Devon Curtis and Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa (Eds).
\nPeacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa<\/i>
\n(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2012, 333pp.)<\/p>\n
This is a useful collection of essays, a cooperative effort between the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa and the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge University, England including a policy seminar held at the University of Botswana.\u00a0 The book should be read in the light of the current difficulties in the Central African Republic where both civilian and military measures are being used in an effort to create new State institutions and a more just and stable situation.<\/p>\n
Responding to violent armed conflict requires two steps:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An action-oriented analysis of the situation drawing on local knowledge and evaluations.\u00a0 Who are the key players? What are their current aims?\u00a0 What are the possibilities of compromise through good-faith negotiations?<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An analysis of policy tools, methods and mechanisms which can help prevent or mitigate an armed conflict.\u00a0 These policy tools are sometimes referred to as a \u201ctoolbox\u201d or a \u201ctoolkit\u201d. Such tools can be used by different organizational channels \u2014 by actors from outside a region, by national governments, by nonofficial conflict management organizations and by local institutions or processes.<\/p>\n
The effectiveness of the tools chosen, their combination, and their users will depend largely on the quality of the analysis.\u00a0 While the United Nations and other bodies have devised sophisticated forms of conflict analysis, political economy analysis, drivers-of-change studies, capacity mapping, a response to armed violence often calls for rapid measures, not a PhD thesis.<\/p>\n
As Devon Curtis notes in his introduction \u201cThe experience of conflict typically brings issues of political authority, security, society, and economy to the fore, albeit in different ways in different places.\u00a0 Questions of how to re-establish political authority and security after violence, what to do about ex-combatants, how to renegotiate and manage the changed social relations, mistrust and destruction that accompanies violence, and what to do about changed patterns of production or livelihood as a result of armed conflict have been addressed in many different ways in different African locales.\u201d<\/p>\n
The quote from Curtis reflects the way the term \u201cpeacebuilding\u201d is being used in the United Nations following the 1992 study by the then secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali An Agenda for Peace <\/i>and the 2005 establishment of the UN Peacebuilding Commission.\u00a0 Peacebuilding is defined as \u201cmedium to long-term processes of rebuilding war-affected communities through identifying and supporting structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict.\u201d This process is usually shortened into the term \u201cpost-conflict\u201d \u2014 a misleading term as conflict is ever present.\u00a0 What is really being described is post-armed violence. Thus, the current use of the term neglects prevention of armed violence.\u00a0 Prevention of armed violence comprises strategies such as institution building, ecologically-sound development, developing dispute resolution mechanisms, and strengthening of tolerance-building and respect for human rights.<\/p>\n
Basically there needs to be a shift in focus from post-armed violence reconstruction to prevention.\u00a0 It is true that there are several reasons why there is so much focus on post-violence aid rather than preventive action.\u00a0 One reason is that donors are more reluctant to contribute to prevention, which is difficult to measure.\u00a0 Since the reconstruction of Europe and Japan after the Second World War, governments and the World Bank have learned to rebuild and modernize infrastructures, housing, roads, ports, factories.\u00a0 One can largely overlook how wars started in the first place, especially when, unlike the World War, most African conflicts do not produce clear \u201cwinners\u201d.<\/p>\n
Much of the emphasis of the chapters is on \u201cStatebuilding\u201d, a more exact term than \u201cnationbuilding\u201d used in the early 1960s, but the processes for developing post-colonial and post-armed violence societies are largely the same.\u00a0 Most of the case studies here concern states which were already divided and weak as colonies: Sudan, Somalia (two as colonies), the Belgium Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which was never a formal colony but had all the weaknesses.\u00a0 As colonies, the governments were not sufficiently inclusive to ensure adequate representation along the lines of ethnicity, much less gender.\u00a0 Civil society was not consciously developed during the colonial period although churches and religious bodies played a role.\u00a0 Power, both political and economic, was centered in the cities, and rural people were marginalized and fearful of the formal legal system.<\/p>\n
I am struck by how little mention of history there is in these presentations, a lack which may come from the emphasis on the post-armed violence approach.\u00a0 Only Ren\u00e9 Lemarchand who has written extensively on the Congo and its history writes in his chapter Peacebuilding in the Great Lakes Region of Africa <\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cWhat peacebuilders are up against in the Great Lakes is a long-term, multifaceted, interlinked crisis.\u00a0 It is best described, in Braudelian terms, as a longue dur\u00e9e <\/i>phenomenon rooted in the historicity of domestic and interstate conflicts, a crisis made even more intractable by the obstacles inherent in the regional environment. There is no room in this context for quick fix solutions, nor can the continuing significance of major historical events be ignored, any more than their tragic repercussions among the people of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is no doubt true of other areas as well.\u00a0 However, if one wants a good overview of difficulties and avenues in present efforts in peacebuilding, there is much to be found in this collection, including an extensive bibliography.<\/p>\n
_______________________________<\/p>\n
Ren\u00e9 Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of\u00a0World\u00a0Citizens. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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