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. Peace-building and national security within a nation are somewhat connected. After a violent conflict, the citizens and leaders alike look forward to living in a peaceful and secure state where they can return to their everyday lives, ensure that people feel safe in their community, allow for social and economic development, and children can have a chance to return to their education. Achieving this requires the collaboration of all stakeholders, which sometimes involves outside forces. The challenge, however, is that unless the people are willing to collaborate with the efforts of the peace-builders, it would be impossible to achieve peace-building.
This paper aims to analyse the concept of peace-building, factors that can contribute positively to peace-building efforts, and the relationship between peace-building and national security. The term Peace-building first emerged through the work of Johan Galtung over 30 years ago. Galtung called for establishing peace-building structures to promote sustainable peace by looking at the root causes of violent conflicts and supporting indigenous capacities for conflict resolution and peace management.
The United Nations 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace, defines peace-building as solidifying peace and avoiding a relapse into conflict. Peace-building 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 . Peace-building 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. Peace-building aims to address the underlying drivers of conflict, strengthen their capacity to promote peace and reduce the risk of violent conflict in any given context.
Establishing sustainable peace through peace-building rests on the citizens and government of any country where peace-building is underway. National ownership is essential to peace-building success, and so also is national capacity. An essential objective of peace-building 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 peace-building capacities. A common peace-building strategy should be derived from a process where 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 accomplish complete reconciliation among rivalling 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.
DEFINITION
The United Nations Brahimi Report of 2000 defined peace-building as activities undertaken to reassemble a peace foundation and provide tools for building on those foundations, sometimes more than just the absence of war. The United Nations Secretary-General’s Policy Committee described peacekeeping as collective measures to reduce the likelihood of a relapse into conflict.
“…Peace-building 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 a relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.”
Peace-building 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 cause of violence. Peace-building can occur either before the conflict (pre-conflict) to avoid escalating the situation into a conflict or after a violent conflict (post-conflict).
The concept of national security lies in the ability of the people of a state to feel safe and secure and for the government of a nation to have the capacity to adequately defend the interests of its people by providing a safe and secure environment where citizens can carry on their activities without the fear of violent intruders.
PEACE-BUILDING FEATURES
National ownership is one essential feature of peace-building. The nation’s citizens, where peace-building is underway, have the primary responsibility, along with their government, to lay the foundation for lasting peace. Peace-building must also focus proactively on building and rebuilding national capacity. Bringing the concerned nation to the state where external assistance is no longer required by ensuring that local initiatives support the development of peace-building capacities. All actors should have a common strategy towards peace-building efforts.
CONFLICT SENSITIVITY AS A FACTOR OF INCREASING THE SUSTENANCE OF PEACE
It is not sufficient to build peace; the maintenance of peace after the conflict is essential. Conflict sensitivity and peace-building are related concepts. While peace-building activities focus on reducing conflict and promoting peace, conflict sensitivity focuses on maximising opportunities to contribute to peace and manage 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 conflict relapse. Conflict sensitivity promotes inclusion and responsive approaches to conflict, strengthening communities’ resilience and promoting youth-positive and gender outcomes. A complete understanding of the causes of the conflict will help peace-building programs 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 peace-building. However, some vital components identified by the United States Institute of Peace can be incorporated into a peace-building plan. The distinctive feature determining a program or activity as peace-building is whether it will greatly or significantly reduce the likelihood or risk of relapse into conflict.
a) 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. Peace-builders 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.
b) Eliciting plans from locals
A comprehensive approach to peace will involve asking local leaders to identify problems and potential conflict triggers and offer bespoke plans and solutions to help the peace process. This kind of inclusion increases the chances of the success of the peace talks and emotionally invests the locals in the desire for peace.
c) Conflict transformation
This involves changing the perspective of conflicting parties to see the conflict 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, peace-builders must look at the current cause of conflict and determine if other not-so-visible causes are creating apparent problems. Conflict transformation can be in terms of the context, the actors, or the issues. Context transformation involves the changes in the context of the conflict that may change how parties view the conflict situation and their motives. Actor transformation will include decisions by the actors to change their general approach to conflict or alter their goals, leading to embracing 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 peace-building.
d) Insider-outsider link
The peace-builder may need to work with other organisations within and outside the area of conflict to achieve successful peace-building outcomes. This helps to bring international resources to the process while at the same time creating specific plans that address the peculiar needs of the situation.
e) Dealing with spoilers
Spoilers have been considered as tactics and groups that seek to hinder or undermine conflict settlement or delay conflict settlement for various reasons and through multiple means. Spoilers need to be identified and dealt with, and having these spoilers included in the peace process will help attain the peace-building objective. However, spoilers can also deter the progress and success of the process. Spoilers can be government, warlords, private military companies, rebels, and diasporas. There are various methods of dealing with spoilers, and the failure or success of the peace process will depend much on the technique used.
f) Identifying obstacles to strategic peace-building
Peace-builders 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 pushbacks from certain groups of individuals who might benefit from the conflict, using the unrest situation to their advantage. The peace-builder must identify this situation and provide worthy alternatives to make the party willing to embrace the peace process. For instance, a group of individuals who are benefiting from a conflict situation by selling illegal arms to other parties might not be willing to see an end to the violent conflict. Sometimes, the obstacle might be from a group whose leader believes he would lose power and influence by accepting the peace process.
g) Conflict resolution and peace agreement maintenance
Various conflict resolution mechanisms can be used in the peace-building process to reach the point of durable peace. The peace-builder must consider the best conflict resolution approach that addresses the parties’ needs. The buy-in of the parties is vital as this will ensure that parties abide by and execute whatever agreement is reached between them.
h) Demobilising armed parties
Supporting armed parties to drop their weapons and transition to civilian life dramatically contributes to stabilisation and peace-building efforts . This can be achieved by getting the parties to trust the peace-building 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 peace-building process.
i) Evaluate
The peace-builder must evaluate the process at every stage to know what is working, what needs to be changed, and the areas that need to be worked on to achieve better results. Restoring peace in a previously violent conflict area takes time; patience and tenacity must be explored.
THE NORTHERN NIGERIAN CRISIS
In recent years, rural banditry, as well as other crimes such as kidnapping for ransom and 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. These acts of terrorist 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 the elites and the government, creating a complex situation of insecurity that the government is fighting hard to curtail because various interests and group take advantage of the situation.
The devastating effect of the crisis in northern Nigeria has further deepened the hardship of the people and citizens of the area, so much so that it has negatively impacted the socioeconomic activities of the people as they can no longer go about their activities freely, particularly the farmlands as a result of the constant attacks and destruction on people, cattle and crop. Unfortunately, the government of Nigeria is having a hard time curtailing the situation.
The insurgence of Boko haram in northern Nigeria has posed security threats to the government of Nigeria, undermining Nigeria’s existence as a political authority. This has also affected the role played by Nigeria in peacekeeping operations in many African countries. The major challenge in dealing with the Boko haram insurgence in Nigeria is that the leaders remain faceless in the mainstream of the Nigerian population.
CONCLUSION
Conflict is a part of human life; specific issues get resolved in conflict, making co-existing more profitable and 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, properties, and emotional trauma. Issues of power and justice are to be considered regarding conflict or the reaction to conflict. Peace-building 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 profitably, resulting in social and economic development. Peace-building 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. The leaders and government are responsible for ensuring the people feel secure enough to accept peacebuilding moves. Peace-building efforts can only be successful in the presence of guaranteed and existing national security.
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