Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

Front matter

EDINE DIBY Devon Curtis and Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa

WITH A FOREWORD BY ADEKEYE ADEBAJO

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

PART I: PEACEBUILDING: THEMES AND DEBATES ONE Peace as an Incentive for War DAVID KEEN

TWO Statebuilding and Governance The Conundrums of Legitimacy and Local Ownership DOMINIK ZAUM

THREE Security Sector Governance and Peacebuilding EBOE HUTCHFUL 63

FOUR The Limits of Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration PAUL OMACH

Contents

Part Ii: Institutions And Ideologies

FIVE The Role of the African Union, New Partnership for Africa’s Development, and African Development Bank in Postconflict Reconstruction and Peacebuilding GILBERT M. KHADIAGALA 107

SIX Peacebuilding as Governance The Case of the Pan-African Ministers Conference for Public and Civil Service CHRIS LANDSBERG 121

SEVEN The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission Problems and Prospects 'FUNMI OLONISAKIN AND EKA IKPE 140

EIGHT Financing Peace?

The World Bank, Reconstruction, and Liberal Peacebuilding GRAHAM HARRISON 158

NINE The International Criminal Court A Peacebuilder in Africa?

SARAH NOUWEN

IJI

PART III: CASE STUDIES TEN The Politics of Negotiating Peace in Sudan SHARATH SRINIVASAN vi

Contents

ELEVEN Peacebuilding in the Great Lakes Region of Africa RENE LEMARCHAND 212

TWELVE Peacebuilding through Statebuilding in West Africa? The Cases of Sterra Leone and Liberia COMFORT ERO 232

THIRTEEN Oil and Peacebuilding in the Niger Delta ADEROJU OYEFUSI

FOURTEEN Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in Southern Africa Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique GWINYAYI A. DZINESA

FIFTEEN Peacebuilding without a State The Somali Experience CHRISTOPHER CLAPHAM

Index 341 vil

Foreword

ADEKEYE ADEBAJO Executive Director, Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, South Africa

It was fortuitous that, after five years, I was able to take time out from my position as the executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR), in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2008/9 to spend a five-month sabbatical in the wonderful surroundings of the Centre of African Studies (CAS) at Cambridge University in England. In pursuit of its pan- African vision, the overall theme of CCR’s Africa program in 2008-12 was “Peacebuilding in Africa,” with a book planned specifically to assess the continent’s peacebuilding challenges. Under the dynamic supervision of Devon Curtis, CAS was itself preparing a book project on the same topic. This volume is the result of the fruitful marriage of both projects between an African institution and a European institution, involving scholars from Africa, Europe, and North America, as well as an Indian-Australian scholar. Several of the authors have practical experience of peacebuilding in Africa. Thematic debates involving issues of mediation, governance, the security sector, disarmament, and demobilization are combined here with assessments of African and global institutions, bolstered by rich case studies spanning the Great Lakes region, Southern Africa, West Africa, and the Horn of Africa. This is truly a unique volume, which we hope scholars, civil society activists, and practitioners around the world working on peacebuilding issues in Africa will find useful.

A seminar at the University of Cambridge in March 2009 helped shape the conceptual and empirical contents of this project. Five months later, CCR organized and largely funded a policy seminar in Gaborone, in cooperation with the universities of Botswana and Cambridge, attended by about forty scholars and practitioners. My colleagues at the Centre for Conflict Resolution deserve particular praise for the flawless organization of this logistically challenging meeting. Commissioned papers were presented at the seminar over three days, and authors received feedback to revise their chapters in a rigorous editing process. A few more chapters were commissioned based on gaps identified at the Gaborone seminar. We thank all the authors for cooperating so efficiently with this arduous process. I particularly acknowledge the contributions

ADEKEYE ADEBAJO of Devon Curtis, who did the most to shape and edit the book (including spending a few weeks in Cape Town in 2010 completing this project). I also thank the director of CAS, Megan Vaughan, for supporting this collaboration. Devon Curtis’s co-editor and former CCR colleague, Gwinyayi Dzinesa, also deserves recognition for his contributions. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Glenn Cowley, former publisher of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, with whom CCR published seven important books on Africa’s post-Cold War international relations. At the Gaborone seminar in August 2009, he skillfully chaired a session on how to turn the papers into a coherent edited volume. Glenn unfortunately died in May 2011, and his great warmth, experience, and insights will be sorely missed.

CCR, one of the very few centers of excellence on the UN’s role in Africa, has established its expertise in this important area, organizing important policy seminars since 2004 on critical peacebuilding challenges in Southern, West, Eastern, and Central Africa that involved key actors from the African Union (AU), Africa’s regional organizations, civil society, the UN, and external donor representatives. The center has also published three books on UN peacebuilding issues, as well as three other volumes covering issues of transitional justice in Africa, Africa’s human rights architecture, and the African Union and its institutions.

Peacebuilding was popularized in the 1992 publication, An Agenda for Peace, by the first African United Nations secretary-general, Egypt’s Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Africa has since become the world’s most important peacebuilding laboratory, making this book particularly timely in assessing two decades of post-Cold War peacebuilding experiences on the continent. The concept of peacebuilding is often associated with the “second generation” of post-Cold War UN missions in countries such as Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and Somalia, where efforts were made to adopt a holistic approach to peace. More recent cases, also covered in this book, have involved the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria’s Niger Delta, and Sudan. Not only are diplomatic and military tools employed in building peace; today’s peacebuilders also focus on the political, social, and economic causes of conflicts, as well as the need to promote socioeconomic justice.

The peacebuilding office established by the UN in Liberia in 1997 was the first ever such office. Others were subsequently established in Sierra Leone, Central African Republic (CAR), Guinea-Bissau, Angola,

Foreword and Burundi. There are also UN peacebuilding offices for west Africa, central Africa, and the Great Lakes region. Both the UN High-Level Panel report of 2004 and the 2005 report In Larger Freedom, by the second African UN secretary-general, Ghana’s Kofi Annan, called for the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission, as well as a Peacebuilding Support Office within the UN secretariat. Both were approved by the UN General Assembly in December 2005 and established in 2006. The Peacebuilding Commission aims to improve UN postconflict planning, focusing particularly on establishing viable institutions, ensuring financing in the period between the end of hostilities and the convening of donor conferences, and improving the coordination of UN bodies and other key regional and global actors. This commission is mandated to interact both with the UN Security Council and its Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and involves the participation of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank (Af DB).

The UN Peacebuilding Commission is composed of thirty-one members from the Security Council, ECOSOC, and the most significant contributors of financial support and peacekeeping troops to the UN. The first chair of the commission in 2006 was Angola’s respected permanent representative to the UN, Ismael Gaspar Martins, and the first two countries to be reviewed were Burundi and Sierra Leone. The commission has also been involved in Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic, and Liberia, and Africa remains its main theater of work. A multiyear standing fund was established with voluntary contributions. However, based on UN experiences in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Central African Republic, many Africans feel that this commission may represent yet another effort at political alchemy that does not do enough to mobilize the resources required for effective postconflict reconstruction efforts in Africa. The first six years of the commission’s existence have proved disappointing and have so far failed to match the great expectations at its birth that it would promote improved peacebuilding in Africa and improve UN coordination in the field.

Africa, however, remains the continent most in need of effective peacebuilding to ensure that countries emerging from conflict do not relapse into war because of a lack of strong institutions and adequate resources to ensure that fighters bid a final farewell to arms. African regional bodies are also seeking a role in peacebuilding efforts on the continent, though they often lack the resources. A proper division of labor xi

ADERKEYE ADEBAJO must therefore be established between African security and financial institutions, external donors, the UN, and the World Bank—another important topic tackled in this book.

Last but certainly not least, I wish to thank the main funders of CCR’s Africa program—the governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden—who provided the support for holding the Botswana seminar in 2009, commissioning chapters, and disseminating this book, as well as the report and policy brief from the project. We hope that this unique study will contribute to efforts to shape a more effective peacebuilding architecture on the continent in pursuit of Pax Africana.

xii

Acknowledgments

The book arises out of a partnership between the Centre of African Studies (CAS) at the University of Cambridge, and the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) in Cape Town. It reflects a truly collaborative effort, cutting across disciplines, perspectives, and experiences to analyze the local and global dimensions of the peacebuilding project in Africa. We thank all the chapter authors, who grappled with these difficult themes and from whom we have learned a great deal.

A large number of people have been involved in the seminars, workshops, and conferences leading to this book. We thank, in particular, Adekeye Adebajo, who was an unwavering source of inspiration, enthusiasm, and support from the project’s inception. We are also grateful to colleagues at CCR, including Dawn Nagar and Fatima Maal, who brilliantly organized a seminar with scholars and practitioners in Gaborone in August 2009. The conference in Gaborone also benefited from the organizational support and intellectual contributions from faculty and researchers at the University of Gaborone, particularly Mpho Molomo and Gabriel Malebang.

The Centre of African Studies provided a convivial setting for discussions and debates leading to this volume. We are grateful to Megan Vaughan and to CAS for ensuring such an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating environment. Assistance from Dorian Addison and Judith Weik was invaluable in organizing a seminar series and also a workshop in Cambridge in March 2009, and we thank them along with all presenters and participants.

It is impossible to thank all those who have helped shape our ideas about peacebuilding. We owe special thanks, however, to Margaret Angucia, Karen Ballentine, Tarak Barkawi, Adam Branch, Sheila Bunwaree, Catherine Gegout, Barry Gilder, James Mayall, Mireille Affa’a Mindzie, David Moore, Mwelwa Musambachime, Musifiky Mwanasali, and Gérard Prunier. We benefited enormously from their stimulating ideas, contributions, and criticisms, and this book was shaped by all of them. Martha Cheo, one of the Visiting Fellows at the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge, strengthened our arguments and ideas and constantly reminded us of the need to think about the contributions xiii

Acknowledgments of women to peacebuilding in Africa. Martha passed away suddenly in Nigeria in March 2012. Her lively intellect, her warmth, and her collegiality will be sorely missed.

The comments from the series editors and two anonymous reviewers greatly strengthened the volume. Jason Cook did a tremendous job in helping with copyediting. It has been a great pleasure to work with Derek Peterson, Harri Englund, and Chris Warnes, the series editors, as well as Gillian Berchowitz, the editor at Ohio University Press.

We were very lucky to have had the support of the British Academy UK-—Africa Partnership Fund and the Leverhulme Trust, in addition to CCR’s donors. We are grateful for their interest and generosity.

Finally, special thanks to our families, friends, and students. Our students at the University of Cambridge and at Witwatersrand University have been some of our most engaging interlocutors, asking critical questions and forcing us to rethink our own assumptions and ideas. We hope that the ideas in this book will inspire and provoke students, scholars, and practitioners in Africa and beyond.

Devon Curtis and Gwinyay1 A. Dzinesa xiv

Abbreviations

African Association for Public Administration and Management

African Development Bank

Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo- Zaire

Armed Forces of Liberia

Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (Sierra Leone)

African Union Mission in Burundi

African Union Mission in Sudan

Arab Maghreb Union

African National Congress (South Africa)

All Nigeria People’s Party

All People’s Congress (Sierra Leone)

African Peer Review Mechanism

Africa Public Service Charter

African Security Sector Network

African Union

United Nations Integrated Office in Burundi

Central African Republic

Centre for Conflict Resolution (South Africa)

Congress for Democratic Change (Liberia)

Canadian International Development Agency

National Congress for the Defense of the People (DRC)

Coalition for the Transformation of Liberia

Comprehensive Peace Agreement

Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (World Bank)

Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction Unit (World Bank)

Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration

Disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation, and reconstruction

(UK) Department for International Development

Department of Political Affairs (UN)

Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UN)

Democratic Republic of the Congo

European Commission

Economic Community of Central African States

Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group

Economic and Social Council (UN) Economic Community of West African States

FIW FRELIMO GDP GEMAP

GPA HIPC HRW IBRD ICC ICG ICISS

ICJ ICTJ IDA IDDRS IDPs IFIs

Abbreviations

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia

Executive Representative of the Secretary-General (UN)

European Union

Armed Forces of Rwanda

Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda

Federation of jaw Women

Liberation Front of Mozambique

Gross domestic product

Governance and Economic Management Assistance Program (Liberia)

General Peace Agreement

Highly indebted poor country

Human Rights Watch

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

International Criminal Court

International Crisis Group

International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

International Court of Justice

International Center for Transitional Justice

International Development Association

Integrated DDR standards

Internally displaced persons

International financial institutions

International nongovernmental organizations

Intergovernmental Authority on Development

International Military Assistance Training Team (Sierra Leone)

International Monetary Fund

International Rescue Committee

Justice and Equality Movement

Joint Task Force (Niger Delta)

Kosovo Liberation Army

Lofa Defense Force

Low-income countries under stress

Liberia Peace Council

Lord’s Resistance Army

Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy

Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta

Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Programme (World Bank)

Movement for Democracy in Liberia

United Nations Observer Mission in Angola

United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo xvi

Abbreviations

MONUSCO United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the

MOU MPLA MSF NATO NDA NDDC NDF NDLF NDPVF NDV NEPAD NGO NIF/NCP NNPC NPA NRA OAU OCHA

OECD OMPADEC

ONUB ONUC OTP

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Memorandum of understanding

Movement for the Liberation of Angola

Médecins sans Frontiéres

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

National Democratic Alliance (Sudan)

Niger Delta Development Commission

Namibian Defense Force

Niger Delta Liberation Force

Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force

Niger Delta Vigilante

New Partnership for Africa’s Development

Nongovernmental organization

National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (Sudan)

Nigerian National Petroleum Company

National Peace Accord (South Africa)

National Resistance Army (Uganda)

Organisation of African Unity

Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (United Nations)

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (Nigeria)

United Nations Operation in Burundi

United Nations Operation in the Congo

Office of the Prosecutor (ICC)

Peacebuilding Commission (UN)

Peacebuilding Fund

Peacebuilding Support Office (UN)

Peace and conflict impact assessment

Postconflict reconstruction and development

Post Conflict Unit (World Bank)

People’s Democratic Party (Nigeria)

People’s Liberation Army of Namibia

Economic Rehabilitation Programme (Mozambique)

Economic and Social Rehabilitation Programme (Mozambique)

Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

Responsibility to protect

Rally for Congolese Democracy

RCD—Movement for Liberation

Regional economic communities

Mozambican National Resistance

Rwandan Patriotic Army

Abbreviations

Rwandan Patriotic Front

Revolutionary United Front

Southern African Development Community South African Defense Force

Structural adjustment program

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency Sierra Leone Armed Forces

Sudan Liberation Movement

Sierra Leone People’s Party

State and Peacebuilding Fund (World Bank)

Sudan People’s Liberation Army

Sudan People’s Liberation Movement

Special Representative of the Secretary-General (UN) Security sector governance

Security sector reform

Sexually transmitted disease

South West Africa People’s Organisation (Namibia) South West African Police

South West Africa Territorial Force

True Whig Party (Liberia)

United Democratic Front (South Africa)

Union of Islamic Courts (Somalia)

United Kingdom

United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia United Nations

United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone

United Nations Angola Verification Mission

United Nations Development Programme

United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola United Nations Mission in Liberia

United Nations Operation in Mozambique

United Nations Transition Assistance Group (Namibia) Unity Party (Liberia)

Union of Congolese Patriots (DRC)

Uganda People’s Defence Forces

United States United States Agency for International Development xviii

Introduction

The Contested Politics of Peacebuilding in Africa

THE AFRICAN UNION (AU) DECLARED 2010 TO BE THE “AFRICAN YEAR of Peace and Security,” with the campaign slogan urging people to “Make Peace Happen.” At a meeting in Tripoli in August 2009, African leaders committed themselves to dealing with conflict and violence, saying: “We as leaders simply cannot bequeath the burden of conflict to the next generation of Africans.”! The chairperson of the African Union Commission, Jean Ping, said that “of the many challenges facing the AU and Africa, the quest for peace and security is the most pressing” and reaffirmed the AU’s commitment to peacebuilding efforts, in partnership with the international community.’

Indeed, Africa has been the site of a large number of international and continental projects to promote peace. In 2011, Africa hosted seven of the sixteen United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions in the world. The first five countries on the agenda of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, established in December 2005, are all African: Sierra Leone, Burundi, the Central African Republic (CAR), Guinea-Bissau, and Liberia. The first four cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC) are also all African: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, and the CAR.

The AU’s 2010 declaration therefore appears to be backed by a range of institutions, mechanisms, and programs to help build peace on the continent. Furthermore, the increased attention to peacebuilding in

Africa has occurred alongside an overall decrease in violent conflict on the continent. The 2007 Human Security Brief published by the Human Security Centre shows that between 1999 and 2006, the number of state-based and non-state-based armed conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa declined significantly.* The number of battle deaths also declined, with the fatality toll dropping by two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa between 2002 and 2006.° The 2006 Human Security Brief said that the greatest decline in armed conflict was in sub-Saharan Africa, with the result that it was no longer the world’s most conflict-affected region.® Both briefs suggested that this decline was related to the major increase in international efforts to end wars and prevent them from restarting, including peacebuilding missions.’

This volume is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. In light of new global and African institutions, initiatives, and activities set up in support of peacebuilding efforts, the time is ripe for a reassessment of peacebuilding concepts, practices, and implications in Africa. The contributors to the volume interrogate whether the optimism reflected in policy reports is merited, and question how and why certain peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are adopted over other ones in Africa.

The volume grows out of a collaborative project between the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR), based in Cape Town, South Africa, involving Africa-based as well as Western-based scholars with diverse perspectives on peacebuilding in Africa. The volume represents a small selection of the work presented by scholars from a weekly Cambridge seminar series in 2008-9, at the March 2009 Cambridge workshop “Rethinking Peacebuilding in Africa,” and at a large international conference of scholars and peacebuilding practitioners organized by CCR in Gaborone, Botswana, in August 2009, in collaboration with the University of Botswana and the Cambridge Centre of African Studies. Although not all of this work is included here, the contributions of all participants have helped inform the ideas and arguments in this volume.

Taken together, the contributions in this volume show that there is no consensus about the role, aims, and effects of continental and international peacebuilding programs and initiatives in Africa. The contributors highlight that although the local, regional, and global spaces for peace in Africa have been altered through discourses and practices of peacebuilding, these practices play out differently in different locales.

Peacebuilding ideas and initiatives are at various times reinforced, questioned, subverted, or reappropriated and redesigned by different African actors. Thus, the trajectories of peacebuilding programs and initiatives tend to be messy and multifaceted. Procedures and practices established in one venue or by one institution are subjected to a thorough reworking as they play out in another venue, such as Somalia, Sierra Leone, or the DRC.

The volume includes contributions from policy scholars and scholars involved in on-the-ground case studies. The contributors adopt a variety of approaches, but they share a conviction that peacebuilding in Africa is not a script that is authored solely in Western capitals and in the corridors of the UN. Rather, the writers in this volume focus on the interaction between local and global ideas and practices in the reconstitution of authority and livelihoods after conflict, showcasing the tensions that occur within and between the multitude of actors involved in the peacebuilding industry, as well as their intended beneficiaries.

Highlighting the diverse expressions and contexts of peacebuilding helps us understand the intended and unintended consequences and limitations of peacebuilding programs in Africa. Contrary to the insular character of much of the peacebuilding discourse and some of the peacebuilding scholarship, the authors in this volume show how peacebuilding cannot be positioned above politics and history.

This introductory chapter briefly traces the evolution of peacebuilding ideas and practices, as well as the growing body of scholarship that has accompanied the rise of the peacebuilding industry. It pays particular attention to the dominant ways of thinking about peacebuilding, including what is often called “liberal peacebuilding,” and the range of critiques that have emerged in the scholarly literature. The chapter then goes on to show why existing frameworks for understanding peacebuilding are largely insufficient. Rather than interpreting peacebuilding as a fixed set of procedures and practices leading to some universally defined end called “peace,” the introduction and the chapters that follow suggest that peacebuilding may be best thought of as a set of multiple ideas, relationships, and experiences that are embedded within hierarchies of power and knowledge. Hierarchies exist within and between peacebuilding institutions, within knowledge about peacebuilding, and within funding for peacebuilding, but the chapters show that these hierarchies are not fixed or immutable.

The Concept of Peacebuilding and its Trajectory in Africa

The idea and the practices of peacebuilding are not new. Conflict is a generative force that alters social norms and institutions in Africa as elsewhere. The experience of conflict typically brings issues of political authority, security, society, and economy to the fore, albeit in different ways in different places. Questions of how to reestablish 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 livelihoods as a result of conflict have been addressed in a myriad of different ways in different African locales over time. For instance, under the Oyo Empire in Nigeria, the victorious Oyo granted substantial political autonomy to the vassal colonies following wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as long as the colonies reaffirmed their loyalty to Oyo. Agents from Oyo resided in the colonies to monitor local politics.* In western Côte d'Ivoire, Mike McGovern describes the historic highly structured social relations between “strangers” and “hosts” that emerged partly as a response to precolonial labor requirements in areas of low population density. Yet if the autochthone “hosts” were conquered by “strangers,” the autochthones often adapted and assimilated and the relationships were recalibrated. Thus, the host-stranger relationship was “an elastic social idiom that facilitated the process of making do and getting on with life, even in the face of endemic violence and insecurity.”’ In the early nineteenth century, Shaka, the Zulu chief and state-builder, consolidated a number of military innovations. By the mid-1820s, he had a large standing army of over 40,000 people. Shaka did not allow members of military regiments to marry until after they finished their military service, often in their late thirties for men and late twenties for women. After marriage, men and women left the regiments and set up their homesteads, so the issue of a transition from a fighter to a “civilian” was resolved through the social institution of marriage." Thus, examples of “peacebuilding” strategies in Africa are as old (and as diverse) as conflict. Drawing on Derry Yakubu’s research, Tim Murithi argues that conflict resolution and peacebuilding mechanisms in precolonial Africa had a “significant degree of success in maintaining order and ensuring the peaceful coexistence of groups.”™ Murithi describes various institutions in their historic and contemporary incarnations, such as the jir mediation forum of the Tiv in Nigeria and the Maro Oput reconciliation mechanism among the Acholi in northern Uganda, to highlight that peacebuilding is not a new preoccupation in Africa.

International actors also have a long history of attempting to shape war-affected communities and politics. Colonial rulers developed a wide variety of coercive and noncoercive strategies to deal with the effects of war. And external actors continued to influence politics in postcolonial Africa, with the wide-ranging UN operation in the Congo from 1960 to 1964 often described as the precursor to the peacebuilding operations of the 1990s.” Yet as a distinctive area of international policy interventions, peacebuilding rose to prominence at the end of the Cold War at the time of the UN operation in Namibia in 1989-90. The end of the Cold War led to a renewed emphasis on the possibilities of international engagement in support of peacebuilding. An Agenda for Peace, published in 1992 by the then UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, provided a coherent conceptualization of peacebuilding for a post-Cold War era. This important report defined peacebuilding as the mediumto long-term process 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.” Essentially, An Agenda for Peace saw peacebuilding as a worthy and distinct area of international attention, and conceived of it as the promotion of activities and structures that reduce the likelihood of violent conflict.

At the time of the publication of An Agenda for Peace, the number of UN peacekeeping operations was rapidly expanding, and many of these operations took place in Africa. Peacebuilding came to be an important component of these missions. Yet since the Agenda for Peace was published in 1992, three changes with respect to peacebuilding are notable: an expansion of peacebuilding activities, a proliferation of institutions tasked with peacebuilding, and an increase in peacebuilding scholarship.

First, the number and kinds of activities that are considered under the rubric of peacebuilding programs have grown, and peacebuilding has become more intrusive. Whereas the Agenda for Peace emphasized state sovereignty, later reports, such as the 2004 United Nations High-Level Panel report 4 More Secure World, focused on the rights of the individual as well as state sovereignty.'* Peacebuilding therefore expanded to include not only the cessation of hostilities and the rebuilding of infrastructure, but also the protection of human rights, the reconstitution of individual identities and the reforging of individual and community relationships.

This expansion in activities reflected a willingness to conceptualize peace not only as negative peace (the absence of direct physical violence), but also as positive peace (the absence of structural violence). According to proponents of positive peace, focusing only on negative peace is insufficient, as it ignores the multiple ways that people suffer. A narrow focus on negative peace meant that great efforts and resources went into helping to reach cease-fires between belligerent groups, and to guarantee these agreements through peacekeeping missions, but other forms of insecurity, inequalities, and vulnerabilities were left unaddressed. For instance, negative peace does not address the unequal status of women or domestic sexual violence.'!* In 2000, the United Nations Brahimi Report on Peacekeeping Reform explained that peacebuilding consisted of activities to “provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war.” Some authors have claimed that peacebuilding entails moving from a condition of negative peace to one of positive peace.’* The areas of concern to peacebuilders have therefore broadened to include issues and activities that were formerly considered to be outside its scope.

The concept of human security further expanded the types of peacebuilding measures on the agenda of international institutions. Although positive peace is not the same as human security, the two ideas are closely connected. Human security focuses on the security of the individual rather than the security of the state. The concept was first elaborated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1994 and has since been widely accepted at the United Nations. Nonetheless, there are large disagreements over the scope of the concept. The UNDP uses definitions that are closer to notions of positive peace, and says that human security includes “safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression,” whereas the Human Security Centre uses a definition that focuses on “violent threats to individuals.” The UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in 2004 identified poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation as major threats to security, along with armed conflict, terrorism, organized crime, and weapons of mass destruction.” Alongside the rise in human security, peacebuilding has therefore deepened to target not only the state and its institutions, but also individuals and their local communities. Social transformation has become an object of peacebuilding concern and intervention, including initiatives to improve individual psychosocial well-being.

These expanded activities and initiatives to address and prevent violent armed conflict could occur at different phases of conflict cycles. Previously, peacebuilding was usually conceptualized as part of a linear progression, starting with humanitarian relief and conflict management, then settlement, then peacebuilding and reconstruction, then development. Increasingly however, it was acknowledged that transitions from conflict rarely follow such a linear path. Activities to strengthen “peace” can take place before, during, or after conflict. Likewise, “peace” and “war” may exist simultaneously in different parts of the same country. For instance, in Sudan the conflict in Darfur escalated even after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement formally ended the conflict between the North and the South in 2005 (see Srinivasan, this volume). Uganda is typically viewed as a “peaceful” country since the National Resistance Army won the war and brought President Yoweri Museveni to power in 1986. However, this obscures the ongoing conflict involving the Lord’s Resistance Army in the northern part of Uganda and across its borders (see Omach, this volume).