Progress and Pitfalls of “Peace-Building”

in Afghanistan continues....

According to this UN document, peace-building consists of a wide range

of activities associated with capacity building, reconciliation, and societal

transformation. Peace operations were originally received with great optimism, held as a panacea for overcoming violent social orders and creating a better world.

However the experiences in various parts of the world in the mid-1990s have shown that sustained peace based on political and military stabilization is not sufficient to end a protracted conflict based on ethnic, religious and other primordially fuelled rivalries, in the absence of a long-term perspective of structural transformation.

Although Nigeria and the Congo had to rebuild war-torn societies in the 1960s (in the case of Congo with UN political and military intervention), more systematic attention was drawn to post-conflict reconstruction with the shift of the international focus from Cold War politics to civil wars, often arising from inter-ethnic conflicts.

Since the Namibia operation in 1989, peace-building has been widely recognised as a distinctive area of

policy and operations.

There are two distinct approaches to peace-building.

One that is followed by the international body in its official capacity, is the phase of

the peace process that takes place after peacemaking (diplomatic efforts to

end the violence between the conflicting parties, move them towards non violent dialogue, and eventually reach a peace agreement) and peacekeeping (a third-party intervention often, but not always, done by military forces to assist parties in transitioning from violent conflict to peace by separating the fighting parties and keeping them apart). Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), on the other hand, approach peace-building as an umbrella concept that encompasses not only long term transformative efforts, but also peacemaking and peacekeeping.

In this view, peace-building includes early warning and response efforts, violence prevention, advocacy work, civilian and military peacekeeping, military intervention, humanitarian assistance, ceasefire agreements, and the establishment of peace zones.

To be continued.......