Learning
Global peacebuilding demands more dynamic and locally responsive approaches amidst increasing complexity.
Revitalizing Global Peacebuilding: Embracing Complexity and Local Agency
Concepts and priorities in global peacebuilding are shifting. The actors and issues that peacebuilding must contend with are increasing to include transnational ideological movements, fragmented oppositions, increased migrant flows, social media organising, climate change, and others. Necessary peacebuilding responses are more complex and dynamic than ever before and are stretching the limitations of traditional state-based approaches. To create truly sustainable peace we need peacebuilding processes that emerge from the will and agency of local peoples rather than outsiders, and are responsive and resilient to context changes.
Adapt Peacebuilding is involved in several research projects that explore questions of complexity, local ownership, and effectiveness of peacebuilding. The research produces advice for clients, policy evidence, and academic reflections. These research efforts coalesce around several hypotheses:
1
Effective peacebuilding requires sufficient localisation. Though the imperative for local ownership in peacebuilding is not new, peacebuilding interventions in practice are often not sufficiently localised within conflict contexts to include all parties and perspectives with a stake in their outcomes.
2
Effective peacebuilding requires local ownership that confers agency over how peacebuilding interventions are designed and resourced, the content that initiatives focus on, and the modalities through which they are implemented. If local ownership does not confer this agency, the concept becomes a rhetorical tool with sub-optimal peacebuilding benefits.
3
Effective peacebuilding is supported by various forms of strategic connectivity. These connections have various types and benefits across horizontal, vertical, insider-outsider, and professional and policy domains.
4
Peacebuilding is more effective when it employs adaptive management methods which allow the process to respond to context changes in real time. These methods are in contrast to the rigid, pre-planned initiatives that are normally required by donors.
5
The preceding characteristics collectively will allow for scalability of peacebuilding interventions. This will be evident in an increased number of people positively impacted by these processes and socio-political institutionalisation which increases inter-generational impact and sustainability.
Policy and academic outputs related to this research will semi-regularly be the subject of newsfeed posts and podcast episodes. Please contact us for more information.
