Peace Building: Concepts and Overview

“Peace-building : Concepts and Overview” Peace is the most desirable goal for every society in the world as frequent occurrence of conflicts makes such goal more desired. Conceptualizing peace as the absence of war often fall short of understanding the true nature of peace as it is quite possible not to have peace even when there is no war in a particular place and/or time. Sometimes peace is characterized as an ideal goal or condition that is required to be ordered, perfect and tranquil. While such conception of peace is not necessarily wrong, they are inadequate in understanding the entire reality of peace. One of the reasons is that the history of the mankind can hardly find such desired condition of a society prevailing for a long period of time.

Rather peace is an ongoing process that involves social, economic and political conditions in reducing conflict and proliferating development within specific societies and/or states around the world. Such conditions work as the prerequisites for sustaining peaceful cohesion both within specific societies and in wider international communities. Peace process has different working forms, e.g. peace keeping, peacemaking, peace enforcement and peace building.

The term peace building was first introduced in the report called “An Agenda for Peace” by the former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1992 as ‘action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict’. With regard to post-conflict peace building, the Secretary-General stressed that for peacemaking and peacekeeping operations to be truly successful, they must include efforts to identify and support structures that would tend to consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence among people. Since then, peace building has become a broadly used term implying activities that go beyond crisis intervention.

Peace building is a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates and implements the full range of processes, approaches and paradigms needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable peaceful surroundings. Peace building includes building legal and human rights institutions as well as fair and effective governance and dispute resolution processes and systems. Peace building includes long term developmental activities, building of governance mechanisms and institutions as well as capacity building for nongovernmental organizations.

The scope(s) of peace building process are enlisted as below

Post-conflict situations,

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Prevention of the recurrence of conflict,

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Sustainable peace,

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National and international ownership,

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Low level of conflict etc.

There are some common characteristics of peace building process regardless of temporal, geographical and contextual conditions. Such characteristics are given as below

Re-building national capacity,

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Focusing non-military mechanisms,

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National/local involvement,

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Complex & post-conflict phenomenon,

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External assistance,

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Prolonged period of time etc.

There are certain tasks which are usually implemented during a peace building process as these tasks help this process to work efficiently towards the goal of achieving sustainable peace in post-conflict situations. Some of these tasks generally observed in peace building process are discussed as below

Disarmament, demobilization and re-integration (DDR) is one of the tasks that are performed in a peace building process. It aims at repatriating armed combatants of the conflict into normal life and re-integrating them into the society so that their availability of engaging in further violence can be diminished,

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Security sector reform (SSR) is another task generally implemented in a peace building process which helps to lessen any chance of recurrence of conflict through various means such as- arms control, non-proliferation of arms and ammunitions, reduction in military expenditure and so on,

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Support to electoral processes is a vital task during peace building process because organizing acceptable, free and fair elections can, in fact, reduce the disharmony between

conflicting parties. Such electoral processes can also lay the foundation of a strong and peaceful governing environment, 

Re-establishing governmental authority is the most important task as crisis of authority often results in disorder and chaos which ultimately leads to conflict. The control over the territory of a country by a legitimate authority prevents the recurrence of conflict.

The role of peace builders during peace building processes is very important and the success of such processes relies heavily on them. There are certain actors who work as peace builders during a peace building process which are discussed as below

Peacekeepers, in most of the cases, play the primary role of a peace builder. The reason behind their role is that the end of a conflicting situation requires the parties to be segregated in order to prevent them from engaging into further conflict. Peacekeeping forces come into play in such kind of situations where prevention of conflict precedes to the process of peace building. Civilian staffs from both national and international sources also play a vital role in peace building operations,

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Non-governmental organizations (NGO), both national and international, can play the role of a peace builder. The primary aim of these organizations is to create such environment where infrastructural and developmental activities can take place to strengthen the peaceful conditions of a country in a post-conflict period,

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National government of the conflict-laden country can play the role of a peace builder in a post-conflict situation simply by carrying out the work initiated by the other actors in a peace building process through various means, e.g. confidence building, effective governance etc.,

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Local people are the most important and active participant in a peace building process because they are well aware of the local norms, culture, conditions and values which offers them to work closely with the conflicting parties and to establish peaceful and harmonious co-existence between the parties. Many national and international organizations emphasize on the engagement of local people as peace builders in the peace building processes as they are also the primary stakeholders.

Peace building process follows different paradigms and approaches considering the needs and contexts of a particular country. Though there is no unified and ideal model of peace building process, different models implemented in different parts of the world has successfully transformed conflict into sustainable peaceful situations. There are some successful examples of peace building endeavors in different countries. For instances- Guatemala, Rwanda and Sierra Leone; UN mandated missions successfully transformed conflict and able to sustain peace for a long period of time with the help of peace keeping forces, local ownership and peace building offices. The European Union is considered the most successful and effective example of a peace building paradigm which was able to re-integrate the European countries by sustaining peace in that region without the assistance of any external actors. As a matter of fact, the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 for preventing the recurrence of conflict since the end of the World War II and promoting peaceful co-existence among the countries in that region.

Every peace building process inherits some advantages and disadvantages too. Some of the advantages of peace building process are as below

Peace building helps to create peaceful co-existence between civilians and combatants,

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It creates spaces where people can interact in new ways by expanding experience and new means of communication,

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It helps to build capacity of governing mechanisms,

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The role of local people while getting engaged in peace building efforts rise the chances of preventing the recurrence of conflict in the post-conflict period,

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Transition of power through peace building processes, e.g. organizing free, fair and acceptable elections in democratic countries, can prevent the spill-over of conflict.

There are some disadvantages of peace building processes which are enlisted as below

Peace building processes often take a long period of time to work on which also requires large numbers of financial, personnel and other resources,

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It is a complex phenomenon that involves different phases, tasks, actors, processes etc.

Peace building is a multi-faceted concept that is, to some extent, inter-related with other forms of peace processes such as- peace keeping and peacemaking, as it carries out the works done by

these processes for attaining peaceful conditions. At the end of the discussion, it is quite clear that peace building aims at fulfilling the ultimate goal of attaining sustainable peace by preventing the recurrence of conflict through any possible means.