ISSN: 2151-0806
due to the fact that the earthquake happened during mass, leaving over two-hundred people dead in the collapsed church. The tragedy in the church not only left many people with the loss of family and friends, but it also left mourning people, mostly Catholic, without a place to worship after such a traumatic event. The secondary violence and instability created in natural disaster situations makes any approach for recovery complicated. Like all people, Sara’s life is complex, and I look to peacebuilding as an approach to creating locally driven solutions. The field of peacebuilding is that, “which prevents, reduces, transforms, and helps people to recover from all forms of violence,” (Schirch, 2004, p. 9). Peacebuilding also aims to “create societies that affirm human dignity through meeting human needs and protecting human rights” (2004, p. 13). By focusing on human needs and security as well as local assets and capacity, peacebuilding looks to approach both the roots of direct and structural violence through meeting immediate needs and making long-term, sustainable plans for the future. In contrast to some traditional development strategies, peacebuilding focuses on local needs and acknowledges the violent structures that support violence. In my position with the NGO, I asked two key questions to determine appropriate approaches to Sara’s situation. First, do we deny Sara funding or do we satisfy her short-term needs thus perhaps fueling globalization? Next, how do we decrease the structural violence that is occurring in Sara’s life? Our scope of work as an NGO was to construct homes and buildings, so in order to meet Sara’s security and economic needs, we would have to build Sara a small house/store in Pisco. The house would be secure, and she would not fear larceny or violence. She would also be able to open a store where she sold bread, bottled water, ice cream, and Coca-Cola. All of these products are tied in some way to a transnational corporation as one can assume that the flour for the bread is imported or at least controlled by a multinational corporation, the milk is Nestle, and in addition to selling bread, she was going to sell Coca-Cola and bottled water (owned by Coca-Cola). If the global economic system crashed, so would her business. If there are petroleum shortages and prices skyrocket, her business could plummet. This does not include the environmental, social, and economic destruction that results from the corporate practices of these industries nor the multiple contradictions associated with international aid. I know that long-term peaceful, human security cannot be met with the same system that created the insecurity, inequality, and oppression. I do believe, however, that when working towards sustainable development, defined in Our Common Future as the ability to, "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (1987, p. 43), a combination of immediate solutions and long-term structural changes must be implemented. For this reason, I supported meeting Sara’s economic and security needs by building her a home and store, and it is also for this reason, that I sometimes depart from Mohanty’s framework. I cannot call myself anti-capitalist or even anti-globalization as I sometimes use capitalism and globalization to meet the immediate needs of women like Sara. To address structural violence in Pisco, other peacebuilding actors were collaborating with my NGO to address other issues in Pisco. Peruvian mental health professionals, government officials, and development workers and planners provided additional services for people like Peace Studies Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 3, July 2013
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