it lacks sufficient personnel to perform this task in
all the places where it is needed. Fresh evidence gathered as soon as possible after massive crimes is
the most useful evidence for documenting crimes and identifying and protecting witnesses. Such
evidence is essential for stopping crimes, even if it subsequently might be used by a truth commission
instead of a court.

The precise mechanisms that can be useful in promoting reconciliation cannot be determined in the
abstract. Ratner and Abrams say that any mechanism can only work with the support of the people of
the particular state.97 This conditional judgment is instructive in most circumstances. Yet it seems to
overlook instances where an initially unpopular judicial process, even when imposed from the outside,
did in fact contribute to peacebuilding in the long run, so this judgment may undervalue international
judicial processes. The benefits of the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals imposed on
German and Japanese officials come to mind.98 Nonetheless, it is clear that widespread public support
for international judicial processes will enhance prospects for reconciliation, especially if the support
is drawn from across a spectrum of diverse groups in the immediately concerned society.

Ratner and Abrams also conclude that if a society has a democratically elected government, then that
governments voice should determine how to proceed: If that government adopts a course that rejects
accountability in favor of a compromise with former abusers, amnesty, or other forms of impunity,
almost any effort at accountability seems crippled, if not still-born.99 Again, this formulation may
overstate the merit of local control if it appears likely (p.212) to justify impunity. Because
international judicial institutions are sometimes capable over time of increasing public sentiment in
favor of denying impunity, they should be used where warranted. The deciding factor should be the
professionalism and impartiality of the proceedings, particularly where they are likely to garner
respect.

Advancing Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation with Peacebuilding Strategies that May Suspend Judicial
Prosecution
Although judicial processes can contribute enormously to finding justice, sustaining peace, and
opening a door to reconciliation, there are times when, like it or not, formal judicial processes simply
will not be used. In some contexts they even may be undesirable, for a time, because they would be
destabilizing or because political impediments would prevent their effective functioning. The
following guidelines, informed by recent experiences in Uganda and elsewhere, can be useful in
developing peacebuilding strategies even if trials do not occur.

1. Peacebuilding should encourage truth telling even if formal prosecutions are not possible. This is a
minimum requirement of respect for surviving victims. Truth telling by both victims and perpetrators
in most cases provides a reasonable foundation for reconciliation. If truth telling could benefit from
the help of external law enforcement personnel, forensic experts, legal advisors, or by moving
proceedings entirely outside the country in which crimes occurred, the international community
should consider helping do this as a duty required of it by its commitment to international
humanitarian and human rights law.100
2. Local, national, and international stakeholders should be brought together to discuss and develop
an integrated and comprehensive strategy for peace and justice.101 Without coordination in the
overall peacebuilding strategy, energies among various actors will be divided. They may oppose one
another in trying to find the right balance between accountability and forgiveness.

3. Peacebuilding strategies should try to ensure that any amnesty provisions will not prevent victims
or families from seeking justice and redress for injury, or deny people the possibility of learning the
truth about the circumstances in which they were victimized.102 Those receiving amnesty for serious
crimes should not be allowed to retain public office after civil strife ends. The international
community is unlikely to respect an unconditional amnesty, blanket amnesty, or self-amnesty. If
amnesty procedures are desirable, they should provide amnesty only on an individualized and
conditional basis.103

The somewhat reflexive, self-serving amnesty process set in motion by the Ugandan government does
not meet the needs of the surviving victims. It needs to be reformed so it is more inclusive and better
meets victims expectations,104 and clearly differentiates between the top five LRA leaders, whom the
ICC indicted, and the rest. Acknowledgments of wrongdoing, (p.213) commemoration of victims,
apologizing to surviving victims, imposing penalties or punishment, and paying reparations should be
considered and possibly required of those to be granted amnesty, especially those most culpable. Such
elements are key to successfully reintegrating former LRA members into the community. 105
4. If prosecution and trials seem inadvisable because of fears that they would risk generating serious
increases in intersocietal tensions and destabilize a society, then peacebuilding strategies should
exercise special care to ensure that efforts to reconcile hostile groups do not attempt to quiet victims
for the purpose of allowing impunity for criminal conduct. Legitimate reconciliation is never a
substitute for justice.106

5. Peacebuilding strategies should also guard against inequities in the distribution of the burdens of
reconciliation. Care must be taken to avoid transferring responsibilities for dealing with past
injustice from the perpetrators to the victims.107

6. Peacebuilding strategies should not allow a degeneration of reconciliation efforts to the point of
allowing them to become merely a state of mind in which people are asked simply to get over their
grief and grievances.108 Reconciliation efforts should not become forced amnesia regarding victims
and perpetrators. Peacebuilding should openly confront the past, 109 even if judicial prosecutions are
not possible or desirable. In Uganda, local political leaders should consult with their constituents to
see how traditional justice ceremonies might deal with violations committed by members of the LRA,
although these usually do not seem to apply to gross, systematic crimes of the severity the LRA has
committed.110 To succeed, peacebuilding normally will include some social, political, and economic
transformations.

7. In pluralistic communities, peacebuilding strategies are likely to be most successful when they are
articulated in terms that do not depend entirely on a particular set of religious beliefs. 111

8. Once accountability mechanisms have been chosen, international and national leaders must make
every effort to ensure that they do not turn into a free-for-all or excuse for vengeance against political
enemies.112

9. Where criminal prosecution is not feasible, an official investigatory commission of some sort is
necessary to provide a degree of accountability. Its work can be detailed, authoritative, and unbiased
in identifying both perpetrators and victims. It can foster healing and spiritual reparation, support
future trials (if they become viable) or nonpenal sanctions such as disqualification from public office,
and establish a clear record for future generations. It also can recommend reforms, compensation,
and other corrective measures. Moreover, such a commission would require fewer resources than are
usually required for international trials.113 It could provide a basis for restorative justice in some
situations.

10. Regardless of whether international judicial processes are used or another accountability
mechanism is employed, it is of vital importance to strengthen the culture of legal compliance with
additional measures in a peacebuilding strategy. These should include human rights education,
public(p.214) information about the possible work of international or domestic courts, the content of
the law, the meaning of ratification of treaties specifying crimes and extradition procedures, and ways
to upgrade domestic laws so that they criminalize internal war crimes and crimes against humanity.
When relevant, states should be encouraged to prosecute crimes that may take place outside their
territory, as well as within, if they have the accused on their territory or can extradite them. 114 No
matter how successful international judicial processes become, they can never substitute for human
rights education and consensus-building to encourage compliance with fundamental norms.
Peace, Justice, and Peacebuilding
Because unnecessary losses of human life may often occur if armed conflicts are prolonged by
negotiations over the use of international judicial processes, these may need to be suspended if
violence can more speedily be brought to an end. In the ICCs first case, the Ugandan parties faced this
dilemma. The foremost desire of people directly affected at the village level is to end the fighting and
abductions as soon as possible, regardless of what an immediate cease-fire may mean for law
enforcement. Nonetheless, as the interviews with Ugandans also indicate,after the killing stops, more
needs to be done in truth telling115 and addressing the justice needs of those who have survived
victimization. Here legal proceduresoften aided by international personnel and authorityare
essential. Peacemaking, followed by truth telling and justice seeking to the fullest degree they can be
realized, will greatly reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. So the basic peacebuilding strategy
should never be viewed as a choice between peace or justice, or as a choice between expedient
bargaining for peace or inexpedient legal protection of human rights. The most prudent and effective
peacebuilding strategy will always include both building peace and protecting human rights.

Moreover, to be most effective, international judicial processes should always be seen as one part of a
much larger, holistic process of peacebuilding. They complement and supplement other essential
practices. In isolation, they can be perceived as divisive and inflammatory. Together with other
constructive legal, political, economic, and educational efforts, they provide truth-filled accountability
for past injustices and clarity about standards that all should follow in the future. To conclude that
many influences work together to achieve peacebuilding is not to diminish the importance of
international judicial practices. Indeed, the ICC or an excellent hybrid court can perform functions
that are essential for effective peacebuilding that no other institutions can provide. These functions
include establishing authoritatively what crimes have been committed (and have not been
committed), who committed them, and who was injured. In addition, international courts can clarify,
publicize, and uphold precise standards for what is acceptable conduct.

These standards gain credibility precisely because they are international and have been endorsed by
national governments throughout the world. Lederach (p.215) and Appleby correctly emphasize that
peacebuilding is local because it is in local communities that people need to experience security,
tranquility, and justice.116 Nonetheless, local respect for a rule against genocide can often be enhanced
by an international legal process because it transcends local prejudices and implements a norm that
gains credibility by its universal endorsement. Genocide may be practiced locally, but the norm
against it is strongest when it is supported universally. In no society can it be considered legal or
morally acceptable to rape or kill a Jew because she is a Jewor a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu or
a Buddhist.
International judicial processes, if of high professional standards, help establish what Lederach and
Appleby aptly list as essential elements of peacebuilding: the rule of law and protection of human
rights.117 International judicial processes at their best also avoid the peacebuilding pitfall of moving
too quickly beyond the most immediate community of concern and agency.118 Although international
courts apply universal laws, they deal with real-world cases that are unavoidably local, giving them
opportunities to encourage the building of some local judicial expertise and public understanding of
the rule of law. Rather than simply leave the scene when the trials are over, they can at least leave
behind more experienced people with a better understanding of the rule of law. To be sure, the ICC
and hybrid courts need to give more thought to this latter dimension and how their work can include,
respect, and promote the human and cultural resources within a given setting.119This can be done
well only with more deliberate intention and strategic planning.

Trading Prosecution for a Cease-Fire?

As the foregoing analysis indicates, it is plausible that in some instances lives can be saved by agreeing
to suspend a judicial investigation or prosecution already under way. In such instances, what should
the court do? There are many constraints on what the ICC can do (regardless of what it would like to
do) in stopping a proceeding once it has reached the stage of formal investigation, indictment, or
prosecution. To obtain a cease-fire in return for not prosecuting alleged war criminals might not be
simple to arrange, even if court officials would decide to do so. Certainly the court is not well
positioned to arrange cease-fires. The ICC has expertise in achieving justice, but it is not equipped to
make judgments about when or how to negotiate peace. In the Ugandan case, the Security Council,
which is charged by the international community with maintaining world peace and security, is in a
better position to elicit a peace agreement from the belligerents than is the court. If the Security
Council is able to negotiate a cease-fire, it could, acting in accord with the Rome Statute, decide that
the ICC should stop all proceedings for one year. It could renew that request indefinitely if it chose to
do so.120 The Security Council is the best situated and most legitimate body to adjust judicial
enforcement to the attainment of peace.

At times, it might be possible for the ICC to arrange the equivalent of what might be considered a plea
bargain in domestic legal practice. Yet the (p.216) seriousness of the crimes that the court prosecutes
would frequently diminish a desire to offer a lesser charge in return for any benefit that the accused
may deliver to the court. The presumption of accountability and a disinclination to accept impunity
has grown over the past two decades, making it unlikely the ICC would or should offer perpetrators of
serious crimes total immunity from prosecution, even in exchange for an end to violent
conflict,121except in rare cases. Sometimes questionable amnesties may, after time passes, be reversed
through changes in public opinion and new judicial processes.122 The Rome Statute does authorize the
prosecutor to halt proceedings if he or she determines, subject to the approval of a Pre-Trial Chamber
of judges,123 that a prosecution is not in the interests of justice, taking into account all the
circumstances.124 The meaning of justice might be stretched to include peace if one understands
that war inevitably violates justice for many people. But the court is not equipped to obtain a cease-
fire agreement or to enforce it once signed.
For the future, the ICC could explore ways to make its indictments conditional to avoid the political
quandary of being blamed for interfering with the achievement of a cease-fire when indictments of top
leaders appear to make them reluctant to stop fighting. Again, the proposed guiding principle of
maximizing the preservation of human life is useful. Of course, it is always preferable for individual
moral responsibility to be assigned for hideous crimes and for those who have wrongfully taken
human life to face penalties for this unlawful conduct. Still, if efforts to prosecute perpetrators
postpone an end to their killing others, then prosecution might reasonably be postponed or given up
altogether. But the bargain to be struck with the accused should be made conditional to prevent
unwarranted concessions to the accused. Even if the international community should decide to give up
prosecutions it should not give up truth telling.

To begin, it must always be made clear that the ICC is not responsible for the accused persons
continued fighting and killing. The court is not asking any indicted person to admit guilt; it is only
asking the accused to face a fair trial. This is a reasonable request, if indictments are fairly drawn up.
The accused persons claims that they are entitled to continue fighting or committing atrocities
because they do not want to answer to charges against themselves are not reasonable or (quite
possibly) legal. The responsibility for continued killing must always be placed on the killers, not on the
court.

The ICC might agree to postpone prosecution of charges contained in an indictment (but not the
prosecution of future wrongdoing should additional unlawful conduct occur) for as long as the
following conditions would exist: the indictees agree to a cease-fire; they implement the cease-fire
within their organization; and they maintain the cease-fire, insofar as it depends on the conduct of the
accused. In addition, the indicted persons might be required to give a public accounting of their
conduct related to the indictment and agree not to hold public office or military rank in the
future.125These provisions do not impose any severe penalties on the accused, but they do require
some truth telling, which is the very least to which the (p.217) victims and their families are entitled,
as well as the least that public trust and the commonweal require.

Identifying International Judicial Processes and Peacebuilding Strategies that Support Each Other
An examination of recent cases of armed conflict and international judicial proceedings demonstrates
that successful strategies for making peace and achieving justice always intersect and often
inextricably mingle, suggesting that pitting peace against justice or justice against peace is a
misleading and destructive oversimplification. As Faisal Al Bagir of the Sudanese Organization
Against Torture and the Khartoum Centre for Human Rights and Educational Development
explained: Accountability, political peace processes and civilian protection must all be part of one
package for Darfur. There is no contradiction between peace and justice. 126 Although the strategic
emphasis to be placed on the different components of the package will vary from case to case and time
to time, the package as a whole, and each of three componentspeace, accountability, and justice
must always inform peacebuilding strategies.127 Until there is more understanding of the precise
conditions under which international judicial instruments contribute to social integration, the
preferred peacebuilding strategy should be to identify, nurture, and employ the qualities of judicial
processes and the accompanying social conditions that will build a democratic rule-of-law society.
Such a society will contribute to both justice and peace in the long run.

In designing the best peacebuilding strategy, all parties should remember that the ICC or other
international judicial processes are only a small part of the peacebuilding picture. Many influences
will shape the prospects for peacebuilding. Moreover, the domestic peacebuilding picture is only one
part of the total peacebuilding picture, which includes the ICCs or other international actors
contributions to upholding norms and reforming structures to curtail gross violations of human rights
around the world. Even an estimate that a particular ICC prosecution may not contribute much to
domestic peacebuilding is not a sufficient reason to stop it (unless its continuance would violate the
life-saving principle). The ICC might still contribute to peacebuilding within the larger global society.
Courts in all venues usually face the prospect that one litigant and his or her supporters will not like
an outcome of the courts proceedings; yet the court renders a decision for the good of society, even if
one subgroup of society becomes somewhat alienated from the judicial processes as a result of that
unpopular decision. Similarly, from the perspective of global society, a widely recognized international
norm should not go unenforced just because a self-interested subgroup of global society might be
unhappy with its enforcement.

We should also remember that the ICC is not well positioned to orchestrate reconciliation in the
society where one or more of its elites has committed crimes, even though some expect the court to
achieve reconciliation. In Uganda, many criticized the court for not being more adept at promoting
reconciliation between the LRA and the people of northern Uganda, from whom many
child (p.218)soldiers were abducted and on whom many crimes were inflicted. Of course the ICC is
happy when its work promotes reconciliation and social healing, but its function is primarily focused
on trying to uphold law impartially. It is not as well equipped to engineer social integration as are
many other governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental agencies. Moreover, its law
enforcement function is usually limited to trying the main, high-level wrongdoers, while leaving to
national courts and international truth commissions the long-term, arduous tasks of restorative
justice and social reconciliation.
With these reflections in mind, the present analysis leads to four general conclusions. First, to provide
highly professional, yet locally sensitive investigations of gross violations of human rights,
international judicial prosecutions should be the default setting for peacebuilding strategies, unless
domestic institutions and agencies working for retributive and restorative justice can carry these out
impartially. Whether judicial processes engage national or international institutions, or both, they can
provide an improved climate for reconciliation and resumption of normal life. Often the political
stresses and social, economic, and ethnic divisions may be sufficiently strong to overwhelm the
potential peacebuilding benefits from domestic institutions acting alone. In such cases, they should be
buttressed by international participation in hybrid arrangements that aim to glean the best of both
worlds. In cases where few credible domestic judicial institutions exist and the ICC is called on to do
the job, it can contribute legitimacy, experience, and legal precedents. There are many good reasons to
establish a standard procedure whereby the strengths of the ICC can be directly utilized, through
collaborative efforts, even when a hybrid court is the chosen instrument. When neither domestic nor
international trials are possible, other mechanisms of accountability should be employed.

To a significant extent, existing studies demonstrate that the conditions enabling international judicial
contributions to succeed in peacebuilding are similar to the conditions enabling UN peace operations
to succeed in the aftermath of violent conflict within a society.128

Second, if perpetrators can be brought to trial in exemplary judicial processes, the court decisions can
remove many of them from positions of power and signal a fresh start with meaningful moral
regeneration in a formerly strife-ridden, poorly governed society. These are essential steps for
successful peacebuilding and reestablishing trust within society. 129 A society haunted by numerous
atrocities is unlikely to succeed at the perilous task of moral regeneration. This task means
establishing a new order of political, legal, and social relationships that affirms certain moral truths
or principles denied by previous modes and orders, and which aims at preventing a recurrence of
violations of those moral truths or principles.130 The ICC is a legal, moral, and political institution
that aims to serve the project of moral regeneration by affirming the rule of law in domestic and
international societies; by focusing on individual accountability; and by promoting deterrence
through the punishment of perpetrators, and social reconciliation through reparations for
victims.131If the ICC is able to perform its duties, it can contribute significantly to moral regeneration
after communal violence and internal war, as (p.219) claimed by many scholars, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, and most other human rights organizations, as well as by the UN
Secretary General and many governmental leaders.132
Lu wisely cautions that the limits of judicial punishment for advancing the project of moral
regeneration, a project that animates peacebuilding, should be kept in mind by peacebuilding
strategists. The moral utility of such measures as punishment, amnesty, and reparation depends on
their contribution to the project of moral regeneration. She notes that punishment, amnesty, and
reparation make moral sense only if they do not undermine, but are consonant with,
the positivepromotion of respect for the humanitarian principles underlying the ICCs
mandate.133 This important moral assessment cannot be made in the abstract; it depends on how
much evidence is found, how a case is argued, how judges perform and explain their verdicts, how the
media portray the issues to the public, and how well the public understands its own moral life.

Third, the overall peacebuilding benefit from international judicial proceedings depends on the extent
to which the proceedings demonstrate, and are perceived to demonstrate, that they are fair in
upholding the most fundamental human rights. For accountability efforts to have a strong, positive
impact, Jane Stromseth, David Wippman, and Rosa Brooks found that the accountability
proceedings [must] demonstrate credibly that previous patterns of abuse and impunity are rejected
and that justice can be fair.134 Without this demonstrative effect, domestic peacebuilding will not be
helped by judicial processes. In Uganda, some observers believe that the peacebuilding potential of
the ICC wasjeopardized when the court seemed to work too closely with the Ugandan government, one
of the two belligerents in the armed conflict. The latter referred its adversary, the LRA, to the court
while retaining jurisdiction over its own military officials who had also been accused of war crimes. 135

Fourth, peacebuilding strategies will succeed in the long run by the extent to which they increase
domestic and global legal capacities and nurture a culture of legal compliance and social integration
aimed at building just rule-of-law societies nationally and globally.136 Such strategies should include
nurturing structural change that holds individuals accountable to international law. Yet of course, the
ICC alone is insufficient to legitimize or stabilize international order.137 Although essential, it would
also be a mistake to expect too much from international accountability processes (whether trials or
truth commissions). There must be a much larger peacebuilding effort to strengthen peoples
understanding of and commitment to fundamental human rights norms and institutionalizing
structures of accountability, using both local and international instruments, rather than acquiescing in
existing international structures that allow impunity.

If international society, Lu aptly cautions, is quick to punish through the ICC, but slow to help
empower the destitute and the marginalized, [it] would constitute a perversion rather than a
fulfillment of the universalist humanitarian ideals underlying the ICCs mandate. The ICCs ability to
support the project of moral regeneration in formerly war-torn societies may depend (p.220) on
transformations in the international economic and political context. The quest for moral
regeneration in domestic societies may be inextricably linked to the moral regeneration of
international society itself.138 This is a healthy reminder that we should be ever conscious of ends and
focus on strategic peacebuilding as part of a holistic enterprise of interconnected measures, not on a
particular technique or a legal or institutional fix. As the populations of northern Uganda themselves
expressed, a multi-faceted transitional justice response, combining several processes and institutions
to address different types of harm caused by different levels of perpetrators, is required. 139 More
important than holding a trial are the purposes and values that it serves, and how it is organically
related to other peacebuilding initiatives. International judicial processes will have more positive
influences in some contexts and at some stages in a conflicts life cycle than others. They may deter
plans for war or ethnic cleansing. They may deter crimes during the waging of violence. They may
promote cease-fires by indicting officials accused of illegal conduct and thereby helping international
society isolate them, discredit them, and mount effective measures to constrain them. They may aid
negotiations of peace agreements by enabling negotiators to say a new government may not include
any indicted persons, as happened in the Dayton Accords. Of course, they would directly aid in
prosecutions, trials, truth seeking, and reparations. They can expand and legitimate the information
for memory. They can protect against gender crimes in a world where gender sensitivity is still far
from the norm. Their decisions, even if leaving the immediate litigants unhappy, can contribute to
broader social reconciliation.140 At their best, international judicial processes are a lynchpin in
replacing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes with rule-of-law societies, nationally and
globally, and respect for human life and dignity throughout the world. Universalizing respect for
human life is peacebuilding par excellence.
Notes
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Conflict, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler (p.230) Hampson, and Pamela Aall, 737752.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2001.

Stromseth, Jane, David Wippman, and Rosa Brooks. Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of

Law after Military Interventions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Wright, Quincy. The Role of International Law in the Elimination of War. New York: Oceana, 1961.

Notes:
(1) . See, for example, Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamuri, Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism

in Strategies of International Justice, International Security 28, no. 3 (2003/2004): 544 .

(2) . Michael P. Scharf, The ICCs Jurisdiction over the Nationals of Non-Party States: A Critique of

the U.S. Position, Law and Contemporary Problems 67 (2001): 152 .

(3) . The question of whether and how accountability proceedings can contribute to strengthening
domestic justice systems and to building the rule of law in post-conflict societies is surprisingly under
analyzed. Jane Stromseth, David Wippman, and Rosa Brooks, Can Might Make Rights? Building the

Rule of Law after Military Interventions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 253 .
For an excellent, thoroughly documented discussion of accountability issues, see chapters 7, 8, and 9.

(4) . In addition to suggesting a rule-utilitarian ethic, I give significant weight to the consent of the
population immediately affected by atrocities. The rationale for this is that the default setting for
policy preferences should be to prosecute the accused to assign specific moral responsibility for
criminal conduct, reaffirm the norms that all should follow, and provide some modicum of justice for
the victims and their families. But if a situation arises in which it is unclear what to do because
proceeding with prosecutions may delay a cease-fire agreement and result in further loss of human
life, the ambiguity of the decision should be influenced by what the people who are most directly
affected want to do. What one should do to maximize the protection of human life, after all, should be
influenced by what the persons whose lives are on the line calculate is the preferred course of action.

(5) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims (New York: International Center for Transitional Justice,

2005), 5 .

(6) . See Osman Hummaida, former director of the Sudanese Organization Against Torture, quoted by
Deirdre Clancy, Prosecutors Announcement Sends Ripples through Sudan, Monitor: Journal of the

Coalition for the International Criminal Court 34 (MayOctober 2007): 13 .

(7) . Amitav Acharya, How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institution

Change in Asian Regionalism. International Organization 58 (2004): 239275 .

(8) . On domesticating foreign policies in the international system, see Robert C. Johansen, The
Future of United Nations Peacekeeping and Enforcement: A Framework for Policymaking, Global

Governance 2 (1996): 301 ; Robert C. Johansen, The National Interest and the Human Interest:

An Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 1437 .

(9) . United Nations Secretary General, Report of the Secretary General on the Rule of Law and
Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-conflict Societies, UN Doc. S/2004/616 (August 23, 2004),
para. 6, p. 4, accessed
athttp://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/395/29/PDF/N0439529.pdf?OpenElement.

(10) . Ibid.

(11) . Preamble to the Rome Statute.

(12) . See Payam Akhavan, The Lords Resistance Army Case: Ugandas Submission of the First State
Referral to the International Criminal Court, American Journal of International Law 99, no. 2

(2005) .

(13) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices: A Population-Based Survey on Attitudes About Peace and

Justice in Northern Uganda (New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2005), 3 .

(14) . Coalition for the International Criminal Court, Peace and Justice: The Importance of

Accountability to Civilian Protection, CICC Monitor 34 (MayOctober 2007): 13 .

(15) . Ibid.

(16) . Juan E. Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, Human Rights Quarterly 19 (1997): 273
.

(17) . Mahnoush H. Arsanjani and W. Michael Riesman, The Law-in-Action of the International

Criminal Court, American Journal of International Law 99, no. 2 (2005): 385 . Quoted from
Uganda: ICC Could Suspend Northern Investigations, Spokesman, IRIN News (April 18, 2005),
at http://www.irinnews.org.

(18) . Arsanjani and Riesman, The Law-in-Action of the International Criminal Court, 385 .
(19) . Ibid. Also see Katherine Southwick, North Ugandan Conflict, Forgotten but still

Deadly, YaleGlobal (March 9, 2005), at http://yaleglobal.yale.edu .

(20) . Arsanjani and Riesman, The Law-in-Action of the International Criminal Court, 385 .

(21) . Akhavan, The Lords Resistance Army Case, 403 .

(22) . Ibid.

(23) . Ibid., 404 . Perhaps this came about in part because Sudanese leaders themselves were
coming under ICC scrutiny for their alleged crimes.

(24) . Ibid.

(25) . Ibid., 404405 .

(26) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of

California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 3 .

(27) . Ibid.

(28) . Ibid., 4 .

(29) . Ibid.

(30) . Ibid.

(31) . Ibid., 5 .

(32) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims, 7.

(33) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 5.

(34) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims, 7.

(35) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 5.
(36) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims, 7.

(37) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 5.

(38) . Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, Making Peace Our Own: Victims
Perceptions of Accountability, Reconciliation, and Transitional Justice in Northern Uganda, August
14, 2007, accessed at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/AMMF-763G7T.

(39) . Preamble to the Rome Statute.

(40) . Paul Seils and Marieke Wierda, The International Criminal Court and Conflict Mediation

(New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2005), 2 .

(41) . Coalition for the International Criminal Court, Peace and Justice.

(42) . Of course, this is true primarily in weak states, where international intervention is a possibility,
or in other states where human rights norms are already internalized. One wonders how U.S. officials
may have thought about their obligation to honor international law when they designed U.S. policies
resulting in abusive treatment of detainees during and following military operations in Afghanistan
and Iraq. See the discussion of the Alberto Gonzales memorandum, which claimed that U.S. prisoners
were not subject to protection by the Geneva Conventions, in Robert C. Johansen, The Impact of U.S.
Policy toward the International Criminal Court on the Prevention of Genocide, War Crimes, and

Crimes against Humanity, Human Rights Quarterly 28, no. 2 (2006) .

(43) . Seils and Wierda, The International Criminal Court and Conflict Mediation, 2 .

(44) . See the Report of the Secretary-General, The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict
and Post-conflict Societies, UN Doc. S/2004/616, August 3, 2004, para. 21. Quoted in Seils and

Wierda, The International Criminal Court and Conflict Mediation, 2 .

(45) . See Comments of the Human Rights Committee, Consideration of Reports Submitted by State
Parties under Article 40 of the Covenant, para 10, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79/Add.46 (1955), quoted

inMendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 259 .

(46) . Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948, 78

U.N.T.S., 277; Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 260 .

(47) . Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 261 . For grave breaches of the laws of war
there is a clear obligation to punish. See Geneva IV, art. 146. Mendez, Accountability for Past

Abuses, 273 .
(48) . Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 261 .

(49) . Ibid., 262 . See eighth annual report, Leonardo Duspouy, Special Rapporteur appointed
pursuant to Economic Social Council resolution 1985/37 U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1995/20/Corr.1

(1955). Cited also by Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 259 .

(50) . Leila Nadya Sadat, Exile, Amnesty and International Law, Notre Dame Law Review 81, no. 3

(2006): 955 .

(51) . Ibid., 1034 .

(52) . See Snyder and Vinjamuri, Trials and Errors; Dominic McGoldrick, The Legal and Political
Significance of a Permanent International Criminal Court, in The Permanent International Criminal
Court: Legal and Policy Issues, edited by Dominic McGoldrick, Peter Rowe, and Eric Donnelly

(Oxford: Hart, 2004), 556559 .

(53) . Patrick Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 113 .

(54) . On the question of deterrence, see M. Cherif Bassiouni, Accountability for Violations of
International Humanitarian Law and Other Serious Violations of Human Rights, in Post-Conflict

Justice, edited by M. Cherif Bassiouni (Netherlands: Hotei, 2003), 34, 54 .

(55) . Even if arresting the accused is not possible because he or she is shielded by a government,
issuing a warrant can effectively prevent the accused persons travel and possibly restrict or freeze the
international movement of assets. Steven R. Ratner and Jason S. Abrams, Accountability for Human
Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

2001), 301 .

(56) . See ibid.

(57) . This happened to Sudanese officials, even though Sudan chose, as did the United States, not to
become a member of the court.

(58) . Catherine Lu, The International Criminal Court as an Institution of Moral Regeneration:
Problems and Prospects, in Bringing Power to Justice? The Prospects of the International Criminal
Court, edited by Joanna Harrington, Michael Milde, and Richard Vernon (London: McGill-Queens

University Press, 2006), 206 .

(59) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 295296 . The particular
instrument chosen for clarifying accountability, whether an investigatory committee, a truth
commission, or an international judicial procedure, is less important than the existence of some
process for stigmatizing the offender and ensuring that political settlements and transitions take
account of human rights abuses (296).

(60) . He speaks here of truth commissions as well as trials. Bruce Shapiro, The Saddam

Spectacle,Nation 284, no. 3 (2006): 4 .

(61) . Sadat, Exile, Amnesty and International Law, 1035 .

(62) . Juan Mendez notes: For grave breaches of the laws of war there is a clear obligation to

punish. Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 273 . See also the Geneva Convention
Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, art. 146.

(63) . An exception to this generalization might be when exemplary national judicial proceedings are
conducted on grounds of universal jurisdiction. In such cases, national proceedings would also have a
salutary impact in other countries. I am indebted to Hao Phen for this point.

(64) . For an excellent analysis of the role of truth commissions, see Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable

Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York: Routledge, 2001) .

(65) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 300 .

(66) . Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 257 .

(67) . The hybrid tribunal investigating crimes in East Timor, for example, has no jurisdiction over
persons in Indonesia, even though many of the worst crimes allegedly were carried out by
Indonesians, often on the payroll of the Indonesian government.

(68) . Mendez, Accountability for Past Abuses, 277 .

(69) . Ibid.

(70) . Time appears to be on the side of exemplary practice, although the dismissive attitude of U.S.
officials in the George W. Bush administration toward honoring the Geneva Conventions protecting
the rights of the accused is an alarming step away from exemplary jurisprudential standards by a
country long associated with support for human rights.

(71) . International Crisis Group, Courting Disaster: The Misrule of Law in Bosnia & Herzegovina,
Balkans Report no. 127 (March 25, 2002): 54. Quoted also by Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can

Might Make Rights? 239 .

(72) . Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can Might Make Rights? 256 .
(73) . See ibid., 254 ; and Laura A. Dickinson, The Promise of Hybrid Courts,American Journal

of International Law (2003): 295 .

(74) . There have been numerous reports that the populations in Rwanda and Uganda are unaware of
or poorly informed about the work of the ICTR and the ICC, respectively. Their citizens feel distant
from the judicial processes, the local press does not pay much attention to proceedings to inform the
populace, and the families of victims do not feel connected to the processes. International Center for
Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of California (Berkeley), Forgotten
Voices and A Voice for Victims.

(75) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims.

(76) . The Rome Statute allows for in situ proceedings in Article 3.3. The ICC, aware of its need to
communicate more effectively in situations where it is at work, has begun to consider in situ hearings
and opening field offices where they would aid fulfillment of the courts mission. See Human Rights
Watch, Courting History: The Landmark International Criminal Courts First

Years,http://www.hrw.org/en/node/62135/section/1, 100115 .

(77) . Trials can give victims a sense of justice that helps them move forward without a need to seek
personal vengeance, thereby assisting peacebuilding. Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can Might

Make Rights? 250 .

(78) . See the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, A Call for Justice: A National
Consultation on Past Human Rights Violations in Afghanistan, p. 21, available
athttp://www.aihrc.org.af/rep_Eng_29_01_05.htm. For analysis, see Stromseth, Wippman, and

Brooks,Can Might Make Rights? 252 .

(79) . UN Secretary General, Report of the Secretary General on the Rule of Law and Transitional
Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, para. 10, delivered to the Security Council, U.N. Doc.
S/2004/616 (August 3, 2004).

(80) . UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report on the Mission Undertaken by Her Office,
Pursuant to Commission Resolution 200/60, to Assess the Situation on the Ground with Regard to
the Abduction of Children from Northern Uganda, paras. 1213, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2002/86 (2001),
available at http://www.ohchr.org/english. Quoted by Akhavan, The Lords Resistance Army Case,
410.

(81) . Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can Might Make Rights? 253 .

(82) . See ibid.

(83) . On the domestication of the international system, see Johansen, The Future of United Nations

Peacekeeping and Enforcement, 301 ; Johansen, The National Interest and the Human Interest,

1437 .

(84) . Arsanjani and Riesman, The Law-in-Action of the International Criminal Court, 402403

(85) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 295 .

(86) . Ibid.

(87) . Patrick Hayden concludes that the move toward individual responsibility (accompanied by the
emergence of human rights and humanitarian law) represents a change in focus that is a sign of global
transformation towards a more cosmopolitan conception of world law. Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global

Politics, 114 . See also David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to

Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 101103 .

(88) . The argument of necessity to follow superior orders may be used to mitigate a punishment, but
it cannot be used to justify illegal conduct.

(89) . Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics, 114 .

(90) . See Quincy Wright, The Role of International Law in the Elimination of War (New York:

Oceana, 1961) .

(91) . Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics, 114 .

(92) . See ibid.

(93) . Paul Gordon Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions

Seen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ; Brian D. Lepard, Rethinking

Humanitarian Intervention (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002) .

(94) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 299 .

(95) . A tendency to understate the benefits of international judicial proceedings is found in Snyder
and Vinjamuri, Trials and Errors.
(96) . Richard Falk, Criminal Accountability in Transitional Justice, Peace Review 12, no. 1 (2000):

82 .

(97) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 301 .

(98) . These benefits included establishing as virtually indisputable that heinous crimes did occur, so
they could not later be credibly denied. In addition, trials established that certain Germans and
Japanese did commit the crimes. Both Germans and non-Germans, Japanese and non-Japanese could
see some authoritative attribution of responsibility, thereby differentiating those who did behave
criminally from those who did not. Impartial trials prepare the ground for peacebuilding because they
discourage collective guilt by establishing individual guilt. This is desirable for both those living in the
society where the crimes occurred and for those living elsewhere who might form negative stereotypes
of the entire nation where crimes occurred.

(99) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 301 .

(100) . See ibid., 301302 .

(101) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 5.

(102) . See Garth Meintjes and Juan E. Mendez, Reconciling Amnesties with Universal

Jurisdiction,Internatinal Law Forum 2 (2000): 7677 . Amnesty laws lost constructive

peacebuilding influence when they became shameful tools for perpetuating the impunity enjoyed by
violators of human rights, rather than opportunities for reconciliation among warring parties.

Meintjes and Mendez, Reconciling Amnesties with Universal Jurisdiction, 7677 .

(103) . Ibid., 97 .

(104) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of

California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 6 .

(105) . Ibid.

(106) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of

California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims, 18 .

(107) . Ibid.

(108) . Many observers have felt that President Alfredo Cristiani in El Salvador used reconciliation to
mean get over it, as did some generals in Argentina. Such misuse of reconciliation, of course, does
not contribute to peacebuilding.
(109) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims, 18.

(110) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), Forgotten Voices, 6.

(111) . International Center for Transitional Justice and Human Rights Center at the University of
California (Berkeley), A Voice for Victims, 18.

(112) . Ratner and Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities, 301 .

(113) . See ibid., 300 .

(114) . See ibid., 302 .

(115) . In his analysis of recent armed conflicts, Christopher Hedges concludes that reconciliation is
not possible without widespread acceptance of the most precious and elusive of all human

narrativestruth. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (New York: Anchor, 2003), 82 .

(116) . As they say, peacebuilding begins and ends with the local. See Strategic Peacebuilding: An
Overview, chapter 1, 35.

(117) . Ibid., 34.

(118) . Ibid., 27.

(119) . Ibid., 28.

(120) . Article 16. Of course there is no inherent conflict between international judicial proceedings
and the work of the Security Council in exercising its primary responsibility for maintaining peace and
security. Indeed, when facing the war in the former Yugoslavia, the Security Council decided in
Resolution 827 to establish an international criminal tribunal as a contribution to the restoration of
peace. See Dan Sarooshi, The Peace and Justice Paradox: The International Criminal Court and the
UN Security Council, in The Permanent International Court: Legal and Policy Issues, edited by

Dominic McGoldrick, Peter Rowe, and Eric Donnelly (Oxford: Hart, 2004), 105 .

(121) . The presumption against impunity has been reinforced by the creation and continued support
for the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the exercise of the concept of
extraterritorial jurisdiction, including universal jurisdiction, the establishment of the permanent
International Criminal Court specifically to prosecute individuals accused of criminal conduct, and the
establishment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and other mixed tribunals for Cambodia, Kosovo,
and Timor-Leste. The United Nations has participated in efforts to create all of these mixed tribunals,
thereby adding to their legal standing. In addition, all fifteen members of the Security Council have
explicitly expressed their commitment to accountability. See Seils and Wierda, The International
Criminal Court and Conflict Mediation, 2. The UN Secretary General has strongly stated that UN-
endorsed peace agreements cannot give amnesty for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity,
or gross violations of human rights, although it has supported amnesties for less serious crimes.
Amnesties given by others are not a bar to prosecution in UN-created or -assisted courts. See Report
of the Secretary-General, The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-conflict
Societies, UN Doc. S/2004/616, August 3, 2004, para. 21.

(122) . This happened in eventually bringing legal charges against former President Augusto Pinochet
of Chile, despite his lifetime immunity.

(123) . Article 53.3.

(124) . Article 53.1(c).

(125) . The ban on holding future public office could be considered a penalty for some, but it is not too
much to ask of those who are indicted but refuse to stand trial.

(126) . Coalition for the International Criminal Court, Peace and Justice.

(127) . Some of the debate between advocates of justice and advocates of peace may arise from the
strong preference of peacebuilders and justice seekers for one more than the other, rather than from
careful analysis of how peace and justice can nurture one another.

(128) . On what enables UN peacekeeping and enforcement to succeed, see these excellent
complementary analyses: Michael Doyle, War Making and Peace Making: The United Nations Post
Cold War Record, in Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing International Conflict, edited by
Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace

Press, 2001) ; Stephen John Stedman, International Implementation of Peace Agreements in

Civil Wars: Findings from a Study of Sixteen Cases, in Turbulent Peace: The Challenges of Managing
International Conflict, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2001) .

(129) . This conclusion parallels one of the findings of Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks in their more
narrowly focused examination of the long term impact of accountability proceedings on the rule of
law. They conclude that the effective disempowerment of key perpetrators who threaten stability
and undermine public confidence in the rule of law is necessary to nurture a rule-of-law society.

SeeStromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can Might Make Rights? 254 .

(130) . Lu, The International Criminal Court as an Institution of Moral Regeneration, 191 .

(131) . Ibid., 206 . Lu also notes that as a mechanism of moral accounting that focuses on
individual agency and responsibility, the ICC will not be nearly sufficient by itself to address the
institutional and structural roots of political violence and atrocity. The verdicts of the ICC therefore
should not exhaust the search for moral and especially causal responsibility, which is crucial to the
ultimate objective of prevention.

(132) . See ibid., 191 .

(133) . Ibid., 206 .

(134) . Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can Might Make Rights? 254 .

(135) . Arsanjani and Riesman, The Law-in-Action of the International Criminal Court, 385 .

(136) . Stromseth, Whippman, and Brooks concluded that the impact of accountability proceedings
depends on the extent to which systematic and meaningful efforts at domestic capacity-building are
included as part of the accountability process. See Stromseth, Wippman, and Brooks, Can Might

Make Rights? 254 .

(137) . Lu, The International Criminal Court as an Institution of Moral Regeneration, 206 .

(138) . Ibid., 207 .

(139) . Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, Making Peace Our Own: Victims
Perceptions of Accountability, Reconciliation, and Transitional Justice in Northern Uganda, August
14, 2007, accessed at http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/AMMF-763G7T.

(140) . Juan E. Mendez, A Voice for Victims, in Annual Report 2004/2005 (New York: International

Center for Transitional Justice, 2006), 207

Human Rights and Strategic Peacebuilding

The Roles of Local, National, and International Actors

Naomi Roht-Arriaza
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords

In addressing past human rights violations, strategic peacebuilding must pay attention not only to
efforts at the state level, but also to local, transnational, and international actors. The role of
international courts and tribunals in generating pressure for domestic prosecution is one pertinent
example. While recognizing the critical importance of each level, Roht-Arriaza highlights the role of
local initiatives in complementing international and national efforts by changing conflict-created
power dynamics and fostering ownership on a larger scale. These initiatives include memorializing
past atrocities, local involvement in national truth commissions, and local justice mechanisms.

Keywords: human rights, peacebuilding, war crimes, war crimes tribunals, truth commissions

Human rights as concept and as law plays multiple roles in the cessation of armed conflict and in the
(re)construction of a more just and peaceful society. Human rights is the rallying cry of those who feel
oppressed; it is the standard by which new government efforts to build rule of law will be judged; it is
the rubric under which new domestic institutions like ombudsmen and human rights commissions to
safeguard individuals and groups against official arbitrariness will operate. Human rights provisions
in peace agreements range from those on refugee return and prisoner release to those on trials, truth
commissions, vetting, reparations, and other attempts to repair past violations to efforts to ensure a
human rights culture.1 Adherence to human rights treaties will often be one of the earliest acts of a
postconflict government, a move imbued with symbolism. Human rights concerns also engage the
supervisory mechanisms available on the international level, from UN procedures to regional courts to
conditionalities on reconstruction assistance. International human rights law will set the limits to
what governments can do: it will influence the shape of power sharing or other arrangements to
protect minorities, it will demand resources and planning for education, health, and other economic,
social, and cultural rights; it will insist on a minimum of public participation and free expression.

As countries emerge from periods of armed confrontation or extreme repression, human rights
lawyers and activists have paid particular attention to strategic peacebuilding, understanding that
dealing with the past is a necessary condition for constructing a lasting, positive peace based on a
more just order. Over the past twenty years or so, a varied and complex international practice has
grown up around (p.232) postarmed conflict efforts to deal with past crimes, including trials, truth
commissions, reparations programs, psychosocial interventions, vetting and recomposition of security
forces and public officials, changes in law, and multiple commemorative efforts. Although initially
there were fierce debates about whether, for example, truth commissions were better than trials, by
now there is a broad consensus that governments can and may use multiple measures, either
simultaneously or sequentially.2 In other words, we needed to embrace dilemmas and paradoxes,3 in
an ecological model of postarmed conflict reconstruction and renewal.4 In this effort, international
human rights and humanitarian law have provided the outer limits within a broad range of options.
However, a states efforts to address human rights violations in the past depend not only on the
actions of the central government but also, crucially, on several types of actors who exert their own
influence and affect the actions and role of central governments. These include international, regional,
trans-national, and local actors. Thus far, their importance and interdependence has been
insufficiently recognized. Just as different pieces of a postconflict agenda must be thought about as a
whole and much thought must go into which tasks go together and which must be done sequentially,
the same is true of different sites of action. This chapter looks at the interplay of these different sites,
with a focus on the issues raised by the need to provide justicein a broad sensefor the victims of
armed conflict and repressive dictatorship. It concludes that it is important as part of strategic
peacebuilding to engage all these levels from the start and carefully think through both synergies and
potential tensions involved among them. In particular, until very recently, insufficient attention was
paid to the local, subnational town or village, even though that is where most people live their lives
and where they may feel most keenly the impact of impunity or lack of reparation. A human rights
framework and an approach based on the complementarity of actions at different scales may be quite
useful.

The National State

The national state is the starting place for any discussion of postconflict reconstruction, whether
physical or moral. The state will necessarily play a central role in defining the contours of state policy,
creating a new or reformed national identity and mythology, and allocating resources. In particular,
the national state will be the central player in reform of national institutions, from prisons to police
and army to the judiciary and prosecutors service. States will also, obviously, be central to criminal
prosecutions for human rightsrelated crimes in national courts, national truth commissions or other
types of truth-seeking efforts, reparations schemes reliant on government funds, and efforts to end
exclusionary practices that affect minorities or other aggrieved groups. Where the state as such has
been the principal source of human rights violations and violence has been vertical, running from
state agents to citizens (as, for (p.233) example, in Chile), national actions will be particularly
important to establish the bright line between the former and current governments.
In fulfilling this key role, however, the national state is limited by a number of factors. Existing
institutions may be discredited due to their complicity or silence in the face of repression or gross
human rights violations. They may have been so decimated by the violence, or so incipient to begin
with, that they must be (re)built from scratch. Money and human and technical resources will be
scarce, and competition for resources fierce given ruined infrastructure, fragile or distorted
economies, and a predictable surge in common crime in the postconflict period. There may be a
continuing lack of trust between former enemies and lack of a culture of political give-and-take that
make compromise and negotiation difficult. Moreover, in many societies emerging from periods of
armed conflict, the capital city has long centralized resources and opportunities and may be worlds
apart from the hinterland. Formal legal systems, often a colonial inheritance, may seem irredeemably
biased toward the rich or simply incomprehensible to most people. Even a national truth commission,
especially one with a largely written output, may seem remote.

Thus, to build a lasting peace, national responses are not enough. Strategic peacebuilders must look
both upto the international sphereand down, to the local, to do what needs to be done.

The International and Transnational Contribution: Catalysts with Caveats

Most obviously, foreign governments and international organizations are providers of money and
technical training for national initiatives. Every truth commission, for example, has relied on outside
funding to a greater or lesser degree. International and hybrid tribunals are also dependent on outside
funding and expertise; indeed, one of the reasons to set up such institutions is to capitalize on outside
resources and expertise and, in the case of hybrid (national-international) tribunals and commissions,
to use them as a training ground for nationals. The international sphere also constitutes a source of
pressure on national governments and nonstate armed actors to conform to certain norms, including
the need to take some action to deal with past human rights or armed conflictrelated crimes. Thus,
certain types of blanket amnesties, at least for genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions,
and torture, are clearly prohibited in international treaty law, whereas increasing evidence in the
jurisprudence of international treaty bodies and regional courts, national courts, the United Nations,
and regional human rights practice points to strong disapproval (if not the absolute prohibition) of
amnesty for crimes against humanity and other serious violations of human rights or humanitarian
law.5

Beyond this, the 1990s saw the beginning of a new architecture of international justice, which in the
current century has diversified and taken on multiple forms even as criticism of the initial efforts has
multiplied. Robert (p.234) Johansens chapter in this volume considers, among other examples, the
international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; I do no more than mention
them here. Although helping popularize and concretize the idea of international justice, advancing
international jurisprudence in a number of fields, and disabling people who would otherwise have had
a more pernicious effect on local politics, the tribunals also had drawbacks. They have been criticized
for failing to make themselves accessible and relevant to the populations of the target countries, for
their remoteness, for lack of sensitivity to victims, for outreach failures, for not creating sustainable
local justice systems or adequately training the persons who must carry on once they close down, and
for not producing a historical record capable of convincing most people that leaders of their ethnicity
had done anything wrong.6
One solution has been to assay hybrid institutions. Truth commissions in Haiti and Guatemala
pioneered the use of both national and international commissioners and staff; the Sierra Leone Truth
and Reconciliation Commission followed a variant of that model. Hybrid courts in Sierra Leone, East
Timor, Kosovo, Bosnia, Cambodia, and elsewhere combine international and national authority and
staffing in various ways. Ideally, such institutions can combine international independence,
impartiality, and resources with a grounding in national culture and law, reduced costs, on-site
accessibility to victims, and greater continuity and sustainability. They run the risk, however, of
creating orphan institutions fully owned by neither their national nor international backers.

Starting in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has represented another variant on the
national/international interface. Unlike the ad hoc tribunals, the ICCs jurisdiction is complementary
to national courts. Under its mandate to defer to national processes unless national courts are unable
or unwilling, the ICC does not measure success by how many cases it brings to trial. Rather, if the
threat of ICC prosecution prods domestic actors into moving forward with some kind of
accountability, that should be counted as a success. Much of the actual work of the ICC, therefore, is to
use the threat of international prosecution to push and prod.

In addition, even under the best of circumstances, the ICC will only be able to deal with a handful of
the leaders on both sides of the conflict. Most combatants, including those forcibly recruited and
forced to attack their own communities will never be brought before either an international or an
internationalized court. There is an emerging practice recognizing this differentiation. Thus, the UN
Security Council has since at least 2000 supported the idea that the International Criminal Tribunals
for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda should, as part of their completion strategy, concentrat[e] on
the prosecution and trial of the most senior leaders suspected of being most responsible for crimes,
while transferring cases involving lesser offenders to the national courts. The prosecutor for the ICC
has similarly expressed his offices intention to focus on the leaders who bear most responsibility, such
as the leaders of the state or organization, while leaving lesser offenders to national courts or other
(unspecified) means. The Sierra Leone Special Court has a mandate to (p.235) prosecute those
bearing the greatest responsibility, which may include not only leaders but midlevel commanders
who encouraged others by their acts.
Unless there is heightened cooperation and coordination with other levels and types of justice,
therefore, the focus of international and internationalized criminal tribunals on a small group of
leaders will lead to an impunity gap. That gap will have to be filled with either national trials or
some other type of justice-related mechanism. Although focusing on leaders and organizers makes
sense from a standpoint of both limited resources and moral culpability, it is often quite unsatisfying
for victims. Even though survivors recognize its ultimate responsibility, the army high command may
be as much of an abstraction as the state itself from a ground-level perspective.7 Rather, people are
interested in seeing on the docket those they saw and heard giving orders and committing atrocities:
only then does justice take on a real face. Moreover, those who participated in and organized terror at
the local level and who continue to enjoy impunity are often still the most powerful local members of
the local apparatus of repression.8 It is galling and disturbing to have to live among such people, see
them flaunt their power (and often, wealth), and feel permanently silenced and threatened by their
very presence. For citizens to perceive a change in their daily lives, those people need to be removed
from the scene.

Like international prosecutions, transnational investigations and prosecutions can catalyze domestic
legal actions under certain circumstances. The most often cited example is that of the Chilean
prosecution of Augusto Pinochet. In the mid-1990s, Pinochet seemed untouchable in the domestic
courts: laws granting blanket amnesty, statutes of limitations, referrals to military courts, Pinochets
parliamentary immunity, and his legislative support all inhibited efforts to investigate his
participation in crimes. In 1996, a group of lawyers asked a Spanish judge to look into crimes
committed in the 1970s in Argentina, including what they styled as genocide, terrorism, and torture.
These crimes came within the jurisdiction of the Spanish courts through a universal jurisdiction
statute (Article 23.4 of the Law of Judicial Power) that granted the local courts power to investigate a
small group of very heinous international crimes without any necessary tie to the place of their
occurrence or to the nationality of suspects or victims, based on every states interest in suppressing
such crimes. Three months later, the courts accepted a second complaint, alleging similar crimes in
Chile; the two investigations eventually merged. When Pinochet arrived in London for back surgery,
he was arrested on a Spanish warrant. The British House of Lords found (twice) that he had no
immunity from extradition and prosecution as a former head of state, and that the crimesat least
some of themconstituted extraditable crimes. Eventually, he was returned to Chile on the grounds of
his fragile health.

Once there, however, his legal troubles multiplied. His untouchability had been broken, judges had
seen their international peers find the charges against him credible, and the Chilean government had
strenuously argued abroad that he should be tried at home, not in a foreign court. It now found itself
unable to oppose domestic trials. Domestic factors were also key: Chile had been (p.236) reforming
its judiciary and retiring Pinochet-era judges, and the political winds had clearly shifted against
Pinochet. The first complaint against him was filed several months before he left for London, as was
the first Chilean Supreme Court decision limiting the applicability of the amnesty laws. After he
returned, both trends accelerated: at their height, there were over 400 complaints naming Pinochet,
and a series of Supreme Court decisions denying him immunity and reopening investigations into his
collaborators left the amnesty and statute of limitations narrowed considerably. Thus, the case
provides a good illustration of the use of outside pressure, through transnational criminal complaints,
to open up blocked domestic legal systems and make them do their job. Before he died in 2006,
Pinochet faced both corruption and human rightsrelated charges and was awaiting trial, while many
of his closest collaborators are in jail.9
Similar histories can be told elsewhere. In Argentina, where members of the military junta were tried
in the mid-1980s, laws prohibiting further prosecutions were also on the books. Pressures to extradite
former military officers to Europe on human rightsrelated charges helped convince domestic
legislators and judges to annul the amnesty laws and reopen long-closed cases. Domestic advocates
and human rights groups used international pressure strategically to break domestic logjams,
pressure the government into guaranteeing access to the courts, and convince sectors of the military
that the choice was between prosecution at home or abroad, not between prosecution and no
prosecution.10In Chad, the case against Hissne Habr in the Senegalese and later Belgian courts
served to pressure the Chadian government into opening its police archives, dismissing many Habr-
era officials still in government, and eventually extracting a promise from Senegal to try Habr in its
courts. In these cases, transnational prosecution seems to have helped open political and legal space
for domestic judicial processes.11

However, this is not always the case. A minimum threshold of safety and security for witnesses,
judges, and lawyers and a quota of civil society pressure are needed before transnational prosecutions
can have any positive effect. In Central America, for example, it is hard to discern advances in
domestic prosecutions as a result of civil and criminal proceedings abroad, at least so far. That
changed briefly with the 2006 arrest warrants and extradition requests issued by a Spanish judge
against former presidents Efran Ros Montt and scar Humberto Meja Victores, along with other
high-ranking Guatemalan officials. The Guatemalan case, like those of Chile and Argentina, was
brought under the universal jurisdiction statute and alleged genocide, terrorism, and torture,
especially against Mayan groups. Although the local courts initially approved the extradition request,
in December 2007 the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled that it would not recognize Spanish
jurisdiction over the defendants. However, a Guatemalan judge in April 2008 decided that on the
request of the Spanish judge, he would publicly hear witness testimony from genocide survivorsthe
first time such testimony has been heard in a Guatemalan court. The judge received death threats for
his actions, a reminder of the continuing difficulties in bringing any kind of prosecution in Guatemala.

(p.237) In addition, if the domestic legal system is too closed to outside influences or the government
is less susceptible to outside pressure, transnational prosecutions will have no effect or even create a
backlashas in, arguably, the Belgian and German investigations of Ariel Sharon or of U.S. officials
actions in Iraq.12 Thus, such prosecutions aimed at officials of powerful states may be legally
ineffective, although they may, nonetheless, have a political impact.
There is undeniably a tension between national and transnational prosecutions as well: to the extent
the transnational prosecution is based explicitly or implicitly on the foreign forum being a court of
last resort, as space is opened for domestic effortsin part due to this catalytic effect of transnational
investigationsit becomes less tenable to argue that trial at home is impossible. Those bringing the
cases must also take care to create relations based on cooperation, information sharing, and
complementarity (rather than competition for funds or media access) and craft cases that will avoid
problems of duplication of effort or lead to a court finding that the case is already being adjudicated
elsewhere. In cases of widespread or massive violations, this is not hard to do.

In civil law systems, transnational cases have taken the form of criminal prosecutions, in large part
because under many civil law systems victims can participate to one degree or another in the criminal
proceedings and can obtain damages in the same proceeding once there has been a finding of criminal
guilt. In common law systems like the United States and the United Kingdom, they have largely taken
the form of civil suits for damages. In the United States, these suits have been brought under the Alien
Tort Claims Act (or Alien Tort Statute) and the Torture Victims Protection Act against individual
defendants present in the United States.13 Seventeen cases between 1982 and 2003 have resulted in
multimillion-dollar judgments, which have rarely been collected. Nonetheless, the cases have allowed
for official acknowledgment of wrongdoing, discouraged potential defendants from visiting the United
States and encouraged others to leave, and helped open conversations at home regarding the need for
justice.

Regional human rights commissions and courts constitute another potentially potent source of
pressure from above. In the Americas, especially, the Inter-American Commission and Court have
played key roles in setting out the parameters of what states can doand not doin the areas of truth
telling, justice, and reparations.14 (The African system, which is more recent, has not played a major
role in this area, nor has the European Court of Human Rights, which has not until very recently dealt
effectively with situations of widespread or systematic crimes in places like Chechnya.) The
commissions rulings in the late 1990s finding blanket amnesty laws to contravene the American
Convention on Human Rights, along with the courts 2001 Barrios Altos case, were widely credited
with not only spurring Peru to annul its challenged amnesty law to conform to the courts ruling but
with influencing domestic courts and legislatures in several countries to limit or annul their own
laws.15 In cases before the Inter-American Court, the state has been found liable after a hearing and
ordered to pay reparations to complainants; in other cases, the (p.238) commission has negotiated a
friendly settlement, with parallel results. In a few such cases, continued pressure from the Inter-
American Commission and Court contributed to pushing forward domestic prosecutions, for example,
in the Myrna Mack case in Guatemala.16
Though undoubtedly a positive force in the Americas, the regional human rights system can also
create tensions with national efforts to remedy the aftermath of the same events. The most evident
tensions have arisen around reparations. The regional systems award reparations on a compensatory
damages tort model, that is, one based on putting the victim back into the position he or she would
have been in before the violation. The courts award damages for material losses, lost earnings, moral
damages, and damage to the project of life, as well as costs and fees. In an individual case, damage
awards tend to run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. When this model is applied to massive
violations such as massacres, however, it becomes problematic. A clear example comes from the Plan
de Snchez case in Guatemala. In 1982, 268 people in the village of Plan de Snchez were massacred
by army troops and their civilian collaborators. The survivors, after getting nowhere in the domestic
legal system, brought their case to the Inter-American Commission, which eventually referred it to the
court. The court ordered the government to pay $25,000 for each of 236 victims and survivors, for a
total of $7.9 million, in addition to providing services to the community, a public apology, and other
acts.

Although it represents a victory for human rights and fulfillment of an obligation to the victims,
money can be highly divisive for families and communities. The sheer size of the amounts, and the
disparities among similarly situated victims it has engendered, has created problems. Individuals and
communities have been woefully unprepared to receive a lump sum of this size: some have been
threatened or robbed, and others have spent the compensation money but their living situations have
remained precarious. At the same time, the Inter-American reparations created false expectations
about the potential scope of national reparations, which are smaller by nearly an order of magnitude,
and questions about the equity in similarly situated massacre survivors receiving very different sums.
Many of these problems are common to other mass disaster or mass tort scenarios and are insoluble
to some degree. Perhaps the best that can be done is to urge both regional commissions and courts,
and the local communities they benefit, to plan ahead for both potential difficulties and for the
potential for long-term local development engendered by the awards. 17

These international and transnational processes have enriched and complicated the arsenal of tools
available to strategic peacebuilders. Even if national governments decide on a blanket amnesty, for
instance, they cannot control the possibility of transnational or international prosecutions that are not
bound by their national efforts. Even given the wide range of such tools, they will be insufficient to
deal with more than a few cases. Whether these are emblematic (for example, against leaders and
organizers) or opportunistic (as when a potential defendant travels abroad), they still will not deal in
more than general terms with the circumstances and life experiences of most survivors.
Given (p.239)the physical location and procedural demands of the courts involved, they will suffer
from remoteness and be difficult for ordinary people to access. For this reason, national and
international, regional or transnational efforts will be most effective if complemented by local-level
efforts. I turn now to the shape of those efforts.
Adding in the Local
Until recently, lawyers working in the area of postarmed conflict justice have treated countries as
undifferentiated wholes. This has its uses in terms of establishing global norms and creating a
national (re)founding mythology;18 certain kinds of tasks can only be carried out on a uniform basis,
by a national state. By themselves, these do not capture the ground-level meaning of the conflict for
people living in specific local spaces, whose experiences may vary widely. For many people, local
power relations affect their lives, and efforts based in a faraway capital may not penetrate sufficiently
to matter, especially given the perennial weakness of the central state.

Thus, strategic peacebuilders should look at independent local initiatives as an integral part of their
work, incorporating bottom-up local efforts as well as top-down state or internationally driven ones.
Such local efforts often precede formal national programs, and they can also follow on or extend such
programs, making them more locally relevant. They are particularly important to begin to change
conflict-created local power dynamics and may also more easily allow for ownership by survivors and
be less prone to large-scale patronage and corruption. At the very least, national and international
initiatives should strive to be aware of (and not to undermine) local processes.

One good example comes from the operation of a truth commission (TC). Such commissions
necessarily suffer from a series of limitations: they must choose exemplary and illustrative cases, not
everyones story can be told, and places where patterns are repeated over and over may get especially
short shrift. The hardest hit communities may not even have survivors in a position to give testimony.
Thus, in cases of massive violations, a TC report, no matter how well researched, will provide only a
general, not a personal truth to many.

Even at its best, a TC is only a snapshot and cannot capture longer term processes of memory
formation over time. TC researchers will also confront widespread distrust and various kinds of
gaming behavior from people who may have been deeply traumatized or who have learned to be
wary of outsiders promising help. A one-time opportunity to give testimony (whether public or
private) cannot substitute for long-term work to rehabilitate survivors. For these things, longer term,
local processes are needed.

The same is true of both national and international justice systems. Even before the years of armed
conflict, most poor, rural, dwellers in postarmed conflict states viewed national justice systems as at
best irrelevant and at worst an incarnation of the discrimination and oppression to which they have
long been (and are) subject. As a recent report put it: (p.240)
In many countries, the law is drafted and administered only in the national language, which many
poor people may be unable to speak or read. Courts may be far away, under-funded, and take years
to decide cases. Bringing a case to court swiftly may require bribes. Judicial procedures may be
inaccessible for those who lack legal representation, which is generally too expensive for the poor. 19

It is unrealistic to expect even the best set of anti-impunity and judicial reform measures to reverse
the centuries of warranted distrust of formal legal systems.

Moreover, it is hard to see how formal justice systems, either criminal or civil, can adequately grapple
with the ambiguities, mixed motives, and shades of gray that characterize most armed conflicts.
Criminal law categorizes subjects as perpetrator, accomplice, or innocent witness.20 It does not deal
well with bystanders,21 and even less well with the kinds of forced complicity that are common to
recent conflicts. In many places, forced recruits are forced to commit atrocities, often against their
own family and neighbors, in an attempt to loosen them from community bonds. Children are forced
to kill their parents; villagers are forced by military or paramilitary forces to kill other villagers or be
victims themselves. These events continue to divide and traumatize communities years later. They
characterize many recent armed conflicts.22

In the postwar period, conflicts within and between communities continue, exacerbated by the newly
exalted position of some ex-militia or paramilitary members as compared to the almost uniform
destitution of their victims. Demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration programs that provide
money and training for victimizers but nothing for those who survived them can exacerbate these
differences. In addition, regions vary greatly in composition: in some, people never left, whereas
others include returning or resettling refugees whose presence creates tensions with existing
residents. Sometimes, returning refugees find others in their homes and lands.23 In some
communities, everyone is a massacre survivor. In others, local power is held by ex-militia members,
and in others new political forces have emerged. Fear of continued violence contributes to silence
about the past, sometimes even within families, and manifests in myriad types of social
dysfunctionality, from lynchings to domestic violence to somatic illnesses. This degree of variation
and complexity makes international and national responses inadequate and, to some degree, locally
irrelevant, and requires further exploration of local responses.

What could such responses look like? For one thing, they would involve communities directly in truth
seeking and memorialization exercises in their own region. The church-supported Recuperation of
Historical Memory project in Guatemala pioneered the incorporation of laypersons into testimony
taking in their local area.24 Thus, community mapping of violations and resultant harms, and local
museums and memorialization projects, would become a cornerstone of postarmed conflict efforts.
Such efforts could easily be linked to national TCs or other truth-seeking exercises; the creation of
regional offices or meetings with communities to prepare and present testimony to a TC
would (p.241)then be seen not as the culminating moment but as the beginning of a longer term local
process. Such documentation and memorialization exercises could include an accounting of not only
the costs and victims of armed conflict but also of local traditions and historyand their disruption
and changecreating awareness and pride in the ability to survive rather than a sense of perpetual
victimization.
Community-supported exhumations and reburials would be another key response. In most cultures,
the link between the living and the dead is important, and it is widely disrupted in situations where
people are forcibly disappeared or where they are killed and family members are prohibited or
intimidated in recovering and burying the body with appropriate ritual. Exhumations are important to
local communities and also nationally for purposes of providing evidence in criminal investigations. It
is important that the second of these goals not eclipse the first.25 Local community participation in
supporting forensic anthropology teams, carrying out reburials with the requisite ceremonies and
markers, and designing and implementing memorials have proven powerful tools. But they also raise
or resurface powerful emotions and memories, and community-based psychosocial interventions are
often needed to help communities recover. Because both sides abandoned the civilian population
during war, trust is hard to come by among survivors; for psychosocial interventions to work, they
must be rooted in a long-term relationship and intimate knowledge of cultural practices, which can
vary widely within a single country. These interventions are thus often most fruitful when carried out
on a local or regional scale.

The biggest questions arise around the uses and abuses of local justice mechanisms. The availability
and applicability of local, informal, or traditional justice systems has become highly contested over the
past few years, not least because of a number of actual or proposed uses in the wake of armed conflicts
in Africa. These systems are seen as integral to a process of local community rebuilding. They allow for
justice practices to resonate with the local culture and be accessible and meaningful to people. They
can foster a sense of ownership of the process, and can integrate restorative justice mechanisms
including public truth telling, acknowledgment and apology, moral and material reparations, along
with, if appropriate, culturally relevant punishment or atonement. They can allow for ex-neighbors to
find a way to coexist and can be a first step toward reintegration of families, clans, and all manner of
intermediate social structures that mediate between the individual and the national polity.

Thus, the water rituals of Mozambique and Sierra Leone cleansed the child soldiers of their crimes
and reincorporated them into their communities with a cool, nonviolent heart. 26 In northern Uganda,
the Acholi carry out a ceremony called mato oput, or drinking the bitter herb, which involves
recognition of a wrong and reconciliation with the victims family. A separate ceremony, involving
stepping on an egg, is used to cleanse those who have been away from home and allow them to
return.27 In East Timor, the Truth, Reception and Reconciliation Commission organized community
reconciliation processes that (p.242) incorporated traditional adat dispute resolution, including a
public airing of facts, apology and/or reparation, and acceptance of responsibility, in exchange for
conditional amnesty for low-level offenders.28 In Peru, local communities found ways first to
dehumanize and then rehumanize those who had joined Sendero Luminoso through public
reincorporation ceremonies involving truth telling, apology, and symbolic punishment.29 In
Cambodia, religious as well as local civic authorities staged ceremonies to welcome back Khmer Rouge
soldiers who laid down their arms in the 1980s.30 These techniques involve decision making by
respected elders after hearing from community members on both sides of an issue.31
The Rwandan experience shows some of the difficulties involved in changing the nature of these
mechanisms from bottom-up to centrally organized government efforts. Postgenocide, the Rwandan
government, faced with over 130,000 mid- and lower-ranked genocide suspects32 and a rudimentary
justice system, chose to adapt the traditional mechanism by creating local-level open-air hearings at
which suspects are accused and defended by their neighbors and sentences, ranging from community
service to prison, are imposed by a group of lay judges. In response to criticisms that the procedures
violated due process norms regarding the presumption of innocence and privilege against self-
incrimination, the government added in legal advisors, appeal procedures, and other features that
substantially modified the process but did not fully assuage these concerns.

Despite undeniable potential advantages, it is important not to romanticize traditional justice systems.
Such systems were generally designed to deal with property and family-related disputes and not with
serious (i.e., homicidal) crime. They thus may not be suitable for complex cases involving issues of
command and indirect responsibility and victims from many communities and traditions. They can be
patriarchal and exclusionary toward women and minorities, and can be coercive, creating pressures
on individuals to subsume their own needs into those of the community. They may assume a degree
of community knowledge and cohesion that, if it ever existed at all, certainly does not exist in
dispersed and reshuffled communities from which many original inhabitants have fled to the cities or
left the country altogether. Indeed, this has been one of the problems with the
modified gacacaproceedings in Rwanda, which have suffered from a lack of participation. For this
reason, they may be less applicable (if at all) in urban areas or the displaced persons camps where
many conflict-affected people now subsist. They generally rely on a high degree of case-by-case
discretion that can easily become arbitrary.

Finally, they may not be appropriate where conflicts were more verticalinvolving state agents
attacking civilian populationsand less horizontal, involving neighbors and people of approximately
the same socioeconomic level fighting each other and then having to somehow live together in the
postarmed conflict era. They may be seriously lacking in basic protections against cruel and inhuman
punishment and in due process protections. They may serve impunity where those who continue to
exercise power at the local level are the same people who committed the violations in the first place.

(p.243) From a human rights perspective, such local proceedings raise two sets of concerns. First,
human rights advocates question whether a process that does not involve some kind of punishment is
adequate. Here there are differing views within the human rights community, but some
commonalities: there must be at a minimum some kind of acknowledgment and truth telling, and
some reparation of the victim. Many (but not all) traditional ceremonies and reintegration practices
centrally include one or both of these elements. Second, due process issues arise in cases involving in
naming and punishing someone as a murderer or genocidaire when they have no access to a lawyer
and usually no right of appeal. Tim Longman argues that there are functional equivalents in
traditional practices like gacaca to many of the techniques by which human rights law guarantees
fundamental rights in formal trials, including the ability of all community members to see and hear
the discussion, present evidence, and raise questions.33 Nonetheless, it is not clear whether these are
sufficient to garner popular legitimacy.
Largely in response to human rights concerns (and pressure from international human rights
nongovernmental organizations), governments in Rwanda and East Timor modified the traditional
procedures to formalize them and connect them to the formal justice system. This quelled some of the
concern around due process violations but raised the question of whether these kinds of spontaneous,
culturally specific local dialogue and reincorporation and commemoration ceremonies lose their value
if programmed or even encouraged by governments or international actors. After all, part of the
strength of such initiatives is that they are insider-driven and a product of local initiative. In other
words, the kinds of local initiatives that seem to work best do so without any formalization in Western
systems of aid and consultation, much less in legal commitments, and may be so place- and time-
specific that the attempt to formalize them may backfire, leaving communities with the worst of both
worlds.

Conclusions
Just as the different parts of the transitional or postarmed conflict justice agenda are
interdependent, so are the different levels or scales on which they are carried out. Truth telling
without justice or reparation leaves victims feeling defrauded; reparations without truth and
acknowledgment is liable to be seen as blood money, buying silence. Justice alone, narrowly defined
as criminal justice or retributive justice, is similarly partial: without some more fulsome process for
those who, because resources or will are lacking or because they were bystanders or coerced, will
never be tried, local power will never shift, nor will community reintegration be possible. Nor can an
overall historical narrative, tracing patterns and causes of armed conflict and setting out
recommendations for the future, arise solely from individual prosecutions or civil trials. Yet without
some public, legally sound punishment for at least the leaders and organizers, victims remain
unsatisfied and unable to fully participate in the (p.244) new dispensation,34 even in cases where
reparation has been paid and TCs have been instituted.
A similar set of interdependencies applies to the local, national, and international scales. National
efforts at justice may need international aid and financing, and may benefit from the catalytic effect
that international or transnational prosecutions may provide. International or internationalized
courts may play a constructive role when national court systems are in disrepair or unable to function,
but without a clear conduit and plan for engaging and eventually turning over cases to national
systems, international courts may have little effect on national audiences or legal cultures and may
thus play a limited role in conflict transformation. Formal justice, whether national or international,
will always only be concerned with a small number of people. For the rest, including unindicted
perpetrators, coerced victim/perpetrators, and bystanders, there is a need for both national truth
telling and for local acknowledgment, memorialization, community mapping, reparations, and
reincorporation processes. The local by itself is insufficient: state-building and construction of a
credible, accessible legal system cannot be simply disaggregated locally, left to disparate and shifting
local custom. It plays an important complementary role. Similarly, there is no reason why
international prosecutions for the few ringleaders cannot coexist with a much larger, richer effort
based at the community level and rooted in customary practices. Indeed, that may, at least in some
cultural and political contexts, be the truest meaning of complementarity.

Notes

Notes:
(1) . See International Council on Human Rights Policy, Peace Agreements and Human Rights (2006),
available at http://www.ichrp.org/public/projects.php?id_projet=27&lang=AN.
(2) . See Naomi Roht-Arriaza. 2006. The New Landscape of Transitional Justice, in Transitional
Justice in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 116.

(3) . John Paul Lederach. 2003. The Little Book of Conflict Transformation. New York: Good Books,

p. 52.

(4) . Laurel Fletcher and Harvey Weinstein. 2002. Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the

Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation. Human Rights Quarterly vol. 24 (no. 3): 573639.

(5) . On the specific legal requirements regarding amnesties, see my background paper prepared for
Peace Agreements and Human Rights, supra note 1. See also Report of Diane Orentlicher,
independent expert to update the set of principles to combat impunityUpdated Set of Principles for
the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity, U.N. Doc.
E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1, Feb. 8, 2005 (Orentlicher Principles) and Basic Principles and Guidelines
on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human
Rights Law and Serious Violations of Humanitarian Law (Van Boven/Bassiouni Principles), G.A. Res.
60/147 (Dec. 16, 2005).

(6) . For one careful study of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, see Eric Stover and Harvey

Weinstein, eds. 2004. My Neighbor, My Enemy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(7) . This is not to argue that survivors are uninterested in seeing the army high command and others
of that ilk brought to justice, simply that doing so may be insufficient for many people. It is also true
that prosecution of only subordinate officials, even if providing a face to survivors, may result in
scapegoating those who are less responsible.

(8) . Victoria Sanford. 2003. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, p. 269.

(9) . For a full description of this process, see Naomi Roht-Arriaza. 2005. The Pinochet Effect:
Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

(10) . Kathryn Sikkink, and Carrie Walling. 2006. Argentinas Contribution to Global Trends in
Transitional Justice. In Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth vs. Justice,

edited by N. Roht-Arriaza and J. Mariezcurrena. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(11) . Reed Brody. 2006. The Prosecution of Hissene Habr: International Accountability, National
Impunity. In Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth vs. Justice, edited by

N. Roht-Arriaza and J. Mariezcurrena. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(12) . For a description of the Belgian cases against Ariel Sharon and against U.S. officials, see Naomi
Roht-Arriaza. 2005. The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ch. 7. For a description of the German case against

Donald Rumsfeld et al., see www.ccr-ny.org.

(13) . Other cases have involved suits against corporations for directly engaging in and/or aiding and
abetting others to carry out violations, and suits against U.S. officials for violating international law.
See Sandra Coliver, Jennie Green, and Paul Hoffman. 2005. Holding Human Rights Violators
Accountable by Using International Law in U.S. Courts: Advocacy Efforts and Complementary

Strategies. Emory International Law Review vol. 19 (no. 1): 169226.

(14) . The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is charged with monitoring human rights
practice in Organization of American States member states and making recommendations to states for
improvement. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights can hear cases arising in states that have
accepted its jurisdiction and can issue binding judgments, including injunctions and damage awards.

(15) . Chumbipuma Aguirre et al. v. Peru. 2001. Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

(16) . Myrna Mack v. Guatemala. 2003. Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This case resulted in
monetary reparations, a public apology, and other moral reparations awarded by the court; after much
pushing from the petitioner and various forms of international pressure, the Supreme Court upheld
the domestic courts conviction of the main intellectual authors of the crime in 2004.

(17) . On the connection between peacebuilding and economic reconstruction, see Nicholas
Sambaniss chapter in this volume.

(18) . See Richard Wilson. 2001. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa:

Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(19) . Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor. 2008. Making the Law Work for Everyone.

New York: UN Development Programme, p. 33.

(20) . For a discussion of the way criminal law creates a bright line between victims and wrongdoers,
see Mark Osiel. 1997. Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory and the Law. Ardsley, N.Y.: Transaction, p.

129. Much of the discussion of the blurred line between victims and perpetrators has taken place
in the context of forcibly recruited child soldiers, who were often forced to commit atrocities against
their own family or neighbors. See Diane Amann. 2001. Calling Children to Account: The Proposal

for a Juvenile Chamber in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Pepperdine Law Reviewvol. 29.

(21) . See Laurel Fletcher. 2005. From Indifference to Engagement: Bystanders and International
Criminal Justice. Michigan Journal of International Law vol. 26.

(22) . See, e.g., Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, or the plight of
children kidnapped by the Lords Resistance Army in northern Uganda.

(23) . For a description of one such community, see Beatriz Manz. 2004. Paradise in Ashes: A

Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror & Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.
(24) . Recuperation of Historical Memory Project, Guatemala Nunca Mas. 1998.

(25) . See Eric Stover and Rachel Shigekane. 2004. Exhumation of Mass Graves: Balancing Legal and
Humanitarian Needs. In My Neighbor, My Enemy, edited by E. Stover and H. Weinstein.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(26) . Alcinda Honwana. 2004. Child Soldiers: Community Healing and Rituals in Mozambique and
Angola. In International Perspectives on Youth, Conflict and Development, edited by C. Daiute, Z.
Beykont, C. Higson-Smith, and L. Nucci. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 225244.

Rosalind Shaw. 2003. Remembering to Forget: Unmaking War for Child Ex-Comatants in

Northern Sierra Leone. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. For an account of similar experiences
in Uganda with the reintegration of Lords Resistance Army fighters, see Marc Lacey. 2005. Atrocity

Victims in Uganda Choose to Forgive. New York Times, April 18.

(27) . Refugee Law Project. 2005. Peace First, Justice Later: Traditional Justice in Northern Uganda,

p. 24, 34.

(28) . Patrick Burgess. 2006. East Timors Community Reconciliation Process: A New Tool for
Reconciliation? In Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth vs. Justice,

edited by N. Roht-Arriaza and J. Mariezcurrena. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(29) . Kimberly Theidon. 2006. Justice in Transition: The Micropolitics of Reconciliation in Postwar

Peru. Journal of Conflict Resolution vol. 50: 1.

(30) . Jens Iverson. 2005. Center Stage: The Contributions of Non-State Actors to Accountability and

Reconciliation in Cambodia (unpublished paper on file with author).

(31) . Lars Waldorf. 2006. Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity: Rethinking Local Justice as Transitional

Justice. Temple Law Review vol. 79.

(32) . The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has only tried, and only intends to try, 100 or
so of the top leaders of the genocide.

(33) . Timothy Longman. 2006. Justice at the Grassroots? Gacaca Trials in Rwanda. In Transitional
Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth vs. Justice, edited by N. Roht-Arriaza and J.

Mariezcurrena. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 8.

(34) . Public opinion studies in several Latin American countries as well as Iraq and Uganda have
consistently shown a demand for justice, understood as a trial, to be a central demand of many
victims. See International Center for Transitional Justice and U.C. Human Rights Center. 2005.
Forgotten Voices: A Population-Based Survey on Attitudes about Peace and Justice in Northern
Uganda. International Center for Transitional Justice and U.C. International Center for Transitional
Justice and U.C. Human Rights Center. 2004. Iraqi Voices.

Economic Globalization and Strategic Peacebuilding

Jackie Smith
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords

Several key assumptions about economic liberalization that inform current peacebuilding operations
must be reconsidered. Smith argues that there is little evidence supporting the assumptions that
market liberalization leads to economic growth, reduces inequality, or creates neoliberal states
capable of promoting peace. In fact, inequality is increasing, and many states are increasingly weak
and undemocratic. According to Smith, international peace and security cannot be achieved without
addressing inequality in the global order. Peacebuilding approaches must consider how peacebuilding
operations reproduce power and must be delinked from the neoliberal globalization project. Smith
offers policy prescriptions for peacebuilders that address the shortcomings of current neoliberal
models.

Keywords: market liberalization, neoliberalism, globalization, inequality, peacebuilding, peace operations, post-conflict
reconstruction

In numerous countries where peace agreements have held without a relapse into conflict beyond the
critical period, the structural factors lying at the source of the original conflict remain unaddressed
and continue to fester. From Cambodia and Guatemala to East Timor, serious issues related to land
tenure, property rights, rule of law, political participation and transitional justice continue to pose
serious challenges to peace consolidation and peacebuilding.

Necl Tschirgi, Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Revisited: Achievements, Limitations, Challenges

The postCold War era has been marked by a proliferation of persistent intrastate conflicts, many of
which have frustrated international attempts to promote peaceful conflict resolution and the
emergence of more peaceful societies. By many measures, international peacebuilding operations have
achieved only mixed success or have simply failed, and nearly half of all postconflict countries see a
return of violent struggle.1 This chapter argues that an important reason for the failure of multilateral
peacebuilding interventions is that these initiatives incorporate a set of assumptions about the
benefits of market liberalization that are inaccurate. More effective intervention to end violent
conflicts requires efforts to better understand how economic globalization impacts the dynamics of
civil wars. Contemporary violent conflicts are not purely localized phenomena but are deeply
embedded within a global context of complex political and economic relationships. Strategic
peacebuilding cannot occur(p.248) without greater attention to these relationships and how they
reproduce power and inequality in the global political and economic systems.
Recent studies on the impacts of multilateral peacebuilding initiatives have concluded that these
interventions have, on the whole, not been terribly successful at helping societies transition from
states of civil war to long-term, sustainable peace.2 Two important recent studies of peacebuilding
operationsthose by Collier and colleagues and Paris3conclude that future interventions must
subordinate market liberalization policies to those that strengthen the capacities of institutions to
manage societal conflicts. Paris, for instance, calls his proposed strategy institutionalization before
liberalization. I argue that these studies do not go far enough in their prescriptions because they cling
to two important assumptions. First, they treat market liberalization and political liberalization, or
market democracy, as inherently linked and complementary processes, both of which are seen as
essential to peacebuilding work. Second, they see economic liberalization as a central element of
peacebuilding, even while they argue for its more gradual introduction in postconflict settings.
Although there may indeed be relationships between economic liberalization and the conditions that
foster peace, and open markets might be associated with more open political systems, there is
considerable debate among social scientists about the nature of these relationships. Market
liberalization can proceed in highly authoritarian contexts, and highly democratic countries may in
fact limit their participation in global markets in response to democratic pressures. Moreover, existing
analyses show that economic liberalization can in fact undermine efforts to rebuild social institutions
and foster political liberalization in war-torn societies.4 This chapter interrogates some key
assumptions behind contemporary peacebuilding operations and the proposals to strengthen them,
exploring whether the conventional wisdom about the relationship of market liberalization to
peacebuilding processes is consistent with existing evidence.

What becomes apparent in this analysis is that much research in the area of peacebuilding fails to
adequately address questions of power and its distribution.5 Sidelining power questions can often
serve on a practical level to expedite cease-fire agreements and on an analytical level to generate more
parsimonious models of conflict dynamics. But asymmetries of power can mask structural sources of
conflicts that can resurface over time. Therefore, by failing to address power imbalances, conflict
analysts and practitioners seeking to reduce violent conflict will fail to identify effective peacebuilding
strategies. Strategic peacebuilding should imply, therefore, a central focus on questions of how
power is distributed among conflicting parties along with intervention strategies that seek to reduce
the inequities in power that can lead to violent conflict.

Globalization has meant an increasing concentration of political and economic power at the global
level.6 Because of this, strategic peacebuilding should also adopt a perspective that embeds the local
within a broader social and political context. As global integration expands along numerous
dimensions, it becomes even more important that conflict analysts adopt a systemic framework.
Contemporary states are embedded within complex sets of economic and political relationships, as are
an array of other transnational actors, (p.249) such as transnational corporations and civil society
groups. Conflicts within states are often reflections of these broader sets of ties, and indeed these
apparently localized conflicts depend on resource flows that extend well beyond national
borders.7Andrew Hurrell describes a triple anchorage of states in the international system of states,
the global capitalist economy, and transnational civil society.8 These webs of interdependence shape
conflicts within as well as between states, and effective interventions to end violent conflicts must
account for these relationships between local and global contexts.
Peacebuilding missions have been described as transmission mechanisms of neoliberal models of
the state.9 Paris argues that far from being technical and neutral exercises in conflict management,
multilateral peacebuilding operations advance liberal market democracy as the preferred model for
domestic governance, advancing a world revolution of Western liberalism. 10 They do so by (1)
encouraging parties to include political and economic liberalization measures in peace agreements, (2)
providing technical assistance in constitution writing and other governance tasks, (3) imposing
political and economic conditionalities on parties in exchange for financial and other assistance, and
(4) performing governance functions in transitional or failed state contexts.11

Significantly, this transfer of governance templates is from the rich, Northern core of the global
economy to the comparatively poor, Southern, and postcolonial periphery. Peacebuilding itself reflects
a long history of inequality in the world system, and it incorporates various forms of powerincluding
structural, institutional, and symbolic powerthat remain largely unexamined in existing literature.
Robinson demonstrates, for instance, how peacekeeping operations in Nicaragua and Haiti were used
to reorganize government practices to make them conform to the needs of globalizing capitalist
interests.12 Thus, peacekeeping can be seen as one mechanism for the development of what Robinson
calls the neoliberal state, or the transformation of national states into entities that support the trade
liberalization agenda of globalized capital.13 In this sense, peacekeeping operations are a part of the
revolution from above, that helped expand the global economy in recent decades.14 Strategic
peacebuilding approaches, therefore, require a critical analysis of how power is reflected and
reproduced in the operation of peace intervention missions. They also demand greater attention to the
assumptions behind these missions and their objectives.

A critical look at peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations suggests that they are designed largely to
protect if not promote the interests of the Northern core states that enjoy privileged influence in
global institutional contexts. Peacebuilding interventionslike other international initiatives, such as
global trade agreements and multilateral development lendinghave helped reproduce neoliberal
economic policies. Unlike global trade and financial institutions, however, peacebuilding missions
advocate economic liberalization not as an end in itself but as a (presumed) means of promoting
economic growth that will reduce violent conflict. However, relatively little empirical research has
been done to critically examine the assumption that economic liberalization will actually contribute to
peacebuilding aims.

(p.250) Also integral to the models of governance favored by market liberalization proponents are
policies that reduce state regulatory capacities and expand incentives and opportunities for
international investment. By reducing the capacities of states to define and defend public goods and
by limiting the policy space available for democratic decision making, such practices may obstruct
efforts to build stronger institutions and foster democracy in postwar states. Given these possible
tensions between the practices of peacebuilding missions and the needs of societies emerging from
violent conflicts, I examine four key assumptions in peacebuilding research and practice: first, that
market liberalization leads to economic growth; second, that growth will solve the underlying problem
of inequality that gives rise to conflicts; third, that a neoliberal model of the state will be effective at
promoting peace; and finally, that multilateral peace and security can be improved without addressing
fundamental inequities in the global economic order.
Market Liberalization and Growth
In their important World Banksponsored study of contemporary internal conflicts, Collier and
colleagues conclude that the key root cause of conflict is the failure of economic
development.15Societies plagued with internal violence are very often those mired in poverty. Thus, a
key strategy for breaking what Collier et al. call the conflict trap is to promote market liberalization,
expanding the countrys access to world markets as a means of promoting economic growth. But will
market liberalization generate the growth needed to transform war-torn societies?

Debates about the effects of trade liberalization and economic growth yield conflicting results, but the
bulk of new work that is emerging suggests that initial optimism about trade liberalizations prospects
were substantially overstated.16 For instance, the World Bank recently reduced its projections of global
gains from trade liberalization by nearly two-thirds, from $832 billion to $287 billion. The projected
benefits to the developing countries were reduced by more than 80 percent, from $539 billion to $90
billion.17 The UN Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report, moreover, states
that the evidence to support the proposition that import liberalization is automatically good for
growth is weak.18 The analysis of trade offered in the UNDP report suggests that although trade
liberalization might indeed be associated with growth in some countries at some times, there is
no direct link between economic liberalization and growth. Other variables are important for
explaining when liberalization helps generate growth and when it cannot.19 There is no automatic
relationship between the two. Thus, despite two decades of radical economic liberalization policies
and a doubling of world exports since the early 1990s, we still see a persistent pool of non-developing
low-income countries that threatens world peace and stability. 20

Another pattern that emerges from data on global trends in imports and exports suggests that the
benefits of trade for poor countries are not at all (p.251) comparable to the benefits experienced by
rich countries. This should lead us to seriously question trade liberalization as an effective
prescription for helping poor countries emerge from conflict traps. While developing countries are
devoting substantially more of their national resources and energies to promoting exports, they have
not achieved substantial gains in terms of global market shares. 21 For instance, despite a growth in
exports between 4055 percent, African countries share of world markets grew by just 0.3 percent in
the 1990s. Indias share of world trade went up just 0.7 percent despite average annual growth of 10
percent during the 1990s.22 This type of economic growth will only contribute to ever-growing
inequalities between countries as well as within them.23 If one considers the environmental and social
costs associated with developing countries increased participation in world markets, there is little
overall benefit from trade in terms of expanding the resources available to most of the population in
these regions.
More disturbing, however, is that the higher income developing countries are finding that growth
from trade is not readily sustained. Weisbrot and Bello found that economic growth rates in Latin
America were markedly higher before the era of neoliberal reforms than they were after countries
opened their borders.24 Many successful globalizers are finding their place in the highly stratified
global production system slipping. Thus, countries like Mexico and Brazil are losing high value-added
manufacturing jobs to Korea and China, and Indias high-tech sector is losing ground to lower paying
industries, such as textiles and apparel.25 The terms of trade for developing countries have been
declining over time, and recent measures place overall developing country declines at 0.74 percent.
This pattern holds even for the larger developing countries, such as India, whose terms of trade
declined by 1.62 percent; and Brazil, which dropped 0.18 percent. 26 This record shows that economic
policies designed to encourage foreign investment do not necessarily produce the economic growth
expected by neoliberal policy analysts. Whereas economic growththat is, expanding the resource pie
for all residents of countries destroyed by waris clearly vital to peace, there is sufficient evidence to
warrant a search for strategies that do not rely on wealth trickling down to local communities from
foreign investors and through export-based production and trade (see chapter 6). Because sustained
peacebuilding work depends on a stable and predictable social and economic environment, policies
that link conflict-torn countries to a volatile and uncertain global economy areas is becoming
increasingly apparentfraught with trouble.

Critics of neoliberal policies often charge proponents of economic liberalization with engaging in what
has been called NAFTA maththat is, reporting the economic gains from trade while neglecting to
account for the associated costs, such as job losses, environmental destruction, and vulnerability to
international markets. For instance, Public Citizen pointed out that the U.S. Trade Representatives
(USTR) reports on the job gains from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) showed
only those jobs created in export industries. The USTR forgot to subtract those jobs lost in industries
that were eclipsed by competition from new flows of imports. NAFTA math is rampant in
many (p.252)official accounts of trades benefits,27 and those concerned with finding appropriate
policy mechanisms to address the problems of violent conflict and fragile states should be careful to
note these inflated assessments of trade benefits. A responsibility to protect people in war-torn
countries seems to require a far more vigorous search for better strategies to advance economic
development and to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth in war-torn countries.
Wise and Gallagher and Weisbrot and colleagues note how trade proponents overlook important costs
that liberalization imposes on poor countries.28 They examine the costs to developing countries of
trade liberalization policies in terms of lost tax revenues from tariffs. They conclude that developing
countries would lose more than $60 billion in tariff revenue under the nonagricultural market access
agreement within the World Trade Organization, around ten times the projected gains from trade
liberalization. In countries where as much as 40 percent of government revenues come from tariffs,
this cost is substantial, to say the least. It also will limit the capacities of poor governments to operate
in the best of conditions, and thus we might rethink whether such policies are desirable for
governments emerging from internal wars.

In sum, the evidence linking trade openness to economic growth are mixed, and there is no direct link
between expanding a countrys access to world markets and growing the economic pie that can help
win over combatants and promote sustainable peace. Moreover, the experiences of the global North
countries in the area of trade liberalization are poor predictors of the likely effects of trade on poor
countries. The evidence shows consistently that the global South has enjoyed fewer and less consistent
benefits from trade liberalization than their richer, early industrializing counterparts. Thus, Collier
and colleagues are right to conclude that priority must be given to policies that promote peace over
those that promote economic growth through markets. But we might ask whether the World Bank
prescriptions are generating the kind of economic growth that can really lead to long-term peace. The
mounting evidence that policies for economic liberalization are not generating the intended growth
effects might go quite a ways toward explaining the shortcomings of peacebuilding operations.

Globalizations criticswhose ranks are gaining ever-larger numbers of policy eliteshave developed
elaborate analyses and feasible policy prescriptions aimed at remedying the shortfalls of neoliberal
economic models.29 The essence of these approaches is a focus on production for local needs, local
ownership, participation, and control, and attention to environmental and social contexts. These types
of strategies can be part of efforts to quickly restore public services and generate economic returns
that Sambanis (chapter 6) found so essential to successful peacebuilding. They have an advantage of
helping increase the direct stakes all citizens would have in postwar peace agreements. Although
growth and service restoration may take a bit longer, the process of engaging local communities and
providing even limited resources to encourage local engagement and entrepreneurship helps build
confidence and mobilizes local skills and energy in the peacebuilding process.

(p.253) Economic Liberalization and Inequality

Collier and colleagues found that the countries at greatest risk of civil war also experienced high levels
of inequality.30 However, none of the studys numerous recommendations for improving
peacebuilding work addresses this specific problem. Instead, there is an implicit assumption that the
problem of inequality will be solved by policies that foster economic growth. This may be a valid
assumption, but given that inequality is strongly linked to the escalation of conflicts, it bears greater
scrutiny than the Collier study gives it. This section examines the question of whether and how
economic liberalization affects patterns of inequality.

Economic orthodoxy links poverty reduction to economic growth. The conventional economic wisdom
says that a rising tide lifts all boats, that a growing economic pie will enrich all of society, and that
the benefits of growth will trickle down to generate other social benefits such as poverty reduction,
environmental improvements, and the like. Thus, if economic liberalization generates growth, and
growth helps reduce inequality, then economic liberalization is a good policy prescription for war-torn
societies. But if economic liberalization does not generate more equitable distributions of wealth, and
especially if it exacerbates inequality, then policy makers and analysts must seriously rethink its role
in postwar contexts.

How has global economic liberalization impacted inequality in the world? Although it is difficult to
identify the specific causal variables, we have considerable evidence showing that economic
globalization has had either no direct effect on inequality or that it may be contributing to rising
inequality within and between countries. The UNDP recently reported that for a majority of
countries[economic] globalization is a story of divergence and marginalization. 31 Global inequality
has grown over recent decades of economic globalization, and now the richest 10 percent of the world
population controls more than half the worlds income, whereas the bottom 40 percent enjoy just 5
percent of world income.32 This inequality is even greater when measures of wealth are used in place
of income. The UNDP data show that inequality in the global South is on the rise, and in turn, this is
slowing economic growth and curbing efforts at poverty reduction. The report arguesalong with
many social scientists and economiststhat inequality is a challenge to the international community,
because it not only impedes market efficiency and economic growth but also undermines democracy
and social cohesionthe very conditions that are required to reduce the likelihood that social conflicts
will escalate into violent confrontations.

The 2005 Human Development Report paints a far gloomier picture of economic globalization than
had many previous official documents. But the evidence is consistent with findings of scholars and
other critics of trade liberalization as a policy panacea. Clearly the problem of persistent poverty and
underdevelopment is less a function of scarce resourcesindeed, the world is far richer by many
material measures than it was in prior decades or (p.254) centuriesthan of the unequal distribution
of those resources.33 In the previous section, I highlighted evidence showing that the benefits of trade
were not equally distributed among the worlds countries, and that the poorest countries and regions
were gaining less than rich ones. This inequality in shares of world trade is reproduced in other
measures of economic inequality. For instance, sociologists have found a consistent trend toward
rising inequality within countries as well as between them.34 This growing gap between the rich and
poor in the world, moreover, corresponds to the timing of neoliberal policy initiatives, which were first
launched in the mid-1980s and disseminated through means such as international trade agreements
and structural adjustment lending programs of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF). The UNDP (2005) reports a current measure of world inequality, the Gini coefficient, of
0.67.35This coefficient reflects a highly unequal global system with levels of inequality higher than
those of the most unequal (and unstable) countries of the world.36
Although rising inequality is associated with the timing of global economic liberalization, we should
not automatically assume a causal relationship, because a wide range of variables clearly affect global
economic distributions. What can we say about whether and how economic globalization might be
affecting inequality? The New Economics Foundation examined the extent to which the economic
growth linked to neoliberal policies benefited the poorest segments of national populations. Their
conclusions correspond with the UNDP report, and they go further to argue that the 1980s and 1990s
generated antipoor growth: a very small and declining percentage of the worlds economic growth
went to those groups in greatest need. People living on less than $1/day received just around 2 percent
of the benefits from economic growth in the 1980s, and this declined to less than 1 percent by 2000.
Those people living on $2/day enjoyed about 5.5 percent of the growth in the early 1980s, and this
share declined to just 3.1 percent by 2000.37 Thus, just as the benefits of trade liberalization were
reduced for poor countries, the benefits of economic growth are small and diminishing for poor
people. The declines come as economic liberalization policies have expanded.
Does this association between economic globalization and rising inequality suggest a causal
connection? We need theoretical work to show whether there is reason to think that economic
liberalization is implicated in persistent and rising inequality. Sociologists identify labor market
dynamics as an important part of this puzzle, and both empirical and theoretical work here shows that
global economic integration has been systematically undermining the power of working people
relative to the owners of capital.38 A major reason for this is that the policies pursued by the global
financial institutions have pressed for the opening of national borders to flows of goods and services
while allowing countries to close their borders to flows of people. This creates market distortions in
the supply and demand of labor that artificially suppresses costs while also curtailing the possibilities
for working people to benefit from expanding trade relationships. This has meant dramatic declines in
rates of unionization around the world and enhanced vulnerability of workers to job losses
directly(p.255) linked to import/export sectors. In the United States, for instance, three-quarters of
those workers losing their jobs due to trade-related competition reentered the labor market at lower
wages than they previously earned.39 Workers in the United States are comparatively powerful
politically, so these losses are likely to be far greater in countries of the global South.
Weak labor rights mean more than just a reduction in the benefits from economic liberalization that
accrue to the poorest segments of the population. They also mean that a disproportionate share of the
costs of liberalization is borne by the poorest people in society.40 Rather than helping benefit the
worlds poorest people, the policies of economic liberalization tend to exacerbate the hardships faced
by those most in need. Do the relatively poor, whose ranks may be growing due to rising global
inequality, have a stake in a system that promotes expanded economic liberalization without specific
efforts to remedy inequality? This is an important question for peacebuilding proponents to ask,
because groups that are excluded from economic rewards can more readily be mobilized into violent
opposition movements. Thus, Pariss analysis of postconflict peace agreements concludes that more
must be done to prioritize efforts to address the problem of inequality over the implementation of
traditional market liberalization policies.41

Not only do inequality and the systematic reduction in the political power of working people
undermine the prospects for stable peace agreements, but contemporary inequality also helps fuel
wars. Collier and his colleagues argue that the ability of combatants in civil wars to field armies is
enhanced under conditions of high unemployment. Both theory and empirical studies of the effects of
economic liberalization show that unemployment is at least a temporary consequence, as losses in
globally uncompetitive industries are made up by new growth in exports. But experience to date
suggests that the losses in employment outweigh employment gains in newly emerging sectors, at
least in the short and medium terms.42 If societies at peace have trouble adapting their employment
sectors to the needs of the global economy, then those plagued with internal conflict will have far
greater difficulty developing policies to promote high employment when they must open their markets
to compete with foreign imports. The employment disruptions caused by market liberalization may in
themselves help prolong (rather than curtail) civil wars.

The persistence and especially the increases of inequality in the global system are serious threats to
both localized peacebuilding efforts and global peace.43 They are threats because they undermine the
legitimacy and authority of existing institutions. As Hurrell argues, hierarchical modes of governance
cost in terms of both legitimacy and efficiency, and the conflicts we are seeing in the world since the
end of the Cold War are likely reflections of this legitimacy crisis. More must be done to address this
crisis and tackle the problem of inequality to provide the political prerequisites for meaningful global
moral community.44
Thus, it would seem that policies aiming explicitly to enlarge the share of world and national income
going to poor households would be far more effective at reducing poverty than are growth-oriented
policies, which treat poverty reduction as a by-product of growth. This would require that
peacebuilding (p.256) initiatives integrate distribution effects into their policy designs. 45 This is
obviously more difficult in the short run, because it requires fundamental transformation of power
relations, but it is essential for both the aim of economic development and for sustainable
peacebuilding. As the UNDP concludes in regard to Guatemala:
No export growth strategy in Guatemala is likely to produce substantive benefits for human
development without deep structural reforms to reduce inequalities and extend opportunity through
the redistribution of land and other productive assets, increased public spending for the poor and
targeted programmes aimed at breaking down the barriers facing indigenous people. Such measures
will ultimately require a change in the distribution of political power in Guatemala. 46

Ultimately, strategic peacebuilding must be about the redistribution of power (and resources) in
society. Walton and Seddon concluded from their study of protests in global South countries against
the austerity measures imposed by global financial institutions that these protests reflected a trend
toward growing pressure for democratic reforms against the neoliberal, bourgeois form of
democracy [that is] more concerned with free trade than individual freedoms, more attentive to
property than human rights, and downright skeptical about the social progress promised by earlier
developmental states in contrast to the economic progress now promised by the market. 47 In short,
the persistent inequality in todays world means that large numbers of people lack a stake in the
current system. The prevention of violence on the part of those denied the benefits of globalization
will require either new efforts to include marginalized groups in social and economic life or even
higher levels of coercion to repress dissent. There is little evidence that proposals to expand economic
liberalization without deliberate and robust efforts to address the unequal distribution of resources
and opportunities will generate lasting peace.

Peace and the Neoliberal State

Effective states are seen as crucial to sustaining peace agreements at the local level as well as to
maintaining regional and global peace and security.48 At the same time, peacebuilding prescriptions
emphasizing economic liberalization may be undermining the ability of war-torn societies to
reestablish capable and effective national states. Economic globalization has encouraged governments
to adopt policies to promote international trade and investment. One way they have done this is
through attaching conditionalities to international loans issued by the World Bank and IMF requiring
policy changes favoring international investment and trade. Many of these policies are also integrated
into postwar peacebuilding agreements as well, often as prerequisites for obtaining international
assistance.

These conditionalitiesknown as structural adjustment policies49vary, but their key requirements

include reductions in public spending, privatization (p.257) of public assets, government support for
export industries, guarantees for international investors, and the elimination of domestic wage and
price controls.50 By structurally adjusting borrowing states, the policies effectively help transform
national states into what Robinson calls neoliberal states, whose domestic markets are more fully
integrated into the global economy.51 In practice, what these policies do is reduce the capacities and
governing role of the state while expanding the influence of international investors and global markets
in the society.52 They also shift power away from representative institutions, workers, and consumers
and toward international investors and export industries.53
A growing body of research questions the effectiveness of structural adjustment policies for promoting
economic growth and other benefits.54 Summarizing this research, Paris concludes:
Twenty years after the advent of structural adjustment, the quarrel over [the influence of these
programs on economic growth and levels of distributional inequality] remains largely unresolved;
Neither the IMF nor the World Bank has been able to demonstrate convincingly that structural-
adjustment programs promote economic growth, and the precise relationship between these programs
and levels of poverty and distributional inequality is still hotly contested. 55

Even more important, the policies promoted by multilateral financial institutions may in fact be
contributing to human rights violations, thereby protracting conflicts while also undermining
possibilities for economic growth. Abouharb and Cingranelli, for instance, analyzed the effects of
international financial policies on human rights practices. They found that the structural adjustment
policies advanced by the World Bank were associated with higher levels of violations of physical
integrity rights, including freedoms from torture, political imprisonment, extrajudicial killing, and
arbitrary disappearances.56

Despite this dubious record, structural adjustment policies continue to be integrated into
international lending agreements and peace agreements, either through multilateral institutions or
through bilateral pressures from the countries that are primary sources of official aid and private
investment.57 These practices are counterproductive to peacebuilding work, becausein addition to
their association with increased rights violationsthey limit the policy space available to governments
that must prioritize building or rebuilding democratic institutions and expanding popular
commitments to peace agreements. Rather than emphasizing these important goals, structural
adjustment policies prioritize the expansion of foreign investment and market liberalization. The
effects of these policies on democratic institution-building are seen as secondary to the aim of
expanding market liberalization as a means of enhancing economic growth. A critical look at these
policies suggests that effective peacebuilding work may require a fundamentally different approach to
structuring national institutions.

Kaldor and Luckhams analysis of postCold War conflicts identifies a generalized phenomenon that
they argue is almost the reverse of state and nation-building.58 They see the practices associated
with economic globalization as contributing to the delegitimation of public authority that is fueling
the(p.258) escalation and proliferation of new wars. They conclude that the only effective way to
resist these new wars is to engage in systematic efforts to democratize politics and restore legitimate
political authority. Whereas Sambanis (chapter 6) calls for caution in this regard, the point that locals
must have a stake in the economic choices that will define postwar development remains valid.
International intervention can be designed to maintain a larger range of choice and control for the
people in countries recovering from war, thereby creating incentives for locals to engage in
peacebuilding processes. This prescription, however, is fundamentally different from that promoted
by conventional peacebuilding interventions, which encourage the pursuit of economic growth as the
main prerequisite to peace. Neoliberal states that are characterized by very limited policy space,
reduced capacity to regulate social actors, and policy programs encouraging profit seeking over other
social aims are unlikely to build public authority and reverse this trend.
Typical peacebuilding prescriptions reduce the range of policy choices available in postconflict states,
thereby obstructing efforts to build legitimate democratic institutions. Most states in the global
Southwhether or not they have experienced internal warshave been forced to negotiate limits to
their national sovereignty in return for international financing.59 Countries that borrow money from
the World Bank or IMF and undergo other international interventions (such as internationally
enforced peace agreements) are not free to determine what economic programs they pursue. Rather
than being subject to democratic mechanisms of deliberation and public accountability, major
economic decisions are often left to elites or to technical experts acting outside of public
scrutiny.60 Although such policies may seem logical from the perspective of professional economists,
they effectively depoliticize decisions at the heart of most societiesthose affecting the fundamental
organization of economic life and the distribution and use of societal resources. Thus, some of the
most important decisions that govern any society are effectively withdrawn from the public sphere.
This constraining of the effective policy space undermines the abilities of postwar societies to win the
loyalties and confidence of citizens. This is true even where there are successful steps toward elections
and other steps of democratization. A democratic state that lacks authority and capacity to shape
decisions that affect peoples lives is an oxymoron.

In addition to limited space for economic policy deliberation, neoliberal states are also characterized
by reduced capacities for regulating economic and other activities within their borders. Peter Evans
refers to this model of the modern state as the lean, mean state, because it emphasizes coercive
capacities necessary for the protection of private property and promotion of social stability over social
welfare. This reduction in state capacities comes at a time when we find an unprecedented
concentration of wealth and power in the hands of private entities, such as transnational corporations
and transnational criminal networks. This latter development necessitates greater capacity for
effective state governance on behalf of societal interests.

The studies of Collier and colleagues and Paris, however, show that effective attempts to end civil wars
require strong domestic institutions that are (p.259) capable of pursuing multifaceted policy
programs. These states must win the loyalties of diverse and often conflicting social groups, and they
must therefore be able to make parties feel they have real stakes in the strengthening and
perpetuation of government institutions. At the same time, they must be able to regulate private
actors that can disrupt peace or otherwise contribute to the exclusion of social groups. States whose
primary purpose is seen to be the promotion of markets and profit-seeking activities are unlikely to be
effective at limiting the business activities of groups perpetuating violent conflicts. The reduction of
state capacities for affecting the distribution of resources contributes to a concentration of resources
in the hands of small numbers of people who remain beyond the control of weakened states. These
weaknesses of states contribute to the dynamics of the conflict trap discussed by Collier et al. 61 Lean,
mean, neoliberal states are thus unlikely to be able to effectively govern the practices of transnational
actors, even when this is vital to the maintenance of peace. Nor are they likely to obtain legitimate
authority necessary for reversing the trend seen by Kaldor and Luckham.
Another way that peacebuilding policies constrain possibilities for states in postwar settings to escape
from conflict traps is by privileging programs that emphasize profit seeking over other social aims.
The key assumption behind neoliberal policies is that markets free of government intervention allow
actors to engage in the free pursuit of profit that is expected to enhance overall economic well-being.
But Collier et al. associate the pursuit of profit among groups engaged in civil wars with the
perpetuation of these conflicts.62 Although the conflicts themselves may not be grounded in explicit
economic ambitions, as warring parties organize themselves to amass the resources needed to wage
protracted conflict, they tend to become increasingly committed to profit-seeking activities during the
course of armed struggles. These profit-seeking practices themselves often depend on the
maintenance of armed conflict or at least the absence of effective governance institutions. Thus, the
dynamics of wars interact with the incentive structures encouraged by neoliberal economic policies to
reinforce conflict traps.

In sum, most analysts of conflict argue that effective peacebuilding work involves the construction of
institutions that enjoy widespread legitimacy. Such institutions must be democratic and effective at
implementing popular preferences and curbing abuses of power. But the privileging of neoliberal
models of the modern state undermines both the legitimacy and political effectiveness of states. This
is particularly problematic in societies emerging from armed conflict, where postwar institutions must
expand the stakes of all actors in the new government and high levels of inequality often require
strong state capacities for economic regulation and redistribution.

Peacebuilding and Global Governance

A final assumption inherent in predominant models of postconflict peacebuilding is that multilateral
peace and security can be improved without addressing (p.260) fundamental inequities in the global
economic order. Whereas analysts have rightly identified the ways local and national armed struggles
can threaten regional and global peace, the solutions offered typically fail to confront the ways that
inequality in the global political order may be fueling more localized conflicts. Moreover,
peacebuilding interventions that force warring parties to adopt market liberalization policies may be
helping perpetuate rather than reduce violent conflict.
Peace agreements encourage postwar states to become more integrated into a competitive global
capitalist economy. As Paris warns, capitalism is inherently competitive. It inevitably creates
winners and losers, which can fuel social unrest.63 Both Paris and Collier et al. argue for more
cautious liberalization of postwar states, even as they maintain that integration into the global
capitalist economy is an effective strategy for societies emerging from civil wars. But if capitalism itself
inevitably creates winners and losers, thereby fueling social unrest, is the promotion of globalized
capitalism an effective strategy for promoting local or global peace and security?

Although globalized capitalism has helped promote economic growth and new technological
innovations, the ability of capitalist markets to maximize human well-being over the long run has
come under growing scrutiny. Indeed, the prescriptions of Paris and Collier et al. demonstrate
that global markets are not sufficient for generating peace, and I have argued that global markets can
undermine the achievement of other conditions that are necessary for peace. Collier and colleagues,
for instance, argue that new systems of international governance are needed to manage international
trade in natural resources so that warring parties cannot use illicit trade to finance wars. They also
argue that poor states need global management of commodity prices to ensure the effective and stable
governance of their countries. They see a need for greater global social solidarity to enhance the flows
of aid from rich to poor countries. Paris also emphasizes nonmarket policies aimed at fostering
democratic cultures and empowering civil society. The policy prescriptions in these studies place
primary emphasis on making changes in the governance of countries marred by civil wars, rather than
in the international system itself.

A systemwide approach to addressing local and national conflicts, however, would lead us to question
the extent to which the predominant, market-oriented approaches to peace agreements are likely to
support long-term peace and security. Can the international community impose models of economic
governance on societies emerging from violent conflict and expect them to build effective and
inclusive democratic institutions? Can peaceful national and global societies exist within a global
order that emphasizes economic competition and individual profit maximization?

These questions are vital, I think, for addressing the problem of violence in contemporary societies.
Most conventional approaches to international peacebuilding and conflict intervention neglect them.
If the global economic and political order is fueling conflicts at local and national levels, then national
or local strategies will not, on their own, end the violence. Problems must be addressed at the level at
which they originate, and thus strategic peacebuilders (p.261) must ask the tough questions about
how the global system is implicated in more localized struggles.
The UNDP Human Development Report argues that policies promoting social inclusion are necessary
if we are to see a reduction in violence in contemporary societies.64 As was stated earlier, the global
capitalist system emphasizes economic competition, which necessarily excludes those without access
to financial and material resources. Social exclusion is a major effect of the global neoliberal order.
Thus, we must ask whether policies that enhance countries participation in global capitalist markets
should be as central a part of the solution to violent conflict as predominant discussions make them.

The privileging of globalized markets in the international policy discourse is also the result of highly
unequal arrangements in the global political order. The ideologies guiding global neoliberalism and
the dissemination of market liberalization policies emerged from the rich countries of the global
North, and they were aided by the support of elites in the global South. But poor countries and people
had little role in shaping this policy agenda, and the policies of the World Bank and IMF have served
to erode the national sovereignty of borrowing states in favor of donor countries.65 Thus, the policy
agenda of market liberalization is not one that emerges from a democratic foundation of deliberation
among sovereign equals; rather, it reflects long-standing patterns of global domination and
subordination. It is unlikely, then, that this policy approach can be a foundation for a stable and
democratic peace.

The place of market liberalization in the international communitys hierarchy of policy priorities also
reflects major inequities in the global system that threaten long-term global peace and security. The
international system is rife with contradictory policies and practices, and one of the most glaring is the
tension between the international financial institutions and the UN Charter. The UN was designed to
prevent wars and promote conditions that are conducive to international peace. The World Bank,
IMF, and World Trade Organization, in contrast, are part of the Bretton Woods system that aimed to
expand global trade and international investment. Although the Bretton Woods system was to fall
initially within the jurisdiction of the UN system, in practice the global financial institutions operate
independently of the UN. Their policies, moreover, are increasingly seen as being at odds with UN
principles of equity, human rights, and environmental sustainability.66

Over recent decades, the U.S. government and other key proponents of globalized capitalism have
worked to systematically reduce the role of the United Nations in global affairs while making the
global financial institutions more influential.67 The major effect of this policy has been to advance
neoliberal agendas through largely coercive measures while subordinating other policy objectives to
that of expanding global markets. As a result, a comparison of global policy arenas reveals major
contradictions among policy aims, outcomes, and norms. For instance, market-oriented policies
encourage economic growth, expanding consumption, and participation based on financial means. In
contrast, environmental preservation policies emphasize the limits of the natural environment and the
precautionary principle. Human rights policies (p.262) emphasize equality, human needs, and
universal rights of participation based on shared humanity. The subordination of the UN to the global
financial institutions has meant a prioritization of markets over sustainability and human rights.
These institutional contradictions complicate efforts to promote sustainable peace at local or global
levels.
Not only do institutional arrangements make it difficult to guarantee that policies promoting equity
and sustainability gain at least equal footing with those promoting economic growth, they also are
likely to complicate efforts to build democratic cultures that are conducive to peace. An international
system that prioritizes markets and economic growth and places the aim of profit seeking over other
social objectives contributes to social exclusion and complicates governance at all levels. Thus, policies
that seek to restrain economic competition in favor of political or environmental security face
important political hurdles. Global neoliberalism has fostered an ideology of competition and market
fundamentalism thatdespite losing some of its luster in recent yearsworks against efforts to foster
democratic civil society and promote a global culture of solidarity and human rights. 68
In sum, creating a global economic context that prevents combatants from exploiting natural
resources to finance civil wars, provides poor country governments with predictable and stable
sources of income, and reduces (rather than exacerbates) inequalities of wealth and income requires
fundamentally different approaches to peacebuilding than those emphasized in most mainstream
policy discourse. To reverse the escalation of internal conflicts and to foster stable and long-term
peace, the international community must confront fundamental inequalities in the global system itself
that are contributing to conflicts at local, national, and regional levels.

Conclusion
Strategic peacebuilding requires an analytical framework that considers how local actors are
embedded within broader economic and political relationships that extend beyond the national to
regional and global levels. Although much intervention must take place at the level where violent
conflict is experienced most directly, the analyses of the causes of civil wars and their perpetuation
show that work must be done beyond local and national levels to address the causes of violence. A
global system that privileges markets and opposes state intervention in economies also provides fertile
ground for illicit trade that can help finance civil wars. Policies that contribute to rising inequalities at
global and national levels fuel grievances that can be used to mobilize groups against one another. An
undemocratic global political order is unlikely to foster the values and cultural practices that will
support democracy at other levels.

Major studies of international interventions in civil wars have concluded that market liberalization
policies can undermine peace strategies. Nevertheless, these studies continue to support the overall
policy of market liberalization. I argue that we need to delink the peacebuilding agenda from
the(p.263) neoliberal globalization project, which emphasizes economic growth and the
globalization of markets at the expense of other policy objectives. 69 Although economic growth can
expand resources available for peacebuilding, it is more important for policy makers in postconflict
settings to actively work to reduce inequality through redistributive policies. Though market
liberalization might encourage economic growth, the privileging of global over local and national
markets may not serve the development needs of most postwar societies. States require greater policy-
making autonomy and capacity for action than they are typically allowed in most peace agreements,
trade agreements, and international financial agreements.70 There must be greater coordination and
coherence in international policy prescriptions across different governance sectors to strengthen state
capacities.
The 1980s and 1990s have seen a very rapid expansion of the global economic order, and the global
political system needs to catch up if we are to have a global economy that serves the needs of people
rather than corporations.71 Although there is widespread rhetorical support for the idea of democracy,
we lack global institutions that can effectively protect democracy at local and national levels. As
governments bring more policy concerns to intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations and
World Trade Organization, they effectively reduce democracy at the national level. 72Following the
work of Karl Polanyi, we might argue that we need to embed the global economy within a global
society that is guided by principles of equity, human rights, and environmental sustainability. 73Such a
society will require major changes to global institutions to provide mechanisms for democratic
participation and accountability comparable to those achieved in many national contexts. In short,
democracy at the national level will be increasingly reduced without steps to democratize global
political and economic institutions.

How might this be accomplished? One way is for peace intervention strategies to be more explicit in
actively supporting a democratic globalization network that advances a more democratic global
order.74 This networkwhich is largely centered on civil society actors but also includes
prodemocratic governments and international officialsmust be empowered to more effectively
counter the network of transnational corporations and political elites that have systematically
advanced their preferred model of neoliberal globalization. Peace operations should serve to alter the
relative balance of power between neoliberal and democratic agents. Currently they are reinforcing the
already vastly superior resources of neoliberals at the expense of democrats. The policies and practices
that enable democracy to flourish are not the same asand, in fact, are contradicted bypolicies that
advance globalized capitalism.75

Thus, peacebuilders must prioritize policies that strengthen norms and practices conducive to
democracy and human rights, rather than subordinating them to the needs of global markets. This
would mean, for instance, that policies aiming to reduce poverty should focus directly on putting
resources into the hands of poor people rather than on expanding economic growth in the hopes that
some new wealth will trickle down to those most in need. It would also mean promoting policies that
level the political playing field among (p.264) citizens to promote more inclusive debates and
policies. By taking steps to organize global society around the values of cooperation and social
solidarity rather than economic competition, the global community might help reduce new incidences
of violent conflict while helping war-torn societies escape the conflict trap.
Scholars of peace initiatives have long argued for greater inclusion of civil society groups and women
into peace processes. These proposals have not been effectively incorporated into existing
peacebuilding efforts. I summarize three major strategies that this analysis suggests might enhance
the prospects for enhancing civil societys role in multilateral peacebuilding initiatives and the
development of more effective and democratic strategies for the resolution of violent conflicts. 76

First, leaders in movements and international institutions should support the development of more
inclusive peacebuilding networks of nonstate, governmental, and intergovernmental actors working
to promote peace, democracy, and more equitable development.77 These should be deliberate efforts
to build alliances between international agencies and civil society actors committed to core democratic
and multilateralist norms, working together to engage both states and private financial actors in the
tasks of more democratic global governance. It is the relative imbalance of power between civil society
and other actors that contributes to conflict escalation and persistent violence. Thus, activities of these
multiactor networks should aim specifically to reduce the inequalities of power between civil society
actors, states, and the private sector and promote democratic participation and accountability in
governance.

Second, multiactor peacebuilding networks should focus in the near term on efforts to democratize
global institutions. An overwhelming majority of UN member states favors a system that better
reflects the interests of all its members. Civil society groups would also benefit from a UN system that
is more representative of all the worlds governments. Finally, these reforms would enhance the
commitment to the UN system by countries and civil societies that have been largely disenfranchised
from global policy making. These changes require focused efforts to bring together supportive
governments and international officials and movement actors around a strategy for promoting UN
and especially Security Council reforms, including, for instance, those recommended by the recent UN
High Level Panel Report on Threats, Challenges and Change.

Third, peacebuilding networks must be more proactive in their efforts to empower actors who have
been marginalized by existing political and economic structures. They must struggle to rein in the
power of corporations in the global polity so that states and civil society actors can exert more control
over decisions that affect their economic lives as well as their political choices. Serious efforts are also
needed to enhance democratic accountability and participation within states. The recent report of the
Panel of Eminent Persons on UN-Civil Society Relations has some good recommendations around
which policy makers and activists can mobilize, such as the call for a new Office of Constituency
Engagement and Partnerships with its own Under-Secretary General, a Civil Society Unit, and an
Elected Representatives Liaison Unit. The World Social (p.265) Forum process provides
opportunities to make important connections among civil society actors in different parts of the world
as well as between civil society and national and international officials. This process should be
supported financially and engaged with more seriously by national and international policy elites as a
possible mechanism for advancing a more equitable, democratic, and just global political order. Such
a global order is an essential prerequisite to peacebuilding everywhere.
Notes

Notes:
(1) . Paul Collier and others, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development

Policy(Washington, D.C.: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003) . See also Michael
Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace

Operations(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006) ; Stephen John Stedman,

ed.,Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner,

2002) .

(2) . Roland Paris, At Wars End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2004) ; Necl Tschirgi, Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Revisited: Achievements,

Limitations, Challenges, International Peace Academy Policy Report (October 2004); Collier et
al.,Breaking the Conflict Trap.

(3) . Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap; Paris, At Wars End.

(4) . See, e.g., Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic

Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Anchor Books, 2003) ; John Markoff, Transnational
Democracy in Critical and Comparative Perspective: Democracys Range Reconsidered, ed. B. W.

Morrison (London: Ashgate, forthcoming) .

(5) . See, e.g., Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, Power in Global Governance: Introduction,
inPower in Global Governance, eds. M. Barnett and R. Duvall (New York: Cambridge University

Press, 2005), 132 .

(6) . See, e.g., Markoff, Transnational Democracy; William Robinson, A Theory of Global

Capitalism(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) ; Philip

McMichael,Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.:

Pine Forge, 2003) ; John Markoff, Globalization and the Future of Democracy, Journal of

World-Systems Research 5 (1999): 242262, http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html .

(7) . See, e.g., Necl Tschirgi, Peacebuilding through Global Peace and Justice, Development 48

(2005): 5056 .

(8) . Andrew Hurrell, Power, Institutions and the Production of Inequality, in Power in Global

Governance, eds. M. Barnett and R. Duvall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 33 .

(9) . Roland Paris, International Peacebuilding and the Mission Civilisatrice, Review of

International Studies 28 (2002): 637656 .

(10) . Ibid., 638 .

(11) . Ibid., 637656 .

(12) . William Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention and

Hegemony(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) .

(13) . Neoliberalism refers to the idea-system favoring market liberalization and rules for a globalized

economy. See Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism .

(14) . Ibid.

(15) . Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap, 53 .

(16) . See, e.g., Kevin P. Gallagher, The Demise of the Doha Round? Unpacking Developing Country

Resistance, Review of International Political Economy (forthcoming) .

(17) . Timothy A. Wise and Kevin P. Gallagher, Doha Round and Developing Countries: Will the Doha
Deal Do More Harm than Good? Research and Information System for Developing Countries, New
Delhi, 2006.

(18) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005: International Cooperation at a Crossroads (New

York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 119 .

(19) . See, e.g., review in Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith, Protest and
Collaboration: Transnational Civil Society Networks and the Politics of Summitry and Free Trade in
the Americas, North-South Center, University of Miami, 2001.

(20) . Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap, 6 .

(21) . Indeed, this is why international trade negotiations and the Doha Development Round have
stalled or collapsed.
(22) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005, 117 .

(23) . Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and Timothy Patrick Moran, World Inequality in the Twenty-
First Century: Patterns and Tendencies in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, ed. G. Ritzer

(Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) .

(24) . Mark Weisbrot, Globalization on the Ropes, Harpers (May 2000): 6 ; Walden

Bello, Dark Victory: The United States and Global Poverty (London: Pluto Press, 1999) .

(25) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 ; Wise and Gallagher, Doha Round and

Developing Countries.

(26) . Wise and Gallagher, Doha Round and Developing Countries.

(27) . See, e.g., ibid. ; Mark Weisbrot and others, Poor Numbers: The Impact of Trade
Liberalization on World Poverty, Center for Economic Policy Research, Washington, D.C., 2004. See
also Robin Broad, Research, Knowledge & the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The World Banks
Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC), Review of International Political Economy 13

(2006): 387419 .

(28) . Wise and Gallagher, Doha Round and Developing Countries ; Weisbrot et al., Poor
Numbers.

(29) . See, for instance, John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, eds., Alternatives to Economic

Globalization: A Better World is Possible, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004) ; New
Principles and Rules to Build an Economic System that Works for People and the Planet, Civil society
statement to the G20 Summit, November 2008,http://www.choike.org/bw2/#english2 (accessed
November 22, 2008); David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (San

Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 2007) .Joseph Stiglitz, Towards a New Paradigm of Development,

in Making Globalization Good: The Moral Challenges of Global Capitalism, ed. J. H. Dunning (New

York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 77107 .

(30) . Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap, 4 .

(31) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005, 116 .

(32) . Ibid., 4 .
(33) . Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) ; Food
and Agriculture Organization, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006: Eradicating World
HungerTaking Stock Ten Years after the World Food Summit (Rome: Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, 2006), http://www.fao.org/icatalog/inter-e.htm (accessed April

3, 2007) .

(34) . There is some debate as to whether between country inequality is rising or stabilizing, and this
emerges from the use of different economic measures. Studies using exchange rates find rising
inequality, while those using purchasing power parity (PPP) find slowed or declining inequality at the
world level. I agree with the contention by Korzeniewicz and Moran in Measuring World Income

Inequalities (American Journal of Sociology 106 [2000]: 209214 ) that exchange rate studies
are more reliable, given the measurement and aggregation errors associated with PPP.Salvatore J.
Babones and Jonathan H. Turner, Global Inequality, in Handbook of Social Problems, ed. G. Ritzer

(Oxford: Blackwell), 101121 ; R. P. Korzeniewicz and Timothy P. Moran, World Economic

Trends in the Distribution of Income, 19651992, American Journal of Sociology102 (1997): 1000

1039 ; Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and Timothy Patrick Moran, World Inequality in the
Twenty-First Century: Patterns and Tendencies, in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, ed.

G. Ritzer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) .

(35) . The Gini coefficient is calculated by measuring the distribution of income across a population. A
coefficient of 0 is a perfectly equal society where each proportion of the population controls a
comparable proportion of the countrys income (or wealth); a coefficient of 1 reflects a perfectly
unequal society. The Gini coefficient for one of the most equal societies, Sweden, is 0.25 and for one of
the most unequal societies, Brazil, is 0.59. The United States Gini coefficient is 0.41.

(36) . The Gini coefficient for Namibia is 0.71; Lesotho, 0.63; Botswana, 0.63; Sierra Leone, 0.63; and
the Central African Republic, 0.61. Compare with the United States at 0.41 and Denmark at 0.25

(UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 ).

(37) . New Economics Foundation, Growth Isnt Working: The Unbalanced Distribution of Benefits
and Costs from Economic Growth, New Economics Foundation, London
(2006),http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/hrfu5w555mzd3f55m2vqwty502022006112929.
pdf(accessed October 20, 2006).

(38) . Korzeniewicz and Moran, World Inequality in the Twenty-First Century; Saskia

Sassen,Globalization and its Discontents (New York: New Press, 1998) .

(39) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005, 124 .

(40) . See, e.g., Bello, Dark Victory ; UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 .
(41) . Paris, At Wars End, 200205 .

(42) . Wise and Gallagher, Doha Round. The fact that more of the labor force today is comprised of
internal or international migrants is also likely to affect the social dislocations that impact prospects
for violent mobilizations, because people uprooted from home communities who later become
unemployed may be particularly vulnerable to recruitment efforts by militant groups.

(43) . Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap.

(44) . Hurrell, Power, Institutions and the Production of Inequality, 55 .

(45) . See, e.g., New Economics Foundation, Growth Isnt Working, and Weisbrot et al., Poor
Numbers.

(46) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005, 123 .

(47) . John Walton and David Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global

Adjustment(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994), 339 .

(48) . Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, and Ramesh Thakur, Making States Work: State Failure

and the Crisis of Governance (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2005) ; Collier et

al., Breaking the Conflict Trap .

(49) . In response to protests against the global financial institutions, officials have renamed
structural adjustment policies to Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, or PRSPs. The content of the
prescriptions in these agreements between borrowing governments and the global financial
institutions, however, remains largely unchanged. Walden Bello, Deglobalization: New Ideas for

Running the World Economy (London: Zed Books, 2003) . Also, the World Bank and the IMF
have failed to follow a requirement meant to prevent the problems associated with the earlier
structural adjustment programs, namely, that they include civil society groups in the development and
implementation of PRSPs. Robert OBrien, The International Monetary Fund, The World Bank and
Labour in Developing Countries, manuscript, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario; Peter
Willetts, Civil Society Networks in Global Governance: Remedying the World Trade Organisations
Deviance from Global Norms, in Colloquium on International Governance (Palais des Nations,

Geneva, 2002) .

(50) . Robert OBrien, Workers and World Order: The Tentative Transformation of the International

Union Movement, Review of International Studies 26 (2000): 533555 ; Paris, At Wars End;
and William Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 2004) .
(51) . Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism.

(52) . Nancy Alexander, Decentralization and Sovereignty: How Policy Space is Eroded, in Social
Watch Report 2006: Impossible Architecture, edited by S. Watch (Montevideo, Uruguay: Social

Watch, 2006), 2022 .

(53) . OBrien, The International Monetary Fund.

(54) . Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2003) ; Weisbrot et
al., Poor Numbers.

(55) . Paris, At Wars End, 166 .

(56) . Rodwan M. Abouharb and David Cingranelli, The Human Rights Effects of World Bank

Structural Adjustment, International Studies Quarterly 50 (2006): 233262 .

(57) . Luke Eric Peterson, Bilateral Investment Treaties and Development Policy-Making. Winnipeg:
International Institute for Sustainable Development & Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation, 2004.

(58) . Mary Kaldor and Robin Luckham, Global Transformations and New Conflicts, IDS Bulletin 32

(2001) .

(59) . Alexander, Decentralization and Sovereignty.

(60) . See William D. Coleman and Tony Porter, International Institutions, Globalization and

Democracy: Assessing the Challenges, Global Society 14 (2000): 377398 ; Michael

Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of

Globalization (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005) ; John Markoff and Veronica

Montecinos, The Ubiquitous Rise of Economists, Journal of Public Policy 13 (1993): 3768 ;
and Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents.

(61) . Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap .

(62) . Ibid., 79 .

(63) . Paris, At Wars End, 167 .

(64) . UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 , chapter 5.

(65) . Alexander, Decentralization and Sovereignty; Hurrell, Power, Institutions and the Production
of Inequality; and Celine Tan, Reclaiming Development: Streamline the Bretton Woods
Institutions, in Social Watch Reports 2006: Impossible Architecture, ed. S. Watch (Montevideo,

Uruguay: Social Watch, 2006), 2325 .

(66) . Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Cambridge: Blackwell, 2001) ;Sigron
Skogly, Structural Adjustment and Development: Human RightsAn Agenda for Change?Human

Rights Quarterly 15 (1993): 751 ; and Tan, Reclaiming Development.

(67) . Jackie Smith, Global Visions, Rival Networks: Social Movements for Global

Democracy(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) .

(68) . Seyla Benhabib, On the Alleged Conflict between Democracy and International Law, Ethics

and International Affairs 19 (2005): 85100 ; Leslie Sklair, Globalization and Its

Alternatives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) .

(69) . McMichael, Development and Social Change.

(70) . Gallagher, The Demise of the Doha Round?

(71) . Christopher Chase-Dunn, Social Evolution and the Future of World Society, Journal of World

Systems Research 11 (2006): 171192 .

(72) . See Markoff, Transnational Democracy; and Charles Tilly, Globalization Threatens Labor

Rights, International Labor and Working Class History 47 (1995): 123 .

(73) . Korzeniewicz and Smith, Protest and Collaboration.

(74) . Smith, Global Visions, Rival Networks.

(75) . Tilly, Globalization Threatens Labor Rights.

(76) . For more detail, see Jackie Smith, Social Movements and Multilateralism: Moving from the
20th to 21st Century, in Multilateralism under Challenge? Power, International Order, and
Structural Change, ed. E. Newman, S. Tharoor, and J. Tirman (Tokyo: United Nations University

Press, 2006), 395421 .

(77) . Korzeniewicz and Smith make a similar recommendation, referring to such networks as
polycentric development coalitions. (Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith, Poverty,
Inequality, and Growth in Latin America: Searching for the High Road to Globalization, Latin

American Research Review 35 [2000]: 754 ).

The Response Imperative
Tensions and Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action and Strategic Peacebuilding

Larissa Fast
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords

Inherent in the many conceptualizations of strategic peacebuilding is the concept of coordination
among multiple actors and roles. Fast grapples with the complex and wide-ranging idea of
coordination, exploring the need for third-party coordination in conflict settings and the dilemmas of
coordination and integration, which may compromise an organizations independence, neutrality or
security. Engaging both sides of the debate on integrating humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding,
Fast argues that it is not the aim or within the scope of humanitarian action to promote social change
or build peace; rather, separate space must be preserved for humanitarian action. Humanitarian
action should, however, avoid contributing to conflict.

Keywords: humanitarian assistance, neutrality, peacebuilding, peace operations, integration, civilian-military

operations

A typical scenario goes something like this: violence breaks out between warring factions, people flee
from their homes trying to escape the violence, United Nations agencies and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) bring in personnel and supplies to respond to the civilian suffering that
inevitably occurs, and diplomats and others work to broker a cease-fire. Though not attempting to
minimize the suffering of the thousands of civilians around the world caught up in atrocities and
violence nor the difficulties of providing relief or negotiating cease-fire or peace agreements, the
contours of the typical story usually hold. The explosion of civil conflict and violence in the postCold
War era and more engagement on the part of civil society and international organizations in
attempting to prevent, respond to, and transform conflict has led to increasing attention on the roles
and actors involved in responding to conflict and violence or building peace.

The concept of strategic peacebuilding assumes a variety of roles and actors to build peace. In
chapter1, Lederach and Appleby define it as follows:

At its core, peacebuilding nurtures constructive human relationships. To be relevant, it must do so at

every level of society and across the potentially polarizing lines of ethnicity, class, religion, and race.
It focuses on transforming inhumane social patterns, flawed structural conditions, and open violent
conflict that weaken the conditions necessary for a flourishing human community.

They argue that peacebuilding extends across the cycle of conflict, from prevention to transformation.
In his earlier work, Lederach (p.272) proposes three levels of actorsgrassroots, mid-range, and top
leadershipand suggests that peacebuilding crosses the horizontal boundaries of conflict lines and
links the vertical levels of actors. As such, it involves a variety of corresponding roles and activities.
Furthermore, he asserts it is necessary to work at multiple levels in the short-term, intermediate, and
long-term horizons.1 Not inconsistently, others define peacebuilding as encompassing poverty
reduction, humanitarian relief, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs for ex-
combatants, economic development projects, human rights monitoring and advocacy, and everything
in between.

If we take seriously the notion that strategic peacebuilding as a concept requires multiple roles and
actorsa web of individuals and institutionssimultaneously and in a complementary fashion
working to build peace in a society, what exactly does this mean? How do we build webs and networks
of actors working for peace? What are the costs and opportunities of particular roles? How should and
do these various roles and actors work together? This chapter explores several key dilemmas and
tensions that arise in thinking about humanitarian action as a smaller part of strategic peacebuilding
in particular, and ponders the larger question of the conceptual and practical messiness of
peacebuilding roles more generally.

Thinking about the relationship (or lack thereof) between humanitarian action and strategic
peacebuilding inevitably raises two linked but conceptually separate debates. The first debate emerges
out of the peacebuilding literature, broadly defined, and revolves around third-party roles and
functions in conflict situations (e.g., the idea of multiple roles and actors in conflict intervention and
how they relate to each other). The second debate occurs within the humanitarian assistance and
development literatures and examines the question of integrationto what extent should
humanitarian action be integrated into or linked to processes designed in the short or long term to
promote peace or social change? These debates have occurred somewhat in isolation from each other,
yet both explore the dilemmas, tensions, and consequences inherent in choices regarding roles and
relationships.

On first glance, it appears that humanitarian assistance and building peace have much in common.
They both attempt to respond to and alleviate the suffering of those caught up in violence. But perhaps
this is where the comparison does and should end. These responses are differenthumanitarian
action is designed as a short-term, emergency response, whereas building peace necessitates a longer
time frame. Yet the question of how to intervene when the violence rages and ravages communities
caught up in destructive conflict remains particularly vexing. Most who write about and define
peacebuilding emphasize that it needs to take place across the conflict cycle of prevention, reaction,
and rebuilding. While stocked and full in the prevention and rebuilding phases, the conceptual
cupboard is mostly bare when it comes to the reaction phase.

The primary reactions of the international community to ongoing civil strife and violence are to
provide humanitarian aid and, where political will is sufficient, intervene militarily. Other actions,
such as diplomatic attempts to (p.273) broker cease-fires, local action to protest or counter violence,
or public naming and shaming of human rights violations, also occur and are essential to building
peace. Few responses, however, offer the immediate and public rewards of aid workers (usually
pictured as white foreigners in the media, even though the vast majority of aid workers are national
staff) weighing underweight babies as part of a feeding program, dishing out food and water to
refugees from the rear of a large truck emblazoned with an agency logo, or compassionately bandaging
wounds in a makeshift clinic. The other public and immediate option is military action, hopefully
consistent with the more altruistic protective purposes of the responsibility to protect. 2 The ongoing
violence in Darfur, Sudan, is a case in point: the options have appeared as either providing
humanitarian assistance or reinforcing the African Union troops, who have been vastly outnumbered
and underequipped, with a more robust military presence. A UN peacekeeping force began deploying
in late 2007, but is still not yet fully operational. Humanitarian assistance, all acknowledge, is simply
a Band-Aid on an increasingly severe and swelling wound. Its reach and effectiveness is compromised
because of targeted violence against and harassment of aid workers, despite the life-saving advances
they have made.3 Other options for responding to the immediate violence are few, although it is yet
unclear how a new U.S. president or the International Criminal Court indictment of President Omar
al-Bashir will change the situation. Do we want to include humanitarian action within the realm of
peacebuilding to be able to claim that we are indeed doing something to respond to violence?
Implicit in the conceptualizations of strategic peacebuilding is the notion of linkage and/or
coordination of roles. The literature on third-party roles in conflict, with some notable exceptions,
outlines separate roles but not how to generate a coherent and linked intervention strategy. Those that
do write about integrated peacebuilding paradigms assume an intrinsic value to coordination. This
chapter argues, perhaps somewhat provocatively, that humanitarian action should not be included
within the broader peacebuilding agenda. Putting aside the more common objections to integration
that peacebuilding is too political an endeavor for humanitarians or that security is compromised
when impartiality and neutrality are compromisedthis chapter maintains an objection to integration
because of the need to maintain a moral response to human suffering; that response is humanitarian
assistance. If we really want to build peace, we need to reserve and protect space for humanitarian
action, regardless of how these efforts may or may not contribute to peacebuilding. Although
humanitarian action should be left outside the peacebuilding agenda, it can instead avoid doing
harm and contributing to conflict. In other words, humanitarian aid cannot build peace, address the
root causes of conflict, or transform the structures that contribute to injustice and inequality, nor
should it be held accountable to these standards.

Third-Party Roles in Conflict

The literature about third-party roles in conflict is growing and has evolved from an emphasis on
mediation and problem solving to an acknowledgment (p.274) and a more sophisticated
understanding of the variety of roles necessary to build peace. In the early years, much of the conflict
intervention literature on roles focused on that of the mediator and his or her corresponding
responsibility to maintain neutrality and impartiality in the intervention. Codes of conduct for
mediators specified these in more detail. As late as 1994, the Academy of Dispute Resolution Model
Standards of Mediator Conduct describe mediation as a process in which a neutral third party
facilitates an agreement. The standards list impartiality as one of the rules for a mediator, stipulating
that he or she should disclose bias or prejudice.4 Likewise, the 1998 Academy of Family Mediators lists
both impartiality and neutrality as part of its standards of practice. 5
In contrast to much of the extant literature at the time, Laue and Cormick suggest five roles for a
conflict intervention: those of activist, advocate, mediator, researcher, and enforcer.6 The role(s) an
intervener plays is dependent on the base of support and his or her credibility with one or more
parties. Furthermore, they argue that neutrality is not possible in any role, because either the
intervener is promoting a (positive) change process or acting on behalf of one of the parties. Nor, they
write, is neutrality ethically desirable. Instead, interveners in community disputes must work for
empowerment, justice, and freedom. Laue reiterates this assumption in a later article, stating All
intervention alters the power configuration among the parties, thus all conflict intervention is
advocacy. There are no neutrals.7 Advocacy, he posits, may be in terms of the party (e.g., a lawyer
advocating for a particular party), outcomes (e.g., for a particular policy), or a process (e.g., the
process used to reach an agreement).8 Similarly, Wehr and Lederach examine neutrality and the
foundations of mediator credibility and legitimacy. They challenge the cultural assumptions of the
outsider-neutral mediator role, which assumes that mediators have no existing or future
relationship with or connection to either of the parties. For outsider-neutrals, precisely this lack of
association forms the basis for the mediators role in the conflict. They describe another model, that of
an insider-partial, whose legitimacy derives from existing and ongoing relationships based on trust
and connection.9

These and other challenges to the value of neutrality in mediation, in particular, paved the way for a
more expanded conception of third-party roles in conflict intervention. Mitchell, in analyzing a
mediation process in Sudan, proposes a typology of fourteen separate intermediary functions. For
example, a convener brings together the various stakeholders in a conflict, whereas a facilitator
assists the parties in communicating during and managing the actual mediation process. In his
analysis, he speculates about the need for a coordinator that would link the various roles in a
mediation process. He concludes that some roles may preclude others because of timing issues or
because the functions are mutually exclusive.10

Ury similarly expands the notion of who can intervene in conflict, promoting the idea of a third side
in conflict situations. The third side moves beyond the dichotomy of conflict parties and brings
bystanders and other community members into conflict intervention in both formal and informal
roles. (p.275) He urges ordinary citizen involvement in preventing, resolving, and containing conflict
as a kind of social immune system preventing the spread of the virus of violence.11 In preventing
conflict, third-siders address latent tensions. In resolving conflict, they tackle overt conflict and
violence, and in containing conflict, they deal with the power struggles inherent in conflicts at all
levels. His roles range from providers and bridge-builders in the prevention stage, to mediators
and healers in the resolution phase, and witnesses, peacekeepers, and referees in the
containment phase.12
Urys notion of sequencing roles based on conflict stages builds on Fisher and Keashleys earlier idea
of a contingency model of intervention. They propose a sequencing of functions based on the stages of
a conflict and the propensity of the role to deescalate conflict. Thus, negotiation and mediation occur
early on, whereas arbitration, mediation with muscle, and peacekeeping occur later, once the parties
are polarized and the conflict has reached a destructive and violent stage. Development aid, they
suggest, serves the function of reducing structural inequalities.13

The Responsibility to Protect report, which the United Nations endorsed as a concept, outlines a
sequential view of intervention and elucidates a more expansive set of actions and actors, ranging
from noncoercive to coercive options. The task of the International Commission on Intervention and
State Sovereignty (ICISS), which produced the report at the behest of former UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan, was to establish a consensus regarding the conditions under which intervention would be
warranted and the process by which it would be legitimate. The ICISS returned with the idea of the
responsibility to protect: that the international community has a responsibility to prevent, react, and
rebuild when individual states are either unwilling or unable to protect their own citizens. In the
prevention stage, actors work to address root causes of possible violence via political and diplomatic,
economic, and legal mechanisms. The reaction stage includes a range of less and more coercive
measures, from sanctions to international military intervention and involves mostly governmental
and intergovernmental actors. In the rebuilding stage, a range of actors, from civil society and NGOs
to governments, work to rebuild societies and address the sources that caused the violence. 14

The range of roles and stages outlined here reflects a recognition of the increasing sophistication of
actors and the challenges to building peace. Schirch takes a somewhat different approach and
examines the universe of tasks needed to build peace. Instead of matching roles to stages, she defines
strategic peacebuilding as a connecting space or nexus for collaboration 15 that requires a variety of
approaches. Common to all approaches are a set of values (e.g., human needs and human rights,
interdependence, partnership), relational skills (e.g., negotiation, problem solving, and active
listening), analytical frameworks (e.g., structural violence), and processes for peacebuilding. She
divides the processes aimed at building peace into four different types: waging conflict nonviolently,
reducing direct violence, building capacity, and transforming relationships. She lists humanitarian
assistance as one of the mechanisms under the approach of reducing direct violence. Schirch, like
the(p.276) others, puts forth a multilayered and multipronged approach that assumes a variety of
actors in intervention. She acknowledges the need to coordinate and concludes that it cannot simply
be one organization or group directing or delegating tasks to others.16 Instead, she espouses modeling
the approaches and skills that peacebuilding actors expect conflict parties to adopt and the need for
accountability among and between peacebuilding actors that reflect the values, skills, and tools that
each brings to the endeavor.
This call for coordination has resonated with others, both in the humanitarian and the peacebuilding
fields. A number of writers have explored issues of coordination and complementarity from a variety
of perspectives. For example, a 2006 issue of International Negotiation focused on coordination in
conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding. Defining coordination broadly to include
information sharing, collaborative analysis and strategizing, resource sharing, formal partnerships,
and other means of synchronizing and/or integrating activities,17 the editors of the issue argue for
effective coordination that not only examines the costs and benefits of coordination within a
particular context but also the more expansive goals that coordination is designed to achieve. In their
view, these expansive goals are sustainable peace and security, and the relevant actors are
intergovernmental, NGO, and international organizations in the conflict resolution, humanitarian,
development, and security sectors. Nevertheless, they suggest coordination for coordinations sake is
not a viable or constructive option.

Ricigliano espouses a more nuanced view, looking at degrees of coordination among actors in
peacebuilding. He examines the notion of effective collaboration, proposing that this depends on both
timing and depth of involvement. In other words, collaboration can happen at multiple stages (e.g.,
problem/needs identification, consultation, policy making/decision making, analysis, planning, and
implementation) and to different degrees, from information sharing (i.e., exchanging ideas or data) to
coordination (e.g., dividing types or location of activity), cooperation (e.g., joint programming or
activities) and integration (i.e., merging projects or organizations). Deeper coordination, he argues, is
easiest when it begins early.18

Within the humanitarian literature, the notion of coordination has also received attention. Based on
several decades of experience and research, Minear summarizes three models of coordination that the
humanitarian community has used: coordination by command, coordination by consensus, and
coordination by default.19 The first has a defined and authoritative leadership structure, the second
operates more by persuasion, whereas in the third model, coordination occurs more informally and
without any kind of clear structure or design. Minear concludes that stronger command structures
facilitate and enhance coordination.

In principle, although coordination is desirable, it has a number of drawbacks. Those who criticize the
push for more coordination among actors, and humanitarian actors in particular, argue it takes too
much money and time to coordinate and that the benefits are not clear. 20 Minear highlights several
additional obstacles. The desire and need for agency visibility and profile can (p.277) inhibit
cooperation, even when it might occur more organically. Furthermore, the rapid response nature of
humanitarian action makes it difficult to implement coordination mechanisms, because the need to
respond quickly tends to trump other priorities. Minear acknowledges the roles of donors and
individual personalities that can either inhibit or foster coordination. 21 In many instances, personality
conflicts can greatly inhibit the ability of agencies to coordinate their activities or share information. 22
Too much integration or coordination also compromises agency independence. If everyone is inside
the system, there is no room for more radical critiques from outside the system. For example, if all
agencies offering humanitarian assistance operate under the same command or coordination
structure, it could stifle criticisms of aid delivery mechanisms. This is especially problematic if and
when governments and foreign policy are involved. The statements of two senior U.S. officials raised
the ire of the American NGO community in the post-9/11 context. In 2001, Colin Powell, then
secretary of State, claimed NGOs were force-multipliers for U.S. foreign policy in Iraq.23 In 2003,
Andrew Natsios, then head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, threatened to pull
funding for NGOs in Iraq that did not acknowledge their U.S. government funding.24 These statements
made many humanitarian and other actors nervous, because it compromised their independence and
impartiality and associated them with controversial U.S. foreign policy objectives. Similarly, close
coordination between human rights actors and peace negotiators may compromise the ability of either
to effectively perform their roles.

This last point raises a significant and underexplored issue: that of how various actors should and can
relate to each other. Ricigliano is one of the few scholar-practitioners who advocates an integrated
approach to peacebuilding and suggests a mechanism for how to achieve this. He makes a compelling
argument for more integration and coordination between sectors of activity in peacebuilding (e.g.,
political, social, structural) and describes how artificial distinctions between them can actually impede
progress toward sustainable peace. These distinctions, he suggests, arise out of the different theories
of action to which agencies ascribe. Specifically, theories of action, while essential, can actually
inhibit an organization from taking a systemic view and achieving real integration with other actors
who have different theories of action.25 Instead, he proposes a network of effective action approach
that prioritizes coordination through sharing information and adopting an iterative approach as part
of the organizations theories of action. He refers to this as a chaordic approach to peacebuilding. 26

Several weaknesses of Riciglianos approach exist in relation to the argument of this chapter. First, he
conflates relief with development actors and does not make any kind of distinction between them and
their different purposes. He refers to both development and relief actors as structural peacebuilders,
leaving no space for purely humanitarian actors. Relatedly, he fails to acknowledge how underlying
principles and values might drive some agencies to pursue a particular course of action. For
humanitarian actors who emphasize neutrality, (p.278) impartiality, and independence, empowering
war-affected populations to better their lives is not a priority; providing life-saving assistance to those
in need takes precedence over other matters. Furthermore, the focus on an integrated approach tends
to overlook the ideas of role clarity and integrity and how some roles may preclude actors from playing
other roles.
Galant and Parlevliet raise the issue of role clarity and integrity in the context of bringing rights-based
approaches into addressing conflict or development programming. They assert:

Different actors can take responsibility for different aspects and roles, provided there is some
communication, collaboration and coordination to ensure that all efforts hang together and that there
is synergy. Consequently, an imperative in a rights-based approach to conflict management is
ensuring role clarity and role integrity. Different actors in an intervention process may play different
roles, and where one actor is called upon to play various roles, his or her primary role should not be
compromised.27

In other words, they, like some of the authors already mentioned, recognize that playing some roles in
conflict situations precludes playing others.

This manifests in different ways depending on an organizations mandate. A central dilemma for
humanitarians, development organizations, and those involved in strategic peacebuilding is the extent
to which advocacy becomes a part of the mandate and activities of an organization. For example, the
founders of Mdcins Sans Frontires (MSF) split from the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) on precisely this issue after the Nigerian-Biafran war in the 1960s, with MSF taking a more
public advocacy stance on the war. Terry summarizes the difference between the two approaches as a
confidentiality issue, pointing out that MSF speaks publicly only when its personnel have been direct
witnesses, and only if it is likely to help the victims to do so. In such [extreme] cases, MSF considers
that aid organizations have only one tool left to them, the freedom of speech, and that it has a
responsibility to denounce the violence and oppression, even at the cost of expulsion. 28 The ICRC
maintained (and still does) that its ability to effectively provide humanitarian aid is dependent on its
principles of impartiality and neutrality. These principles, in turn, compel it to pursue any advocacy
strategy behind the scenes, if it does so at all.29 It is precisely respect for the ICRC and its principles of
impartiality, neutrality, and quiet diplomacy that allow it access to prisoners and populations where
others have none. Indeed, the ICRCs interpretation of humanitarian principles dictates its actions.

The degree to which advocacy contradicts or supports principles of impartiality and neutrality
depends in part on the definition of advocacy. The type of advocacy in which an organization engages
can influence its ability to perform other roles. As Laue points out, advocacy can be in terms of
process, party, or outcome.30 Kraybill adds values advocacy to this list.31 In some situations, it is
possible to maintain impartiality while simultaneously advocating on behalf of a particular process or
values. In other situations, outcome or party advocacy (p.279) is an important, indeed crucial role,
especially in asymmetric conflicts. Asymmetry in conflict implies the need for power balancing and
structural change, a long-term effort that requires public and sometimes forceful advocacy on behalf
of particular options or outcomes. Organizations and individuals need to make choices between these
types of advocacy that are consistent with their mandate and retains their credibility as interveners
and the trust of the conflict parties.
In other situations, trust, developed through long-term relationships, paves the way for a role in
negotiating peace agreements but may compromise the fundamental purpose for the actors original
presence. For example, in one country rebels have approached individuals from a development
organization to play a role in facilitating a peace agreement with the government. Should development
organizations get involved in negotiations between parties, in facilitating contacts? Can individuals,
employed by organizations, separate their individual selves from their corporate identity? This is part
of peacebuilding, but it raises difficult issues for those faced with the choice. The decision to assist
with negotiations or to act as a go-between may compromise the organizations accreditation (i.e., the
permission the government grants to the organization to operate in a country) because of a perceived
partiality toward the rebel group, and thus its ability to fulfill its development mandate. Again,
organizations need to make these choices dependent on their own assessment of their role(s),
mandates, and values. Perhaps the organization could step in as a convener 32 but not assist in the
actual negotiations.

This discussion of third-party roles raises a number of points related to the underlying principles and
values that inform how an agency operates, as well as the dilemmas inherent in coordinating or simply
linking roles in conflict and building peace. Strategic peacebuilding requires multiple actors and
activities and even the integration of the political, social, and structural elements of
peacebuilding.33Nevertheless, for reasons described next, it is important to maintain a role and space
for humanitarian action that remains outside of a peacebuilding paradigm.

The Integration Debate

A central debate within the humanitarian community is the extent to which humanitarian action and
actors should stand alone, apart from the more explicitly political roles of peacebuilding or even
development.34 On the one hand, proponents of integration argue that closer coordination between
the various actors and activities would increase the effectiveness of peacebuilding. On the other, those
who want to guard their independence from the more political goals of peacebuilding resist
integration under the umbrella of peacebuilding. The more common arguments against integration
are intrinsically linked to the traditional humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality: first,
that peacebuilding is a political endeavor, and as such runs counter to the core values of neutrality and
impartiality; and second, that the loss of neutrality and impartiality is related to a decrease in the
physical security of aid workers.

(p.280) The integrationists35 have argued that to make real progress in preventing violence or
reconstructing societies emerging from the ashes of war or intractable conflict, it is necessary to link
humanitarian action with other possible responses. A number of commentators have suggested that
the provision of humanitarian assistance has become a substitute for decisive political action in
response to emerging complex emergencies. Indeed, it is often easier for governments to earmark
money for humanitarian relief rather than work to negotiate or implement peace agreements, despite
the fact that most of the individual country UN consolidated appeals for humanitarian assistance
remain underfunded. Charney maintains it is possible to uphold traditional humanitarian principles
while at the same time working for broader social change. In his words, Integration is about unified
international action in support of reconciliation and social inclusion. 36 The United Nations integrated
missions, first introduced in the Brahimi Report on UN peacekeeping, represent a step toward a
conceptual and practical integration.37 These integrated missions unite all UN activities and actors,
including humanitarian ones, in a given country under one banner. Even outside of integrated
missions, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Under-Secretary General
for Humanitarian Affairs are located under the Secretary Generals office, thus implicitly linking the
humanitarian with the political. Indeed, a number of commentators express skepticism that the
political and humanitarian can be or are separate. For Weiss, The assumption that politics and
humanitarianism can be entirely separated, as if they were parts of two different and self-contained
worlds, is a fiction.38 Instead, he and other integrationists argue that humanitarians must
acknowledge and work within the political world in which they operate.
In contrast, the more purist humanitarians have long resisted any connection to or association with
other actors working in violent conflict zones, from the military to those agencies carrying out
development or peacebuilding programming. Purists emphasize the fundamental principles of
independence, impartiality, and neutrality and rightly suggest that a purely humanitarian response to
alleviate human suffering is enough in and of itself. To taint humanitarian action with a political
agenda, such as building peace or aid conditionality, is to destroy a basic and time-tested response
to violence and war. In the words of commentator David Rieff:

The tragedy of humanitarianism may be that for all its failings and all the limitations of its viewpoint,
it represents what is decent in an indecent world. Its core assumptionssolidarity, a fundamental
sympathy for victims, and an antipathy for oppressors and exploitersare what we are in those rare
moments of grace when we are at our best. Independent humanitarianism does many things well
and some things badly, but the things that it is now being called upon to do, such as helping to
advance the cause of human rights, contributing to stopping wars, and furthering social justice, are
beyond its competence, however much we might wish it otherwise.39

(p.281) For purists, even the linkage to development programming is suspect, for development
implies elements of normalcy and legitimacy.40 In an analysis of Operation Lifeline Sudan and the
relief-to-development continuum, the reviewers argue that development implies a measure of political
and economic stability that is usually not present in complex political emergencies. As a result,
development assistance is neither neutral nor impartial. Humanitarian assistance, in contrast, is
provided by the majority of donors unconditionally. Unlike development aid, relief aid does not
imply international recognition, or legitimation of the government or other authorities controlling
territory.41 For others, the critique of integration is based more on moral reasons. De Torrent is
particularly derisive in his critique of the integration agenda: The implication of the coherence
agenda is that meeting lifesaving needs is too limited in scope, and that the principles of impartiality,
neutrality, and independence that have typically characterized humanitarian action should be set
aside in order to harness aid to the higher goals of peace, security, and development. 42 Essentially he
argues on ethical and moral grounds that humanitarian action is a good in and of itself.

A more recent and practical critique of the integration agenda is related to an increase in targeted
incidents against aid workers. A number of high-profile attacks on the ICRC, the United Nations, and
NGOs have generated statements that the loss of impartiality and neutrality has put aid workers at
risk. The bombings of the UN and ICRC headquarters in Iraq in August and October 2003 and the
murder of seventeen aid workers wearing T-shirts bearing their agencys logo in Sri Lanka in August
2006 tragically illustrate the dangers of aid work. Although the reasons for these attacks remain
unclear, some have pointed out that the United Nations reputation in Iraq was damaged by years of
sanctions.43 In the case of the seventeen Action Contre la Faim national staff killed in eastern Sri
Lanka, all but one were Tamil, suggesting a politically motivated attack.

Evidence on the link between security and the protective value of impartiality and neutrality is mixed.
In a study of fatalities of aid workers between 1996 and 2005, Stoddard, Harmer, and Haver found
that countries with UN integrated missions suffered no higher a rate of fatalities than those without.
The study concludes, It is safe to say that these variables [military intervention, presence of
transnational terrorist groups, presence of armed groups or use of integrated mission approach] are
not important determinants of violence against humanitarian aid workers.44 In other words, political
tainting or the loss of impartiality and neutrality does not seem to explain attacks on aid workers.
Another study of factors contributing to increased physical insecurity for NGOs suggested working
with both sides of a conflict as a risk factor for increased insecurity.45

Despite these findings, experience and anecdotal evidence imply that the actions of one organization
directly impact others. Security management manuals emphasize the transfer effect of one
organizations behavior on others.46 This risk operates at multiple levels. For instance, in one country
a humanitarian convoy injured a civilian in a road accident. Several days later,
another (p.282)convoy was attacked in the same location, ostensibly in retaliation for the previous
accident.47 At an organizational level, in another country a relief and development organization was
working closely with a human rights organization. Militias attacked both organizations because they
did not agree with their agenda of refugee return.48 At an international level, the risk relates more to
foreign policy and relations between states. In Gaza City in August 2006, Palestinian demonstrators
attacked humanitarian offices after the start of the war in Lebanon, protesting the lack of protection
for Lebanese children. The perception of a link between agendas is often more important than the
reality.
The conceptual lack of association, and its concomitant messiness on literal and metaphorical
battlefields, and the desire to remain untainted surfaces in examples on the ground. This is both the
burden and incentive of the humanitarian principles of independence, neutrality, and impartiality. In
studying the perceptions of local communities of the aid enterprise in Afghanistan, researchers
discovered, based on their focus group interviews, that Afghans do not care whether the aid arrives via
the military or humanitarian actors. Rather, they care more that they receive it.49 The Multi-Donor
Evaluation of Assistance to Rwanda observed a similar trend in the refugee camps of eastern Zaire in
1996, where refugees did not distinguish between Red Cross and other NGOs or humanitarian
actors.50Given this reality, are we fooling ourselves into thinking that it actually matters? Perceptions
on the ground are important and can dramatically influence the levels of safety and security an
organization enjoys. An effective approach to security management for humanitarians (and
peacebuilders) takes this into account and works to educate local populations about their purpose,
values, and goals.
At a minimum, humanitarian aid should do no harm, meaning that humanitarian action should avoid
contributing to or exacerbating conflict.51 Avoiding contributing to the divisions and fault lines that
characterize violent conflict is a more limited and achievable task for humanitarians than contributing
to the goals of building peace. Terry reaches a similar conclusion:

Humanitarian actors should ensure that the essential taskssuch as alleviating life-threatening
sufferingare undertaken with minimal harm before considering expanding humanitarian action
beyond them. If aid organizations pursue conflict resolution and peace-building activities, they are
likely not only to increase the negative consequences of humanitarian action, but to further exonerate
states of their responsibilities in these realms.52

A Separate Space for Humanitarian Action

The central argument of this chapter is that humanitarian assistance should not be incorporated into
the larger peacebuilding agenda. The foregoing discussion on peacebuilding roles and integration has
a number of implications. (p.283) In terms of relationships between peacebuilding roles, interveners
in conflict need to think consequentially about their roles. This manifests in several ways. First, it is
important to look at both formal and informal mechanisms of coordination or, in the words of
Lederach, weaving the web of strategic peacebuilding. Perhaps it is more productive to reframe the
question and ask not whether humanitarian action should be linked with broader efforts but to
examine the ways in which it is already linked. This necessitates a look at the informal mechanisms of
networking as opposed to the more formal and institutionalized mechanisms of coordination. These
informal mechanisms of coordination are often more effective, efficient, and important. Much of the
business and creative thinking of conferences, negotiating peace agreements, or providing life-
saving assistance happens over the dinner table or at local watering holes and not in formal meetings.
Although the downside of informal mechanisms is that coordination then depends on who you know
versus what you do, it is incumbent on interveners to expand the range of actors, in particular to
include local networks, and to think expansively about what constitutes peacebuilding intervention.
Peacebuilding, and humanitarian action, need to better use local capacity, 53 and the peacebuilding
field needs to think more creatively about immediate responses to ongoing violence.
In reality, conflict resolvers and/or those involved in facilitating or mediating peace agreements or
ceasefires at a local, national, or international level, with their emphasis on impartiality, have much in
common with humanitarians espousing neutrality. Both shoulder the burden of not being seen as
favoring one side or the other. Being seen as talking too long with one side or providing more
assistance to one side, regardless of the reality of the situation, can have deleterious effects and lead to
accusations of partiality. Each works for and claims allegiance to a larger goal (e.g., providing
assistance to a suffering population or crafting a ceasefire that stops the violence). In other words, the
implications and burdens of impartiality within the field of conflict resolution/transformation are
analogous to those of neutrality for humanitarian action. Both require associating with, talking to, and
negotiating with and between all sides, a fact that evokes the ire of advocates (talking to the bad
guys). Both involve walking a tightrope between both sides and other members of the web of
international actors intervening in various ways in conflict. This highlights the import of thinking
proactively, consequentially, and ethically about the inherent limitations of roles. In other words,
organizations need to find examples of the consequences of particular actions and be clear about their
own niche, capacity, and mandates.

Third, guarding space for humanitarians means narrowing the definitions of what constitutes
humanitarian action and mediation.54 Many of the assumptions of humanitarian assistance, such as
the short-term nature of assistance as an intervention, actually end up going against some of the core
values of strategic peacebuilding, such as empowerment, building the platform for constructive
change,55 and the idea of longer term interventions. It also defuses the moral power of humanitarian
action: that we provide relief solely to assist those who are in need of assistance. Relief/humanitarian
assistance is not supposed (p.284) to address structural injustice, nor is it designed to empower
people to change their situations. It is a small bandage, and sometimes these are necessary. If we want
to be seen as responding to violence, we need to allow purist humanitarian actors and mediators the
conceptual and practical space to do their work. Perhaps there is room for ambiguity in many
peacebuilding roles, but certain roles (e.g., humanitarian action and mediators) must remain separate
to protect the integrity of the role and the safety of the actors.
This leads to the second element of the argument, that of the extent to which humanitarian assistance
should be incorporated into the peacebuilding agenda. The dilemma is that the arguments of both
purists and integrationists have merit. On one hand, assuming Laue is correct in asserting that all
intervention alters the power balance, all humanitarian assistance is political. 56 On the other hand, the
underlying values of humanitarian assistance do have intrinsic value and should not be sacrificed for
other values. Integrationists go too far in incorporating humanitarian assistance into broader agendas
of building peace, but purists need to acknowledge how humanitarian assistance is manipulated for
political gain. This means humanitarian assistance should avoid contributing to conflict but should
not aim to build peace.

Human rights advocates would not suggest throwing away the convention against torture or the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Optional Protocols simply because some individuals and
states disregard their obligations under these conventions. Nor would police officers or ordinary
citizens advocate removing laws declaring murder a crime simply because not everyone abides by
them. By the same token, we should not discard the value of humanitarian assistance as a moral and
necessary response to human suffering because it does not (and should not) necessarily contribute to
a long-term agenda of building peace. Instead, we need to guard the space for humanitarian actors to
do their work and search outside the box for ways of building peace.

Notes
References

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Notes:
(1) . John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided

Societies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1997) , John Paul Lederach, The Little
Book of Conflict Transformation, The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding (Intercourse, Pa.:

Good Books, 2003), John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building

Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) .

(2) . ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention

and State Sovereignty (Ottawa, ON: IDRC and DFAIT, 2001) .

(3) . For example, according to various IRIN reports (http://www.irinnews.org), in January 2007, a
group of NGO and UN staff and African Mission in Sudan peacekeepers were harassed at a social
gathering. Sudanese police arrested and subsequently beat those in detention. In addition, more than
400 aid workers were evacuated from Sudan in December 2006. At least twelve aid workers were
killed in Darfur alone between May and December 2006.

(4) . Academy of Dispute Resolution, Model Standards of Mediator Conduct, 1994 .

(5) . Academy of Family Mediators, Standards of Practice for Family and Divorce Mediation, 1998

. Impartiality is defined as freedom from favoritism or bias, either in word or action,

while neutrality refers to the relationship that the mediator has with the disputing parties (1). The
more recent (September 2005) Model Standards of Conduct for Mediators, adopted by the
Association for Conflict Resolution, the American Bar Association, and the American Arbitration
Association, includes impartiality in its standards but makes no mention of neutrality.

(6) . James Laue and Gerald Cormick, The Ethics of Intervention in Community Disputes, in The
Ethics of Social Intervention, ed. Gordon Bermant, Herbert C. Kelman, and Donald P. Warwick

(Washington, D.C.: Hemisphere, 1978) .

(7) . James Laue, The Emergence and Institutionalization of Third Party Roles in Conflict,
in Conflict Management and Problem-Solving: Interpersonal to International Applications, ed.
Dennis J. D. Sandole and Ingrid Sandole-Staroste (New York: New York University Press, 1987), p. 20

(8) . Ibid.

(9) . Paul Wehr and John Paul Lederach, Mediating Conflict in Central America, Journal of Peace

Research 28, no. 1 (1991) .

(10) . Christopher Mitchell, The Process and Stages of Mediation: Two Sudanese Cases, in Making
War and Waging Peace: Foreign Intervention in Africa, ed. David R. Smock (Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Institute of Peace Press, 1993) .

(11) . William L. Ury, The Third Side: How We Fight and How We Can Stop (New York: Penguin,

2000), p. 7 .

(12) . Ibid.

(13) . Ronald J. Fisher and Loraleigh Keashly, The Potential Complementarity of Mediation and
Consultation within a Contingency Model of Third Party Intervention, Journal of Peace Research 28,

no. 1 (1991) .

(14) . ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect.

(15) . Lisa Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding, The Little Books of Justice and

Peacebuilding (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 2004), p. 11 .

(16) . Ibid., p. 83 .

(17) . Susan Allen Nan and Andrea Strimling, Coordination in Conflict Prevention, Conflict

Resolution and Peacebuilding, International Negotiation 11, no. 1 (2006): 2 .

(18) . Robert Ricigliano, Collaboration (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Alliance for
Peacebuilding, Shawnee on Delaware, Pa, October 2224, 2006).

(19) . Larry Minear, The Humanitarian Enterprise: Dilemmas and Discoveries (Bloomfield, Conn.:

Kumarian Press, 2002) .

(20) . Nicholas Stockton, Humanitarianism Bound: Coherence and Catastrophe in the Congo, 1998

2002, unpublished study for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2003 .
(21) . Minear, The Humanitarian Enterprise, chapter 2 .

(22) . In a study of humanitarian action in the West Bank and Gaza, personalities played a role in the
degree to which various UN agencies coordinated their approaches. See Larissa Fast, Aid in a
Pressure Cooker: Humanitarian Action in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Medford, Mass.:

Feinstein International Center, 2006) .

(23) . Colin Powell, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell Remarks to the National Foreign Policy
Conference for Leaders of Non-Governmental Organizations, October 26, 2001, available

athttp://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/powell_brief31.htm .

(24) . Andrew Natsios, Remarks at the InterAction Forum, Closing Plenary Session, May 21, 2003,

available at http://www.interaction.org/forum2003/panels.html .

(25) . Robert Ricigliano, Networks of Effective Action: Implementing an Integrated Approach to

Peacebuilding, Security Dialogue 34, no. 4 (2003): 449 .

(26) . Ibid.

(27) . Ghalib Galant and Michelle Parlevliet, Using Rights to Address ConflictA Valuable Synergy,
inReinventing Development? Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory into Practice, ed.

Paul Gready and Jonathan Ensor (London: Zed Books, 2006), p. 117 (italics in original) .

(28) . Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 21 .

(29) . For more on the ICRC principles, see Denise Plattner, ICRC Neutrality and Neutrality in

Humanitarian Assistance, International Review of the Red Cross, no. 311 (1996) .

(30) . Laue, The Emergence and Institutionalization of Third Party Roles in Conflict.

(31) . Ronald Kraybill, The Illusion of Neutrality, Track Two (November 1992) .

(32) . Mitchell, The Process and Stages of Mediation.

(33) . Ricigliano, Networks of Effective Action.

(34) . In this chapter, I refer to this as integration or the coherence agenda. The literature on
humanitarian action also addresses this question in discussions on coordination.
(35) . For more discussion on the purist versus integrationist debate described in this section, see
Antonio Donini, Issues Note (paper presented at The Future of Humanitarian Action: Implications
of Iraq and Other Recent Crises, brainstorming workshop, Boston, October 9, 2003). Others refer to
Dunantists (after Henry Dunant, whose work on the battlefields of Solferino led to the founding of
the ICRC) or classicists on one hand, and Wilsonians (who acknowledge the political dimension
and linkages or convergence between foreign policy and humanitarian objectives) or political
humanitarians on the other. The solidarists, or those who choose partiality to one side or to the
poor and oppressed and tend to reject both impartiality and neutrality, are yet another group in the
debate. The solidarists are most often faith-based agencies. See also Thomas G. Weiss, Principles,

Politics, and Humanitarian Action, Ethics and International Affairs 13 (1999) , andMinear, The

Humanitarian Enterprise, chapter 5 .

(36) . Joel R. Charney, Upholding Humanitarian Principles in an Effective Integrated

Response,Ethics and International Affairs 18, no. 2 (2004): 15 .

(37) . Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, Report of the Panel on United Nations

Peacekeeping Operations (New York: United Nations, 2000) . Espen Barth Eide et al., Report
on Integrated Missions: Practical Perspectives and Recommendations (New York: UN Executive

Committee on Humanitarian Affairs, 2005) .

(38) . Weiss, Principles, Politics, and Humanitarian Action, p. 12 .

(39) . David Rieff, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis (New York: Simon & Shuster,

2002), p. 334 .

(40) . Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and

Security(London: Zed Books, 2001) , Joanna Macrae, Purity or Political Engagement?: Issues in
Food and Health Security Interventions in Complex Political Emergencies, Journal of Humanitarian

Assistance (1998), available at http://www.jha.ac/articles/a037.htm .

(41) . Joanna Macrae et al., Conflict, the Continuum and Chronic Emergencies: A Critical Analysis of
the Scope for Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Planning in Sudan (London: Overseas

Development Administration, 1996), p. 2 .

(42) . Nicolas de Torrent, Humanitarianism Sacrificed: Integrations False Promise, Ethics and

International Affairs 18, no. 2 (2004): 3 .

(43) . Independent Panel, Report of the Independent Panel on the Safety and Security of UN

Personnel in Iraq (New York: United Nations, 2003) , Paul Reynolds, Why the UN Is a

Target,BBC News, August 19, 2003 .

(44) . Abby Stoddard, Adele Harmer, and Katherine Haver, Providing Aid in Insecure Environments:

Trends in Policy and Operations, HPG Report 23 (London: ODI, 2006), p. 59 .

(45) . Larissa A. Fast, Characteristics, Context, and Risk: NGO Insecurity in Conflict

Zones, Disasters31, no. 2 (2007) , Larissa A. Fast, Context Matters: Identifying Micro- and
Macro-Level Factors Contributing to NGO Insecurity (Ph.D. dissertation, George Mason University,

2002) .

(46) . Koenraad Van Brabant, Operational Security Management in Violent Environments, Good

Practice Review 8 (London: Humanitarian Practice Network, 2000) .

(47) . Anonymous personal interview with author, fall 2000.

(48) . Anonymous personal interview with author, July 2006.

(49) . See the Afghanistan Case Study in Antonio Donini et al., Mapping the Security Environment:
Understanding the Perceptions of Local Communities, Peace Support Operations, and Assistance

Agencies (Medford, Mass.: Feinstein International Famine Center, Tufts University, June 2005) .

(50) . John Borton, Emery Brusset, and Alistair Hallam, Humanitarian Aid and Effects, Study 3
(Copenhagen: Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, 1996)

(51) . Mary B. Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support PeaceOr War (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne

Rienner, 1999) .

(52) . Terry, Condemned to Repeat, p. 245 .

(53) . Others in both the peacebuilding and humanitarian literatures have made similar
recommendations. See, for example, Gil Loescher, Threatened Are the Peacemakers, ND
Magazine(2005), Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in

Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 1997) , John Paul Lederach and Janice Moomaw Jenner, eds., A
Handbook of International Peacebuilding: Into the Eye of the Storm (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,

2002) , and Schirch, The Little Book of Strategic Peacebuilding .

(54) . Elsewhere I have argued for defining conflict resolution more narrowly, using impartiality and
inclusiveness as the two criteria for conflict resolution interventions. See Larissa A. Fast, Frayed

Edges: Exploring the Boundaries of Conflict Resolution, Peace and Change 27, no. 4 (2002) .

(55) . Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation .

(56) . Laue, The Emergence and Institutionalization of Third Party Roles in Conflict.

Turning from Hatred to Community Friendship

Forgiveness Education as a Resource for Strategic Peacebuilding in Postaccord Belfast

Robert D. Enright
Jeanette Knutson Enright
Anthony C. Holter
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords

Forgiveness education should have a role in long-term strategies for peacebuilding. The authors argue
that forgiveness has the power to break cycles of sectarian violence and makes possible what Aristotle
termed civic friendship. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the psychological effects of anger among
children are high enough to warrant clinical intervention. The authors find that forgiveness education
corresponds to decreases in anger, depression, and anxiety in children. They offer examples of
effective forgiveness education curricula for teachers.

Keywords: forgiveness education, forgiveness, anger, trauma healing, Northern Ireland, strategic
peacebuilding, sectarian violence, Aristotle, children and war

Our contribution to strategic peacebuilding is the concept of civic friendship through forgiveness.
Ours is a decidedly long-term strategy for peace in which educational institutions are challenged to
rethink their social curricula to make room for a new development: forgiveness education. The latter
is a strategy for reducing anger and abiding resentment in children to make room for the possibility of
friendship across the divide of groups that have been torn apart by violence and war. Because
forgiveness education takes much time to sink deeply into childrens minds and hearts, our strategy
spans the early elementary school years through the end of high school, with increasingly
developmental sophistication regarding what forgiveness is and how to achieve it. Only in the later
years of schooling are forgiveness and friendship linked toward groups that have been in conflict with
the students own group.

Unless community members, in the unfortunate situation of conflict and war, understand and
deliberately cultivate forgiveness, they are unlikely to foster friendship across divided communities.
Unless community members cultivate friendship, we predict that any given community beset by
decades or centuries of violence will not recover well in a psychological sense, despite the best efforts
of lawmakers and economic reformers. Peace, in other words, centers at least in part within people
(not only without) and in the structures of society. This is not to invalidate efforts at political and
societal reform; it is only meant as a challenge. Without the psychological change within people, the
goal of peace in any permanent way will be harder to realize.
(p.292) We are not alone in our call for internal, psychological transformation as a way of
strategically confronting societal conflict. Roger Peterson makes the compelling case that hatred and
resentment in Eastern Europe are barriers to a lasting peace in that region.1 As we will see, forgiveness
is one scientifically supported antidote to resentment. In his analysis of ethnic conflicts, Kaufman
makes the case that hatred is one of the major variables that continues to fuel conflict even when
economic and political barriers begin to fall.2 Our contribution, beyond these important works, is to
point to actual school curricula for transforming hatred and resentment toward friendship.
Our own focus for the past six years has been on children within Belfast, Northern Ireland, a
community that has experienced the Troubles and has been working its way to peace in a postaccord
society following the Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998. Much needs to be accomplished in the
impoverished areas that still have a strong paramilitary presence. Might one necessary but not
sufficient accomplishment be the change of heart that must take place within people so that their
home/community is in better order? Is it possible to resurrect the ancient notion of friendship, with
the vision that those who now see factions might, in a couple of generations, begin to see friendship as
a community goal? Is it possible to begin with children and educate them in the value of forgiveness
and friendship so that, as adults, they will be deeper forgivers and friendship seekers than might have
been the case without that education?

First we offer a brief history of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and some of the peace efforts in that
region. This is followed by a sketch of the current anger within and toward children and youth in
Belfast. After all, if the children are currently unaffected by the Troubles of recent decades, then why
bother with the considerable effort that will be needed to establish curricula that focus on forgiveness
and friendship? After this brief discussion, we offer an exposition on friendship based on Aristotles
analysis. We then offer scientific evidence from psychology that a lack of friendship, in the form of
abiding anger and hatred, has deleterious effects. We then turn to a solution to anger: forgiveness.
After briefly defining forgiveness, we examine its effectiveness in cleaning up the human heart. This is
followed by a description of forgiveness education within Belfast in particular because we contend that
starting with the children is the best chance of developing communities that cultivate friendship. In
the penultimate section, we address skeptical views of forgiveness and its place in strategic
peacebuilding. We end the chapter with a challenge to those involved in the processes of strategic
peacebuilding.

A Brief History of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Subsequent Peace Efforts
The roots of the contemporary conflict in Northern Ireland can be traced back to the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, a period referred to as the Ulster Plantation, when English citizens were given
parcels of land in the north of Ireland that had been previously owned and farmed by Irish
citizens.3The (p.293) ensuing discord between these groups was distinguished as cultural,
territorial, as well as religious and was exacerbated over the next several decades through military
campaigns (such as the Battle of the Boyne in 1690) and legislative actions (such as the Act of Union
in 1801), which increased English interest and governance in Ireland.4
Significant armed and legislative actions continued to shape the landscape of Ireland throughout the
twentieth century. One of the most noteworthy armed conflicts occurred when local groups of Irish
citizens rebelled against the English in what is known as the 1916 Easter Rising. This armed attack
against the English, and the subsequent execution of the Irish leaders of the insurrection, precipitated
the Government of Ireland Act of 1920.5 The act effectively created two separate governments: one in
the Irish Free State and another in Northern Ireland. The Irish Free State later seceded from the
British Commonwealth and became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.
Territorial, political, and religious divisions escalated along with increased inequality in Northern
Ireland over the next half-century. Individuals, groups, and neighborhoods were segregated along
distinct political and religious divisions: Nationalists (typically Catholic, desiring a unified Ireland)
and Unionists (typically Protestant, desiring a maintained union with England). During the mid-
twentieth century, many Catholic Nationalists in Northern Ireland were inspired by the global civil
rights movement and organized under the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to demand
equality. Organized protests were met with hostility that fueled action and retaliation by paramilitary
groups throughout the region, such as car bombings, murders, kidnappings, and so on, and frequent
clashes with the British military and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Violence directly connected with
paramilitary activity claimed the lives of nearly 2,500 people between 1969 and 1979 alone. This
period of intergroup and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland that began in the 1960s and continued
through the late 1990s is colloquially referred to as the Troubles.

Great strides have been made in the past decade to diffuse intergroup violence of the Troubles and
promote peace. The ratification of the agreement in April 1998 was a historic event that began the
process of governmental reform, paramilitary decommissioning, and several other key social and
education changes in Northern Ireland.6 Although the success of a power-sharing government was
short liveddirect rule from England was reinstated in 2002preparations are under way to reinstate
a local, home-rule government in Northern Ireland.7 It should also be noted that significant progress
has been made with regard to paramilitary decommissioning and disarmament. In July 2005, the
Irish Republican Army called for its members to disarm and cease violent activity, and this has been
validated by a recent report of the monitoring commission.8 Despite these positive steps forward
about ten years after the agreement, there remains a significant and enduring level of violence
within Belfast and other communities throughout Northern Ireland.9

Certain sections of Belfast are demarked by flags, painted curbs, political murals, and politically
charged parades that effectively divide entire neighborhoods by political affiliation, religious and
ethnic identity, and paramilitary (p.294) association.10 Some of the more notorious interface areas
are physically divided by a large concrete and steel peace wall. The persistence of sectarian and
community violence continues to have deleterious outcomes for individual members of these
communities, especially young children.11 Therefore, it is of utmost importance that children growing
up in this ongoing conflict have access to peace education and a voice in peacemaking processes. 12
Belfasts Children Today: Are They Angry?
Elsewhere, we have surveyed the extent of anger that is present in six- to seven-year-old children in
state and Catholic schools within what the locals call the interface areas of Belfast. 13 The interface
areas are characterized by Catholic and Protestant housing in close proximity, with occasional
sectarian violence erupting within the community. Approximately ninety students representing Irish
Catholic and British Protestant culture were administered a well-validated anger inventory.

The results were compared with those from Milwaukee, Wisconsins central city, where ethnic
segregation and violence are also common, and from Madison, Wisconsin, where such segregation
and violence are not as prevalent. The results showed that the children in Belfast and Milwaukee were
statistically equivalent in terms of anger, and both were significantly higher than the children in
Madison. In fact, the average scores in Belfast and Milwaukee were at or near the clinical level of
anger, suggesting that the average six- to seven-year-old in those communities is in need of
professional help for levels of anger.

We have abundant observations from our (to date) five years of work within Belfasts schools. Here
are only eight examples (of many more that we have) to illustrate that the interface areas of Belfast are
in need of intervention to heal the hearts of the children. Some of the examples show the childrens
anger, whereas others show anger toward them. We can only surmise the anger that may be
developing in the children who are targets of others anger. First, in one school of 212 students in
which we work, 100 of them are being treated by medical and psychological professionals outside of
the school for sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression. Second, a prominent paramilitary leader ordered
that his adolescent son be knee-capped (crippling by gunshot to the knees at close range). Third, for
many months, four-year-old girls were terrorized on their way to school by adults throwing rocks and
bags full of urine at them, trying to prevent them from going to a school in which different beliefs from
their own were taught and learned. Fourth, a teenage boy was crucified to a block of wood by other
youths in what was reported as a sectarian act. Fifth, another teenage boy was murdered by other
adolescents wielding baseball bats. Once he was down, they stomped on his head. This, too, was
identified by police as a sectarian act. Sixth, a group of courageous students from our own university
visited a school to help paint the interior walls. Two weeks after the students finished the rewarding
but exhausting job, vandals burned the gymnasium of that school in what police called a sectarian act.
Seven, three cars were (p.295) fire-bombed in the school parking lot during school hours at another
school; this was also reported by police as a sectarian act. Finally, when we commented to one
principal about the wonderfully disciplined behavior of the children in the school, she humbly
remarked, Oh, yes, they are behaving well for now, but after school, too many of them will be
standing on the street corner throwing rocks at the bus from the other school nearby.
Social science, then, with the best psychometric measures available, shows the children to be
excessively angry. Taking time to be a part of school lifemeeting with teachers and principals, and
observing children throughout the school dayshows us that some children are perpetrators of
violence and the victims of it. The idea of friendship with the other side is so distant from many
childrens minds as to make our proposed project laughable. Yet anger and violence are no laughing
matters, nor is our scientific evidence on the efficacy of forgiveness education to reduce anger and
restore emotional well-being. Thus, we proceed to an exposition of the life-saving concept of
friendship and the meaning of that term. We then turn to a discussion of anger and its diminution
through forgiveness education, as a way of eventually fostering friendship.

An Aristotelian Understanding of Friendship and Its Importance

Civic friendship within communities has been the focus of some scholars work.14 Yet the
appropriation of this Aristotelian concept for direct intervention within communities is rare. This is
unfortunate for at least two reasons: (1) Aristotle remains one of the most popular philosophers in the
West, and (2) he held up friendship as the primary quality of a good community, or the City.

In two of his central works, the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle described two kinds of
friendship, one on the individual level and the other on the civic level, a collection of partnerships of
partnerships. Either kind of friendship is so important that they are said to transcend justice. To say
that anything transcends justice is an attention grabber primarily because Aristotles mentor, Plato,
held justice to be the paragon virtue. Yet for Aristotle, friendship is a form of love, the highest form of
love. He refers to friendship on one hand as a virtue because it contains an individuals inclination and
practice of love. On the other hand, he clarifies that friendship may not be an actual virtue but
insteadinvolves virtue, presumably because, unlike true virtues, which can be practiced by themselves
when others are practicing vice, friendship requires goodness between two or more people.

Aristotle distinguished three kinds of friendshipthose of mutual pleasure, utility, and moral
goodness. Only the friendship of good will concerns us here because it is the highest form of
friendship centered on mutual love and unconditionality (loving the other as an end and not for the
fleeting conditions of pleasure or utility). Civic friendship, as we understand Aristotle, is a deliberate
fostering of good will toward others as an end in and of itself. It involves the cultivation of support and
the development of bonds. It is the deliberate (p.296) avoidance of factions because all citizens are
capable of offering and receiving love and respect.
Civic friendship is more difficult to understand than individual friendship, as it is considered by some
to be more watery.15 Civic friendship includes more people, in more complex relations than
individual relationships, yet each shares important similarities. Both concern moral good, which
implies a mutual caring (a return of affection, in Aristotles words) between and among people. Both
imply a certain kind of equality between and among people, not in an arithmetic sense (all get three
apples) but in a moral sense. All people are part of the moral good, all can cultivate and offer respect,
and all are concerned about the development of virtue in the other. To enter into civic friendship is to
enter into a world in which it is necessary that the citizens grow in virtue.

For Aristotle, a city cannot be a good community unless its citizens are good. If the people of a
community do not develop friendship, then it is unlikely that the community will actually be a city in
the deepest sense of that word. A collection of people living together is not a city, is not a healthy
community, simply because the citizens tolerate each other, have good sanitation facilities, or
experience a reasonable level of economic justice. To tolerate is not necessarily to love the other; to
have friendship, as we have seen, by definition, is to love the other through exercising moral virtue.
Tolerance alone is not a positive moral response but the absence of negative thoughts and actions.
Friendship, on the other hand, provides those positive thoughts and actions.

The Aristotelian challenge, that we are to deliberately foster friendship, by mutually loving one
another, is a high target indeed. Yet it is perfectly consonant with his definition of virtue. For Aristotle,
virtue is the disposition of the mind that is inclined to do good, lying in a mean relative to us, such
that a person of wisdom would say, yes, that truly is excellence and should be pursued. 16 In other
words, having a good end point helps us take accurate aim at the target, even if we are not sufficiently
developed at present to reach the full excellence of that end point. Thus, the end point of a good
community is friendship among the people, even if the attainment of true and enduring friendship is
difficult at present. At least, to be inclined to seek and practice that friendship is a good goal.

A word on Aristotles metaphysics is in order. He believed, as we know, in the underlying essence of

the moral virtues. The virtues are objective not subjective, absolute not relative, and universal not
situation- or culture-specific. He, of course, is entirely correct here.17 Has there ever been a society
that valued sloth over industriousness, cruelty over compassion, or injustice over justice? Surely
certain cultures express industriousness, compassion, and justice differently and may even have
differing customs or, in some cases, laws to ensure the proper expression of certain virtues, but their
essence is unchanged in that communities everywhere prefer industry, compassion, and justice. This
is not a trivial point. If virtues are objective, absolute, and universal, then their applicability in various
parts of the world is more likely and more reasonable than we may think. It is not a crime to introduce
certain virtues such as friendship or forgiveness to war-torn lands in distant places as long as
the(p.297) peacemakers are sensitively aware of the local, cultural, and religious nuances of the
particular virtues of the community. It would seem that the introduction of the concepts of friendship
and forgiveness would be compatible with both the British Protestant and the Irish Catholic world-
views in Belfast. They may have their nuanced differences, but the basic ideas of these social concepts
would surely be compatible with their long-standing faith traditions.
We are aware of the dangers of imposing particular views of the virtues on cultures that do not share
those particular views. Yet education in virtues need not involve something rigidly
impositional.18Rather, it is about creating the fund of concepts or social capital that is needed for
peace. This, by the way, is a major reason we advocate for local intervention for virtues development
rather than what some might call expert intervention by people from other lands. We have
confidence that the introduction of virtues education, with an emphasis on forgiveness, is a moral
good because all peoples in all lands share the essence of friendship and forgiveness and the proper
expression of these. Theexpression of them differs across world communities. As we leave the student
instruction to the local teachers, we avoid a variety of culturally imposed errors. Now that we have a
general understanding of the concept of friendship, let us turn to the next section, a discussion of
anger and its psychological effects.

Anger and Its Effects

For Aristotle, virtues exist in a golden mean between two extremes.19 For example, courage exists
between the extremes of cowardice and reckless bravado. Friendship, similarly, exists between the
extremes of a cloying dependence and separation of people by hatred and anger. The latter extreme is
our focus here.

Even anger itself can be seen as existing within a mean of complete sanguinity to rage. Angers mean,
or a short-lived exasperation at the imperfections of the world that can energize a person and motivate
a quest for justice, is not our concern here. Instead, the extreme of deep and long-lasting anger is our
concern, the kind that can be implicated in psychopathology, destroyed relationships, and war and
violence on the social level. In other words, our focus is on toxic anger, the kind that can take root in
conditions of societal injustice and contribute back to even more injustice. We see this in Belfast,
where the children learn the lessons of prejudice and hatred at early ages, with a consequence of
continued violence within the interface areas of the city.

Anger and Children

A thorough examination of anger in children and youth is beyond the scope of this chapter. Our intent
is modest: to show how what we call toxic anger is related to a host of undesirable characteristics. We
have chosen one well-established psychiatric disorder, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), to
discuss. ODD is a diagnostic category of the American Psychiatric Association (p.298) that is
associated with the following anger-related symptoms: the child or youth often loses temper, argues
frequently with adults, frequently defies adult authority, annoys others, blames others for what is
ones own fault, and is often spiteful, angry, and resentful. A child must exhibit at least four such
symptoms over a six-month period to be diagnosed with ODD.
Research on children and youth who have been diagnosed with ODD shows that the children,
compared with those without the diagnosis, have more suicide attempts, 20 greater adjustment
problems at home and in school, higher rates of depression and anxiety, and relationships
characterized by high conflict,21 and are at greater risk for drug use in adolescence.22 A recent study of
young adult drivers in the United States showed that those with a pattern of aggressive driving, which
can put the driver and innocent victims at risk for injury or death, had a higher prevalence of ODD
than those who were not aggressive drivers.23 It should be noted that aggressive driving, what the
locals in Belfast call joy riding, is a persistent problem on the streets in that city late at night.

If left untreated, ODD can lead to conduct disorder, perhaps the most serious of the childhood
disorders because of its symptoms of aggression and violence.24 Clinicians observe that ODD can
emerge as early as ages three or four and should be treated by early elementary school. If left
undiagnosed or untreated, the anger and opposition can become exceptionally difficult to reverse by
adolescence and adulthood.25 Our intent is not to suggest that most problems in Belfast are centered
on ODD or that ODD is the major pressing problem in need of amelioration. Instead, we have chosen
only one of several childhood disorders associated with excessive anger to show its severe and
disruptive consequences.26
Countering Toxic Anger with Forgiveness Therapy and Education
Whenever we are faced with an extreme expression of a virtue, such as cowardice rather than courage,
it would be ideal if there were a corrective to the extreme position. This is where psychology can come
into play. Psychotherapists have developed a number of programs to counter a variety of excesses,
whether it be excessive worry, drinking, or anger. We discuss forgiveness therapy and education as an
antidote to toxic anger and as a contribution to strategic peacebuilding on the social level. Prior to that
discussion, let us try to be clear on our meaning of the term forgiveness.

What Forgiveness Is and Is Not

Forgiveness as a human action toward another who was unjust has ancient origins. The oldest
preserved account of one person forgiving another is in the Book of Genesis (chapters 3745) in the
Hebrew Bible. In that account, Joseph was horribly mistreated by his jealous brother and ten half-
brothers. When he rose to political influence in Egypt, all of his half-brothers, not
knowing (p.299)him, requested help with famine relief. After showing considerable anger and
ambivalence toward them, he eventually wept, hugged them, and unconditionally forgave them. His
forgiveness and subsequent generosity helped found the Hebrew nation. His one act of forgiveness is a
striking example of how such mercy can improve the conditions of an entire social group.
A somewhat similar story of forgiveness, that of the prodigal son, occurs in the New Testament (Luke
15:1132). An ungrateful son asked prematurely for his inheritance from his wealthy father. After
squandering the gift on reckless living in a foreign land, he returned repentantly to his father. Before
the son could ask for forgiveness, the father ran to him, embraced him, and forgave him. As in the
Hebrew story, the forgiveness was loving and unconditional, with the forgiver not asking for an
apology or any other recompense prior to forgiving. Somewhat similar stories can be found in Islamic
and Buddhist traditions.27

Even though the origins of the concept of forgiveness are within ancient religious traditions, that
concept and its applications need not follow one particular religious tradition, or any religion for that
matter. Are not the origins of justice within ancient religious traditions? Yet people practice justice as
they wish, some within religious contexts, others within entirely secular contexts. In our experience,
forgiveness is the same. People are free to choose the world-views that best support a forgiving
response. In fact, the exploration and study of forgiveness within the academy has taken a decidedly
academic turn lately, as we will see shortly.

In modern philosophy, expositions on person-to-person forgiving are consistent with the ancient
conceptions. In Joanna Norths well-known essay, she presents three conditions during forgiveness:
(1) the offender acted unjustly, (2) the forgiver reduces negative reactions such as resentment, and (3)
the forgiver institutes or restores goodness, such as compassion, benevolence, and love (agape),
toward the offender.28 Joanna North and Margaret Holmgren emphasize the unconditional nature of
forgiving. While North emphasized the principle of moral love underlying a response of forgiving,
Holmgren emphasized respect.29

The gist of forgiving is that it is a response of mercy toward someone who acted unfairly. The mercy
takes two forms, the reduction or cessation of negative responses and the deliberate (willed) offering
of a principled moral stance that might be love and respect.

To forgive is not the same as to condone or excuse. In forgiveness, the one offering mercy knows that
the other acted unfairly. In excusing, the one so doing finds a mitigating circumstance to conclude that
the act, in fact, was not unfair. If James steals Melissas car and she eventually realizes that he did so
to rush a bleeding child to the hospital, her evaluation of his behavior is likely to change. She would
not view James as having done anything that requires forgiveness. Thus, to excuse or condone is not
to offer mercy to the other; forgiveness is the deliberate act of offering mercy in the face of the other
persons injustice.

To forgive is not the same as to forget. We realize that the expression forgive and forget is pervasive,
but we have never seen one instance in which someone who forgives develops a sort of moral amnesia.
When people forgive, (p.300) they seem to remember in new ways. Thus, if people are fearful of
forgiveness lest they become vulnerable to the others tricks once again, they should realize that
forgetting is not an inherent aspect of forgiveness.
To forgive is not the same as to reconcile. Forgiveness is a virtue that is developed and expressed
through the will of one person toward another or others. Reconciliation is an interaction between two
or more people. James may want to reconcile with Melissa, but it is not entirely within his will.
Melissa must respond to his gestures of forgiveness and learn to trust him, and both must come
together in good will if reconciliation is to be realized. Thus, forgiveness is one persons act of mercy
toward another, whereas reconciliation requires two or more parties for completion.

To forgive does not mean to ignore justice. A grave mistake is to think of forgiveness and justice as
opposed to each other. This is what we call either-or thinking, and it could render forgiveness not only
irrelevant but also dangerous. For example, suppose James had a violent temper toward Melissa. If
she could not protect herself when she forgives, that would be absurd. We should, instead, use both-
and thinking. For example, if Melissa deliberately dents Jamess car, he can forgive her and still
present her with the auto body shops bill. Thus, there is nothing inherent in forgiveness that negates
justice. The two can and should be practiced together, depending on the circumstances. In Northern
Ireland, as one person forgives someone from the other side, he or she can and should ask for
fairness.

The Cognitive Structure of Unconditionality and Its Connection to Friendship

An early development in our groups construction of a psychological theory of forgiveness was to
ascertain the cognitive structure that underlies a forgiveness response. We do not mean to imply that
forgiveness is entirely or even primarily a cognitive activity. We wish to imply, from a psychological
and educational perspective, that forgiveness may require certain cognitive capacities before a
therapist or educator introduces the concept. This is important for the construction of appropriate
educational material from a developmental perspective. One central underlying cognitive structure to
a forgiveness response is what we call unconditionality.30

Unconditionality is the understanding that all people are equal, regardless of personal, relational, or
environmental characteristics (e.g., personality, social skills, athletic ability, or even social privilege).
This understanding is based on the Piagetian concept of identity: the understanding that A + 0 = A, or
that something nonessential added to the first value does not alter it. Piagets well-known experiments
with conservation demonstrate this principle. Consider an experimenter who pours water from a
short, wide container into a tall, narrow container. The structures of the containers are the 0
component, and the volume of water is the A component. In other words, the volume of the water is
not in any way altered whether it is in a short or a tall container.

(p.301) Unconditionality arises from this basic cognitive skill of identity. A person is a person
whether in a short, wide house or a tall, narrow house. This insight, which a child can make, then
leads to a belief in the moral principle of inherent worth, the conviction that people are in essence
equal, despite varying psychological characteristics, including behavior that may be unfair. A person is
a person of worth whether he or she is poor, struggling intellectually in school, or behaving badly,
even to the one doing the thinking with the underlying cognitive structure of unconditionality.
Offering forgiveness involves acting on this social-cognitive understanding and the moral principle of
inherent worth that develops from it.
Let us now suppose that James and Melissa are sufficiently cognitively developed according to the
foregoing descriptions. James can use the cognitive structure of unconditionality and apply it in the
moral realm so that he sees Melissa as possessing inherent worth. On seeing her worth, he may wish
moral good for her. As Melissa does the same toward James, she will wish his good. When both are
willing moral good toward the other and when both are aware of this, they are friends by Aristotles
definition of friendship. Of course, insight is not a sufficient condition for the practice of virtue, but
without it, a full expression of a virtue, including ones own part in a relation of friendship, is probably
unlikely.

The Effectiveness of Forgiveness Therapy and Education

We present in the list below a summary of a portion of our forgiveness intervention efforts over the
years. In every case, we use the gold standard of research design, with randomization to treatment
condition, pretesting, posttesting, follow-up testing, and the use of psychometrically sound measures.
Across all twelve of the studies listed, we see the following pattern: (1) regardless of the age of the
participants, which ranged from as young as six to the elderly years, those who have forgiveness
education or therapy generally fare better emotionally than the control group; (2) when anger is
incorporated as a dependent measure, it invariably declines in the forgiveness condition relative to the
control condition; (3) the decrease in anger, anxiety, and depression is usually clinically important in
that the decline is often to normal levels where clinically compromised levels were observed at pretest.
In sum, forgiveness education and therapy are effective in reducing anger and related emotions in a
statistically significant and a clinically significant way.

Examples of Experimental Studies

Incest survivors. The forgiveness group became emotionally healthier than the control
group after fourteen months. Differences between the groups were observed for depression,
anxiety, hope, and self-esteem. The results were maintained in a fourteen-month follow-
up. Study: Freedman, Suzanne R., and Robert D. Enright. Forgiveness as an Intervention
Goal with Incest Survivors. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology64, no. 5 (1996):
983992.
(p.302)

Men hurt by the abortion decision of the partner. The forgiveness group became
emotionally healthier than the control group, similar to the above study. Differences between
the groups were observed for anger, anxiety, grief, and forgiveness. The results were
maintained at a twelve-week follow-up. Study: Coyle, Catherine T., and Robert D. Enright.
Forgiveness Intervention with Postabortion Men. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology 65, no. 6 (1997): 10421046.
Drug rehabilitation. The forgiveness group became emotionally healthier than the control
group, similar to the above two studies. The experimental participants need for drugs
declined substantially, relative to the control group. Results were maintained at a four-month
follow-up. Study: Lin, Wei Fen, David Mack, Robert D. Enright, Dean Krahn, and Thomas W.
Baskin. Effects of Forgiveness Therapy on Anger, Mood, and Vulnerability to Substance Use
among Inpatient Substance-Dependent Clients. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology 72, no. 6 (2004): 11141121.
Couples at risk for divorce. The forgiveness group as well as the group following Aaron
Becks cognitive behavioral therapy showed that the couples drew closer to one another with
 improved relationships following treatment. Study: Knutson, J. A. Strengthening Marriages
through the Practice of Forgiveness. Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin
Madison, 2003.
Cardiac patients. Again, the experimental (forgiveness) group became emotionally
healthier than the control group. At a four-month follow-up, the experimental group had
more efficiently functioning hearts than the control group. Study: Waltmann, M. A., D. C.
Russell, C. T. Coyle, R. D. Enright, A. C. Holter, and C. M. Swoboda. The Effects of a
Forgiveness Intervention on Patients with Coronary Artery Disease. Psychology and
Health 24, no. 1 (2009): 1127.
Emotionally abused women. Results are similar to the above studies in terms of
emotional health including decreased anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder
symptoms, and increased self-esteem. Study: Reed, Gayle L., and Robert D. Enright. The
Effects of Forgiveness Therapy on Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress for Women
after Spousal Emotional Abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology74, no. 5
(2006): 920929.
Terminally ill, elderly cancer patients. After a four-week intervention, the forgiveness
group showed greater improvement in psychological health (less anger, more hopefulness
toward the future) than the control group. Physical indicators of both groups showed
declines. Study: Hanson, Mary, Robert D. Enright, and Thomas W. Baskin. A Palliative Care
Intervention in Forgiveness Therapy for Elderly Terminally Ill Cancer Patients. Journal of
Palliative Care (forthcoming).
At-risk middle school and high school students in Seoul, Korea. The findings are
similar to the above study. Study: Park, J. H. Validating (p.303) a Forgiveness Education
Program for Adolescent Female Aggressive Victims in Korea. Doctoral dissertation,
University of WisconsinMadison, 2003.
First-grade (Primary 3) children in Belfast. Those in the experimental (forgiveness)
group became less angry relative to those in the control group. Randomization is by group;
analyses are on each individual. Study: Enright, Robert D., Jeanette A. Knutson Enright,
Anthony C. Holter, Thomas W. Baskin, and Casey Knutson. Waging Peace through
Forgiveness in Belfast, Northern Ireland II: Educational Programs for Mental Health
Improvement of Children. Journal of Research in Education 17 (2007): 6378.
In light of the potential importance of forgiveness for strategic peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and
in light of the importance of the concept of agape within forgiveness, we turn next to a challenge to the
Aristotelian project.

Developing the Aristotelian Conceptions of Friendship and Love

In the beginning of this chapter, we claimed that Aristotle has a deeper challenge to peace than many
contemporary thinkers because of his idea that people should be friends with one another, whereas
contemporary accounts rarely go further than a call for tolerance, mutual restraint, or justice. We now
would like to claim that Aristotles end point of mutual respect and love (philia) does not go quite far
enough. Three points are needed to move the Aristotelian end point to a more accurately moral
conclusion.

First, his concept of friendship based on mutual respect is underdeveloped because it is unconditional
only to a point. For Aristotle, one is friends with another because that other person is good. Although
this may seem like a conditional rather than an unconditional statement, we think that it is more akin
to an unconditional concept because, once the other obtains goodness, it is more like a settled
disposition (hexis), and thus the friend is unlikely to stray from the goodness. Thus, for Aristotle, one
offers good will to another because he or she is also the bearer of good will. Kant extended this idea
with his claim that we have good will toward another because he or she is capable of good will.
Forgiveness challenges us to extend good will even further to unconditionality, to love those who may
be incapable of good will at the present time. Our goal, like Aristotles, is mutual friendship, but a
citizen of the city should consider extending love, in the form of unconditional forgiveness, even to the
unlovable. This would include enemies from different communities who have fought one another, as is
the case in Belfast. Forgiveness has a way of breaking cycles of resentment, which in turn may break
cycles of violence.

Second, friendship itself needs to be redefined in light of our current knowledge of forgiveness and
love. Perhaps we should not see friendship as the mutual exchange of philia, a natural form of love
because all to whom it is offered are lovable, and instead see love as the univocal gift of agape in the
hope (p.304) of a mutual exchange of that agape. Love, in other words, begets love in return. The
love extended in agape is service love, not so natural as philia, storge, or eros, and thus more difficult
and challenging.
Third, agape, unconditionally expressed by individuals, creates one more problem for the Aristotelian
program. He placed the whole (in this case, the city) as more important than the parts (in this case,
the citizens). For Aristotle, the parts derive their meaning, their very identity, from the whole. Yet as
we have argued, the individuals unconditional expression of agape can give the community its
distinctive character in the expression of friendship. Therefore, the individual (the parts) primarily
(but not exclusively because we do not wish to engage in either-or thinking) determines the character
of the whole (the city) and not the reverse. The primacy of the individual is evident in the free choice
of each person to either act lovingly or not, to act in a forgiving way or not. Educating the citizens for
goodness takes on even more importance, we think, with this model because without good training,
good citizens are not developed. Without good citizens the character of the city is at risk, which further
puts the citizens at risk. If the children of Belfast are not exposed to the concept of agape and allowed
to choose to appropriate it toward members of the out-group, then what kind of a city will the children
build when it is their turn to lead?

This new concept of friendship as agape more than philia seems to be consistent with Aristotles
teaching that we must set the target as high and as truthfully as we can so that we might eventually hit
it. We contend that some people at some point in the peace process will have to bear the pain of
injustice, that is, exercise agape prior to such an overture from the other side. Such moral action is a
way to stop the cycle of revenge and be a conduit of good for subsequent generations.31 The idea of
bearing the pain is a difficult concept because it asks people to suffer on others behalf with no
apparent payoff for the sufferer. The practical question is how many in a given community will deepen
their idea of love and friendship to include unconditional suffering for the good of the enemy. What
might happen in Belfast if teachers, parents, and students took this idea of bearing the pain seriously
enough to apply it in a practical peacebuilding strategy? The possibility of civic friendship seems much
more concrete and attainable if the students can learn and practice bearing the pain through agape.

Interlude
To summarize, the children of Belfast are angry. Friendship in communities needs to be a target, even
if seen as a high and difficult target, because without it, societies are at risk for the development of
toxic anger, factions, and stereotyping. Social science has convincingly shown the deleterious effects of
toxic anger. When such toxic anger rises in individual hearts, forgiveness is a powerful antidote. Social
science certainly does suggest this on the individual and small relational level. We know what happens
in control groups where participants have not yet had the opportunity to practice forgiveness: anger
usually (p.305) remains or can escalate. Thus, one necessity for correcting the extremes of toxic
anger is forgiveness, properly understood and practiced. If anger reduction through forgiveness can be
appropriated accurately and over time in Belfast, might this contribute a powerful strategy to the
peacebuilding process?
Forgiveness Education with Children in Belfast
If forgiveness therapy with adults is effective in reducing anger and improving emotional and
relational health, might it be the case that helping children learn about forgiveness is an effective
deterrent to toxic anger at the present time and eventually in adulthood? If many children in a war-
torn community such as Belfast learn about forgiveness and learn to practice it well, might this have
an impact on the relational health of that community? If children learn at an early age that all people
have inherent worth, might this form the basis of reducing negative stereotypes of others who have
formed factions in the society? Might such knowledge of others inherent worth form the basis of an
emerging friendship where before there were only factions? And might not such friendships
contribute to a sustainable peace settlement?

In 2002, we thought it important to begin answering some of these questions. We operated from the
following assumptions.

1. 1. Children should learn forgiveness slowly and in an atmosphere of interest and fun. After all,
if a coach wishes to develop, say, soccer skills in children, does he or she drill them until they
lose their taste for the sport, or does the coach start slowly with a bit of fun to show to the
children the beauty of the sport?
2. 2. We need to create curricula based on developmental psychology principles so that the early
grades get a more simplified version and the later grades get an increasingly more subtle and
challenging view of the virtue of forgiveness.
3. 3. We need to create a curriculum guide so that the childrens classroom teacher can rather
easily deliver the lessons in an effective manner.
4. 4. If we can create useful teaching tools from the earliest to the latest grades, then students
who have had forgiveness education for many years may more naturally appropriate
forgiveness when faced with injustice. Such students may be less likely to confuse forgiveness
with condoning or excusing, forgetting, or reconciling.
5. 5. Ours is not a quick fix, thus rendering it instantly unpopular. We suspect that it will take
two generations of students going through ten to twelve years of schooling in forgiveness
before a community impact is realized from this effort. Yet what is twenty years compared
with sectarian strife that can and does last for centuries?
6. 6. As more students implement forgiveness and continue to do so into adulthood, the
normative social relations within that community may begin to alter toward more positive
interactions. In other words, the (p.306) quality of justice sought should shift to a wiser
justice with a more satisfying outcome than usually is the case within societies divided by
factions hostile toward one another. Of course, we do not expect a utopia, but we are
expecting a shift in civility and perhaps even in friendship in some sectors of society.
As a postscript to this section, we are well aware of existing educational and community based
programs designed to foster mutual understanding between and among factions in Northern Ireland.
One of the most widely used social and peace education programs for children in Northern Ireland is
Education for Mutual Understanding (EMU). The Education Reform Order of 1989 promoted
programs such as EMU to encourage respect for self and others, the building of relationships, and
understanding of conflict and other themes associated with peace and reconciliation. 32 However, as
early as 1990, the mandatory EMU curriculum had received considerable scrutiny and criticism from
teachers and scholars who argued that it lacked a strong conceptual framework, did not address the
deeper issues of intergroup conflict, and provided insufficient training for teachers. 33
Forgiveness education directly addresses several of the criticisms levied against existing educational
programs such as EMU. First, without forgiveness being a deliberate and deep part of such endeavors,
the curricula are basically attempts to change minds and not primarily change hearts. We do not think
it possible to create friendships through the intellect, through understanding primarily. In our case,
the exercises of helping children use their cognitive schema of unconditionality to foster the insight of
inherent worth of all people are only the starting point for a softened heart. Second, such curricular
efforts must be persistent, involving an intensive learning experience in any given academic year.
Having children from each side get together a few times a year is wonderful, but not sufficient. Having
the children hear about forgiveness for a lesson or two and then galloping off to other concepts is not
sufficient. Third, the forgiveness and friendship learning need to take place over time, as we have
stated here, over generations.

It is important to also acknowledge the intentional, interdenominational communities throughout

Northern Ireland, such as the Corrymeela Community, the Christian Renewal Center, and the
Columbanus Community of reconciliation, that continue to espouse forgiveness as a way to promote
peace and reconciliation.34 These communities provide a powerful lived example of intergroup
harmony, and their commitment to the political and social aspects of forgiveness is an integral
component for sustained peace in Northern Ireland. Current forgiveness education in Northern
Ireland extends this important work to young childrenthe future parents, neighbors, and leaders in
the countryand joins these communities in acknowledging that sincere friendship is a powerful
outcome of interpersonal forgiveness. Forgiveness education for young children, in tandem with
interreligious and cross-community programs, represent a unique response to the challenge to create
a culture of forgiveness.35

(p.307) We now turn to a description of one of the curricula, in this case the second grade
curriculum, as an example of what happens within the Belfast schools.

Example of the Second-Grade (Primary 4 in Belfast) Curriculum

A seventeen-lesson curriculum guide for teachers of second-grade children was written by a licensed
psychologist and a developmental psychologist.36 Each lesson takes approximately forty-five minutes
or less and occurs approximately once per week for the entire class. Additional activities in the guide
are provided if a teacher wishes to extend the learning.

In the early years of the program, the teachers were introduced to the ideas of forgiveness and the
curricular materials in a workshop directed by the authors of the curriculum or others associated with
the project. We envision other methods as the work expands. Audio recordings of the workshop, for
example, may become available for download.

Forgiveness is taught by the classroom teachers primarily through the medium of story. Through
stories such as Disneys The Fox and the Hound, Cinderella, Dumbo, and Snow White, the children
learn that conflicts arise and we have a wide range of options to respond to unfair treatment. The
curriculum guide is divided into three parts. First, the teacher introduces central concepts that
underlie forgivenesssuch as the inherent worth of all people, kindness, respect, generosity, and
moral lovewithout mentioning the word forgiveness. In part two, the children hear stories in which
characters display instances of inherent worth, kindness, respect, generosity, and moral loveor their
opposites, such as unkindness, disrespect, and stinginesstoward another character who was unjust.
In part three, the teacher helps the children, if they choose, apply the five principles toward a person
who has hurt them.
Throughout the implementation of this program, teachers make the important distinction
betweenlearning about forgiveness and choosing to practice it in certain contexts. The program is
careful to emphasize the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. A child does not reconcile
with someone who is potentially harmful, for example. The teachers impress on the children that the
exercises in part three are not necessary but completely optional.

The first-grade curriculum is similar, with the exception of the choice of stories. In first grade, the
centerpiece stories are from Dr. Seuss.

The Curriculum in Subsequent Grade Levels

In grade 3 (primary 5) the focus is more deliberately on the concept of agape. By grade 5 (primary 7),
the curriculum challenges the students to consider not only the theme of forgiving but also the themes
of seeking to be forgiven and receiving forgiveness. By secondary school, the students will be asked to
develop a deep understanding of friendship and how forgiveness can play a part in fostering it. By
later secondary school, the students will be challenged to bring their learning into their community for
the purpose of healing misunderstanding, prejudices, and hatred that have grown and established
themselves (p.308) over centuries. The students, of course, will be taught the virtue of temperance,
the golden mean that any one person is limited and can only do so much. It is the addition of others
like themselves, those helping foster forgiveness and friendship, who can make an impact on the
community.

What Has Been Accomplished in the Belfast Schools

In 2002, we started forgiveness education with thirty-six children in three classrooms on the primary
3 (ages six to seven) level. In 20062007, teachers were delivering the forgiveness curriculum to over
1,800 students in seventy-five classrooms in Belfast. The program, in other words, grew very rapidly
as we added new schools and new grade levels within schools. The preliminary research with
classrooms randomized to the experimental (forgiveness education) or control (no forgiveness
education until the next year) groups has shown a statistically significant decrease in anger and
psychological depression favoring the students in the experimental groups. 37 The children tend to
come into the program with anger that approaches the clinical (psychologically unhealthy) level. After
the program, the childrens level of anger begins to fall toward more normal levels.

We have the technology in place to train teachers in the art of forgiveness. We have teacher
curriculum guides that the teachers find easy to use. We have feedback from teachers that the
curriculum is fun for the children, relatively easy to implement, and produces excellent results from
the teachers viewpoint. One important piece of evidence that educators value the forgiveness
curriculum is this: no teacher who has begun the program has stopped teaching it in subsequent years.
The social scientific findings are consonant with the teachers reports.

Skepticism toward Our Approach

Throughout our twenty-two years of studying forgiveness, we have found that some people consider
the act of forgiving to be useless at the least and quite dangerous at the other extreme. Now that we
are linking forgiveness to community peace efforts, we suspect that greater controversy will ensue.
Our purpose here is to address three kinds of criticism: (1) that leveled at forgiveness itself, (2) that
leveled at friendship as a basis of a good community, and (3) that leveled at the interaction of
forgiveness and community friendship. We start with forgiveness itself.

Skeptical Views of the Concept of Forgiveness and Its Education

Perhaps we are in denial, but it is our firm conviction that every criticism we have ever heard against
the concept of forgiveness has emanated from a misunderstanding of what forgiveness is or what it
accomplishes. We consider five such skeptical views here.

1. Forgiveness as inappropriate: education in our war-torn community will turn my son into a
wimp. He needs to know how to fight. We received this criticism (p.309) from a very concerned
father who served in a paramilitary army. We suggested two new ways to consider forgiveness. First,
his son will be part of a classroom effort. He will not be the only learner, thus he is not likely to be
singled out as a wimp. Second, forgiveness education teaches the quest for justice along with
forgiveness, lessening the chance that practicing mercy alone will make his son vulnerable. The father
accepted these arguments as reasonable, after a heated two-hour debate, and allowed our entrance
into his neighborhood for the purpose of training teachers in the art of forgiveness.
2. Forgiveness as immoral: forgiveness thwarts justice because of its emphasis on mercy. Aristotle
challenged us all not to practice any virtue in isolation. Mercy needs justice to ensure fairness, and
justice needs mercy to temper its demands. If we think of forgiveness as a gift given with good intent
to a wrongdoer, we can see that the virtue is not immoral.

3. Forgiveness as dangerous: if my child forgives, he or she will be vulnerable to the bullies in school.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same. A child can consider forgiving the bully and then
watch his or her back (and report the bully to school personnel). In other words, a child is free to offer
the gift of forgiveness whenever he or she chooses; reconciliation would come when the injuring party
recognizes the wrongdoing and takes steps for genuine change.

4. Forgiveness as weakness: forgiveness is for those who are inferior and cannot assert their rights
in a powerful way. This is Nietzsches challenge to those who study and practice forgiveness. We
think that this view is flawed because it fails to acknowledge the courage necessary to forgive in the
face of deep emotional pain and injustice. When we realize that a forgiving person can and should
seek justice, the criticism seems to lose its strength.

5. Forgiveness education as brain-washing: forgiveness education is a form of indoctrination and

should be avoided. We dissent from this view for three reasons. First, moral education has a history
going back thousands of years. It is not moral education per se, but how the teachers convey the
knowledge may be central to the criticism. Our programs employ the childrens actual classroom
teachers, who know well those childrens religious beliefs, cultural norms, and ethnic customs, thus
avoiding indoctrination. Second, does genuine forgiveness bind a forgiver (and the forgiven) in
autocratic slavery or set him or her free? We leave the answer to the reader. Third, if we know that we
have something good to impart to children, and try to impart it with good educational approaches,
who is the unconstructive one, the teacher or the one discouraging or preventing the teaching?

Our addressing the skeptics of forgiveness is only part of the equation. We now turn to those who
criticize friendship as a central basis for good communities.

Skeptical View on Friendship as a Necessary Condition for Good Communities

1. Politics is the art of the possible. Character building puts a restraint on the possible and therefore
a focus on friendship and virtue is not practical. It was Machiavelli who claimed that politics is the art
of the possible, deemphasizing virtue. Here (p.310) is one example of how far his philosophy took
him from virtue. In his most famous work, The Prince, Machiavelli instructs princes not to keep faith
with men because they will not keep faith with him. Here is why we should question the assertion: he
seemed to pride himself on observing history and contemporary society in a sort of scientifically
accurate way. Yet he never showed one instance of a successful society that was based deliberately on
mistrust.
2. The greatest power causes the greatest changes. Virtue, with its emphasis on temperance, or the
golden mean, may thwart power. This argument asserts that virtues, including forgiveness, may get
in the way of positive social change. We would like the reader to consider, however, whether power by
itself is actually a desirable quality for communities. Power, like wealth, can be used for either moral
or immoral ends. Thus, those who possess either power or wealth need virtues, like forgiveness, to
temper excessive expressions of power and guide them, lest they degenerate into the immoral.

3. To define the city as an affiliation of partnerships toward mutual sharing in the good life is too
restrictive. People may come together for any number of reasons that please them. This view
confuses a given persons opinion about the city and its ultimate purpose. Even if a person uses the
city for personal convenience, it does not follow that this is its ultimate purpose. For example, a
scholar may say that her chair is a place on which books should be stacked, even though its ultimate
purpose is a place on which to sit. The good life is achieved by friendship within and among
partnerships.

4. Even if the citys ultimate purpose is the good life, it can be the individual pursuit of that life rather
than a partnership of friends. The good life by definition is interactive, including others besides the
self. If a community has a history of misunderstanding, it becomes all the more necessary to have an
emphasis on peacebuilding, with forgiveness being a bridge between the difficulties of the past and
current social reconstruction.

5. Even if the citys ultimate purpose includes partnerships, it need not follow that a partnership of
partnerships is required. After all, we all have partnerships in families, places of employment and
worship. Those partnerships, as Aristotle suggests, may not realize justice unless all work together
under the law to achieve that justice. A focus on group-to-group forgiveness may make the quest for
and the realization of justice more likely primarily because those who are less angry may see more
clearly to the fair solutions.38

Skeptical Views of the Interplay of Forgiveness and Friendship

1. Even if friendship as partnerships is one of a citys endpoints, it does not follow that forgiveness is
involved. After all, people can practice restraint and tolerance without forgiveness. Even if people
can get along without forgiveness, they may find it difficult to conquer anger without forgiveness when
injustices are deep and long-lasting in a society. Restraint and tolerance may still include anger
brewing beneath the surface that can easily surface at the hint of further unfairness. Even if the
necessity of forgiveness is not established in communities, it is a powerful resource for fostering
restraint and tolerance.

(p.311) 2. There is no such thing as group forgiveness. Thus, forgiveness as part of a partnership of
partnerships is unrealistic. Philosopher Trudy Govier makes the philosophical argument that
societies can seem to be angry and revengeful.39 They possess a certain negative affective and
behaviorally normative quality to them. Why do we presume that societies are only capable of
possessing negativequalities and not that they can possess positive normative qualities such as
forgiveness and mercy? For Govier, then, group forgiveness can be a reality. We take a subtly different
but related view. In our view, the community norms of forgiveness and mercy may emerge when a
significant number of the citizens understand, appreciate, and practice those virtues. Let us be clear.
We are not presuming that just as an individual can forgive, a community can forgive. Instead, we are
arguing that as more and more people appreciate and practice forgiveness, then forgiveness as a norm
is more likely to emerge in that community.
3. Even if societies can possess merciful qualities, how realistic is this to expect? Most people
probably can give examples of revengeful societies, but can any of us describe an actual society that
deliberately cultivates friendship, mercy, and forgiveness? The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa is one encouraging example of the morally possible being implemented
for good.40Even though that bold social experiment has not yet led to completely satisfying outcomes,
it stands as a pioneering model of what can occur within societies beset by violence.41

Our forgiveness education model now has underlying psychological theory to explain why it should
work, teacher curriculum manuals, a workshop training program that teachers find useful, scientific
evidence that the programs are effective in reducing anger in children, and a technology for offering
this approach to teachers within many communities. Forgiveness is an ideal, but it is also a part of
practical politics.

4. Aristotle suggested that friendship is fostered by the virtue of love. His conception of love was of
the natural kind, philia. Forgiveness involves what C. S. Lewis would call a higher form of love,
agape.42 It seems irrational to advocate the cultivation of a higher form (a form perhaps more difficult
to attain) to foster a lower form of love. This would be true only if we adhered to Aristotles conception
of love. Yet we have already redefined friendship to incorporate and accommodate agape. Thus, we are
advocating the development of agape in individual children so that as adults they can apply that agape
to community partnerships.

5. Even if forgiveness can be a tool for fostering friendship within communities, it seems to be useful
only in extreme cases, such as societies at war for years or generations, because of its emphasis on
deep anger borne out of severe injustice. Although it is true that the most recent forgiveness efforts
have centered on violent and impoverished communities, why should we expect that a harmonious
society will not suffer injustices of an unexpected kind in the future? Forgiveness education for
societal friendship may act to prevent the creation of societal factions and as an incentive to perhaps
enrich existing friendships. After all, even the best of friends disappoint one another at times.

(p.312) 6. Isnt your approach simply a traditionally conservative one that blames the victim,
places the burden of recovery on that victim, and ignores social programming? The accusation
seems to be taking the either-or form of thinking rather than the both-and approach that we
advocated earlier in the chapter. Just as it would be extreme and unwarranted to focus exclusively on
character development of citizens, it is equally extreme and unwarranted to think that social ethics
and programming will solve all social ills. Our model is motivated by what we as psychologists can
bring and by the rarity of focus on virtue ethics among scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding.
The Final Question
What is the end point for the program described here? The practice of forgiveness and friendship, as
Aquinas reminds us in his Summa, are not the final ends because virtues are more like the arrows that
move toward a target; they are not the target itself. The virtues in this case are means to the end of
peaceful relationships, within the realization that this is a fallen world and so peace must be taken in
its reasonable, realistic sense. As Aquinas further reminds us, the ultimate end point is not only
peaceful relations with others but also happiness with God. Given that both sides of the conflict within
Belfast are Christian, then this Thomistic end point is not unreasonable. Perhaps one of our next
essays will center on Thomas Mertons wisdom: we are not at peace with others because we are not at
peace within ourselves (anger, unforgiveness); we are not at peace within ourselves because we are not
at peace with God.
The Final Challenge
We applaud those courageous peace workers who strive for better laws, an equitable distribution of
goods, a valid verification of weapons, and all that can make for peace. Our essay here is not meant to
foster either-or thinking but to encourage both-and thinking and action. Because our approach is not
a sufficient condition for peace, neither are the social ethics and public policy approaches sufficient for
a lasting peace if members of communities remain wounded and bitter.

We are not offering a new approach here, but a very old one, as the ideas of community friendship and
forgiveness are of ancient origin. What is new is a reawakening to the potential of these two ideas and
their association within war-torn communities.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states that to be just is not enough. Communities need
friendship.43 If a basis of peace is friendship, then a basis of friendship is the growth in virtue. A
central virtue that may foster friendship and therefore community peace is forgiveness, perhaps a
necessary but not a sufficient condition for a stable peace. Postaccord societies need forgiveness in
particular to counter years of toxic anger and make friendship a reality.

Notes

Notes:
(1) . Petersen, Roger Dale. 2002. Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in
Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press .

(2) . Kaufman, Stuart J. 2001. Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War, Cornell Studies

in Security Affairs. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press .

(3) . For further information on the history of the Troubles, consult the following sources: Cairns, Ed,
and John Darby. 1998. The Conflict in Northern Ireland: Causes, Consequences, and

Controls.American Psychologist 53, no. 7: 754760 ; Darby, John. Conflict in Northern

Ireland: A Background Essay. In Facets of the Conflict in Northern Ireland, edited by Seamus Dunn.

New York: St. Martins Press, 1995 ; Muldoon, Orla T. 2004. Children of the Troubles: The

Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland. Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 3: 453468 ;

and Power, P. C., and S. Duffy. Timetables of Irish History. London: Worth Press, 2001 .

(4) . Darby, Conflict in Northern Ireland: A Background Essay.

(5) . Fay, Marie-Therese, Mike Morrissey, and Marie Smyth. Northern Irelands Troubles: The
Human Costs, Contemporary Irish Studies. London: Pluto Press in association with the Cost of the

Troubles Study, 1999 .

(6) . The agreement is also known as the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement. It may be
found at www.nio.gov.uk/the-agreement.
(7) . The Agreement at St. Andrews may be found at www.standrewsagreement.org.

(8) . The Thirteenth Report of the Monitoring Commission may be found

atwww.independentmonitoringcommission.org/documents/uploads/thirteenth%report.pdf.

(9) . Gallagher, Tony. 2004. After the War Comes Peace? An Examination of the Impact of the

Northern Ireland Conflict on Young People. Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 3: 637 .

(10) . Darby, John, and Roger Mac Ginty. The Management of Peace Processes, Ethnic and

Intercommunity Conflict Series. New York: St. Martins Press, 2000 ; Jarman, Neil. 2004
Demography, Development and Disorder: Changing Patterns of Interface Areas. Belfast: Institute

for Conflict Research ; and Jarman, Neil. 1999. Displaying Faith: Orange, Green and Trade
Union Banners in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies Queens University of Belfast

(11) . For a review of the impact of the Troubles on children, consult the following sources: Cairns and
Darby, The Conflict in Northern Ireland; Connolly, P., A. Smith, and B. Kelly. 2002. Too Young to
Notice: The Cultural and Political Awareness of 36 Year Olds in Northern Ireland. Belfast:

Community Relations Council ; Conroy, John. Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life. Boston:

Beacon Press, 1987 ; Gallagher, After the War Comes Peace?; McClenahan, Carol, Ed Cairns,
Seamus Dunn, and Valerie Morgan. 1996. Intergroup Friendships: Integrated and Desegregated

Schools in Northern Ireland. Journal of Social Psychology 136, no. 5: 549558 ; Muldoon,
Children of the Troubles; Muldoon, Orla T., Karen Trew, and Rosemary Kilpatrick. 2000. The
Legacy of the Troubles on the Young Peoples Psychological and Social Development and Their School

Life. Youth & Society 32, no. 1: 628 ; and Trew, Karen. 2004. Children and Socio-Cultural

Divisions in Northern Ireland. Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 3: 507522 .

(12) . This text provides a contemporary account of youth involvement in peace processes. McEvoy-
Levy, Siobhn, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, RIREC Project on Post-Accord
Peace Building, and Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict. 2006. Troublemakers or
Peacemakers?: Youth and Post-Accord Peace Building. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame

Press .

(13) . Enright, Robert D., Jeanette A. Knutson Enright, Anthony C. Holter, Thomas W. Baskin, and
Casey Knutson. 2007. Waging Peace through Forgiveness in Belfast, Northern Ireland II:
Educational Programs for Mental Health Improvement of Children. Journal of Research in

Education 17: 6378 ; Enright, Robert D., Jeanette A. Knutson Enright, Anthony C. Holter,
Thomas W. Baskin, and Casey Knutson. 2008. Waging Peace through Forgiveness in Belfast,
Northern Ireland III: Correcting a Production Error and a Case Study. Journal of Research in

Education 18: 128131 .

(14) . For an overview of scholarly work pertaining to civic friendship, consult the following
sources:Schollmeier, Paul. 1994. Other Selves: Aristotle on Personal and Political Friendship, SUNY

Series in Ethical Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press ; and Scorza, Jason A. 2004.

Liberal Citizenship and Civic Friendship. Political Theory 32, no. 1: 85108 .

(15) . Budziszewski, J. 1997. Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law. Downers Grove, Ill.:

InterVarsity Press .

(16) . Quotation marks around relative to us emphasize that for Aristotle, the expression of virtue is
rarely perfect and that different people demonstrate different degrees of that virtue. See, for
example,Simon, Yves Ren Marie, and Vukan Kuic. 1986. The Definition of Moral Virtue. New York:

Fordham University Press .

(17) . We say this with some trepidation, knowing full well that relativist models pervade the academy
at present. We consider relativist models to be a passing fancy because of the self-contradictions,
which are beyond the purview of this chapter, that exist within them.

(18) . Galston, William A. 2002. Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political

Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

(19) . The term golden mean was not originally Aristotles term, but is now attributed to him.

(20) . Foley, Debra L., David B. Goldston, E. Jane Costello, and Adrian Angold. 2006. Proximal
Psychiatric Risk Factors for Suicidality in Youth: The Great Smoky Mountains Study. Archives of

General Psychiatry 63, no. 9: 10171024 .

(21) . Greene, Ross W., and Robert T. Ammerman. 2006. Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
InComprehensive Handbook of Personality and Psychopathology, Vol. 3, 285298: New York: Wiley

(22) . Marshal, Michael P., and Brooke S. G. Molina. 2006. Antisocial Behaviors Moderate the
Deviant Peer Pathway to Substance Use in Children with ADHD. Journal of Clinical Child and

Adolescent Psychology 35, no. 2: 216226 .

(23) . Malta, Loretta S., Edward B. Blanchard, and Brian M. Freidenberg. 2005. Psychiatric and
Behavioral Problems in Aggressive Drivers. Behaviour Research and Therapy 43, no. 11: 14671484

(24) . Enright, Robert D., and Richard P. Fitzgibbons. 2000. Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical
Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope Washington, D.C.: American Psychological

Association .
(25) . Barcalow, Kelly. 2006. Oppositional Defiant Disorder: Information for School Nurses. Journal

of School Nursing 22, no. 1: 916 .

(26) . For a more thorough review of the literature, see Enright and Fitzgibbons, Helping Clients

Forgive .

(27) . Ibid.

(28) . North, Joanna. 1987. Wrongdoing and Forgiveness. Philosophy 62: 499508 .

(29) . Holmgren, Margaret R. 1993. Forgiveness and the Intrinsic Value of Persons. American

Philosophical Quarterly 30, no. 4: 341 ; and North, Wrongdoing and Forgiveness.

(30) . Enright, Robert D. 1994. Piaget on the Moral Development of Forgiveness: Identity or

Reciprocity? Human Development 37, no. 2: 6380 .

(31) . For more on bearing the pain, see Bergin, Allen E. 1988. Three Contributions of a Spiritual
Perspective to Counseling, Psychotherapy, and Behavior Change. Counseling and Values 33, no. 1:

2131 .

(32) . Arlow, Michael. 2004. Citizenship Education in a Divided Society: The Case of Northern
Ireland. In Education, Conflict, and Social Cohesion, edited by Sobhi Tawil and Alexandra Harley,

255314. Geneva: UNESCO, 280 .

(33) . For a detailed overview and critique of EMU, see Arlow, Citizenship Education in a Divided
Society; Smith, Alan, and Alan Robinson. 1996. Education for Mutual Understanding: The Statutory

Years. Coleraine: University of Ulster ; Smith, Ron. 2002. Professional Educational Psychology
and Community Relations Education in Northern Ireland. Educational Psychology in Practice 18,

no. 4: 275295 ; and Wright, Frank. Some Problems with Education for Mutual Understanding.
In Finding Ways to Go: A Discussion Paper about Community Relations in Northern Ireland.

Coleraine: University of Ulster .

(34) . Wells, Ronald. 1999. People behind the Peace. Cambridge: Eerdmans .

(35) . Ibid., 80 .

(36) . Knutson, Jeanette, and Robert D. Enright. 2003. Discovering Forgiveness: A Guided

Curriculum for Children, Ages 68. Madison, Wisc.: International Forgiveness Institute .
(37) . Enright, Robert D., et al., Waging Peace through Forgiveness in Belfast, Northern Ireland II.

(38) . The final three points in this list are from Budziszewski, Written on the Heart .

(39) . Govier, Trudy. 2002. Forgiveness and Revenge. London: Routledge .

(40) . Tutu, Desmond. 1999. No Future without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday .

(41) . Van der Walt, Clint, V. Franchi, and Garth Stevens. 2003. The South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission: Race, Historical Compromise and Transitional

Democracy.International Journal of Intercultural Relations 27, no. 2: 251267 .

(42) . Lewis, C. S. 1960. The Four Loves. New York: Harcourt .

(43) . Aristotle, and H. Rackham. 1926. The Nicomachean Ethics, The Loeb Classical Library. New

York: Putnams, 453 .

Religion and Peacebuilding

Gerard F. Powers (Contributor Webpage)
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords

The prevailing secularist paradigm and quantitative analyses of the relationship between religion,
conflict, and peace are inadequate. Powers calls for moving beyond a functionalist approach to the
roles of religion in promoting conflict or peace to a fuller appreciation of the complexity of religion
and the unique spiritual and religious resources available for peacebuilding. Citing illustrative
examples from around the world, he highlights the pressing need for a multi-layered analysis of
complex religious strategies for peacebuilding. The chapter explores three critical dimensions of a
strategic approach to religious peacebuilding: the public role of religion, religions relationship to
nonviolence and the just war tradition, and the potential and limits of ecumenical and interreligious
peacebuilding.

Keywords: religious peacebuilding, religion and conflict, interreligious peacebuilding, strategic

peacebuilding, secularization, public religion, just war, nonviolence, ethics of war

In The Mighty and the Almighty, Madeleine Albright acknowledges that, as U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations and secretary of State, she held the conventional view of foreign policy specialists
that religion is not an appropriate or relevant subject for analysis or discussion. According to Albright,
I cannot remember any leading American diplomat (even the born-again Christian Jimmy Carter)
speaking in depth about the role of religion in shaping the world. 1

Albrights experience as a diplomat reflects what could be called the secularist paradigm. 2 According
to this paradigm, Western notions of secularization are equated with that which is modern,
democratic, and pluralistic. The cultural and political arrangements in which religion is much
more visible and salientthe arrangements that prevail in much of the worldare equated with that
which is premodern, undemocratic, and intolerant.3 As Zbigniew Brzezinski points out, the
prevailing orthodoxy among intellectuals in the West is that religion is a waning, irrational, and
dysfunctional aberration.4 Religion and morality are notand, more important, should not be
major factors in foreign policy. Joseph Nye and Stanley Hoffmann have noted that because foreign
policy tends to focus on the structure of the international systemnotably political, economic, and
military power relationshipscivil society or mass movements have received relatively little attention.
Given this relative lack of attention to the soft power of movements from below, the religious
influences, which are strongest at this level, often have been missed or underestimated. 5

(p.318) Like a growing number of specialists in international affairs, Albright now admits that this
secularist paradigm is no longer adequate; understanding international affairs today requires an
understanding of religion. In fact, Samuel Huntingtons influential thesis that intercivilizational
conflicts reflect the new paradigm in international affairs is based in part on his contention that in
the modern world, religion is a central, perhaps the central, force that motivates and mobilizes
people.6
This heightened attention to the public role of religion does not represent a sharp departure from the
prevailing orthodoxies of the secularist world-view in one important sense. Religion, according to
many, might not be waning, but it remains mostly irrational and dysfunctional, a source of conflict
and division, and a powerful motive force behind exclusivist world views. 7 Al Qaedas terrorism is
exhibit A. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka are also cited. The secularists who have long
argued that religion has no place in the public square and especially not the foreign ministry would
seem to have firm ground on which to build their case.

Not surprisingly, many who specialize in religion have never accepted the descriptive or normative
power of the secularist paradigm, with its almost uniformly negative view of the role of religion.
In The Ambivalence of the Sacred, Scott Appleby contends that the same kind of unwavering, absolute
commitment to ones faith, or religious militancy, that can be a source of division can also be a
powerful force for freedom, justice, and liberation.8 The peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe; the
human rights movement in Latin America; the antiapartheid struggle in South Africa; the downfall of
Marcos in the Philippines; the peace process in Colombia, Mozambique, and Uganda; the struggle for
freedom in Tibet; and the campaign for democracy in Myanmar are just a few examples of the power
of religion at work in the service of justice and peace.

Though there is a growing literature on the positive role of religion in peacebuilding, it deserves more
serious consideration, especially by foreign policy specialists.9 A short article cannot begin to map and
analyze the plethora of peacebuilding being done by innumerable faith-based institutions and faith-
filled individuals. My task is more limited: to propose several elements of a strategic approach to
religious peacebuilding. I first address the inadequacies of the prevailing secularist paradigm. I then
discuss the complexity of religious peacebuilding, especially the need to consider religion on its own
terms and appreciate the rich set of religious resources that can be mobilized on behalf of
peacebuilding. I then examine more closely three critical dimensions of a strategic approach to
religious peacebuildingits inherently public nature; the relationship between nonviolence, just war,
and peacebuilding; and the role of ecumenical and inter-religious peacebuilding. Finally, I suggest
several implications of this analysis for policy makers.
I approach religious peacebuilding as an academic and a practitioner who has worked on international
affairs for more than two decades for and with the huge, diverse, and complex global institution that is
the Catholic Church. (p.319) Although my analysis reflects my Catholic perspective and experience, I
believe it will find resonance with academics and practitioners concerned with religious peacebuilding
more generally.
The Inadequacy of the Prevailing Secularist Paradigm
Before elaborating on elements of strategic religious peacebuilding, it is necessary to address the
fundamental difference between the secularist view, which sees religion mostly as an atavistic and
irrational cause of conflict that should be marginalized and privatized, and those who believe that
religion is an underappreciated force for peace that should have a significant role in society. Appleby
calls this weak religion versus strong religion. 10

The secularist paradigm sees religion as a major factor in causing and intensifying conflicts around the
world because religion absolutizes and sacralizes differences over issues, leaving little room for
compromise. Where religious differences per se are not at issue, religious identity can be a marker of
ethnic or national identities that can exacerbate communal divisions and can be easily manipulated by
cynicaland often irreligiouspolitical leaders in service of their extremist forms of nationalism.
Henry Kissinger, for example, called the 1990s Balkan conflicts wars of religion because, he argued,
the only difference between the warring parties was religious identity.11

Most quantitative studies of religion and conflict focus on these two dimensions of the negative role of
religion. They usually distinguish between two kinds of conflicts. In one kind, religious
incompatibilityis a major factorthat is, religious issues are at stake, such as when the primary
parties to the conflict make religious claims for control of the state or territory by a religious tradition.
In other conflicts,religious dissimilarity is a major factorthat is, religious issues are not at stake, but
the parties to the conflict are distinguished in part by different religious identities.12

These studies suggest that although religion is a factor in a number of conflicts, it is rarely a primary
or exclusive factor. One of the most nuanced studies was done by Uppsala Universitys Department of
Peace and Conflict Research. Isak Svensson reports on the incidence of four types of conflicts from
1989 to 2003: (1) 58 percent were conflicts in which religion played no part in either separating the
identities of the belligerents or in the claims of the parties to the conflict (e.g., Burundi, Nepal, El
Salvador); (2) 20 percent were conflicts in which the parties were separated by a difference in
religious identities but without any religious claims at stake (e.g., IRABritish government in
Northern Ireland); (3) 11 percent were conflicts between belligerents that belong to the same religious
tradition but in which there are religious claims in the conflict (e.g., conflicts among Muslims in
Algeria, Egypt, and Indonesia over the religious or secular nature of the state); (4) 11 percent were
conflicts where the parties were separated by their religious identities and at least one party made
religious claims (e.g., Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Kashmir).13 In sum, he found that only 22 percent of
conflicts involved religious claims. Others have come to (p.320) similar conclusions.14 If one looks
specifically at terrorism, one also finds that although it is on the rise, religious terrorists make up 36
percent of terrorist groups in the world.15
A partial listing of some of the worlds bloodiest conflicts of the past century is consistent with these
studies. The twentieth century was by far historys bloodiest. The architects of the slaughter of so
many millions were men like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein,
none of whom killed in the name of religion; in fact, they were mostly openly hostile toward it. The
same could be said of more recent examplesthe Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda,
Cambodia, Colombia, Darfur, the wars in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, and Somalia in the
early 1990s.
Even if religious factors do not play a significant role in most conflicts, including some of the most
notorious of the past century, are conflicts with a religious dimension more intractable and more
violent than other conflicts? Statistical studies differ on this question. Monica Toft found that religious
civil wars were nearly twice as likely to recur as nonreligious civil wars, and religious civil wars were
four times harder on noncombatants than civil wars in which religion is peripheral.16 In a review of
recent studies, Svensson found conflicting results. Some studies concluded that in international
conflicts where religious identity defined the conflicting parties, there was a significant decrease in the
likelihood of settlement. Others, however, concluded that the religious identity of the conflicting
parties did not affect the likelihood of settlement or the duration of the post-settlement peace. Still
others have found that ethnic civil wars fought over religion were less difficult to mediate than wars
over secession and autonomy.17 Svenssons own conclusion, based on the Uppsala Conflict Data
Program, is that in civil conflicts differences in religious identities of the parties did not reduce the
likelihood of a negotiated settlement, but conflicts in which religious claims were at stake did
significantly decrease the chance of a negotiated settlement.18

These studies offer useful aggregate indicators of the incidence of and trends in the religious
dimensions of conflicts, but they must be complemented with a much more sophisticated qualitative
understanding of the role of religion.19

First, most of these quantitative studies do not attempt to measure the intensity of religious identity
and beliefs. Nor do they offer insights into the complex interaction between religious identity and
ethnic, national, racial, class, cultural, gender, and political identities. Amartya Sen reminds us, The
religious partitioning of the world produces a deeply misleading understanding of the people across
the world and the diverse relations between them, and it also has the effect of magnifying one
particular distinction between one person and another to the exclusion of all other important
concerns.20

Second, it is important to avoid the monolithic, undifferentiated, and functionalist approach to

religion that is so often associated with the secularist paradigm, and is sometimes reflected in
statistical studies of religious conflict. In conflicts with a religious dimension, religious traditions are
not equally implicated. Tofts study of civil wars distinguished among the major
religious (p.321) traditions. She found that when religion is a central factor in a conflict, Islam is the
religion most likely to be involved. Gurrs earlier study of ethnic conflicts came to the same
conclusion.21
These aggregate findings are useful in identifying global differences among major religious traditions
and the incidence of conflict. They do not, however, purport to track or analyze differences within
particular religious traditions. They also fail to disaggregate religious influences in particular conflicts,
and therefore cannot account for the positive versus negative roles that religion plays in those
conflicts. Statistical studies correctly identify religion as a dimension of the conflict in Iraq, for
example, but they do not provide insight into the very different roles played by the followers of Shiite
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the followers of his Shiite antagonist, Muqtada al-Sadr. Statistical
studies also cannot adequately take into account nonreligious factors, such as long-standing clan
rivalries, that explain why different Shiite groups fight each other in Iraq. In virtually every conflict
where religion plays a role, it is a complex, variegated factor, with some religious elements playing
negative roles, some positive, and some both.22

Northern Ireland, frequently described as a religious conflict, is a case in point. The strident
sectarianism of the Reverend Ian Paisley and the Orange Order are one part of the religious collage,
but so is the reconciling leadership of the Reverend John Dunlop, former moderator of the
Presbyterian Church. That collage includes the Catholic Provisional IRA, whose motive force was
never Catholicism and whose desired end was a socialist (not Catholic) Ireland, as well as the Catholic
bishops, who are known for their condemnations of IRA violence.23

Another problem with the studies of religion and conflict is that they have mostly not included cases,
such as Colombia, El Salvador, and northern Uganda, where religion might not be a factor in the
conflict but plays an important role in peacebuilding.

If the role of religion in conflict is much more complex and variegated than the secularists
acknowledge and statistical studies can map, then the relevant distinction is not between religious
conflicts and other conflicts but between those religious actors who play a negative role in a conflict
and those who play a positive onebetween extremists and nonextremists.24 The challenge, then, is to
marginalize religious extremists, not religion. Especially where religious extremism is a central factor
in a conflict, it is all the more important that there be authentic religious alternatives that can counter
the extremists from within their own tradition. Promoting an uncompromising Western secularism as
a solution to religious extremism can have the unintended effect of feeding extremism by further
threatening traditional sources of personal, cultural, and religious identity. Contra the secularists, the
best way to counter extremist religion is with more authentic religion, not less or weakened or
privatized religion.25

From a sociological perspective, this distinction between extremist and nonextremist, or authentic
and inauthentic religion, is problematic, because there is no objective way to distinguish among such
actors, all of whom might (p.322) be motivated by or pressing what they believe to be authentic
religious claims. From a strategic peacebuilding perspective, however, this distinction is crucial. It
reminds us that an adequate understanding of the role of religion in conflict requires an
understanding of the internal dynamics of the ongoing development of doctrine, norms, and religious
practices within diverse religious traditionsand a willingness to make subjective judgments about
which doctrines, norms, and practices contribute to peacebuilding and which do not. Both Osama bin
Laden and Ayatollah al-Sistani claim to represent authentic interpretations of Islam. That does not
mean that both interpretations are equally legitimate or have equal saliency within lived Islam.
Although it would be naive to expect universal assent to any one interpretation of Islam, it is possible
to sort out these competing interpretations through theological and moral argumentation, just as it is
possible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate interpretations of constitutional law or
legitimate and illegitimate governments.
Strategic peacebuilding insists that we go much deeper than quantitative measures of religions role in
conflict, that we avoid treating religion as an easily categorizable monolith, and that we understand
both the negative and positive roles of religion in conflict and peacebuilding. Strategic peacebuilding
gives priority to qualitative analyses that take seriously pluralism within and among religious
traditions as well as the complex qualitative factors that contribute to either conflict or peace in
particular cases. Strategic peacebuilding makes a normative judgment that a political scientist or
sociologist of religion might not be willing to make: that an interpretation of a religious tradition or
certain religious practices that promote violence and injustice are inauthentic, whereas those that
are a force for peace and justice are authentic.26

The Complexity of Religious Peacebuilding

To avoid some of the weaknesses of the secularist critique of religions role in conflict, it is essential
that religious peacebuilding be evaluated on its own terms and in all its complexity.

Defining Religion and Strategic Peacebuilding

Because there is little agreement in the literature on terminology or definitions, let me briefly define
my terms. Religion, according to Appleby, can be defined simply as the human response to a reality
perceived as sacred.27 Religious actors, in turn, can be defined as people who have been formed by a
religious community and who are acting with the intent to uphold, extend, or defend its values and
precepts.28 Religious peacebuilding includes, therefore, the beliefs, norms, and rituals that pertain to
peacebuilding, as well as a range of actors, from religious institutions, faith-based private voluntary
organizations that are not formally part of a religious institution, and individuals and groups for
whom religion is a significant motivation for their peacebuilding. For example, Catholic peacebuilding
requires an analysis of a billion-strong, (p.323) complex, and diverse community that consists of
multiple actors, from the pope and bishops to countless priests, women religious and lay people; from
more than a hundred national episcopal conferences to thousands of dioceses and well over a hundred
thousand parishes; from vast social service, health care, social action, and educational systems to a
multiplicity of lay organizations and movements.29
Peacebuilding can be defined quite broadly as everything implied by a robust, positive understanding
of a just peace. Alternatively, it can be defined more narrowly as an approach to healing broken
societies, or, even more narrowly, as a set of nonviolent methods of dealing with conflict, from
mediation and interfaith dialogue to relationship building and reconciliation programs. As Lederach
and Appleby point out in chapter 1, strategic peacebuilding encompasses the broader definition:

[It] nurtures constructive human relationships. To be relevant, it must do so strategically, at every

level of society and across the potentially polarizing lines of ethnicity, class, religion, and race. It
focuses on transforming inhumane social patterns, flawed structural conditions, and open violent
conflict that weaken the conditions necessary for a flourishing human community. 30

Faith-based peacebuilding intervenes in these various stages of conflict through a broad array of roles
and activities at the local, national, and international levels. Adapting typologies proposed by
Lederach and Sampson, David Steele groups these roles into four types: observation and witness (e.g.,
fact finding, monitoring of cease-fires, accompaniment of victims), education and formation (e.g.,
conflict resolution training, education on peace and justice issues, faith formation in vocation of
peacebuilding), advocacy and empowerment (e.g., mass protests, efforts to change specific public
policies, incorporating peacebuilding in development programs), and conciliation and mediation (e.g.,
participation in truth and reconciliation commissions, facilitating peace processes, interfaith
dialogues).31 Because it involves multiple stages of conflict and multiple roles and activities,
peacebuilding also involves multiple time horizons: before ceasefires and regime changes, during the
conflict itself, the immediate aftermath, and the often decades-long process of reconstruction and
reconciliation after the violence ends.32

Evaluating Religious Peacebuilding on Its Own Terms

Analyzing peacebuilding, broadly defined, in conflict situations with multiple security, political,
economic, and cultural dimensions is a challenge. Adding religion to the mix further complicates the
task. First, and most obvious, is the fact that there are countless religious traditions, and these
traditions, themselves, are by no means monolithic. They differ remarkably in size, organizational
structure, geographic reach, and the sophistication, content, and style of their teaching and action on
social, political, economic, and other issues related to peacebuilding.

(p.324) Second, in some respects it is valid to use standard metrics applied to political actors or
transnational social movements to analyze religious peacebuilding. In other respects, it is not valid.
Religious entities work on peacebuilding programs and issues, but their essential mission and identity
are not defined in terms of those issues and programs, as is the case with secular nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs). Religious bodies often have millions of members, but they are not membership
organizations like Amnesty International or MoveOn. Religious bodies have rich intellectual
traditions, but they are not think-tanks like the U.S. Institute of Peace or the International Crisis
Group. Religious peacebuilding often involves distinctively religious and spiritual resourcessuch as
ritual, prayer, and spiritual healingthat are not part of a secular NGOs peacebuilding portfolio and
cannot be analyzed and measured with standard tools of sociology and political science.
The most important distinction between religious and other civil society actors is the mission and self-
understanding of religious bodies qua religious bodies. Religious peacebuilding, whether done by
individuals or institutions, is motivated and shaped by deeply held religious beliefs and has a stature
and credibility that is derived, in large part, from religious identity. Therefore, any analysis of religious
peacebuilding must go beyond a functionalist approach that focuses primarily on its political efficacy
and understand it in the context of larger issues of religious identity and mission. Theological and
pastoral traditions and practices might exclude or circumscribe certain ways of doing peacebuilding
that are common to political actors and social action groups. Religious leaders and institutions often
have a definite political impactmediating conflicts, opposing authoritarian regimes, and advocating
for specific public policies. They are sometimes reluctant, however, to engage in certain kinds of
peacebuilding that are perceived as too political and thus beyond their competence, in the
theological and ordinary sense of that word. When they get involved, they might want to engage at a
general level appropriate to their role as pastors and teachers, to avoid being dismissed for
inappropriately mixing religion and politics.

Restrictions on clerics holding public office, supporting political candidates or parties, or other forms
of direct political engagement are not uncommon. In June 2007, for example, the Filipino government
invited Fr. Elisio Jun Mercado, a Catholic priest who is respected by the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) in Mindanao, to be its chief negotiator in the peace talks with the MILF. After initially
accepting the appointment, Fr. Mercado ultimately decided to forgo this formal role in the
negotiations in part because it was seen as incompatible with his role as a priest.

For students of international relations and peace studies, the SantEgidio community, a lay Catholic
community headquartered in Rome that is credited with helping negotiate an end to the Mozambique
war, is an example of track-two diplomacy and the role of civil society in promoting peace. For
students of the Catholic Church, SantEgidio is also an example of the proper relationship between lay
and clerical roles. Similarly, a Catholic bishops conference might be reluctant to become formally
involved in mediating a conflict, even though (p.325) it has the capacity and credibility to do so,
because of its understanding of the institutional Churchs role vis--vis the political order and a
bishops role vis--vis the Catholic laity. It might first choose to encourage lay Catholics to undertake
that role, and only do so itself if it becomes clear that no other entity is available. Even then, the
bishops might see their substitute political role as an exceptional case. If one does not understand
theology, it is easy to misinterpret the bishops reluctance to get involved in mediation as indifference
or a failure of will. Strategic approaches to religious peacebuilding take into account these theological
nuances that are too often missed or ignored by outsiders who see religion in purely instrumental
terms and analyze it as they would a political institution.
Finally, as important as it might be in a particular conflict situation, religion is just one actor and one
factor in a much wider project of strategic peacebuilding. As with the studies cited earlier, it is difficult
to disaggregate religion from other factors in peacebuilding. As Appleby points out, one needs a
multilayered view of religious peacemaking that avoids sharp distinction between the religious and
the secular.33 Religious peacebuilders rarely act alone. Successful religious peacebuilding usually
involves collaboration with other civil society actors, governments, and international institutions.
Religious Peacebuilding as a Function of the Nature of a Conflict
The nature of the conflict will have an important impact on whether religious bodies can play a
constructive peacebuilding role and the nature of that role. In the conflict following the break-up of
Yugoslavia, there are three different accounts of the role of religion. The religious war account
contends that specifically religious divisions gave the conflict in the former Yugoslavia a dimension
not unlike the religious wars Europe has known all too well over the centuries. The ethnoreligious
waraccount of the conflict does not emphasize religion per se but religions contribution to the rise of
chauvinistic forms of nationalism. The manipulation of religion account of the war acknowledges that
religious fears and symbols were manipulated and abused by cynical ultranationalists for their own
ends, but downplays the role of religious differences or religious nationalism in fomenting conflict.
According to this account, the conflict was over competing and mostly incompatible claims of self-
determination that arose out of the failure of the Yugoslav idea.

The assessment of the role of the Serbian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim communities in this
conflict is, in large part, a function of which account of the war one adopts. The first account focuses
on religious doctrines and practices that encouraged sectarianism and religious violence. Strategic
peacebuilding, then, reexamines those doctrines and practices, and pursues inter-religious dialogue
about divisive doctrines and practices, as well as areas of common ground.

Because the second account of the war defines the issue as religious nationalism, not religious
violence, the relationship between religion and the political order and religion and national identity
becomes most salient. In the face of (p.326) religious nationalism, effective religious peacebuilding is
less about finding common ground on religious issues per se and more about retrieving theological
and moral teaching on the appropriate relationship between religion and politics and between religion
and national identity. The peacebuilding challenge for religious leaders is to promote a civic form of
national identity that distinguishes between the virtue of patriotism and the idolatry of chauvinistic
nationalism, upholds the religious freedom of minorities, and embraces religious pluralism as an
important part of a healthy democracy. Religious peacebuilding would also include intra- and
interfaith efforts to oppose a partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina along religious, ethnic, and national
lines that solidifies and, in effect, rewards ethnic cleansing.
Like the second account of the war, the third leads to an examination of a political theology and ethics.
The wars barbarity and intractability, according to this view, were not attributable to ancient
religious-cultural hatreds but to the failure of politics to counter chaos, war-lordism, and cycles of
violence in the wake of the implosion of Yugoslavia. Even more than the second account of the war,
the third highlights a lacunae in Roman Catholic, Serbian Orthodox, and Islamic social ethics. In
varying degrees, each lacks ethics that can constructively contribute to debates over secessionist self-
determination and minority rights. Muslim and Catholic support for Bosnian secession, for example,
reflected in part a desire to participate in the democratic transformation that was sweeping Eastern
Europe and a realistic evaluation of the futility of remaining in a failed Yugoslav state dominated by
Slobodan Milosevics brand of Serbian nationalism, a futility confirmed by the ensuing war. No doubt
the conflicting positions on self-determination hindered the ability of religious leaders in the former
Yugoslavia to be reconcilers. But these differences, in part, reflected legitimate moral and religious
concerns about nurturing and protecting human rights and the spiritual and cultural values of their
respective societies. Reconciliation, therefore, requires not just addressing religious violence or
religious nationalism but also a just resolution of competing claims of self-determination.

In short, an adequate analysis of strategic religious peacebuilding takes seriously the complexity of
religion and religious actors; the multifaceted, sometimes distinctive religious strategies for
peacebuilding; and the extent to which these strategies arise out of an accurate assessment of the
nature of a particular conflict. Further elaboration of the religious resources for peacebuilding is
needed, however.

The Power and Virtue of Strategic Peacebuilding

Madeleine Albright makes the controversial claim that faith-based organizations have more
resources, more skilled personnel, a longer attention span, more experience, more dedication, and
more success in fostering reconciliation than any government.34 To understand this statement, it is
useful to provide a schematic of the rather unique mix of ideals, institutions, and people (p.327) that
together constitute a robust set of religious resources for strategic peacebuilding. 35

Religious Resources for Peacebuilding

It is difficult to generalize about the endless number of religious beliefs and ideas that play a role in
fomenting conflict or promoting peacebuilding. In assessing commonalities among a dozen prominent
religious peacebuilders, David Little concludes that they all share a hermeneutics of peace, namely,
an interpretive framework that begins with the conviction that the pursuit of justice and peace by
peaceful means is a sacred priority in each of the traditions represented.36 A hermeneutics of peace
acknowledges that religious beliefs sometimes inspire sectarianism and violence but also self-
sacrificial work for justice and peace. Commands to treat all people as children of God and to be
peacemakers are no less powerful than teachings that encourage religious exclusivity and sanction
religious violence. Religious traditions also often contain core precepts that contribute to
peacebuilding that are generally not found in conventional political discourse, such as forgiveness,
love of enemy, and solidarity with the poor and oppressed. Moreover, although religious absolutes are
generally seen as conflict-producing because they leave no room for compromise, in fact, few wars are
fought today over these absolutes. Wars are usually fought over political power, territory, access to
resources, and ideology. Although religion sometimes is used to reify these goods, 37 at least as often,
religion opposes as idolatry an uncompromising or absolutist approach to the conflicts over the
(nonreligious) issues that fuel most wars.

Ideas alone have little social relevance unless they shape the actions of institutions and individuals. In
many poor, war-torn countries and failed or failing states, religious bodies are often the most
important civil society institutions. In Latin America and Africa, many of the schools, hospitals, social
services, relief and development, and human rights programs are sponsored by religious institutions.
The experience of these institutions can give religious bodies special expertise that cuts across many
aspects of peacebuilding. Because religious bodies are deeply rooted in society and the daily lives of
ordinary people, they can bring greater credibility and deeper relationships to their engagement in
peacebuilding than most NGOs. Religious institutions also have the advantage of being able to
influence not just public policies but also cultural mores and the beliefs and practices of individuals.

The indigenous nature of much religious peacebuilding is strengthened by the fact that many religious
institutions are relatively unique transnational actors. They are deeply rooted in local communities yet
also have a global reach that can surpass that of governments, international institutions, or
multinational companies. Their global reach enables them to bridge the global divide between zones of
conflict and poverty and zones of peace and prosperity. Their indigenous character enables them to
provide early warning of simmering conflicts and can help outsiders better understand and respond to
the dynamics of a particular conflict. Catholic Relief Services and World Vision, which
serve (p.328)tens of millions of people in more than a hundred countries, are only two of numerous
large faith-based relief and development agencies that have integrated peacebuilding into their work
in war-torn areas. Hundreds of thousands of missionaries also provide unique connections between
countries in conflict and wealthier, powerful countries like the United States. Religious bodies in these
powerful countries often give their religious counterparts from places like Sudan and El Salvador
direct access to the leaders of international institutions and governments who can play a constructive
role in helping resolve local conflicts.
Finally, because, at root, religious bodies are communities of people, religion has an ability to reach,
educate, inspire, and mobilize the masses. Some of the most dramatic examples of religious people
power are the Catholic Churchs role in the mass protests that helped bring down the Marcos regime
in the Philippines, the Evangelical Lutheran Churchs role in providing safe space for organizing the
protests that brought down the communist government in East Germany, and the Serbian Orthodox
Churchs role in toppling the regime of Milosevic in Serbia. In many ways, though, these and other
mass mobilizations are exceptional cases. More typical are advocacy efforts, such as the landmines
and debt relief campaigns, that rely heavily on religious institutions and faith-based NGOs to reach
millions of people through their congregations and schools.

People power is also about individuals. Religious leaders at the local, national, and international level
often have a moral credibility that political, governmental, media, and corporate leaders lack. This
moral credibility allows them to be effective advocates for peaceful social change, to mediate between
conflicting parties, and to provide new visions for the future in societies torn by conflict. Finally,
countless peacebuilders are lay peoplesome famous, most notwhose peacebuilding arises out of
their religious beliefs. In fact, over the past twenty-five years, almost half the Nobel Peace Prize
laureates have been religious leaders or lay people whose work was inspired by their faith.

Integrating Ideas, Institutions, and People

Religious peacebuilding is strategic when it effectively integrates these diverse religious resources.
Integrating ideas, institutions, and people power is comparable to what Appleby calls the saturation
model. According to Appleby: Nonviolent religious militancy becomes politically effective over the
long term only when it spans a spectrum of actors at different levels of society, all of whom are
working in collaboration for the nonviolent resolution of conflict and the building of stable political
structures and social relations.38 Similarly, Douglas Johnston and Brian Cox conclude that effective
faith-based diplomacy requires four attributes:

1. 1. A well-established and pervasive influence in the community.

2. 2. A reputation as an apolitical force for change based on a respected set of values.
(p.329)

3. 3. Unique leverage for reconciling conflicting parties, including an ability to rehumanize

relationships.
4. 4. The capability to mobilize community, national, and international support for a peace
process.39
Their first attribute is about faith-based people power, the second and third mostly involve faith-based
values, and the fourth, faith-based institutions. Put another way, the effectiveness of religious
peacebuilding depends on integrating theology, ethics, and praxis; integrating the peacebuilding work
of different parts of religious institutions; and integrating peacebuilding policy and process. Let me
briefly elaborate on each.

It is banal to say, but a religious body is an effective peacebuilder when there is continuity between
what it preaches and what it practices. My contention that religious peacebuilding must be analyzed
on its own terms, not solely by the standard metrics for assessing political actors, interest groups, or
NGOs, assumes that peacebuilding is integrated into the life and mission of religious bodies.
Peacebuilding must be an authentic means to fulfill ones religious mission; religion cannot be simply
a means to pursue peacebuilding. Instrumentalizing religion, even for the worthwhile objective of
peacebuilding, will undermine religion as well as the effectiveness of religious peacebuilding.

Rooting peacebuilding in mission and integrating it into the life of the religious body has practical
consequences. Stand-alone peacebuilding programs, although necessary and important, are not
necessarily best able to use the full panoply of religious resources. Stand-alone programs must be
complemented by efforts to make peacebuilding an integral part of religious formation of its leaders
and its members, its prayer and rituals, its pastoral strategies, and its charitable work. A Catholic
trauma healing program in Rwanda, for example, will be rooted in the Churchs sacramental tradition,
especially reconciliation and the eucharist, as well as in the Churchs experience in pastoral
counseling. A Muslim program to reintegrate refugees in Iraq will not be based on the narrowly
defined humanitarian needs and short-term time frame of a government grant but on the broader
spiritual and social needs and the long-term horizon of the mosque, which will be dealing with the
consequences of the war not only for todays refugees but also for their children and grandchildren.

Integrating peacebuilding and mission can be challenging. Religious traditions that emphasize an
individuals personal relationship with God might not have a strong theological basis for claims that
peacebuilding at the societal level is integral to the faith. In other traditions, peacebuilding is
considered integral, but there is often a considerable gap between official teaching and the integration
of that teaching into the daily life of that community.

Not surprisingly, the impact of religion in a particular conflict depends, in large part, on the intensity
of religious affiliation. One reason extreme nationalists were able to manipulate religion during the
Balkan wars of the 1990s is that five decades of communism had severely weakened religion, resulting
in low levels of religious literacy and practice.40 Dowd suggests that low (p.330) levels of meaningful
religious affiliation are one reason the Catholic Church in Rwanda was ineffective in preventing the
genocide.41 Mennonites, Quakers, and other historic peace churches have had a disproportionate
role in faith-based peacebuilding training and conflict resolution around the world because the
vocation of peacebuilding has become an integral part of the life of those communities.
Religious peacebuilding is often effective in the short term in places where religious leaders retain a
high degree of influence and respect in society at large. Paradoxically, religious bodies might become
more effective peacebuilders over the long term if the task of peacebuilding was not so often confined
to those in clerical roles. In some countries, the leading role of clerics is often a function of the
relatively low levels of education of ordinary believers as well as the traditional role that religious
leaders have played in society. Peacebuilding will be more deeply integrated into the lived religion of
the whole faith community as the peacebuilding role and capacity of lay leaders and ordinary believers
becomes more important. The role of nonclerics is especially important for peacebuilding with a
political dimension for which religious leaders might not be well suited.

Closely connected to the integration of teaching and practice is institutional integration. Religious
bodies are the envy of the Central Intelligence Agency and MoveOn only when they are integrated
vertically and horizontally. The Roman Catholic Church is probably the most vertically integrated
religious body; its hierarchical structure has clearly defined leaders and institutions at all levels of a
pyramidal structure and clear lines of teaching and organizational authority (though it is quite
decentralized in its operations).42 Many religious institutions are much less vertically integrated but
still have the capacity, through their identifiable religious leaders and national and international
structures, to operate at levels beyond the local community. As Lederach has pointed out, strategic
peacebuilding resists the temptation to give priority to peacebuilding at one level of the hierarchical
pyramid or for peacebuilding at one level to operate in isolation from the other levels. 43 In Northern
Ireland, Catholics and Protestants collaborated rather effectively at the leadership level and through a
proliferation of ecumenical grassroots peace and reconciliation groups, such as the Corrymeela
Community. This remarkable ecumenical collaboration would have been even more effective if there
was not such a dearth of ecumenical engagement at the parish and congregation level.

The political science term for horizontal integrationtransnational actorhas its theological
correlates in such concepts as solidarity and the Body of Christ. Religious institutions vary
considerably in the extent to which horizontal collaboration among coreligionists around the world is
valued and practiced. The most effective religious peacebuilding occurs where a high value is placed
on being in solidarity and maintaining unity with those suffering from conflict, and these values are
institutionalized through regional and international structures and meetings, congregation-twinning,
missionary and aid programs, and ad hoc engagement around issues of peace and justice.

(p.331) Vertical and horizontal integration are critical in enabling religious leaders to meet a
common challenge: maintaining a proper balance between the deeply embedded ties to cultural,
ethnic and national identities that give religion its influence in particular conflict situations, and the
cosmopolitan or universal elements that give religion its moral credibility and transnational reach.
What Lederach and Appleby say about strategic peacebuilders generally applies especially to religious
peacebuilders: Practitioners specialize in the dynamics of peacebuilding within the boundaries and
on the terms set by local communities, but they recognize that local communities today always already
exist within national and global contexts.44
Religious individuals and institutions are especially effective peacebuilders because they are
inculturatedthey are deeply rooted in their own communities, representing a complex web of
relationships that often cut across economic, political, and ethnic divisions. They also often enjoy a
moral credibility that is unmatched by other local actors. Especially in times of war and repression,
local religious leaders and institutions share in their communitys suffering (unlike many
international institutions and international NGOs) and are often prominent defenders of their
communitys rights and legitimate aspirations.45 In Poland and Tibet, for example, religion has been a
protector of national and cultural values and rights in the face of repression and aggression. In
Guatemala, Colombia, Mozambique, northern Uganda, and other conflicts, religious leaders have used
their local influence to facilitate or mediate peace processes.

These characteristics of indigenous religious peacebuilders are not without challenges. Precisely
because they are so deeply entrenched in their own communities, they must resist taking refuge in a
comfortable ethical and pastoral parochialism at the expense of the cosmopolitan ethic and universal
religious vision that can be religions most important contribution to peacebuilding. Perhaps the
greatest sin of omission of religious actors who are deeply rooted in communities embroiled in conflict
is their failure to condemn, in unambiguous terms, violence and human rights abuses committed by
their own religious, ethnic, or national group. Because of their condemnations of IRA violence, the
Catholic bishops in Northern Ireland were severely criticized, particularly by many Catholics, for not
being prophetic in their witness on behalf of a beleaguered Catholic community. At the same time,
the Catholic bishops in Croatia were strongly criticized for being too nationalistic in rallying
international support for a victimized Croatian Catholic community.

It is easy, and in some respects appropriate, to applaud the former and condemn the latter. But a fair
analysis would have to take into account the extreme conditions under which religious leaders
operate, the moral dilemmas they face, and the failures of moral courage and vision to which religious
leaders and ordinary believers are not immune. Despite doctrines on the equal dignity of all people
and the centrality of peacebuilding, it is not easy for religion to counter the dehumanization and
scapegoating of the enemy during conflict, to overcome the tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to
ones own group or nation, and to engage in the prophetic self-criticism that could
undermine (p.332)national unity, give the enemy a propaganda bonanza, and risk ones own and
other lives. For these and other reasons, religious leaders can easily come to see their pastoral role as
being chaplains to their own community, even at the expense of their role as religious leaders.
Religious leaders become effective peacebuilders only when they are able to rise above this ethical and
pastoral parochialism, while not abandoning the religious inculturation that can make them such a
force for peace in the local context. Most (if not all) religious traditions contain within them rich
resources for overcoming parochialism and fostering a more universal vision. Concepts of
transcendence, charity, justice, reconciliation, and human dignity are consistent with and reinforce
the pluralist goal of engendering unity while respecting diversity. The fact that most religious bodies
are transnational actors, closely aligned with coreligionists around the world, also serves as a brake on
any tendencies to become too nationalistic and see the world exclusively from the prism of their own
particular ethnic or national group.

Finally, the integration of principles and practices and vertical and horizontal institutional integration
should correspond to an integration of different types of peacebuilding. Strategic peacebuilding
requires a link between the various roles assumed by religious peacebuilders: observation and witness,
education and formation, advocacy and empowerment, and conciliation and mediation. The Acholi
Religious Leaders Peace Initiative in northern Uganda, started in 1997 by Anglican, Roman Catholic,
Muslim, and Orthodox leaders, is a good example of the effectiveness of this kind of integration. The
religious leaders peacebuilding work grew out of their humanitarian aid programs in the camps for
the displaced. They used their influence to play a key role in facilitating the peace process between the
Ugandan government and the Lords Resistance Army. As a complement to their work on the peace
process, they worked with their religious counterparts in the United States and other key countries,
first, to bring greater attention to what was, in the 1990s, a mostly ignored conflict, and later to urge
the United States and the United Nations to play a constructive role in the peace process by (among
other things) supporting indigenous alternatives to the indictments handed down by the International
Criminal Court. They did not, however, work only at the elite level. They also formed local and later
district-level peace committees to educate their own people about peacebuilding, address land issues,
organize peace rallies and prayers, mediate local conflicts, and develop programs of trauma healing. 46

The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative is an example of the strategic value of integrating
religious resources for peace. Most important were the common religious principles and moral
credibility that allowed them to be strong witnesses for peace. Also essential were the variety, reach,
and strength of their religious institutions in the zone of conflict and their institutional ties to their
counterparts around the world. Finally, they had the capacity to address the needs of and mobilize
ordinary Acholis to be a force for peace and reconciliation amid one of the worlds most brutal and
intractable conflicts.

(p.333) Three Challenges for Religious Peacebuilding

This chapter has argued that a strategic approach to religious peacebuilding rejects the prevailing
secularist paradigm that sees religion as mostly a source of conflict and division; takes seriously the
complexity of religion and religious actors, the multifaceted, sometimes distinctive religious strategies
for peacebuilding and the extent to which these strategies are a function of the nature of a conflict;
and integrates the complex of ideas, institutions, and individuals that can serve as a potent source of
religious peacebuilding. I now address three key issues raised by religious peacebuilding: (1) the
public nature of religious peacebuilding, (2) the role of principled nonviolence in religious
peacebuilding and (3) the relative importance of ecumenical and inter-religious peacebuilding
compared to single-identity peacebuilding.

A Strong Public Role for Religion

If the secularists are mistaken in their assumption that the antidote to religious conflict is to
marginalize and privatize religion, then strategic religious peacebuilding cannot be limited to
motivating individuals to be peacebuilders and transforming interpersonal relationships; it must be
tied to a strong public role for religion. The role of religion in postconflict situations is a case in point.
Many religious traditions are well equipped to address the moral dimensions of the use of force before
and during a violent conflict. Most also have a rich theological, spiritual, and pastoral tradition on
personal reconciliation with God and neighbor. But few have well-developed teaching or pastoral
practices related to the political or communal dimensions of reconciliation after a war is over.
Northern Ireland is not atypical. During two decades of conflict, the four largest churches developed a
clear and mostly constructive approach to the complex political and religious dynamics of the conflict.
But after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, they were somewhat at a loss in dealing with
postconflict issues, such as amnesty for paramilitaries and long-term pastoral strategies for healing
and reconciliation. The growing theological and ethical literature on the political dimensions of
forgiveness is beginning to fill this gap.47 The point is that effective religious peacebuilding depends on
a sophisticated public theology and social ethic that justifies and gives substance to religious
engagement in the social, economic, cultural, and political dimensions of peacebuilding.

The complexity and variety of perspectives on the theology and ethics underlying a public role for
religion can only be hinted at here. As a general rule, those religious traditions that historically have
been most concerned with personal religious experience or posit a sharp distinction between the
religious community and the wider social order have not developed the kind of sophisticated public
theology and social ethic necessary for strategic peacebuilding. Christian Anabaptists (traditional
peace churches) are on one side of the spectrum. They emphasize the need for a distinctive
community of believers that (p.334) can model nonviolent, just behavior. For the most part, they do
not believe it is possible or part of their religious mission to seek to influence the public order. On the
other end of the spectrum is political Islam, which seeks to create a public order that reflects,
safeguards, and promotes Islamic religious and moral teaching. So-called mainline Christian
denominations tend toward a middle ground in which religious and moral values can help shape and
inform the social, political, and economic realms, but these sectors retain some degree of autonomy
from the religious realm.
This spectrum of views on the public role of religion is reflected in three large and complex sets of
issues that are central to an understanding of the essential public dimension of religious
peacebuilding: religionstate relationships, religion and politics, and religion and culture.

Religionstate relationships can have a major impact on whether religion is a source of conflict or
peace. I briefly examine four types of religionstate relationships and their relationship to
peacebuilding:

1. 1. the atheist state, which is intolerant of religion;

2. 2. the state religion, where one religion has a monopoly in society and relies on the state for
both special privileges and to restrict or deny the rights of minority religions;
3. 3. churchstate separation, which privileges religious pluralism by ensuring a secular state
that is neutral toward religion; and
4. 4. the preferred religion(s) model, where the state gives preference to one or more religions,
but state and religion are separate and no effort is made to restrict minority religions.48
The first two types of religionstate relationships are most problematic for religious peacebuilding.
Where religion is severely circumscribed by atheist states, so is religious peacebuilding. The Catholic
Church in Poland could play the role it did in the peaceful demise of communism because it was the
principal social institution in Poland that was independent of the government and capable of pursuing
an alternative vision of Polands social, political, and economic future. In the former Yugoslavia,
religious peacebuilders were handicapped in their efforts to counter religious nationalism in part
because the public role of religion had been systematically circumscribed and undermined under
communism. State religions can sometimes parlay their privileged position into a peacebuilding role,
but more often a religious monopoly is a source of conflict, as with the Khartoum governments efforts
to impose sharia law in southern Sudan. Paradoxically, in the long run, the direct religious role in
government and politics can weaken the public role of religion given the risks of religion being
politicized or coopted by government, either of which can undermine its public credibility.

If the atheist state and state religion models have serious negative connotations for religious
peacebuilding, it does not necessarily follow that religious peacebuilding thrives best in liberal
democracies with strict churchstate separation. In the United States, churchstate separation has
arguably (p.335) contributed to the peacebuilding role of religion. Churchstate separation has not
prevented and might have contributed to the strong role religion plays in public life. Religious
opposition to U.S. policies that undermine the peace process in Colombia and faith-based advocacy
campaigns for peace in Darfur and northern Uganda are fruits of the flourishing of public religion in
the context of strict churchstate separation. What works in the United States, however, does not
necessarily work in countries with very different histories, cultures, political systems, and
demographics. The temptation to try to remake the world in the U.S. image of churchstate
separation is a formula not for peacebuilding but conflict. In many cultures, the U.S. model is seen as
the camels nose of Western secularism and a threat to religion.
Although it can suffer from some of the problems associated with the state religion model, the
preferred religion(s) model can sometimes contribute to effective religious peacebuilding. This model
often coincides with and reinforces a situation in which one or more religious traditions have the
public influence necessary to mobilize the masses against a repressive government or bridge divisions
between conflicting parties in a civil war. Yet because there is not a state religion and the rights of
minority religions are protected, the risk that religion will be politically coopted or become a source of
conflict is diminished.

The religionstate issue is related to but distinct from the larger issue of religion and politics.
Whatever the formal religionstate relationship, peacebuilding requires political engagement;
therefore, religious peacebuilding is about religion and politics. (I define politics broadly to include
engagement on issues of public policy, not just partisan politics.) For many religious peacebuilders,
the challenge is to have a political impact without becoming politicized. Some are most comfortable in
a public role where they serve as a social conscience, criticizing the actions of warring parties,
addressing the moral dimensions of policy issues, and offering a vision of a more peaceful, just, and
reconciled society. Not infrequently, religious peacebuilders assume a more overtly political role when
they identify with one party in a conflict or take on roles usually reserved for governmental actors. In
several prominent cases, notably the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Poland, East Germany,
Serbia, and the Philippines, religious leaders have assumed political roles in mediating between the
government and rebels or calling for a change of regimes. In Guatemala, South Africa, and Peru,
religious leaders have played prominent roles in truth and reconciliation commissions. For some, such
roles are perfectly compatible with their public theology and their conception of proper religious
leadership. Others might avoid such roles as an illegitimate mixing of religion and politics. Still others
might justify what they consider a substitute political position only in exceptional cases when there is
a dearth of other credible leaders to fill the peacebuilding role. A strategic approach to religious
peacebuilding will carefully assess the wide variety of normative perspectives among religious
peacebuilders on religion and politics, not just the potential political effectiveness of their
interventions. In my own judgment, when religious peacebuilders move from a temporary political
role to a more permanent political role, they risk (p.336) losing their moral legitimacy and, over time,
become less effective as peacebuilders. The work of religious peacebuilders will and ought to have
political implications to be effective, but the religious peacebuilders undermine their constructive role
when they become political actors as such.
The attention given to the important issues of religion and state and religion and politics can
sometimes obscure the public role of religion in influencing the cultural dynamics of peacebuilding.
According to Lederach and Appleby,

Promoting reconciliation and healing as the sine qua non of peacebuilding is predicated on a hard-
won awareness that violent conflict creates deep disruption in relationships that then need radical
healingthe kind of healing that restores the soul, the psyche, and the moral imagination. Such
healing, it is recognized, draws on profound rational, psychological, and transrational resources,
especially the spiritual dimension of humanity. Its preferred modalities are therefore symbolic,
cultural, and religiousthe deepest personal and social spheres, which directly and indirectly shape
the national and political spheres.49

Etzioni calls this challenge of developing a moral culture, the soft underbelly of security in
countries where authoritarian regimes are failing, have collapsed, or have been replaced. 50 He
recognizes that in contrast to Western secular approaches that emphasize the establishment of liberal
democracies as the source of peace and stability, religion is one source, in many cases a main source,
and in some cases the major or exclusive source, of moral culture in countries trying to escape
violence and instability.51 Etzionis soft underbelly of security applies not just in cases of
authoritarian regimes but in many conflicts, particularly long-standing civil wars. It is common for
religious leaders in countries riven by conflict to see their main challenge as addressing the cultural
casualties of war. In Colombia, the Catholic Church has a formal role in the official peace process
(what might be seen as a substitute political role), but it is clear that it must also help cultivate civil
society efforts to counter the culture of violence that has developed over decades of conflict and help
the long process of creating a culture of peace, without which the peace process cannot succeed. Of
course, the Church in Colombia could not play either role if it were not a major public force in
Colombia.

In sum, a robust religious contribution to peacebuilding requires a robust public role for religion. That
role must arise out of a sophisticated public theology and social ethic and can be understood only in
light of the variety of religious perspectives on the complex set of issues related to the relationship
between religion and state, religion and politics, and religion and culture.

The Role of Nonviolence in Religious Peacebuilding

The secularist critics of religion and some critics of the secularists contend that religiously motivated
and justified violence is a serious (if not the principal) challenge for religious peacebuilding. If that is
correct, a signal (p.337) contribution that religion can make to peacebuilding is to reconsider its
teachings on war and peace and embrace nonviolence.
According to Etzioni, a critic of the secularist paradigm, the problem with Samuel Huntingtons clash
of civilizations thesis is that it obscures that crucially important differences run through each
civilization, between those who believe in the use of violence to advance their cause and those who
seek to rely on persuasion, between Warriors and Preachers.52 Etzioni defines warriors as those who
use religion to justify terrorism or violent coercion against nonbelievers; preachers are those who
might pursue illiberal political objectives but do so through persuasion, not coercion. He rejects
Bernard Lewiss contention that the solution to Islamic violence is to secularize and modernize
Muslim nations. Rather, he argues that illiberal Moderate Muslims, those who do not support
Western secular conceptions of human rights, democracy, and religion and politics, are nevertheless
our political allies in opposing those who advocate violence, terrorism, and unjust war. 53 Etzioni is
strategic in that he avoids monolithic and reductionist approaches to religious violence that fail to
acknowledge the diversity of views within and among religious traditions on the use of force and
political theology, and the complex relationship between the two. But his analysis of religious violence
needs nuancing.

Religious traditions have taken three distinct approaches to the ethics of force: holy war, just war, and
pacifism, or principled nonviolence. Etzionis warriors represent the first approach. In holy war, there
are no limits to the use of force because it is necessary to defend and promote ultimate religious ends.
The principal contemporary forms of holy war are extremist forms of Islam, personified by Osama bin
Laden,54 and extremist forms of nationalism, in which preserving or promoting ethnic or national
identity justify total war and indiscriminate violence. Etzionis preachers fall under either the just war
or pacifist approaches. Most contemporary forms of the just war tradition reject holy war, and many
share with pacifism a strong presumption against the use of force. Just war traditions recognize,
however, that the limited use of force may sometimes be justified to achieve limited goals, such as
defending the innocent against aggression. The pacifist tradition, exemplified by the traditional peace
churches in Christianity, considers nonviolence to be an exceptionless norm.

Etzionis focus on warriors versus preachers is helpful to a point, but it needs further nuance on the
role of violence and some modification on the role of political theology. Obviously, religious
peacebuilding has to be about finding nonviolent ways to resolve conflict, but it need not be grounded
in principled nonviolence. The first task of religious peacebuilders is to delegitimate holy war and
abuses of the just war tradition. Perhaps paradoxically, those best positioned to do so are not pacifists
but those who preach a restrictive interpretation of just war. My own Christian tradition has a long
and less-than-proud record of holy war. The refinement and narrowing of the just war tradition, not
the emergence of pacifism, ultimately delegitimated holy war within mainstream Christianity. 55 Just
war norms continue to be used, even by pacifists, to counter the religious and moral appeals of
terrorists and contemporary holy warriors. In Northern Ireland, one of the most important
contributions of Catholic and (p.338) Protestant leaders to peacebuilding was to appeal to just war
norms to condemn IRA and Loyalist paramilitary violence.56
Properly used, the just war tradition can serve not only to delegitimate religious violence but also as a
valuable form of violence prevention and conflict mitigation. Religious leaders are often in the
forefront in using just war categories to oppose their own governments resort to military force and
condemn the indiscriminate and disproportionate uses of force, which so often fuel cycles of violence.
The just war tradition also helps counter the widely held realist view that morality has little or nothing
to do with issues of national security and war. Furthermore, a restrictive just war interpretation allows
religious leaders to challenge holy war and the permissive abuses of the just war tradition while not
being dismissed as morally irrelevant in the face of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and blatant aggression.
A theology, ethics, and praxis of nonviolent peacebuilding has a lot to learn from the tradition of
nonviolence, especially the seriousness with which it pursues alternatives to war. An ethic of
peacebuilding, however, is not an alternative to the just war tradition but a necessary complement to
it. An ethic of peacebuilding is grounded, as Marc Gopin suggests, in the recognition that pacifists are
not alone in wanting to strengthen the capacity of religious peacebuilders to effectively engage in
conflict resolution strategies as an alternative to the use of force.57 For these reasons, religious
peacebuilding must be attentive to a nuanced understanding of religious teachings on the ethics of war
and how they interact with an ethics of peacebuilding.

But what of Etzionis view that illiberal religious moderates are not a significant problem for
peacebuilders? Etzioni rightly rejects the secularist argument that the solution to religious violence is
to secularize and modernize highly religious societies. But he does not give enough weight to the role
of political theology in fomenting conflict. It matters a great deal whether religious traditions are
illiberal or not; exclusivist political theologies are not moderate simply because they might reject
violence. Efforts to delegitimate religious warriors must be tied to an effort to delegitimate the
political theologies and nationalist ideologies that undergird their holy wars and abuses of the just war
tradition.

One of the toughest peacebuilding challenges in places like Sri Lanka and Israel-Palestine is not
religious violence but religious nationalism. The link between religion and nationalism might seem
less terrifying, but it is arguably a much greater source of injustice and violence than religious
militants preaching holy war. Religion plays a peacebuilding role when it embraces inclusivist forms of
civic nationalism and legitimate expressions of patriotism while condemning chauvinist and
exclusivist forms of religious nationalism. In Bosnia, the problem was not that some religious leaders
appealed to just war norms to justify the use of force to stop ethnic cleansing. Rather, the problem was
finding religious resources that could delegitimate the chauvinist forms of nationalism that fueled the
ethnic cleansing.

Similarly, religious terrorism is based on a belief that faith demands or sanctions violence. According
to Philpott, however, (p.339)
Near the center of virtually every religious terrorist groups beliefs also lies a political theology. They
believe that one or more regimes is illegitimate for having defiled and failed to promote authentic
faith, and should be replaced by one where political authority is tightly meshed with religious
authority, which actively promotes right religion, and that thereby subordinates other religious
communities.58

He finds that 93 percent of all religious terrorist groups hold an integrationist political theology. They
have taken up the gun to replace corrupted, secularized orders with ones where political authority is
rightly oriented.59 If Philpott is correct that a particular form of political theology, particularly
Islamic revivalism, is behind most religious terrorism, then the solution lies not just in condemning
religious justifications of terrorism but, more so, in the efforts of more responsible voices within Islam
to counter this political theology.

Religious peacebuilders need not resolve the historic debate between pacifism and just war. These
traditions address the important but narrow question of the ethics of the use of force; they cannot
address the wider range of issues that must be part of religious peacebuilding. The task for religious
peacebuilding is not to embrace principled nonviolence but to use insights from both the pacifist and
just war traditions to delegitimate unjustifiable violence, especially holy war. 60 The emphasis in both
traditions on the moral imperative of finding alternatives to the use of military force point to the need
to deepen the theological, ethical, and practical bases for strengthening the capacity to prevent and
resolve conflicts through nonviolent means. Perhaps most important is the need to go beyond the
categories of just war and pacifism to delegitimate the political theologies and ideologies that fuel
violence. More Mahatma Gandhis are always needed, but even more needed are more Reinhold
Niebuhrs.61

The Significance of Inter-Religious and Ecumenical Peacebuilding

Inter-religious and ecumenical peacebuilding has increased significantly in response to the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, and the identity conflicts of the 1990s. Organizations like the World
Conference on Religions for Peace, the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, and the SantEgidio
Community; the peacebuilding programs of the World Council of Churches and other inter-religious
and ecumenical bodies at the international, national, and local levels; the inter-religious peacebuilding
programs of the major faith-based relief and development agencies; the religious peacebuilding
program of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation; and a host of inter-
religious NGOs are examples of these collaborative efforts.62

Inter-religious peacebuilding usually has one or more of five purposes: (1) deepening relationships,
(2) improving understanding, (3) finding common ground on beliefs and issues, (4) promoting
common action, and (5) encouraging complementary action. Each goal is worthy in itself, but a
strategic approach to inter-religious peacebuilding defines the purpose of a particular initiative
in (p.340) light of the nature of the conflict, the theory of change underlying the engagement, and the
actors involved.
As with peacebuilding generally, the purposes of inter-religious peacebuilding must be defined in light
of the nature of the conflict. Inter-religious peacebuilding often suffers from a paradox: the more
religion is central to a conflict, the greater the need for inter-religious peacebuilding; the less religion
is central to the conflict, the greater the likelihood that inter-religious peacebuilding will bear fruit.

Because many agree with the secularist assumption that religious differences lead to conflict, many
also assume that a main purpose of inter-religious peacebuilding is to find common ground on ethical
and theological beliefs. Interestingly, in practice, the formal inter-religious dialogues that seek to
resolve long-standing differences on such issues often take place on separate tracks from those
dialogues that relate to particular conflicts. Major inter-religious initiatives on peace in the Middle
East, for example, would not have been possible without the relationships of trust that have developed
between Jews and Christians through formal theological dialogues, but the initiatives themselves have
usually been undertaken outside of these formal theological dialogues. This separation between
dialogue around doctrine and dialogue around peacebuilding is due in part to a desire not to allow
political conflicts to sidetrack doctrinal dialogues and in part to a conviction that the long-term
process of resolving doctrinal differences will have little impact on conflicts that, while having a
religious dimension, are not about religious beliefs and differences.

Reinforcing commonalities in religious beliefs is an important purpose to the extent that agreement
on the sacredness of human life, the obligation to seek the common good of all, and the rejection of
religious violence provide a deep foundation for inter-religious peacebuilding. But making this a
central purpose of inter-religious engagement can be futile and even counterproductive. It can be
futile because, as Appleby points out, it is not apparent that even broad concepts such as forgiveness
and reconciliation are universal beyond their most generalized usage. Religions, in short, have not
arrived at a universal set of values or priorities in pursuing peace.63 Religious traditions hold different
world-views, and even within religious traditions and individual denominations, there are vast
differences in approaches to conflict. It is not necessary to discover or agree on a global theology and
ethic of peacebuilding for religion to be effective in peacebuilding. Efforts to do so take an enormous
amount of time and resources and usually produce a least-common-denominator approach to
religious peacebuilding whose impact is minimal, in part because it emasculates the richness and
distinctiveness of existing traditions, thereby reducing the ability of religious concepts to motivate and
inspire people to be peacebuilders. For Catholics, the sacrament of reconciliation can be a powerful
motivation for seeking communal forgiveness and healing, whereas an effort by diverse religious
traditions to come to agreement on the role of forgiveness in a conflict might be a source of
unnecessary division over doctrinal nuances and differences over how forgiveness would apply in the
case at hand. As a result, such efforts often result in watered-down statements that lack
the (p.341)capacity to move ordinary believers. The time and resources spent trying to find common
ground on theological issues is often better spent pursuing collaborative or complementary action on
carefully selected issues that relate more directly to the conflict.
Efforts to find common ground can be especially counterproductive in identity conflicts where a
communitys religious and communal identity and even survival are threatened. In those cases, efforts
to deemphasize what is distinctive in ones own religious tradition can exacerbate the problem of what
Gopin calls negative identity, the tendency to define ones religion in opposition to the other. The
solution is not to downplay religious identity but to find those elements within that identity that can
contribute to peacebuilding. As Gopin notes, seeking common commitments might work with more
moderate segments of religious groups, but such efforts will not work with religious extremists until
well after the conflict has abated.64 He continues, especially during a crisis, it is vital that we elicit
that which is most unique and most sacred as a source of prosocial practice and social change, if we
truly want to move the entire religious culture to a new and lasting commitment to peacemaking. 65

Clearly, when religion and religious identity are being used or manipulated to deepen communal
divisions and conflict, inter-religious dialogue is essential to overcome mistrust and
misunderstandings, deepen relationships that can bridge the communal divide, and take at least
symbolic common actions to counter the extremists who preach religious conflict. Particularly in
conflicts with a religious dimension, however, the purpose and benefit of inter-religious engagement
might not necessarily be in common action but in what the coming together allows one to do alone
within ones community. As an instrument of peacebuilding, inter-religious collaboration often has
limited direct impact; complementary action (not collaborative action) is often more effective. The
trust needed for inter-religious collaboration is often undermined by a gap between inter-religious
statements for peace and what the signatories say to their own communities. Effective inter-religious
dialogue enables participants to go back and work within their communities to help them break out of
myths of unique victimization, counter stereotypes and prejudices, and promote better understanding
and respect for the hopes, fears, and legitimate grievances of the other community. A major test for
inter-religious dialogue amid identity conflicts is whether it enhances the ability of moderate religious
leaders, who are usually the participants in these dialogues, to draw on their improved understanding
of the enemy and what is distinctive in their own tradition to more effectively counter the extremists
in their own community.

In Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the Bishops-Ulema Dialogue was established in 1996 to
bring together Catholic and Muslim leaders to support the formal peace process between the
government and Muslim rebels. After more than a decade of dialogue, mostly about very general areas
of common ground on religious beliefs, both sides have concluded that the next challenge is to do
much more sustained education and dialogue within their own communities, who remain mired in
myths and misconceptions about the other community.

(p.342) In Northern Ireland, dialogue between Catholic and Presbyterian leaders from the United
States and Northern Ireland led to a level of trust that resulted in a groundbreaking joint statement
and initiative on fair employment. Equally important, however, was the impact of the ecumenical
relationships on the work of the individual religious bodies. The U.S. Catholic bishops would routinely
send their draft statements on Northern Ireland to their Presbyterian counterparts in the United
States and Northern Ireland to ensure that the bishops did not inadvertently misinterpret the
situation or further inflame the sectarian divide. Likewise, the U.S. Presbyterian Church would send
its draft statements to Catholic leaders for review.
Unfortunately, in part because of the focus on inter-religious dialogue where religion is a dimension of
a conflict, not enough attention is paid to some of the most effective cases of inter-religious
peacebuilding, cases where religion plays a central role in society but is not central to the conflict. In
these cases, inter-religious peacebuilding can be effective for the simple reason that it is easier to find
common ground on issues at stake in the conflict and religious actors can more easily bring what
David Little calls an empathetic detachment. Empathetic detachment requires a reputation for
moral engagement and concern combined with an ability to transcend narrow partisanships.
Prominent religious identity, Little suggests, provides a badge of trustworthiness and impartiality
that can be of great benefit in either formal or informal negotiations.66 Between 1999 and 2002, the
Inter-religious Council of Sierra Leone, for example, facilitated a peace agreement between the rebels
and the government because the religious leaders, working together, were able to use the trust and
moral credibility they enjoyed to build bridges between conflicting parties.67 The work of the Acholi
religious leaders in brokering peace in northern Uganda is another example of the power of united
efforts at peacebuilding where religion is not a factor in the conflict.

Linking the purposes of inter-religious peacebuilding to an assessment of the nature of the conflict is
closely related to the theories of change that underlie these initiatives. 68 Reina Neufeldt identifies four
theories of change that are usually at work in inter-religious engagement. Affective theories focus on
(1) changing the hearts and minds of participants about the conflict and each other, and (2) building
and deepening relationships across deeply divided societies by providing a safe space for those from
conflicting sides to come together. The more ambitious social and political purposes include (3)
promoting cultural change by overcoming sectarian stereotypes and building a culture of peace, and
(4) promoting structural or policy changes by, for example, mediating in a peace process, advocating
for disarmament, or promoting democratization in response to repressive governmental policies. 69

Effective inter-religious peacebuilding closely ties purposes of inter-religious engagement to realistic

theories of change. Each of the purposes of inter-religious peacebuilding could be linked to one or
more of these theories of change. As already mentioned, in Northern Ireland, one purpose of such
dialogue was to strengthen and improve understanding among the moderates in each community so
that they could address sectarianism more (p.343) effectively by working within their own
community. Another purpose was to deepen relationships of trust so that religious leaders could
respond to crises in ways that would reduce the risk of escalation. In Macedonia, the purpose of inter-
religious efforts was to establish parentteacher groups that included Muslims, Orthodox, and
Catholics based on the theory that such common action around issues not related to the conflict would
change hearts and minds and build bridges across religious and ethnic divides. In northern Uganda,
united advocacy on amnesty, the International Criminal Court indictments, and other policy issues
was a key element of the religious leaders efforts to promote the peace process.
With the exception of some elements of the fourth strategyfor example, responding to crises,
mediating in peace processes, and pursuing specific policy initiativesthese strategies for change are
long term and difficult to measure and thus easily dismissed as irrelevant. Gopin argues, however,
that conflict resolution strategies, which tend to be crisis-driven and problem-focused, limit the
creative potential of religion. By contrast, he maintains, eliciting long-term strategies of coexistence
well before a crisis, in a way that draws out the religious tendency across many cultures to dream and
conceive of better realities and work toward them, positively engages religious traditions when they
are not driven into extreme positions by the passions of conflict and the suffering of their
constituencies.70 Given the long-term nature of the strategies for change, effective inter-religious
peacebuilding must be based on long-term, sustained engagement across the timeline of conflict, from
before violence erupts to well after it is over.71
The nature and effectiveness of inter-religious peacebuilding is also a function of who is involved
elites, mid-level, or grassroots; insider only or also outsider. Inter-religious peacebuilding often
involves religious leaders, but in many places there is also a proliferation of mid-level and grassroots
inter-religious peacebuilding. Given the role of religious leaders in their communities, inter-religious
dialogue is likely to be most successful when it is part of a larger, multilevel process that has been
modeled and encouraged by religious leaders.72 Unfortunately, too often, inter-religious engagement
occurs at the leadership level or in ad hoc grassroots initiatives with little connection or coherence
between them.

Inter-religious engagement can be impeded by difficulties in finding dialogue partners when, for
example, hierarchical Christian communities seek to engage with decentralized Muslim communities
or there are significant power imbalances (e.g., the Muslim and Christian communities in Iraq), which
usually leaves little incentive for the dominant religious group to engage.

Most inter-religious dialogues involve moderates. This is partly making a virtue of necessity
extremists are likely to see dialogue as entailing illegitimate compromise or risking their own status
and partly a well-established strategymoderates gain a voice and legitimacy that will help them
marginalize the extremists. Engaging moderates enhances prospects for effective common or
complementary action and avoids giving legitimacy to those who misuse religion to foment division
and violence. But it also limits the (p.344) effectiveness of dialogue because those most responsible
for the violence are not engaged.73 Sometimes, however, the engagement by moderates can build the
trust necessary to allow them, together or alone, to reach out to the extremists within their own
community without being accused by the other side of legitimating extremism.
The effectiveness of inter-religious peacebuilding can be enhanced when outsiders (those not from the
area of conflict) contribute to the dialogue of insiders (those from the area of conflict). The
Presbyterian and Catholic leaders in the United States worked with their counterparts in Northern
Ireland on a twelve-year transatlantic ecumenical initiativethe Inter-Church Committee on
Northern Irelandthat opened up possibilities for collaboration that did not exist when the
ecumenical collaboration was limited to Northern Ireland.74 Through ecumenical speaking tours and
other visits to the United States, this initiative helped counteract the Presbyterian sense of siege by
giving Presbyterian leaders a voice in the United States they had not had before, especially among
Catholic elites who had influence over U.S. policy. The involvement of U.S. religious leaders also
provided the necessary impetus for the four main churches in Ireland to undertake controversial
initiatives, such as a common initiative on the neuralgic issue of fair employment.

Inter-religious peacebuilding can be effective if its purposes are clear; they are related to the nature of
the conflict; they are linked to realistic, mostly long-term strategies for change; they involve sustained
engagement by religious leaders at all levels; and they are supported by coreligionists from outside the
area of conflict. A caution is in order, however. Inter-religious peacebuilding is essential and can be
extremely effective, but too much emphasis has been placed on it to the exclusion of single-identity
peacebuilding, or peacebuilding within ones own community.

Inter-religious peacebuilding faces obstacles that single-identity peacebuilding does not. Inter-
religious peacebuilding requires significant time and resources that might better be used mobilizing
ones community for peace. As Gopin points out, it is easier to convince someone to engage in
peacebuilding from within ones community than it is to engage in authentic dialogue with ones
adversary.75 Moreover, given the dynamics of conflicts with a religious dimension, participation in
inter-religious initiatives during times of crisis can undermine ones credibility with those within ones
community who are most susceptible to the appeals of extremists.
Because it is prone to a least-common-denominator approach, inter-religious peacebuilding also lacks
some of the power of single-identity peacebuilding. In some of the worlds most devastating and long-
standing conflicts, such as Colombia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, religion plays a key
role in peacebuilding, but inter-religious peacebuilding is largely irrelevant simply because of the
religious demographics of the country. The remarkable political and social transformations in Poland,
East Germany, the Philippines, and Serbia were influenced by a single dominant religion, often with
close ties to national identity. Peacebuilding within ones community can draw on the full complement
of a traditions rituals, beliefs, norms, spirituality, and communal (p.345) identity, which is not
possible even in the most effective inter-religious peacebuilding. Extremists within a religious
tradition will most likely be marginalized, not because the moderates are engaged in inter-religious
initiatives but because they can appeal to this rich set of religious resources to convince their
coreligionists that extremism is antithetical to their tradition. In short, inter-religious peacebuilding is
sometimes essential and effective, but it is often not the most essential and effective form of religious
peacebuilding.
Conclusion: Religious Peacebuilding and Policy
Jeff Stein, the national security editor at Congressional Quarterly, asked members of Congress and
the Bush administration who specialize in counterterrorism if they could explain the basic differences
between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, the two principal antagonists in Iraq and elsewhere. The FBIs
chief of national security incorrectly thought that Iran and Hezbollah were Sunni. In what he
described as typical of most American counterterrorism officials, two chairpersons of different House
Intelligence subcommittees dealing with terrorism also did not know the difference between the two
Islamic traditions.76 Not surprisingly, in U.S. planning for postwar Iraq, especially the Pentagons
planning, relatively little attention was given the role of religion.77 In fact, under the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA), the only Iraqi ministry without a shadow minister (i.e., a CPA overseer of
the Iraqi minister) was religious affairs. The CPA was also slow to recognize the significant
peacebuilding role of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and how the complex intra-Muslim divisions in
Iraq might contribute to conflict.

These anecdotes are symptomatic of a general incompetence with respect to the role of religion in
international affairs on the part of many foreign policy elites, an incompetence rationalized by a
secularist perspective, which, even after 9/11, does not place a premium on developing a sophisticated
understanding of this role. Students of religion and U.S. foreign policy can resonate with Albrights
complaint that although she had abundant expertise at her disposal on virtually any foreign policy
issue, she had almost no one to turn to on matters of religion. 78

An extensive report on U.S. government engagement with religion by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies concluded that despite a significant increase in attention to religion since 9/11,
major obstacles remain to effective U.S. engagement with religion.

U.S. government officials are often reluctant to address the issue of religion, whether in
response to a secular U.S. legal and political tradition, in the context of Americas Judeo-
Christian image overseas, or simply because religion is perceived as too complicated or
sensitive.
Current U.S. government frameworks for approaching religion are narrow, often
approaching religions as problematic or monolithic forces, overemphasizing a terrorism-
focused analysis of Islam and (p.346) sometimes marginalizing religion as a peripheral
humanitarian or cultural issue.
 Institutional capacity to understand and approach religion is limited due to legal
limitations, lack of religious expertise or training, minimal influence for religion-related
initiatives, and a government primarily structured to engage with other official state actors. 79
This report recommends a variety of ways the United States could address these obstacles to effective
engagement with religion. The first task is to enhance the institutional competence on religion
throughout the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. It would be helpful, for example, to expand the mission
of the State Departments Office for International Religious Freedom and the Commission on
International Religious Freedom to include not just religious freedom issues but also the less
understood issue of religion, conflict, and peacebuilding. Much more important, however, would be to
develop expertise on religion throughout the State Department, intelligence agencies, the Defense
Department, and other relevant agencies. Religion cannot continue to be assigned to low-level cultural
affairs officers at embassies who often have no expertise in religion and whose portfolio is far too
broad to develop any.80 The United Nations would also benefit from a similar institutionalization of
expertise in religion by establishing a subcommission on religion as part of the new Peacebuilding
Commission or by ensuring that it has experts in religion on the Peacebuilding Commission and its
peacekeeping missions.

The second task is to increase engagement with a wide range of religious actors while also
reconsidering the nature of that engagement. Concerns about engaging with or supporting terrorists
have severely limited the ability of the U.S. government and, to a lesser extent, development
organizations involved in religious peacebuilding from working with any but moderate religious
actors in areas of conflict. Strengthening the moderates and marginalizing the extremists is a
reasonable strategy for change, but effective peacebuilding cannot be limited to that single strategy. It
is also important to engage with a wide range of religious traditions, not just dominant groups, and to
engage at multiple levels (though it is appropriate for a government to give priority to religious leaders
given their often crucial role and so as not to appear to be undermining those leaders).

The nature of engagement with religious actors is also important. The tendency of policy makers to be
concerned with religious entities mostly when they play a political role in crisis situations limits the
ability for effective engagement in long-term, culture-changing peacebuilding which is the forte of
religious peacebuilding. Governments often place unrealistic expectations on religious leaders because
they seek short-term political impact during a crisis. In conflicts with a religious dimension,
governments often try to convene religious leaders or otherwise encourage religious peacebuilding
under governmental auspices. With some notable exceptions, these initiatives are misguided.
Governments should be wary of interfering in the internal dynamics of religious bodies or attempting
to coordinate or promote religious peacebuilding. In most (p.347) cases, direct and visible
governmental involvement with a religious peacebuilding initiative is not needed (often the religious
groups are doing much more than the government knows or acknowledges), nor is it helpful.
Governments rarely have the knowledge, credibility, or neutrality needed to intervene, and
governmental involvement can undermine the independence and credibility of religious bodies. More
appropriate and helpful are government efforts to include experts in religion and, in exceptional cases,
religious leaders indirectly in negotiating and implementing peace processes. Because religious
leaders usually are deeply rooted in their communities and might have a broader, more long-term
vision than political leaders, their input into the process can help ensure that a peace agreement will
take into account issues crucial to a sustainable peace.81
The third, and by far most important, task is to reconsider the substantive approach to religion.
Despite rhetoric about Islam being a religion of peace, the emphasis of U.S. policy on the war of
ideas between the West and Islamic extremism risks framing the challenge much as bin Laden and
other religious extremists doas a war of Islam against the West and the West against Islam.82 The
almost exclusive focus on extremism has inhibited the development of a sophisticated understanding
of Islam and has also diverted attention and resources from the role of other religious traditions in
conflicts. The preoccupation with Islamic extremism arises from legitimate concerns about a grave
threat, but it also reflects the predisposition among policy elites to see religion mostly as a problem to
be dealt with, rather than a force for peace. The United States and other nations recognize the critical
role of religious entities in relief and development and have long engaged with these efforts; a similar
appreciation is needed of the positive peacebuilding role of these same religious actors. When religion
is taken seriously by policy makers, it is usually treated in instrumentalist ways. It needs to be
considered on its own terms, not simply as one of a host of NGOs or potential political allies in
promoting the governments agenda in a particular conflict. It is a daunting task that will require
resources that do not yet exist within the policy-making apparatus; religious peacebuilding has to be
considered not just from a political science or conflict resolution perspective but also from a more
robust and holistic theological, sociological, and cultural perspective. 83

The final substantive issue that has to be addressed more forthrightly is the impact that U.S. policies
have on the capacity of religious actors to build peace. The U.S. intervention in Iraq has fed Islamic
extremism and deepened divisions within Islam and between Islam and Christianityjust as many
religious leaders predicted it would. It is also difficult to exaggerate how U.S. support for dictatorial
regimes throughout the Middle East and its failure to pursue vigorously an equitable peace between
Israelis and Palestinians have diminished the peacebuilding capacity of moderate religious actors and
strengthened the hand of religious extremists. The cultural impact of U.S. policies is also critical. Even
public diplomacy programs on religion tend not to listen to and learn from religious actors but
promote Western, secular approaches to religion and democratization that are seen as threats by even
moderate religious actors in some (p.348) cultures.84 If the United States continues to be seen as the
principal engine of Western secularization, individualism, and materialism, bin Laden and his
supporters will have little trouble recruiting sympathizers from the many who see such efforts at
secularization as further proof of Americas anti-Islamic neocolonialism.
Notes

Notes:
(1) . Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World

Affairs (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), p. 8.

(2) . The secularist paradigm draws on the literature analyzing the dynamics of secularization, but
goes beyond this analysis to assert the normative value of secularization. For a particularly polemical
example of the ideology of secularism, see, e.g., Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How

Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve Books, 2007).

(3) . Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Illusion of Control, in Powers, G., Christiansen, D., and Hennemeyer,
R., eds., Peacemaking: Moral and Policy Choices for a New World (Washington, D.C.: U.S.

Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1994), pp. 26, 31. Reprinted from Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of

Control(New York: Macmillan, 1993).

(4) . Ibid., p. 31.

(5) . See Joseph Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public

Affairs, 2004), pp. 517 ; Stanley Hoffmann, The Case for Leadership, Foreign Policy (Winter

19901991): 2530.

(6) . Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. (New York:

Simon & Schuster, 1996): p. 66. See also Samuel Huntington, If Not Civilization,

What? Foreign Affairs 72 (November/December 1993): 192. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of

Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993): 49.

(7) . Brzezinski, The Illusion of Control, pp. 26, 31.

(8) . R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and

Reconciliation(Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield, 2000): pp. 57.

(9) . Some excellent examples of this literature include Mark Rogers, Tom Bamat, and Julie Ideh,
eds.,Pursuing Just Peace: An Overview and Case Studies for Faith-Based Peacebuilders (Baltimore,

Md.: Catholic Relief Services, 2008) ; David Little, Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in

Conflict Resolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) ; Tsjeard Bouta, S. Ayse
Kadayifci-Orellana, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Faith-Based Peace-Building: Mapping and Analysis of
Christian, Muslim and Multi-Faith Actors (Washington, D.C.: Netherlands Institute of International

Relations in cooperation with Salam Institute for Peace and Justice, 2005) ; Harold Coward and
Gordon Smith, eds., Religion and Peacebuilding (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004)

; Douglas Johnston, ed., Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003) ; Mary Ann Cejka and Thomas Bamat, eds., Artisans of Peace:

Grassroots Peacemaking among Christian Communities(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003)

; David Smock, ed., Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace,

2002) ; Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence,

and Peacemaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

(10) . Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred, pp. 7678.

(11) . Henry Kissinger, Bosnia: Reasons for Care, Washington Post, December 10, 1995, p. C9.

(12) . Isak Svensson, Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars, Journal of

Conflict Resolution 51 (2007): 932934.

(13) . Ibid., pp. 938939. See also Monica Duffy Toft, Religion, Civil War, and International
Order, BCSIA Discussion Paper 200603, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, July

2006. Toft finds that since 1940, most civil wars are fought over issues not involving religion,
except perhaps peripherally: religious civil wars are rare. Monica Duffy Toft, Getting Religion: The

Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War, International Security 3 (Spring 2007): 97131. On the
other hand, Toft found that there has been an increase in the relative number of religious civil wars
over the years, with religious civil wars making up a disproportionate number of the ongoing wars
after 2000 (eight of seventeen as of 2000).

(14) . Only 8 of 49 militant sects (out of 233 communal groups) in the early 1990s were defined solely
or mainly by their religious beliefs. Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of

Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993), p. 317.

(15) . According to Philpott, citing Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Colombia University

Press, 1998) , in 1968, none of the worlds 11 terrorist groups were religious; by 1980, 2 of 64
terrorist groups were religious; by 1995, 26 of 56 (46 percent) of all terrorist groups were religious.
Today, based on the Terrorism Knowledge Base, Philpott finds that 95 of 262 (36 percent) of known
terrorist groups are identifiably religious. The knowledge base is presented by the National Memorial
Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and can be found at http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Daniel
Philpott, Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion, American Political Science Review101
(August 2007): 520.

(16) . Ten of the forty-four (23 percent) religious civil wars recurred, compared with only eleven of
ninety (12 percent) of the nonreligious civil wars. There were 28,974 versus 7,666 average deaths per
year for central and peripheral religious involvement, respectively. Toft, Getting Religion, p. 116.

(17) . Svensson, Fighting with Faith, pp. 930949.

(18) . Ibid. , pp. 938942.

(19) . See ibid., p. 932.

(20) . Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: Norton, 2006), p. 76.

(21) . Ted Robert Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993).

(22) . For a detailed evaluation of efforts to quantify religion in conflict and other situations,
seeJonathan Fox, A World Survey of Religion and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2008), pp. 3261.

(23) . On the views and strategy of the IRA, see Padraig OMalley, The Uncivil Wars: Ireland

Today(Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1983), pp. 258313.

(24) . No one term adequately describes the distinction that needs to be made. Appleby rightly notes
inThe Ambivalence of the Sacred, for example, that the problem is not religious militancy, because
religious militants include both bin Laden and Martin Luther King Jr., suicide bombers, and saintly
advocates of nonviolence. The phrase religious extremism is not an entirely adequate alternative,
but I use it to distinguish between those religious actors who seek a just peace in conflict situations
and those who foment violence, division and sectarianism.

(25) . On the question of religion, there is a significant gap between the views of the policy elites in
Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Tokyo and the views of ordinary people around the
world. In fall 2003, the Zogby polling firm and the University of Rochester released what they called
the first ever worldwide poll on religious beliefs, which found that people care about religion far more
than politics, that a clear majority associated violence within their own country with politics not
religion, and that a majority says that their country would be better if it were more religious. Poll
results are summarized at http://www.zogbyworldwide.com/news/ReadNews1.cfm.

(26) . Pope Benedict XVI made this distinction in his message for the twentieth anniversary of the
Inter-religious Meeting of Prayer for Peace, initiated by his predecessor, John Paul II, at Assisi in
October 1986: demonstrations of violence cannot be attributed to religion as such but to the cultural
limitations with which it is lived and develops in time. In fact, attestations of the close bond that
exists between the relationship with God and the ethics of love are recorded in all great religious
traditions. David Little warns that those who claim that good [or authentic] religion brings peace
oversimplify, but notes that one lesson from a study of religious peacebuilders is that proper religion
exhibits a preference for pursuing peace by peaceful means (nonviolence over violence) and for
combining the promotion of peace with the promotion of justice. D. Little, Religion, Violent Conflict,

and Peacemaking, in Little, Peacemakers in Action, p. 429, 437.

(27) . Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred, p. 8.

(28) . Ibid., p. 9.

(29) . Catholic Almanac (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 2009).

(30) . See Appleby and Lederach, chapter 1 in this volume.

(31) . David Steele, An Introductory Overview of Faith-Based Peacebuilding, in Mark Rogers, Tom
Bamat, and Julie Ideh (eds.), Pursuing Just Peace: An Overview and Case Studies for Faith-Based

Peacebuilders (Baltimore, Md.: Catholic Relief Services, 2008), pp. 2232.

(32) . Ibid.

(33) . Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred, pp. 78.

(34) . Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty, p. 77.

(35) . I borrow this formulation from J. Bryan Hehir, Responsibilities and Temptations of Power: A

Catholic View, Journal of Law and Religion 8:1 & 2 (1990), p. 75.

(36) . Little, Religion, Violent Conflict, and Peacemaking, p. 438.

(37) . Philpott shows that radical Islamic revivalist groups, while small in number, foment conflict by
sacralizing such conflicts. Philpott, Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion, pp. 515516.

(38) . Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred, p. 122.

(39) . Douglas Johnston and Brian Cox, Faith-Based Diplomacy and Preventive Engagement, in

Douglas Johnston, ed., Faith-Based Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): p. 14.

(40) . Lenard Cohen reviews surveys on religious affiliation in Bosnias Tribal Gods: The Role of
Religion in Nationalist Politics, in Paul Mojzes, ed., The Religion and the War in Bosnia (Atlanta:

Scholars Press, 1998), pp. 4354.

(41) . Dowd suggests that the low level of meaningful religious affiliation in Rwanda was, in part, a
function of the fact that most Rwandans were Catholic, so Catholic identity meant less than if Rwanda
had been a more religiously plural country. According to Dowd, there is an inverse relationship
between the extent to which membership is inclusive and the meaningfulness of membership. The
more exclusive membership is, the more meaningful membership is. Robert Dowd, Religious
Pluralism and Peace: Lessons from Sub-Saharan Africa in Comparative Perspective, Paper presented
at the Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 25, 2004.
Dowd might be correct in his assertion, but factors other than religious pluralism must be at work.
Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the role of the Catholic Church in Poland, the Philippines, El
Salvador, Colombia, and other religiously homogenous countries in mobilizing the masses in
opposition to repressive governments.

(42) . Timothy A. Byrnes, Transnational Catholicism in Postcommunist Europe (Lanham, Md.:

Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

(43) . John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided

Societies(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1997), p. 39.

(44) . Lederach and Appleby, chapter 1 of this volume.

(45) . Little, Peacemakers in Action, pp. 46.

(46) . Kelsie Thompson, Uganda: Alliances for Peace: The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative,
in Mark Rogers, Tom Bamat, and Julie Ideh (eds.), Pursuing Just Peace: An Overview and Case
Studies for Faith-Based Peacebuilders (Baltimore, Md.: Catholic Relief Services, 2008), pp. 133144.

(47) . See, e.g., William Bole, Drew Christiansen, S.J., and Robert Hennemeyer, Forgiveness in
International Politics: An Alternative Road to Peace (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Conference of Catholic

Bishops, 2004) ; Raymond Helmick and Rodney Petersen, eds., Forgiveness and Reconciliation:
Religion, Public Policy, and Conflict Transformation (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press,

2001) ; Donald Shriver, An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics(Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1998).

(48) . For a highly nuanced analysis of the wide variety of religionstate relationships around the

world, see Fox, A World Survey of Religion and the State.

(49) . Lederach and Appleby, chapter 1 of this book.

(50) . Amitai Etzioni, Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 2007), p. 152.

(51) . Ibid., p. 163.

(52) . Ibid., p. 151.

(53) . Ibid.

(54) . According to Philpott, 91 percent of all religious terrorist groups are radical Islamic

revivalists.Philpott, Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion, p. 521.

(55) . For historical studies of religious and ethical approaches to war and peace, see, e.g., Roland
Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-

evaluation(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960) ; James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and
the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1981).

(56) . David Little points out that the Rev. Dr. Roy Magee, the Presbyterian minister who helped
convince Loyalist paramilitaries to give up their violence, is not a pacifist, nor are several of the other
religious peacebuilders he examines. Little, Religion, Violent Conflict, and Peacemaking, pp. 436

437.
(57) . Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon, pp. 3031.

(58) . Philpott, Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion, p. 520.

(59) . Ibid.

(60) . On the limited role of the just war tradition in peacebuilding, see Gopin, Between Eden and

Armageddon, pp. 3537.

(61) . Reinhold Niebuhr was a twentieth-century American theologian generally known as a realist.

(62) . For an excellent review of the plethora of major inter-religious dialogues since 9/11, see John J.
DeGioia, Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue (World Economic Forum,
January 2008), pp. 5669.

(63) . Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred, p. 141.

(64) . Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon, p. 63.

(65) . Ibid., p. 64.

(66) . Little, Peacemakers in Action, p. 440.

(67) . Ibid., pp. 278298, 440441 .

(68) . For a general discussion of peacebuilding and theories of change, see John Paul Lederach, Reina
Neufeldt, and Hal Culbertson, Reflective Peacebuilding: A Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Tool
Kit (Notre Dame, Ind.: Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre

Dame, 2007)

(69) . I am drawing on an excellent analysis of theories of change in inter-religious peacebuilding; see

Reina Neufeldt, Interfaith Dialogue: Assessing the State of Theory, Practice and Impact,
unpublished manuscript, 2008.

(70) . Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon, p. 62.

(71) . We are all familiar with what I have privately dubbed the dialogue of drones, a politebut
tediousexchange of theological generalities and self-serving slogans. But that process takes time; it
involves repeated meetings, sometimes over months and years, and it requires secluded spaces.
Fruitful dialogue is not a quick fix and it does not happen in a fishbowl. Jane Dammen McAuliffe,
Context and Continuity Is Crucial, in World Economic Forum Report on West-Islam Dialogue, p.

61.

(72) . Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon, pp. 4243.

(73) . Thomas Banchoff, The Circle of Dialogue, in N. Tranchet and D. Rienstra, eds., Islam and the

West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2008), p. 67.

(74) . Josiah H. Beeman and Robert Mahony, The Institutional Churches and the Process of
Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: Recent Progress in PresbyterianRoman Catholic Relations, in
Dermot Keogh and Michael H. Haltzell, eds., Northern Ireland and the Politics of

Reconciliation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 150159.

(75) . Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon, p. 48.

(76) . Jeff Stein, Can You Tell a Sunni from a Shiite? New York Times, October 17, 2006, p. A23.

(77) . Liora Danan, Mixed Blessings: U.S. Government Engagement with Religion in Conflict-Prone
Settings, A Report of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Center for Strategic and International
Studies, July 2007, p. 6.

(78) . Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty, p. 75.

(79) . Danan, Mixed Blessings, p. 3.

(80) . Many of the recommendations for improving the U.S. governments capacity to address
religious freedom issues would also be relevant to religion and conflict issues. See Final Report of the
Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad to the Secretary of State and to the President of
the United States, May 17, 1999.

(81) . Little, Peacemakers in Action, pp. 2021.

(82) . Danan, Mixed Blessings, p. 43.

(83) . Ibid.

(84) . See ibid., pp. 1417.

Conclusion: Strategic Peacebuilding beyond the Liberal Peace

 Oliver P. Richmond
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords

Richmond suggests that this volume illustrates the emergence of a new stage in the development of
peacebuilding: strategic peacebuilding. Strategic peacebuilding goes beyond security-focused
strategies that build on the lessons of liberal peace, focusing on sustainable peacebuilding at all levels
of society. He synthesizes insights from the volumes authors and from his own fieldwork in Bosnia-
Herzegovina, Timor-Leste, and the Solomon Islands, focusing especially on the role of the local in
strategic peacebuilding. From this volume, Richmond believes, emerges a vision of a
postliberaljustpeace that is more robust, inclusive, locally informed, and contextually sensitive than
dominant conceptualizations of peace.

Keywords: strategic peacebuilding, justpeace, liberal peace, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Timor-Leste, Solomon Islands

The concept and theories of strategic peacebuilding developed in this study are indicative of a much
needed and radical attempt to reframe the liberal peacebuilding project of the postCold War world.
This project was derived from the UN revolution and the age of peacebuilding that Philpott refers
to in the introduction to this volume. It is now clear that what appeared to be the loose peacebuilding
consensus of the 1990s faces many challenges.1

This volume represents the latest stage of this ongoing project. Boutros-Ghalis groundbreaking policy
statement, Agenda for Peace, was followed by the lesser known agenda on democratization and
development,2 documents such as the Carnegie Report, the Brahimi Report, The Responsibility to
Protect, the High Level Panel Report, and expert panels on peace operations, conflict resolution, and
peacebuilding.3 The dominant impulse, at least until the war on terror diverted attention and
resources, has been to draw together the wide-ranging responses that have emerged across
institutions and disciplines to try to produce one universal blueprint for peace, one that can now be
called a liberal peace for the postCold War world.4 I have described this elsewhere as the product of a
third generation of thinking about peace and conflict.5 This represents a rational and secular post-
Enlightenment project in which democratization, development, the rule of law, and human rights
form the basis for building a postconflict state, guided by external experts and conditions. 6 The state is
based on the liberal norms of a mixture of legal regulation and freedoms, as well as on self-
determination and sovereignty. This liberal project has become key to the production of international
order, but it is also subject to (p.354) internal inconsistencies and criticisms, external resistance, and
increasingly obvious shortcomings.
Clearly, there are different interpretations of the liberal peacebuilding project, from those of a
conservative nature (focusing on security matters and institutions) to those that incorporate many of
the attributes of more emancipatory thinking (focusing on civil society and issues related to social
justice).7 They all share assumptions about the state, sovereignty, territoriality, governance,
democracy, self-determination, human rights, rule of law, and development. The relative emphasis on
these components depends on which version of liberal peacebuilding is being pursued. As I argue
elsewhere, mainstream thinking on peacebuilding has generally come to agree on an orthodox form
of the liberal peace, which is somewhere between its conservative and emancipatory gradations. 8

The model of the 1990s quickly proved to be inadequate, and even worse, sometimes ethically
inconsistent, particularly given the UN withdrawal from Rwanda during the genocide, the failure to
instill a liberal state through peace enforcement in Somalia, and the failure to combat ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. The dominant peacebuilding actors (e.g., the UN system, the
international financial institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and major donors) tried to
escape this predicament by a combination of humanitarian intervention, prioritization of military
security, efforts to create liberal states, and, after the terrorists attacks of 2001, regime change (as the
precursor for liberal statebuilding). The goal of creating a liberal state meant that almost any
intervention, using almost any methodwhether coercive, conditional, or consensualbecame
automatically legitimate in the view of some prominent U.S. and U.K. policy makers. This liberal and
positive peace was all the justification that many policy makers required, even though it focused
primarily on installing often alien institutions on people, culture, and society.

As a result, in the Middle East, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, the Balkans, and many other locations, peace
processes began to undermine themselves by reinforcing state-centric models and ultimately
confirming ethnonationalism and territoriality (despite a concerted move in the 1990s to go beyond
Westphalia).9 As peacebuilding came to merge with statebuilding, local actors renewed their
competition for control of the new state. This appropriation of liberal agendas for peacebuilding,
without concern for the everyday needs of the population and with too great a reliance on force and
discourses of securitization,10 meant that the liberal goal of emancipation and a just peace was often
lost. Instead, the focus returned to far more limited conflict management approaches.

The broad consensus on a liberal peace remains to a certain degree, though it has had limited
outcomes so far and many reverses. Its proponents claim that their priorities of security and
institutionalism represent realism and pragmatism. They are concerned that the peace agenda may
already be overextended. Its criticsincluding myselfargue that in practice such approaches
represent limitations that weaken the very project of peacebuilding and its contemporary associated
dogmas.11Such tensions are clear in the strategic vision of peacebuilding that this volume represents
and begins to address in its quest for (p.355) a justpeace. It has ably outlined the liberal arguments
for and about peacebuilding but goes further and suggests a new stage in the development of
peacebuilding.
In this conclusion, I outline the range of peacebuilding issues discussed in this volume. The overall
thesis is that strategic peacebuilding is an alternative to the (now fading) more securitized post-9/11
strategy. Through a reflexive engagement with liberal peacebuilding, the challenge is to return to
inclusive peace processes and a more robust conception of sustainable peace. In the next section, I
examine how strategic peacebuilding challenges the liberal peace which has become the predominant
focus of peacebuilding. Finally, I offer some thoughts on how the liberal peace might be improved on,
drawing to a large degree on research I have recently conducted on what I call liberal peace
transitions in five cases.12

Overview of Issues
The critical and strategic agenda for peacebuilding that emerges in this volume is developed in
increasing detail as this book progresses. The volume begins with a conceptual discussion, followed by
a discussion of institutional forms of peacebuilding from above and below. Lederach and Appleby
develop a concept of strategic peacebuilding to which the subsequent chapters refer. They attempt to
conceptualize a broad horizontal, vertical, and temporal dynamic that takes into account the
interrelationship between theory, policy, and practice; introduces diversity into policy debates; and
prepares the ground for an ethical and strategic critique of actual peacebuilding. It moves beyond the
more usual evaluation based on issues of efficiency and coordination.

In the following conceptual chapter, Peter Wallensteen optimistically points out that the number of
conflicts has significantly declined from the high of the immediate postCold War environment. He
attributes this decline in part to the development of peacebuilding practices, institutions, and theory
during this period. Although states are obviously necessary for peacebuilding, he is critical of the
tendency to equate peacebuilding with statebuilding; engagement with a wider set of issues and actors
is also essential. For example, the reconciliation between and within France and Germany after World
War II was achieved by addressing issues of human dignity and security for communities as they arose
in everyday political, social, economic, and cultural life. Incorporating a wide range of issues increases
the complexity of peacebuilding, which many policy makers (and some academics) take to be
implausible. But as Wallensteen argues, embracing the theoretical, methodological, ontological, and
practical complexities of peacebuilding helps peace be more self-sustaining. A more self-sustaining
peace also entails engaging with local peacebuilders and regional contexts while avoiding stifling
international engagement as well as market solutions that, at least in the difficult and lengthy
transitional period, might not meet urgent needs for jobs and activities that build a common future.
Wallensteen offers valuable and wide-ranging insight into peacebuilding and its evolution,
representing and concurring with much innovative research into an agenda for justpeace over the past
few years.

(p.356) Hal Culbertson raises the problem of learning and evaluation in the following chapter.
Especially since 1990, peacebuilding practices have tended to be broader in scope and increasingly
focused on efficiency and integration. Yet the philosophy underlying liberal peacebuilding, which
provides the parameters of this broadening, has not been subject to much reflection. As Culbertson
points out, this is partly because this would involve questioning the universal applicability of the
blueprint itself. An evaluation process that reflects diverse contexts and addresses failures is necessary
if peacebuilding is to develop legitimacy internationally and at the local level. In my view,
peacebuilding practice has been a singular failure in developing legitimacy, mainly because it has
become so indebted and subservient to a liberal, Western, and developed-world paradigm of peace
that is more a technology of governance than a response to local realities. 13 Culbertsons emphasis on
developing reflective capacities at the micro level of peacebuilding projects is vital if they are to
contribute to a justpeace that has both emancipatory qualities and everyday relevance.
Philpotts chapter on an ethics for political reconciliation opens up an area that rarely appears in
policy and academic literature, which has focused on developing a managerial approach to
peacebuilding in the context of the Weberian state.14 Disciplinary, cold, and lacking in empathy, such
literature often focuses on the international dimensions of a state-centric peace, which gives primacy
to security rather than reconciliation at all levels. Philpott shows how this approach overlooks colossal
injustice and suffering.

Unfortunately, many actors have already evolved standard operating procedures that have avoided
reconciliationnot consciously, perhaps, but as a result of far too much faith in the liberal state and a
far too parsimonious an approach to researching and constructing reconciliation as the basis for
peace. The key elements of political reconciliationacknowledgment, reparations, accountability,
forgiveness, apology, and just political and economic institutionsprovide a more comprehensive
approach to the ethics of peacebuilding. Nonsecular, non-Western models of state and authority and
cultural and religious practices are very difficult to build into a liberal state model and therefore
generate an internal tension within the current peacebuilding paradigm.

Philpott argues that religious and cultural traditions are crucial to reconciliation, taking it far beyond
the liberal project into a terrain more likely to connect populations and leaders and to develop a
sustainable ethics of peace. The question then becomes how to actualize these practices to create a
locally acceptable social contract. Philpott rightly notes that this requires a much more thorough
engagement with questions of social justice. If as much effort had been put into this area as has been
devoted to governance, institutions, and security over the past twenty years, the track record of the
peacebuilding project might have been far better. Perhaps it might not have reached the heights of
reconciliation and reconstruction in Europe after World War II, but the basis for such an achievement
might now be present.

Some of these issues are also raised in Simon Chestermans chapter on the role of international
institutions in peacebuilding. He asks the provocative (p.357) and important question: whose
strategy, whose peace? This gets at why reconciliation, for example, is generally a low priority in the
liberal agenda. In my view, much of what has developed so far has attempted rather unreflectively to
transfer to conflict zones a one-size-fits-all package, based in a Western ideology and experience
that leaves little room for local adjustment. The priority is peace between states rather than pursuing
more ambitious forms of conflict resolution and transformation within and between societies.
Chesterman shows how this tendency has led to approaches to transitional administration that aim to
replace divided or collapsed states with more stable forms of statehood, mainly determined by
external agendas and ideologies rather than an equitable and transparent processes of negotiation
between locals and internationals. International practitioners determine the language of issues raised
in such conversations through their own expectations, processes, and institutional frameworks,
creating local peacebuilding industries that are mimicked but not necessarily internalized.
Chesterman provides an excellent account of the need for a far better understanding of local political
dynamics and their sustainability and legitimacy. He argues for channeling political resources through
institutions rather than individuals, through civilians rather than the military, and through
democratic processes. Great care is needed on the part of internationals to avoid any semblance of a
colonial relationship with local actors. If he is correct in saying states cannot be made from the
outside, a radical revision is required of the peacebuilding project. I would go a step further and
encourage an examination of polities other than states and the sorts of capacities they require to
rebuild a local social contract in a regional context. Many of the problems that Chesterman points to
represent a failure of current models of peacebuilding to build social contracts between states,
international peacebuilders, politicians, and local communities. Local communities are the most
ignored, yet most crucial constituencies of peacebuilding.

The preceding chapters have grappled with the normative aspects of peacebuilding. In particular, they
reach for a shared ethics that is plausible at both the local and international level. Nicholas Sambanis
reverts to a more classical methodology but shares many of the same concerns in engaging with a
notion of sustainable peace. He offers a peacebuilding triangle, developed with Michael Doyle, that
shows the relationship among the depth of the conflict, remaining local capacity, and the
requirements for international assistance. He asks a fascinating question: what is the standard of
peace required? He answers: a participatory peace. A participatory peace focuses on local
engagement and the social contract, and the capacity to survive after international actors have left. He
offers a complex and convincing explanation for failed peace agreements as well as prescriptions for
greater success, include more attention to local capacity building, greater UN engagement, more
foreign assistance, and more multidimensional hybrid engagements. In addition, he argues that
democracy needs to be rooted not just within a nation-state but also in a broader regional context.

This argument about increased participation and hybridity runs into difficulty with his assertion that
integrated missions might have to rely on stronger (p.358) security interventions and delays in
political liberalization. Peace operations might reduce local government capacity, especially in terms
of political economy, in the short term, with the longer term goal of a more participatory peace. As
Iraq and Afghanistan have unequivocally shown, however, this approach will anger the participants in
a peace process in the short term and make it less likely that they will participate in good faith or that
ajustpeace will be achieved. Indeed, it runs the risk of undermining the legitimacy of peacebuilding
because it involves internationals supplanting local input into statebuilding. At least in the short term,
they lose the two elements of a justpeaceself-determination and self-government. Perhaps if Iraq
and Afghanistan had been run under the auspices of the UN, such a bargain could have been made
and accepted by locals as legitimate. But even then, history shows this is unlikely. Even participation
is often not seen as enough for local actors, elites and grassroots alike, who have often invested blood
and resources in a struggle for self-governance. Before any international intervention that might
legitimately defer local governance and place it in the hands of international actors, there must be a
consensus that has both broad international and local legitimacy.
The following chapter adds a further dimension to the discussion of strategic peacebuilding in that it
seeks to find a balance between excluding and sanctioning terrorists and developing a viable peace
process based on democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Given that the era of the war on terror
has generally been a substitute for the promising peace processes of the 1990s, this is a difficult
balance to find. Clearly, as George Lopez and David Cortright show, such strategies have to be
considered where parties to a peace process cannot be persuaded to renounce actual or structural
violence. They argue that this balance is more achievable with a targeted approach to sanctions, as has
emerged within the UN system since the mid-1990s. Targeted sanctions can be a substitute for
military intervention, particularly in the context of arms embargoes.

Sanctions must be used with caution. They should not be indiscriminate, nor should they be expanded
without great care for they may further radicalize extremists or predatory elites (state and nonstate).
Moreover, they can place the peacebuilding process at risk by excluding the most difficult actors (or
spoilers). In cases such as Northern Ireland in the 1990s, these are the very actors with whom it is
most important to open lines of communication. Yet those targeted are often engaged in behavior that
is generally considered to undermine peace. Given this paradox, sanctions are a strategy to be applied
with great sensitivity. Indeed, as recent UN actions have shown,15 it is important to maintain a sharp
separation between counterterrorism strategies and peacebuilding. In many peace processes where
this has not occurred, such as in the Middle East, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka, state counterterrorism
strategies have obstructed the peace processes at various phases. It has proven very difficult to
persuade the UN that this is not the case (see, for example, the quiet marginalization of the Counter-
Terrorism Committee in the UN system). As the authors point out, however, involving the UN adds
more nuance to such strategies while avoiding what Mark Duffield would call the securitization of
peacebuilding and development through the adoption of a hard security agenda. 16

(p.359) Robert Johansen examines the contribution of international judicial processes in his chapter,
which aims at overturning the widely held assumption that peace and justice are mutually exclusive.
Clearly, importing external standards of justice into conflict zones can have an impact on
accommodations reached between disputants. This is often most noticeable in investigating human
rights abuses and atrocities committed during a conflict. As Johansen points out, since the
International Criminal Court has made it plausible that political leaders will later be held responsible
for war crimes, a compromise peace agreement might not be in their interest. To deal with this
dilemma, he proposes a rule-utilitarian ethic aimed at achieving the lowest possible loss of life in
both the short and long run. In this ethics, legal justice is one element in a wider peacebuilding
framework, not the dominant element. Peacebuilding and justice do not require an either/or choice
but share common goals of strengthening human rights and the rule of law as part of a justpeace ethic.
Peacebuilding should take into account the political and normative utilities of justice, which requires
an account of political interests in their local context as well as in the context of international norms.
Where there is a tension between processes of justice and an overall goal of peace, Johansen argues
that truth telling should be encouraged as a foundation for a broad reconciliation process that does
not favor certain groups (especially those implicated in violence or crime) and does not allow justice to
be a cover for vengeance. Thus, peace and justice are always integral to each other. Separating them
probably will lead to a virtual peace that likely favors those who had defied international and local
norms or are intent on usurping control of state structures. Peacebuilding must show how the rule of
law operates fairly to provide justice for perpetrators and victims; it must strengthen the rule of law in
ways that are relevant and legitimate both at the international and local levels.
Such sentiments are mirrored in the following chapter, which examines the place of human rights in
peacebuilding. Naomi Roht-Arriaza argues for an ecological model of peacebuilding driven by human
rights and humanitarian law frameworks operative at the local, national, and global levels. Justice
mechanisms rooted in local communities are especially vital. But as Roht-Arriaza illustrates, there are
problems with the assumption that the local milieu, often one of the drivers of conflict, is the source of
unambiguous conflict resolution. Yet coopting and formalizing justice in a local context using Western
standards also runs the risk of alienating the very communities who need and want to be part of a
new, democratic, and pluralistic polity. Narrow versions of justice that are disconnected from broader
social and political issues need to be avoided.

Larissa Fasts chapter on humanitarian operations looks at whether humanitarian action by outsiders
might be integrated into strategic peacebuilding. She argues that the need to maintain a moral
response to human suffering must take priority over integrated approaches to peacebuilding. This
means, quite rightly, that humanitarian assistance is more important than the political or institutional
aspects of peacebuilding. Humanitarian assistance does not build peace or deal with the roots of
conflict but instead focuses on specific and isolated issues, beginning with avoiding harm. An
integrated approach compromises the capacity of humanitarian agencies to operate because it
requires (p.360) them to become involved in the structures of political conditionality. A separate
space is required. Although humanitarian assistance is vital to the project of peacebuilding, it must be
able to focus on need alone, even where rights are still problematic. This neutral, needs-based goal is
important, even if lack of neutrality and bias are inevitable given an interveners expectations, culture,
biases, and, in many cases, lack of local knowledge.
Jackie Smiths fascinating chapter focuses on the problems raised by the often unthinking adoption of
neoliberal economic strategies, which have had serious unintended consequences across a whole
range of cases. I would go further than Smith and argue that such impulses are now built into the
institutional structures of liberal peacebuilding because they rest on an inherent perception that
peacebuilders possess expert knowledge and locals do not. An automatic devaluing and distancing
from the local context results.17 This propagates a hierarchy that neoliberalism and liberal
institutionalism confirms in economic, political, and sometimes even class terms. 18 Smith shows how
peacebuilding, like the conflict it treats, is globally embedded and reproduces the power relationships
and inequality of global political and economic systems. This is a crucial insight, which gets to the
heart of why liberal peacebuilding has not reproduced a liberal and local social contract and instead
has often led to predatory states and benefited their elites. Much of this stems from the marketization
strategies that ignore social welfare and force postconflict developing economies to compete in a wider
milieu that consigns people to poverty in the crucial peacebuilding transition. It is exacerbated by an
unwillingness of internationals to engage with local culture, customs, institutions, and processes. As a
result the postconflict individual who aspires to be an active citizen generally finds that the state she
has worked so hard for fails to provide her with basic resources, recognition, or a stake in the
development of peace. Peacebuilding, then, should not reflect existing inequalities and promote an
elitist class system, protected by emerging security forces whose energies would better be devoted to
protecting ordinary citizens.

Peacebuilding needs to be delinked from globalization, Smith argues. Postconflict situations should be
treated as special transitional cases, as with Europe after World War II.19 This requires a global (not
just local) democracy. Smiths chapter might be accused of idealism by some in more realist, positivist,
liberal institutionalist, or neoliberal quarters. But the practice of the past twenty years illustrates
clearly that what she offers is actually a necessary and pragmatic strategy for promoting democratic
states and polities founded on a social contract that benefits the most needy and vulnerable.

The following chapter turns to a discussion of civic friendship and how to overcome hatred through
forgiveness, particularly in the context of contemporary Belfast. This fascinating chapter shows the
possibilities inherent in the creative humanistic turn opened up by the critique of security and
institutionally oriented peacebuilding. Robert Enright, Jeanette Knutson Enright, and Anthony Holter
argue that any strategic notion of peacebuilding must develop civic friendship through forgiveness.
Indeed, in places like Bosnia and East Timor, they argue, new conflict dynamics have emerged as
unintended (p.361) consequences of liberal peacebuilding. Perhaps indicative of the liberal bias of
Western academics and policy makers, the authors acknowledge that theirs is a long-term strategy,
almost as if this was a failing! Of course, long-term strategies need no apology. Any strategic version of
peacebuilding must always have an eye on the long termon generations and life spans. Otherwise, it
runs the risk of being self-defeating. Witness East Timor, where the failure to address long-term
problems of social welfare, custom, and new identity conflicts led to the near collapse of the peace
after it had earlier been widely lauded as a major success by the UN, World Bank, and others. The
authors show how educational institutions can contribute to peacebuilding if they are able to
transcend societal divisions. Education addresses the roots of conflict and how they are transmitted
across generations. The educational system is often both a part of this transmission and an obvious
site in which to prevent it. Yet institutional peacebuilders normally ignore it because of their mistaken
belief that peace starts mainly in political, economic, or securitynot social or culturalinstitutions. A
sustainable justpeace requires a forgiveness that is rooted in society, culture, and attitudes, as well as
institutions.
Gerard Powers contends that religion, a critical element of culture and sometimes a political force as
well, has generally been overlooked in conflict and peacebuilding situations, even though it is
increasingly recognized as central to the modern world. He shows how the prevailing secularist
paradigm has led many policy makers and academics to underestimate the impact of religion,
especially its positive role in peacebuilding. He describes the essential public nature of religious
peacebuilding and the potential and limits of ecumenical and inter-religious peacebuilding. A strategic
approach to peacebuilding that takes religion seriously has major implications not just for U.S. foreign
policy but also for other peacebuilding actors who share the prevailing secular approach to
peacebuilding.

Implications for the Evolution of Peacebuilding

The liberal paradigm of peacebuilding has offered significant advantages, as Doyle, Sambanis, Paris,
and many others have documented.20 It has represented a step forward compared to earlier conflict
management approaches and incorporates many of the goals of earlier versions of conflict resolution
and peacebuilding.21 This volume has shown that there is now a need to consolidate the wisdom of
liberal peacebuilding and move beyond this dominant paradigm to approach the goal of sustainable
and locally owned forms of peace now endorsed by the UN system and other actors. There is a growing
consensus on the failure so far of liberal peacebuilding to achieve this goal. 22

Some contributors to this volume suggest that this framework can be salvaged and improved. Others
suggest that more radical thought is required to go beyond this paradigm of peacebuilding. 23 This
difference in approach reflects the fact that even postliberal peacebuilding faces intellectual tensions
similar to those faced by liberal peacebuilding. Such tensions are inevitable. So much (p.362) has
been invested in the liberal projectthe culmination of at least 100 years of developing liberal
institutions and the social contract within states and several hundred years of liberal philosophythat
it would be very difficult to move into a radically new agenda that was not, in some way, indebted to
the liberal project. What is distinctive about this volume is that it approaches these tensions through a
much broader pluralism of method, ontology, and practice than ever proposed before in the quest for
a self-sustaining, locally rooted justpeace.
Another dimension of this volumes contribution to the multiplicity of peacebuilding is worth
notingthe need for peacebuilding to respond theoretically and reflexively to its own failings. Such a
response means modifying and simultaneously reinventing peacebuilding through the many
institutions that have grown up around it. Only through this wider methodological, ontological, and
epistemological reflection might a justpeacethat is, a postliberal, emancipatory, empathetic, or
caring peace24be achieved.

Several other key issues emerge in the context of the necessarily broad yet strategic discussion
included in this volume. The first relates to the discussion that began before 9/11, but was then
interrupted, on the shift from notions of absolute sovereignty toward a post-Westphalian approach to
politics. Peacebuilding has generally adopted the state as its vehicle, but in many conflictsBosnia, for
instancethe state is the source or root of contention. Many of the authors in this volume consider the
state as a key to successful peacebuilding, but they must ask what type of state is envisaged by all
stakeholders, with an emphasis on the views of the least powerful. It should not be assumed that the
state represents a preexisting package of tried and tested values, norms, institutions, and processes,
simply to be transferred through peacebuilding.

As Lederach and Appleby suggest, peacebuilding should focus on the creation and nurturing of
multilevel and constructive human relationships, rather than merely instrumental and technical
responses to conflict. A strategic peacebuilding approach offers an engagement with the shifting and
complex, geopolitical, economic, and cultural realities via a range of agencies, actors, and institutions,
formal and informal, across an interdisciplinary and interdependent spectrum of knowledge and
issuesall aimed directly at dealing with root causes of conflict. This calls for a fourth generation of
conflict resolution or transformation activities, not a return to conflict management. 25 Ultimately, it
engages reflexively with the most as well as the least marginalized people in postviolence situations.
This requires a normative position and an engagement with difference rather than a reliance on
universal blueprints. Strategic peacebuilding offers the opportunity to connect the localized conditions
and contexts of specific conflicts with the international and institutional designs of peace that are still
being developed.

Beyond the Liberal Peacebuilding Agenda?

Given the relatively uneven record of the embryonic efforts in peacebuilding over the past two
decades, I argue that a maximalist case for peacebuilding, (p.363) rather than a reductionist and
parsimonious version, is the most strategic option currently available. A plausible and pragmatic
paradigm for peacebuilding promotes a culture of peacebuilding across the life cycle of a conflict,
rather than lazily equating it with the construction of liberal or neoliberal states. Peacebuilding begins
and ends with the local, Lederach and Appleby argue, but within an international context. Here I
might add that the local should be as local as it possibly can be and not merely representative of
local elites.
As I elaborate elsewhere, what emerges from this discussion is not just a better concept of liberal
peace, but a postliberal peace in which the liberal and the local combine to form a liberal-local
hybrid.26 This implies a far better understanding of the dynamics of the relationship between the
liberal and the local and of the interface between the two in everyday life. This liberallocal interface,
and the nature of peace it suggests, requires extensive and ongoing contextual consultation and
research to develop these ideas so that they are ready to be negotiated, accepted, rejected, and
constructed when and where that becomes necessary. For example, when internationals engage in
conflict zones, they might ask of disputants at all levels what type of peace could be envisaged, what
type of reconciliation might be achieved, and what is needed to understand, engage, and support
everyday life. Security, institution-building, democratization, the rule of law, human rights,
marketization, and development might be constructed from these informed perspectives. This
inclusive conversation between local disputants and internationals could uncover a consensual ethic
of discourse and praxis by which a postliberal peace might be achieved.

The need for this internationallocal conversation was evident when I visited Bosnia Herzegovina in
March 2008. The Office of the High Representative (OHR), the linchpin of the postDayton era peace,
was demoralized and in turmoil. Its representatives felt that they had lost their leverage over local
politics (with the peacekeeping troops long gone, and the bluff called on their Bonn powers by local
politicians). After years of working to ensure that Bosnia stayed peaceful and became liberal, they
could no longer exert coercive influence. A representative of the OHR argued that it probably was time
the office closed and passed the baton to the European Union. The EU argued that it was up to local
politicians and constituencies to make the reforms necessary to join the EU and that the EU could not
relax its rules to allow the country to move more quickly toward accession, even if this would make the
local peace more sustainable. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the
United Nations Development Programme representatives in turn argued that the EU might have to
relax its entry rules, given that this was the only hope for a sustainable peace once the OHR closed.
The latter in turn acknowledged that closing the OHR was risky: war had been mentioned in the
media for the first time since Dayton, and everyones eyes were on what the Republika Sprskas
position would be in the light of Kosovos Unilateral Declaration of Independence. 27 The OHR has
created an either/or situation: either wield power to build peace or leave and risk conflict. This is not
the only option, however. It can develop other strategies to ensure peace in Bosnia and remain
committed to peacebuilding in a strategic sense, rather than remain imprisoned within
its (p.364) mandates, which clearly no longer reflect the realities in Bosnia. One might argue that
passing responsibility to the EU would partly reflect the current situation, but despite more than a
decade of involvement by these institutions, peace has become neither self-sustaining nor locally
owned.
Consistent with Lederach and Applebys approach to peacebuilding, eliciting local cultural and social
resources for constructing peace would be far more strategic and pragmatic. Indeed, local actors in
Bosnias peacebuilding sector have long recognized this.28 International commentators have also
recognized the risks of an organization like OHR, which may undermine local capacity to promote
democracy and human rights while simultaneously seeking to improve it. 29 An elicitive approach
offers a pathway out of the unintended consequences of such dogmatic liberal prescriptions.

It is interesting to note that in two other peacebuilding contexts in which I conducted fieldwork in late
2008, I found that such sophistications had recently been adopted by international peacebuilders,
including formerly resistant institutions like the World Bank. After the collapse of the peace in Timor-
Leste in 2006, there is now an ongoing and elicitive attempt to redevelop a liberal state that
incorporates local customs as well as an embryonic welfare system to provide disincentives for violent
behavior. In the Solomon Islands, a mixed international and local team is working on major
constitutional reforms that would produce a hybrid-liberal and custom-based constitution. In both
cases, there has been a clear recognition that the liberal state and liberal peacebuilding alone cannot
provide a framework for peace.30 Thus the liberal-local hybrid is already emerging. So far, such work
is in its infancy, but it does appear to represent a logical response to the weaknesses of previous
approaches to peacebuilding.
Peacebuilding, like ethics, is an ongoing historical practice 31 that needs to be incorporated into any
renewed agenda for peace. As with the search for a sustainable peace in Bosnia, Timor-Leste, or the
Solomon Islands, this is a reason not to announce the failure of peacebuilding after so much effort but
to try even harder for its renewal and success. Success should now be defined as a locally
sustainablejustpeace32 and not merely a grand narrative of geopolitical practices, institutions, or
markets that mainly benefit local and international political, economic, and peacebuilding elites.

Weberian states are primarily concerned with security through power and territorial governance;
liberal states are primarily concerned with the good life through checks and balances in particular
territories; and neoliberal states focus, in addition, on the role of the free market in distributing scarce
resources. Strategic peacebuilding broadens the processes and the goals of peacebuilding beyond the
liberal paradigm, meaning that the attainment of a justpeace requires more than merely a state
apparatus for security or a market apparatus to redistribute resources. It requires greater levels of
democracy to engage with the machinery of checks and balances, and it also requires communication
and mediation with and between international liberal prescriptions and the often nonliberal local
context.

A strategic version of peacebuilding may well, on the surface, be taken to offer retrogressive hints of
methodological reductionism, one in which the (p.365) Weberian, liberal, or neoliberal state remains
the basis of the imagined polity. Linking the term strategic to a reformed version of peacebuilding
carries its own baggage. Strategic implies hard security. Although security is a precondition for any
polity or state recovering from conflict, it is only one of several. The choice of the phrase strategic
peacebuilding is in itself strategic. It engages with a language that policy makers and officials
comprehend and deploy themselves but brings to it a far wider range of issues and connections. In
effect, strategic peacebuilding tries to develop wide-ranging responses to the problems raised by using
the Weberian, liberal, and neoliberal state as a toolkit for conflict resolution, and so it offers a window
into a postliberal peace that may be more locally and contextually sensitive. Ultimately, strategic
peacebuilding as developed in this volume illustrates the pragmatism of localized, sensitized,
multidimensional, and multilevel peacebuilding that moves far beyond what has so far proven to be a
rather self-defeating approach based more narrowly on security and institutions.
Conclusion
The evolution, reform, and refinements of peacebuilding discussed in this chapter retain the normal
tools of peacebuildingdemocratization, human rights and the rule of law, marketization and
development, secularity, and a balance of powers. In addition, it advocates a localized, culturally and
socially just, representative, and participatory political system, a process of politics that respects local
culture, provides for social welfare, and is open to religious influences. Underlying all the
contributions to this volume is the assumption that an integrated, multidimensional approach is
required to produce a rapid peace dividend, one that will persuade disputants that peace is better for
them than war. An integrated approach would be in my view much more strategic (and effective) than
previous approaches because it does not privilege parsimonious versions of securitythat is, state or
elite security, as opposed to human security33before and above all else. Nor does it, by implication at
least, privilege one-size-fits-all liberal peace packages, imported and controlled mainly from afar, over
the needs or rights of locals or customary and indigenous processes. Nor would it rest on restrictive
time lines or budgets tailored solely to the requirements of donors. A justpeace requires a negotiation
between these levels and issues of peacebuilding and an outcome that is both locally authentic and
consistent with the most rigorous international norms pertaining to needs, rights, and institutions.

This volume provides a survey of the state of the art of peacebuilding, and contained within many of
the chapters are strong indications of a far more reflexive approach involving alternatives to the
liberal peace and a media that allows scholars and policy makers to escape the rigor of their own
reductionist technology of governance. A positive justpeace requires an engagement with as broad,
representative, and participatory a representation of everyday life in postconflict zones as possible if it
is to be empathetic, emancipatory, elicitive of recognition and care, and hence sustainable.

(p.366) Any attempt to develop a strategic paradigm of peacebuilding must remember that its roots
lie in the lives and the consent of real people and societies who have the capacity to make choices
within their own context and aspire to such agency. To maintain its integrity, any approach to
peacebuilding on their behalf must be able to offer a form of peace that is rhetorically defensible
across the range of platforms with which this book has shown that strategic peacebuilding engages.
Far from pursuing a utopian agenda, this volume offers a realistic and pragmatic terrain into which
peacebuilding must move as it begins to respond to the problems that have emerged with the liberal
peace paradigm of the postCold War world. A justpeace is the challenge for the next phase or
generation of peacebuilding.
Notes

Notes:
(1) . See Oliver P. Richmond, UN Peace Operations and the Dilemmas of the Peacebuilding

Consensus, in International Peacekeeping, vol. 10, no. 4, 2004.

(2) . Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventative Diplomacy, Peacemaking and

Peacekeeping, New York: United Nations, 1992; Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for
Development: Report of the Secretary-General, A/48/935, May 6, 1994; Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
Supplement to an Agenda for Peace A/50/60, S.1995/1, January 3, 1995; Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
An Agenda for Democratization, A/50/332 AND A/51/512, December 17, 1996.

(3) . In particular, see Report of the Secretary-Generals High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges,

and Change, United Nations, 2004; International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre,
2001.

(4) . See my Transformation of Peace, London: Palgrave, 2005/2007 , esp. conclusion. See
also Kofi Annan, Democracy as an International Issue, Global Governance, vol. 8, no. 2, AprilJune

2002, pp. 134142; A. Bellamy and P. Williams, Peace Operations and Global

Order, International Peacekeeping, vol. 10, no. 4, 2004; D. Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul:

Human Rights and International Intervention, London: Pluto, 2002; J. Chopra, and Tanja

Hohe, Participatory Intervention, Global Governance, vol. 10, 2004; Mark Duffield, Global

Governance and the New Wars, London: Zed Books, 2001; Roland Paris, At Wars End,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; M. Pugh, Peacekeeping and Critical

Theory, Conference Presentation at BISA, LSE, London, December 1618, 2002.

(5) . Oliver P. Richmond, Maintaining Order, Making Peace, London: Palgrave, 2002, chapter 5.

(6) . Pariss book, At Wars End, is perhaps the apogee of this development, in that his
institutionalization before liberalization concept depends on a coercive external importation of the
privileged processes of peacebuilding.

(7) . See my argument in Transformation of Peace, p. 216.

(8) . Ibid., p. 219.

(9) . Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastunduno, Beyond Westphalia, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1995.

(10) . Barry Buzan, O. Waever, and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder,

Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998.

(11) . For supporters and critics of the liberal peace, see, among others, Michael Doyle, Kant, Liberal

Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 12, 1983 ; Michael Doyle and
Nicolas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

2006; Charles T. Call and Elizabeth M. Cousens, Ending Wars and Building Peace:
International Responses to War-Torn Societies, International Studies Perspectives, vol. 9, 2008;

Stephen D. Krasner, Sharing Sovereignty. New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing

States, International Security, vol. 29, no. 2, 2004; Paris, At Wars End; J. Snyder, From

Voting to Violence, London: Norton, 2000; David Rieff, A Bed for the Night, London: Vintage,

2002; Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas that Conquered the World, New York: Public Affairs,

2002; Michael Pugh, The Political Economy of Peacebuilding: A Critical Theory

Perspective, International Journal of Peace Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2005; David

Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton, London: Pluto Press, 1999; Duffield, Global

Governance and the New Wars; Roland Paris, International Peacebuilding and the Mission

Civilisatrice, Review of International Studies, vol. 28, no. 4, 2002; Roger Mac Guinty,
Indigenous Peace-Making versus the Liberal Peace, Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 43, no. 2, 2008:

13965; Beate Jahn, The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention and

Statebuilding (Part II), Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, vol. 1, no. 2, 2007; Neil
Cooper, Review Article: On the Crisis of the Liberal Peace, Conflict, Security and Development, vol.

7, no. 4, 2007.
(12) . Oliver P. Richmond and Jason Franks, Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Peacebuilding and

Statebuilding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

(13) . Michel Foucault, Governmentality, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited
by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997, pp. 87

104.

(14) . Ibid.

(15) . Recent meetings at the UN in New York at which I was present indicated that there is significant
internal tension in the UN system between peacebuilding and development projects and the Counter-
Terrorism Committee.

(16) . Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.

(17) . Oliver P. Richmond, The Romanticisation of the Local: Welfare, Culture and

Peacebuilding,International Spectator, vol. 44, no. 1, 2009: 14969.

(18) . David Harvey, Neoliberalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

(19) . Karl Polyani, The Great Transformation, New York: Rinehart, 1944.

(20) . Paris, At Wars End; Doyle and Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace.

(21) . It is generally taken that conflict management represents limited attempts to focus mainly on
security matters, whereas conflict resolution deals with underlying and social causes. See for

example,John Burton, World Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.

(22) . For my own empirical and theoretical discussion of the achievements of the liberal peace, see
myLiberal Peace Transitions (with Jason Franks). See, among many others, Chandler, From Kosovo

to Kabul; Mac Guinty, Indigenous Peace-Making versus the Liberal Peace, pp. 139163;M.
Pugh and N. Cooper, with J. Goodhand, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges of

Transformation, Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2004; Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper, and Mandy
Turner (eds.), Whose Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding,

London: Palgrave, 2008; Snyder, From Voting to Violence, p. 43; Annan, Democracy as an

International Issue, p. 136; Chopra and Hohe, Participatory Intervention, p. 292;

Rieff, A Bed for the Night, p. 10; Paris, International Peacebuilding and the Mission

Civilisatrice, p. 638.
(23) . See among others Christine Sylvester, Bare Life as Development/Post-Colonial

Problematic,Geographical Journal, vol. 172, no. 1, 2006, p. 67.

(24) . See Oliver P. Richmond, Peace in IR, London: Routledge, 2008.

(25) . See Richmond, Maintaining Order, Making Peace, esp. conclusion.

(26) . Oliver P. Richmond, Eirenism and a Post-Liberal Peace, forthcoming in Review of

International Studies, 2009. The term liberal is used here in its philosophical sense.

(27) . Fieldwork and personal interviews in Bosnia Herzogovina, March 1016, 2008; Timor-Leste,
November 2008; Solomon Islands, December 2008.

(28) . See Liberal Peace Transitions, chapter 2. See also the discussion at a project workshop in
Sarajevo in March 2007, where local discussants were extremely critical of liberal peacebuilding in
Bosnia.

(29) . Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton.

(30) . Volker Boege, M. Anne Brown, Kevin P. Clements, and Anna Nolan, States Emerging from

Hybrid Political OrdersPacific Experiences, The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies Occasional Papers Series, no. 11, September 2008.

(31) . R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. ix.

(32) . See Oliver P. Richmond, Reclaiming Peace in International Relations, Millennium: Journal of

International Studies, 2008; A Post-Liberal, Everyday Ethic of Peace? Article for PRIO project
on the Ethics of the Liberal Peace, 2009.

(33) . Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh and Anuradha Chenoy, Human Security: Concepts and Implications,

London: Routledge, 2006.