Building The Peace

"Building Peace is John Paul Lederach's definitive statement on peacebuilding. Lederach explains why we need to move beyond "traditional" diplomacy, which often emphasizes top-level leaders and short-term objectives, toward a holistic approach that stresses the multiplicity of peacemakers, long-term perspectives, and the need to create an infrastructure that empowers resources within a society and maximizes contributions from outside."

Making War and Building Peace examines how well United Nations peacekeeping missions work after civil war. Statistically analyzing all civil wars since 1945, the book compares peace processes that had UN involvement to those that didn't. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis argue that each mission must be designed to fit the conflict, with the right authority and adequate resources. UN missions can be effective by supporting new actors committed to the peace, building governing institutions, and monitoring and policing implementation of peace settlements. But the UN is not good at intervening in ongoing wars. If the conflict is controlled by spoilers or if the parties are not ready to make peace, the UN cannot play an effective enforcement role. It can, however, offer its technical expertise in multidimensional peacekeeping operations that follow enforcement missions undertaken by states or regional organizations such as NATO. Finding that UN missions are most effective in the first few years after the end of war, and that economic development is the best way to decrease the risk of new fighting in the long run, the authors also argue that the UN's role in launching development projects after civil war should be expanded.

Mediation and negotiation, personal transformation, non-violent struggle in the community and the world: these behaviors – and their underlying values – underpin the United Nations’ definition of a culture of peace, and are crucial to the creation of such a culture. The Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace addresses this complex and daunting task by presenting an accessible blueprint for this development. Its perspectives are international and interdisciplinary, involving the developing as well as the developed world, with illustrations of states and citizens using peace-based values to create progress on the individual, community, national, and global levels. The result is both realistic and visionary, a prescription for a secure future.

Even though international peacebuilding has rapidly expanded in the last two decades to respond to more multi-faceted and complex conflicts, the field has lagged behind in documenting the impact and success of projects. To help address this gap, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, one of the leading networks in the field, has brought together 13 stories of innovative peacebuilding practices from around the world in Building Peace. While the projects covered are diverse in nature, together they demonstrate the significant impact of peacebuilding work. Contributors created new institutions to prevent and manage conflicts at the local or national levels, helped restore relationships in conflict-affected communities, and empowered citizens to work for positive change in their societies across ethnic, religious, and political divides. It’s clear that there is no quick fix for violence but this volume will go a long way in providing inspiration and practical tools for policymakers, academics and practitioners who seek to make significant and valuable contributions towards achieving peace.

There is increasing consensus among scholars and policy analysts that successful peacebuilding can occur only in the context of capable state institutions. But how can legitimate and sustainable states best be established in the aftermath of civil wars? And what role should international actors play in supporting the vital process? Addressing these questions, this state-of-the-art volume explores the core challenges involved in institutionalizing postconflict states. The combination of thematic chapters and in-depth case studies covers the full range of the most vexing and diverse problems confronting domestic and international actors seeking to build states while building peace.Charles T. Call is assistant professor of international relations at American University. Editor of Constructing Justice and Security After War, he has conducted field research on postconflict issues in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Central America, Haiti, Kosovo, and West Africa.Contents: Ending Wars, Building States?C.T. Call. Context. The Politics of Security in State Building?B. Rubin. Peacebuilding and Public Finance?C. Lockhart and M. Carnahan. Postconflict Economic Policy?P. Collier. Participation and State Legitimation?K. Papagianni. Justice and the Rule of Law?E. Jensen. The Limits of Bottom-Up State Building?W. Reno. Cross-Cutting Challenges?S. Cliffe and N. Manning. Cases. Somalia?K. Menkhaus. Palestine?R. Brynen. Bosnia?M. Cox. East Timor?E. Bowles and T. Hohe. Afghanistan?J. Sherman. Liberia?M. McGovern. Conclusion. State Building, War, and Peace?C.T. Call.

"John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. He has provided consultation, training and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, Tajikistan, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. In this book, Lederach poses the question, "How do we transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our human community while still living in them?" Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act-an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination." This imagination must, however, emerge from and speak to the hard realities of human affairs. The peacebuilder must have one foot in what is and one foot beyond what exists. The book is organized around four guiding stories that point to the moral imagination but are incomplete. Lederach seeks to understand what happened in these individual cases and how they are relevant to large-scale change. His purpose is not to propose a grand new theory. Instead he wishes to stay close to the "messiness" of real processes and change, and to recognize the serendipitous nature of the discoveries and insights that emerge along the way. overwhelmed the equally important creative process. Like most professional peacemakers, Lederach sees his work as a religious vocation. Lederach meditates on his own calling and on the spirituality that moves ordinary people to reject violence and seek reconciliation. Drawing on his twenty-five years of experience in the field he explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding and points the way toward the future of the art." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0616/2004011794-d.html.

In the early 2000s, Liberian women wearing wrap skirts and white T-shirts, shouting: ‘We want peace, no more war’, attracted international attention. After almost fifteen years of civil war, the enduring active, multifaceted, and non-violent campaigning for peace by women’s organisations contributed to the end of the fighting and the signing of a peace agreement between the warring factions. Although it is widely assumed that women’s inclusion in peace processes yields greater attention to women’s issues and needs in the aftermath of a conflict, this is only partly the case in Liberia. Thus, this analysis looks beyond the extraordinary commitment by women in Liberia and deals with the questions to what extent their role in the peace process has contributed to gender-sensitive outcomes in post-conflict Liberian society and why greater gender sensitivity was not achieved. By focusing on manifestations of patterns of masculinity in the public and private spheres, Anne Theobald identifies factors at different levels of analysis within different time frames that elucidate the unexpected outcome. Not only does this provide for a more encompassing understanding of dynamics of gender relations and context-specific variables impeding gender sensitivity in post-conflict settings, but it also helps to refine prevailing theoretical approaches on gender in peacemaking and peacebuilding and to develop more holistic, context-specific, and efficient policy approaches, which can effectively lead to gender-sensitive peace.

Private corporations are rarely discussed as playing a role in efforts to curb civil violence, even though they often have strong interests in maintaining stability. Violence often damages the infrastructure necessary to deliver goods to market or may directly target companies. Corporations also have a normative obligation to conduct business in ways that promote peace. While there are historical examples of firm-instigated violence and firms reaping benefits from instability and conflict, there is also evidence that corporations proactively engage in peacebuilding. For example, firms devise programs to promote economic development, offer access to education, and employ former combatants. In The Building and Breaking of Peace, Molly M. Melin develops a theory of the conflicting roles corporations play in both building and preventing peace. Melin shows that corporations engage in peacebuilding when there is a gap in the state's capacity to enforce laws, but they also weigh the opportunity costs of peacebuilding, responding to the need for action when conditions enable them to do so. Firms are uniquely situated in their ability to raise the cost of violence, and proactive firms can increase the years of peace in a country. At the same time, an active private sector can make it harder for states with ongoing conflict to reach an agreement, as they act as an additional veto player in the bargaining process. Including original cross-national data of peacebuilding efforts by firms in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa from 2000 to 2018, and in-depth case analyses of corporate actions and outcomes in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Tunisia, Melin shows that corporations help to prevent violence but not resolve it. In examining the corporate motives for peacebuilding and the implications of these activities for preventing violence and conflict resolution, the book builds a more holistic picture of the peace and conflict process. The findings also help explain why armed civil conflicts persist despite the multitude of diverse actors working to end them.

The international community invests billions annually in thousands of projects designed to overcome poverty, stop violence, spread human rights, fight terrorism and combat global warming. The hope is that these separate projects will 'add up' to lasting societal change in places like Afghanistan. In reality, these initiatives are not adding up to sustainable peace. Making Peace Last offers ways of improving the productivity of peacebuilding. This book defines the theory, analysis and practice needed to create peacebuilding approaches that are as dynamic and adaptive as the societies they are trying to affect. The book is based on a combination of field experience and research into peacebuilding and conflict resolution. This book can also be used as a textbook in courses on peace-building, security and development. Making Peace Last is a comprehensive approach to finding sustainable solutions to the world's most pressing social problems.