How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT *
This article examines the concept of peacebuilding and its relationship to national security, arguing that neither can be achieved without the other. After tracing the term from Galtung’s original formulation through the definitions adopted in An Agenda for Peace and the Brahimi Report, the author sets out the features that distinguish peacebuilding from peacemaking and peacekeeping, with particular emphasis on national ownership and the objective of making external assistance unnecessary. The role of conflict sensitivity in sustaining peace is then considered, followed by nine components of a peacebuilding strategy: recognising the cost of prolonged violence, drawing plans from local actors, conflict transformation in its contextual, actor and issue dimensions, linking insiders and outsiders, dealing with spoilers, identifying obstacles including those who profit from continued conflict, selecting appropriate resolution mechanisms, demobilising armed parties, and continuous evaluation. The crisis in northern Nigeria is examined as a case in which insecurity has undermined both livelihoods and the state’s capacity to act. The author concludes that peacebuilding cannot succeed where citizens do not feel safe.
KEYWORDS *
Peacebuilding, national security, national ownership, conflict sensitivity, conflict transformation, spoilers, demobilisation, Boko Haram, northern Nigeria, banditry, Galtung, relapse
INTRODUCTION
It is essential to see to the end of a violent conflict and put in place strategies and structures that can help prevent future conflict and maintain sustainable peace. Peacebuilding and national security within a nation are closely connected. After a violent conflict, citizens and leaders alike look forward to living in a peaceful and secure state where they can return to their everyday lives, where people feel safe in their community, where social and economic development is possible, and where children can have a chance to return to their education. Achieving this requires the collaboration of all stakeholders, which sometimes involves outside actors. The challenge, however, is that unless the people are willing to collaborate with the efforts of the peacebuilders, it would be impossible to achieve peacebuilding.
This paper aims to analyse the concept of peacebuilding, the factors that can contribute positively to peacebuilding efforts, and the relationship between peacebuilding and national security. The term peacebuilding first emerged through the work of Johan Galtung more than thirty years ago. Galtung called for establishing peacebuilding structures to promote sustainable peace by looking at the root causes of violent conflicts and supporting indigenous capacities for conflict resolution and peace management.
MAIN CORPUS
Definition
The United Nations report of 1992, An Agenda for Peace, defines peacebuilding as solidifying peace and avoiding a relapse into conflict. Peacebuilding strategies and activities must be coherent and tailored toward the specific needs of the concerned state, based on national ownership. They should consist of a carefully sequenced and prioritised set of activities for achieving targeted objectives. Peacebuilding consists of various approaches or activities designed to strengthen national capacities at various levels of conflict management, address the causes of conflict, and promote peace. Peacebuilding aims to address the underlying drivers of conflict, strengthen capacity to promote peace, and reduce the risk of violent conflict in any given context.
Establishing sustainable peace through peacebuilding rests on the citizens and government of any country where peacebuilding is underway. National ownership is essential to peacebuilding success, and so also is national capacity. An essential objective of peacebuilding is to reach a point where external assistance is optional as quickly as possible, by ensuring that all initiatives support the progress and development of national peacebuilding capacities. A common peacebuilding strategy should be derived from a process in which many stakeholders are consulted and based on a comprehensive assessment of the country’s needs.
Other approaches to peace include peacemaking and peacekeeping. Peacemaking involves an attempt to stop an ongoing conflict, to work toward reconciliation among rival parties and build mutual understanding among parties and stakeholders. The purpose of peacekeeping is to prevent the resumption of conflict by putting in place activities that favour the creation of lasting peace.
The United Nations Brahimi Report of 2000 defined peacebuilding as activities undertaken to reassemble the foundations of peace and to provide the tools for building on those foundations something more than just the absence of war. The Secretary General’s Policy Committee described peacebuilding as a range of measures aimed at reducing the risk of relapse into conflict.
Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritised, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.
Peacebuilding is a long-term process to resolve conflict and establish sustainable peace through non-violent means, which involves relationship building, institutional reforms, and addressing the root causes of violence. Peacebuilding can occur either before the conflict, to avoid escalation of the situation into conflict, or after a violent conflict.
The concept of national security lies in the ability of the people of a state to feel safe and secure, and in the capacity of the government to defend the interests of its people by providing a safe environment where citizens can carry on their activities without the fear of violent intruders.
Peacebuilding features
National ownership is one essential feature of peacebuilding. The citizens of the nation where peacebuilding is underway have the primary responsibility, along with their government, to lay the foundation for lasting peace. Peacebuilding must also focus proactively on building and rebuilding national capacity, bringing the nation concerned to the state where external assistance is no longer required by ensuring that local initiatives support the development of peacebuilding capacities. All actors should have a common strategy towards peacebuilding efforts.
Conflict sensitivity as a factor in sustaining peace
It is not sufficient to build peace; the maintenance of peace after the conflict is essential. Conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding are related concepts. While peacebuilding activities focus on reducing conflict and promoting peace, conflict sensitivity focuses on maximising opportunities to contribute to peace and managing potential harm. The likelihood of sustaining peace is increased through conflict sensitivity, as this contributes to the prevention of conflict and helps mitigate conflict, which may also contribute to the reduction and likely resolution of ongoing violent conflict and reduce the risk of relapse. Conflict sensitivity promotes inclusion and responsive approaches to conflict, strengthening communities’ resilience and promoting youth-positive and gender-positive outcomes. A complete understanding of the causes of the conflict will help peacebuilding programmes to be designed and implemented in conflict-sensitive ways.
Strategies for peacebuilding
Because no two situations are precisely the same, there is no single strategy or process for peacebuilding. However, some vital components identified by the United States Institute of Peace can be incorporated into a peacebuilding plan. The distinctive feature determining whether a programme or activity counts as peacebuilding is whether it will significantly reduce the likelihood or risk of relapse into conflict.
Recognising the effect of long-term violence. Recognising the truth that violence will likely leave both parties worse off than they started is likely to spur a desire for conflict resolution. Peacebuilders can bring the conflicting sides together into negotiation, helping them see the need to embrace peace. Often, recognising this truth spurs a desire to resolve conflict quickly.
Eliciting plans from locals. A comprehensive approach to peace will involve asking local leaders to identify problems and potential conflict triggers and to offer plans and solutions suited to the setting, to help the peace process. This kind of inclusion increases the chances of success of the peace talks and invests local actors in the desire for peace.
Conflict transformation. This involves changing the perspective of conflicting parties, so that the conflict is seen as a way of identifying the social problem that needs to be addressed, turning the conflict into an opportunity to improve the relationship between the parties, and initiating positive societal changes. Through the conflict transformation process, peacebuilders must look at the current cause of conflict and determine whether other, less visible causes are creating the apparent problems. Conflict transformation can operate in terms of the context, the actors, or the issues. Context transformation involves changes in the context of the conflict that may change how parties view the conflict situation and their motives. Actor transformation includes decisions by the actors to change their general approach to conflict or alter their goals, leading to acceptance of a peace process, which may sometimes include a change in leadership. Issue transformation involves reassessing positions taken by parties on critical issues of the conflict and reframing those positions to reach a compromise resolution and move toward peacebuilding.
Insider and outsider link. The peacebuilder may need to work with other organisations within and outside the area of conflict to achieve successful peacebuilding outcomes. This helps to bring international resources to the process while at the same time creating specific plans that address the particular needs of the situation.
Dealing with spoilers. Spoilers have been described as actors and tactics that seek to hinder, undermine, or delay conflict settlement for various reasons and through multiple means. Spoilers need to be identified and dealt with, and including them in the peace process may help attain the peacebuilding objective. However, spoilers can also impede the progress and success of the process. Spoilers can include governments, warlords, private military companies, rebels, and diaspora groups. There are various methods of dealing with spoilers, and the failure or success of the peace process will depend much on the technique used.
Identifying obstacles to strategic peacebuilding. Peacebuilders must identify any obstacles to a successful process. Having identified those obstacles, there is a need to find ways of addressing them without creating further conflict. Sometimes the obstacles may come as pushback from certain groups or individuals who benefit from the conflict, using the unrest to their advantage. The peacebuilder must identify this situation and provide worthwhile alternatives to make the party willing to embrace the peace process. For instance, a group of individuals benefiting from a conflict by selling weapons to the parties might not be willing to see an end to the violence. Sometimes the obstacle might come from a group whose leader believes he would lose power and influence by accepting the peace process.
Conflict resolution and peace agreement maintenance. Various conflict resolution mechanisms can be used in the peacebuilding process to reach the point of durable peace. The peacebuilder must consider the approach that best addresses the parties’ needs. The buy-in of the parties is vital, as this will ensure that they abide by and execute whatever agreement is reached between them.
Demobilising armed parties. Supporting armed parties to lay down their weapons and transition to civilian life contributes greatly to stabilisation and peacebuilding efforts. This can be achieved by getting the parties to trust the peacebuilding process enough to lay down their arms and sign negotiated peace agreements where they are also guaranteed a minimum level of security. The parties can also be guaranteed reintegration under the peacebuilding process.
Evaluate. The peacebuilder must evaluate the process at every stage to know what is working, what needs to be changed, and which areas need further work to achieve better results. Restoring peace in a previously violent conflict area takes time; patience and tenacity are required.
The northern Nigerian crisis
In recent years, rural banditry, as well as other crimes such as kidnapping for ransom and the abduction of students from their schools, has threatened the peace and security of the people of northern Nigeria. It has also posed a threat to national security as people, farmlands, and property are constantly attacked, set on fire, and destroyed. The actions of armed groups, particularly Boko Haram, have further complicated the problems of poverty, unemployment, and insecurity in the northern part of Nigeria, not just for the average person but also for elites and the government, creating a complex situation of insecurity that the government is fighting hard to curtail, because various interests and groups take advantage of the situation.
The devastating effect of the crisis in northern Nigeria has deepened the hardship of the people of the area, so much so that it has negatively impacted their socioeconomic activities, as they can no longer go about their business freely, particularly on farmland, as a result of the constant attacks and destruction affecting people, cattle and crops. Unfortunately, the government of Nigeria is having a hard time curtailing the situation.
The insurgency of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria has posed security threats to the government of Nigeria, undermining its authority. This has also affected the role played by Nigeria in peacekeeping operations in many African countries. A major challenge in dealing with the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria is that its leaders remain largely unknown to the general population.
SUMMARY *
The article’s argument is circular in the productive sense: peacebuilding requires that people feel safe enough to participate in it, and people come to feel safe through the institutions that peacebuilding creates. The author does not resolve that circle but insists on it, and the Nigerian case is presented as what happens when neither condition obtains, since a population under attack cannot farm, trade or attend school, and a state unable to protect it cannot obtain the cooperation on which any programme would depend. The strategic components set out in the middle of the article are correspondingly practical rather than theoretical: identify who profits from the fighting, work out what would have to be offered in its place, secure the participation of those with the capacity to obstruct, and evaluate continuously rather than at the end.
CONCLUSION
Conflict is a part of human life; certain issues get resolved through conflict, making coexistence more workable and better defined. Conflict, however, does not need to be prolonged or violent. Violent conflict leaves no one the same; those who survive it suffer the loss of loved ones, of property, and emotional trauma. Issues of power and justice must be considered in relation to conflict and to the reaction to conflict. Peacebuilding involves addressing the root causes of violent acts and ensuring people feel safe in their community, allowing them to go about their business and endeavours productively, resulting in social and economic development. Peacebuilding can only thrive and be successful when steps have been taken or are being taken to safeguard the lives and property of citizens, particularly in a post-conflict situation. Leaders and government are responsible for ensuring that people feel secure enough to accept peacebuilding measures. Peacebuilding efforts can only be successful in the presence of guaranteed and existing national security.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s closing proposition, that peacebuilding requires national security to precede it, is the point at which the argument would benefit most from a qualification, because taken literally it counsels waiting for a condition that peacebuilding is meant to produce.
The relationship is better described as sequenced than as conditional. Security first arguments have shaped a great deal of practice and have a poor record where security is pursued as a purely military objective, since operations that displace populations, produce civilian casualties or rely on forces the population does not trust generate recruits faster than they remove them. What the evidence supports is narrower: basic physical safety in specific places is a precondition for specific activities. Schools can reopen where a road is safe; markets function where traders are not extorted; a demobilisation programme requires that those who disarm are not killed. Peacebuilding therefore proceeds locally and unevenly, in the areas where enough security exists, rather than waiting for a national condition that may never arrive.
The Nigerian case illustrates why the distinction matters, and it also contains a complication the article does not draw out. What is described as a single crisis is at least three: the Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa insurgency in the north east, the farmer and herder conflicts across the middle belt, and the banditry and mass kidnapping of the north west. These have different causes, different actors and different remedies. The middle belt violence is substantially a dispute over land, water and grazing routes intensified by desertification and by the collapse of the customary arrangements that once governed transhumance, and it responds to land use planning, grazing reserve rehabilitation and revived local mediation, none of which is a security measure. Treating all three as insurgency to be defeated militarily has produced the pattern the author describes, in which the state expends its capacity without altering the conditions.
Two additions belong here. Demobilisation is treated in the article as a component of peacebuilding and is worth stating with its known conditions, since programmes fail predictably where they are absent: a security guarantee that combatants believe, which usually requires a third party; a realistic livelihood rather than a one-off payment; community acceptance, which requires working with the receiving community and not only with the combatant; and attention to the fact that programmes designed around men with weapons have consistently excluded the women and children associated with armed groups, who then receive nothing. Nigeria’s own experience with the Operation Safe Corridor programme has generated evidence on each of these points that is directly usable.
And the spoiler analysis, which the article handles well, can be pressed further using the distinction the literature draws. Total spoilers, whose goals are incompatible with any settlement, must be contained or defeated; limited and greedy spoilers, whose demands are negotiable or whose interest is material, can be brought in, bought out or divided from their followers. Misclassifying the second kind as the first turns a manageable problem into a war, and the corollary is that spoiler management is primarily an intelligence and analysis task before it is a military one.
Finally, the article’s insistence on national ownership deserves the emphasis it receives and one caution. Ownership by whom is the question that determines everything that follows: a programme owned by a government that is party to the conflict, or that is regarded by the affected population as the source of its grievance, is not owned by the people whose peace it concerns. In settings of the kind described here, ownership is meaningful when it reaches communities, traditional authorities, women’s organisations and youth groups, and the practical difficulty of reaching them is precisely what makes the work slow. That difficulty is not a reason to substitute a signature from the capital.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
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Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
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