The dilemma of local peace: Paradigmatic turn or myth?
Introduction
Operating at the confluence of peace
theory and practice, in this brief reflection, I grapple with the dilemma
associated with the, now too familiar, notion of local peace both in its
conceptual and practical dimensions. On the one hand, I seek to make a
contribution to the deconstruction of the assumed conceptual certainty of what
local peace means and the perceived rhetoric about its successes. On the other,
I contribute to opening the window for a continued search for a better
understanding of peace and the broader discourse on viable ways of ‘doing
peacebuilding’ in the complex and ever-changing conflict dynamics in Africa.
The
critique of liberal peace
With the dawn of critical peace research,
there seems to be an agreement among the academic community that attempts to
build a global consensus on how to respond to armed conflicts of varying scales
have failed (Lewis et al, 2018). This is even as the critique of liberal peace
that has dominated peacebuilding since the end of the Cold War – heralded by Ghali’s
(1992) ‘Agenda for peace’ – has recently surged. Many scholars seem to agree
that liberal peacebuilding has failed to meet its promise as epitomized in the
optimism of the 90s. Debate on international interventions, led by the UN and
the international community (largely Western powers) and international
non-governmental organisations (INGOs), have come under intense academic critique (Fisher, 2018).
Such measures have particularly been accused of being contextually insensitive
and for imposing a neo-liberal Western model of governance with little or no
regard to local authorities (Autesserre, 2012). As the critique of liberal
peace grows, theorists have cast their conceptual fishing nets deep and wide
emerging with concepts such as illiberal peace (Lewis, et al, 2018) and
post-liberal peace (Richmond, 2016), among others. Even policy makers and peace
practitioners have since toned down their optimism and are slowly seen to
vacate their inclination to liberal peace as a magical ‘fix it’ approach to
conflicts, particularly in the global South (Wallis & Richmond, 2017: 426).
The
birth of local peace
The failings of liberal peace have birthed
various conceptual discourses. It has equally resulted in the increase in and
focus on local peacebuilding mechanisms. The notion of local peace is not
strange in the discourse of peace and conflict given the fact that peace is too
broad a concept. Following Galtung’s (1996) conception, peace in its positive
connotation, is indeed broad to the extent that it lends itself to questions of
analytical usefulness. Understandably, there is consensus within the academic
and practice circles on ‘adjectification’ of peace. This departs from the conception
of peace as a complex notion, signifying different things to different people at
different times and places (Webel & Johansen, 2007: 7-8).
Following this thinking, adjectives come
in handy in rendering the concept of peace analytically useful. Hence, peace is
conceived as liberal or democratic when it goes hand in hand with a range of
political and civil liberties or authoritarian when they are lacking. Peace is
inclusive when many sectors of society become involved or elitist when it is
based on elite pacts, such as Kenya’s famous ‘handshake’ whose assumed peace
dividends have been questioned (Opalo, October, 12 2019). On the other hand,
peace can be conceived as just when it holds perpetrators of violence
accountable and takes into account different needs while it is viewed as unfair
when only one side can assert its own goals or otherwise victor’s peace as is
the case with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in Rwanda (Piccolino, 2015).
Peace is stable if it lasts for a long time, or unstable if war recurrence
happens as in Liberia, Burundi, South Sudan, among others. This selection shows
that devoid of adjectives, the term peace is largely empty of content (Kurtenbach, 2019: 1).
Within this philosophy of ‘adjectification’,
the emergence of the concept of local peace to the crisis of liberal peace can
be appreciated. While many experts exhibit variations in their conceptions of
local peace, the practitioner community seem to locate the concept around the
ideas of peacebuilding processes involving locally-based actors, addressing
local conflict dynamics through local mechanisms and/or strategies and tactics
(Wise et al., 2019: 2). On the other hand, academics are still grappling with what
local peace actually entails. For example, while in the ‘local turn’ Richmond (2011)
seems to emphasize micro-processes with territorial connotation, Mac Ginty
(July 02 2019) with his emphasis on ‘everyday peace’ seems to suggest the
conception of local that connotes the ordinary. In this regard, Mac Ginty,
helps us to overcome the binary between the perceived international-liberal and
the local-illiberal competing conceptions of peace which the notion of
territory does not do justice to.
However, in my view, with or without territory, the notion of local
peace suffers significant conceptual defects that makes its analytical
usefulness problematic.
Romanticization
of local peace
The perceived unquestionable significance
of local peace as remedial to the maladies of liberal peace, championed by the
international community led by the UN and western nations, has increased its
uptake, on the one hand, and lessened the conceptual critique, on the other. As
a result, we have seen a romanticization of the notion of local peace which
has, regrettably, become a blinder that forecloses attempts to interrogate its
conceptual and analytical viability and usefulness. Failure to substantively
subject the notion of local peace to rigorous scrutiny runs the risk of
embarking on a peacebuilding venture that will reproduce the challenges and
failings of liberal peace that it seeks to overcome.
The
conceptual quagmire
While many actors appear to agree on the
aspects that qualify peace as local, there does not seem to be any practical
and theoretical engagement of local peace from the philosophical point of view.
For instance, do we have any known local ideologies of peace and are such
ideologies, if any, different from what is perceived as non-local? In other
words, other than conceiving local peace as involving local actors and done
through local mechanisms – which essentially relate to the processes and
approaches of resolving conflict – do we have any known ontological foundations
on the understandings of peace that are uniquely attributable to the said
local? Additionally, given that it appears compelling to discredit the notion
of territory – due to the complications it creates – how then do we possibly
localize any philosophy of peace? Would it not make sense to think of peace as
a menacingly universal concept whose only particularity relates to how it is
perceived and consumed by individual persons and groups? If this were to be
granted and given the iniquitousness and interconnectedness of the world today,
is it possible to conceive of such individuals and communities as local? What
would be the inclusion/exclusion criteria; in other words, what qualifies an
individual and/or a group as local and the other non-local? Should we go step
further and grant that there are indeed groups of people that do not
necessarily exercise movement from certain geographical territories hence local
peace can apply to them in the proper sense of location hence confined to their
own conceptions and approaches to peace, how would we escape the egregious
error of ‘othering’ that underlie numerous social ills whose effects, such as
imperialism, patriarchy and classism that the world reels from? This is
especially the case, since it reproduces the ‘us’ vs the ‘them’ problem.
Surely, we have not forgotten that the ‘us’ (liberal west) and ‘them’ (illiberal
non-west) is a key undoing of the liberal peace paradigm. If we were to abandon
territory – which I think we should – and adopt Mac Ginty’s ‘everyday, does
local then not include everybody? If this be the case how analytically useful
is the concept of local?
It is based on questions such as these
that I deeply reflect on the notion of local peace and its conceptual
shortcomings. This does not mean to suggest that I propose vacation of the
concept of local peace but a recommendation that scholars and practitioners
need to interrogate the conceptions and perceptions they hold as regards local
peace.
Dubious
narrative of success of local peace in Africa
Rampant ‘NGOnization’ and
‘projectification’ of peacebuilding disfavors local peace. Even as we struggle
with local peace at the conceptual level, I contend that local peace, as
implemented in many parts of Africa, has largely been spearheaded by NGOs whose
approach to peacebuilding is typically through yet another deeply problematic
notion of project cycle. Peace is a reality that is too complex, too fluid, too
transient to fit in a typical project cycle model complete with logical
frameworks and/or theories of change. Peace is too dynamic, too unpredictable
and too difficult to measure that it easily elides typical Monitoring and Evaluation
(M&E) frames that inform NGO projects designs.
During my stint in the practice of peacebuilding
within NGO setting, I have, for instance, felt frustrated with the reporting
templates and indicator tracking traditions typical of NGO projects. I have
equally encountered colleagues in the field who have expressed their
displeasure with the manner in which peace projects are designed and
implemented by various NGOs and I have met and interacted with practitioners
who are genuinely concerned about this phenomenon. These experiences make me
want to reflect on the assumed importance of NGOs in peacebuilding (Paffenholz, 2009)
and their designs including the flaws related to funding models (Heideman, 2013.)
among other factors. But, beyond this rather outward-looking and institutional
approaches to locating insufficiencies associated with NGO peacebuilding, I
equally question the intra-NGO dynamics, particularly by interrogating the
characteristics of individual actors running these entities. In so doing, I
bring to the fore the rather covert behavioral anomalies associated to the
perceived failures of NGOs as agents of peacebuilding, specifically in African
countries.
Types
of peacebuilders
Recently I had a conversation with two
peacebuilding practitioners. One is a veteran peacebuilding practitioner and
the other is my former schoolmate. Both are overseeing, at varying levels and
capacities, implementation of peacebuilding projects in various parts of
Africa, work that they have done for several years. As we reflected – albeit
lazily over a drink – on peacebuilding generally, through NGOs in Africa, three
major categories of NGO peacebuilding practitioners emerged.
The first is a group of individuals who
are out to build careers and enjoy the benefits associated with and/or accruing
from holding various positions in NGOs and most cases with ambitions to transition
to other big positions of influence and power, including in politics and international
arena. This category comprises of ambitious career-driven individuals who, in
most cases, are both knowledgeable and eloquent. These professionals are fully
aware of the inadequacies associated with NGOnization and projectification of
peacebuilding yet conceitedly project the ‘all is well’ image. They exude confidence
and remarkable enthusiasm about what they do and speak highly about the assumed
yet dubious successes of peacebuilding projects as captured and reported
through standard NGO project cycles processes. Akin to what in ‘Amani
Mashinani’ (2009) the late Bishop Cornelius Korir calls ‘peace mercenaries, and
related to what has elsewhere been termed ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ (Eide, 1997), this
category of ‘peacebuilders’ wield influence and feature quite prominently in
the global ‘marketplace’ of peace discourse transactions. Armed with expansive
knowledge of the subject, professional and technical skills and benefiting from
vast experience and eloquence in their articulation of issues, they
successfully create and sustain an impressive narrative of success. They are responsible
for painting an image of great work and resounding accomplishments that often
place the prevailing actual realities behind thick veils. This category of
peacebuilding practitioners is at the heart of the prevailing romanticization;
they are one of the key reasons local peace appears to be working simply because
that is what they report and project.
The second is a group of people whom, for
lack of better description, we thought are genuinely ignorant and/or generally
naïve. They religiously attend to duty and work so hard within set parameters
of project cycles without ever questing a thing. They unreflectingly hold those
structures and processes to be effective and as unaffectedly contributing to
transforming conflicts and societies. They will implement what is set out to
the letter, harvest data based on set out indicators – even when they are
irrelevant or when they are outright misplaced – and report on progress as
required in often predetermined reporting templates. This is the group that
works quite well with the first one, with the former as boss and the latter as
‘foot soldier.’ This is a category that tends to be ‘career peacebuilders’ with
access to and influence over structures of peacebuilding largely in intra-state
set-ups with networks that have international linkages. They dominate the
national space, regularly commentate on topical issues on peace and
occasionally represent their establishments on international arenas. When they
appear in international settings, they become the, de facto, representation of ‘local
peace actors’ hence they collaborate augment and advance the local peace
successes narrative.
The third and last category include a
group of people who genuinely attempt to use available resources and frameworks
within NGO setting to support the said local peace processes with the view to
see communities transform and evolve into reliable, predictable and hopefully stable
entities. This latter group is the one that most often than not get frustrated
by the sheer contrast between what is reported internationally and the ‘local’
reality. We realized that they actually don’t last long. They tend not only to
quit their jobs but also switch careers. I have so far met quite a number of
them who have since evolved into other ventures. The problem with this third
group is that by quitting, they actually contribute to maintaining the
status-quo since they leave it unchallenged and intact full with its dubious
narrative of local peace successes.
The bottom line is that, doing
peacebuilding through the NGO setting is largely flawed and what is on the
ground is in stark difference from what is contained in beautiful reports held
by donors in western capitals where funding for such processes is domiciled. I
know that representatives of donor agencies do hold periodic visits to the
field to ascertain the situation. But it is a plain truth that when such people
conduct field visits, they will often hear and see what their local
counterparts (NGO operatives) want them to hear and see. It is that simple. And
therefore, the triangle is complete and the narrative of the success of local
peace is created, validated and sustained. This is perhaps the reason for the
insistence on and ‘romanticization’ of the so-called local peacebuilding which
I here argue needs interrogation both at the conceptual and practice levels. As
I said earlier, failure to interrogate the thinking and the ‘doing’ of local
peace may end up reproducing if not reversing the paltry gains made through
liberal peacebuilding’s nearly 30 years’ experimentation.
Conclusion
Given such conceptual and practical
challenges related to the notion of local peace, I think it is time to appraise
the rhetoric of local turn and assumed purity and fit of local peace which is paradoxically
been propagated by those perceived to be ‘non-local’ (the international
community). While some scholars are actively promoting local peace on the basis
of the challenges of liberal peacebuilding and ‘local’ peace actors – through
NGO programmes – continue to vocalize what they argue are successes of local
peacebuilding, conceptual ambiguities and practical flaws are arrayed contra
the optimism of local turn as paradigmatic shift in the direction of realizing
a viable alternative to the failings of liberal peace. This calls for a
(re)evaluation of (i) the concept of local peace and (ii) the assumed successes
of NGOnized local peace programmes and their assumed efficacy. This is
important since it not only helps us to ensure conceptual clarity and sharpen
our analytical approaches but also be cautious about the possible (re)production
of the mistakes of the last two decades – associated with failures of liberal
peacebuilding.
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The dilemma of local peace: Paradigmatic turn or myth?
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
January 11, 2020
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