Within the United Nations system, peacebuilding refers to reducing the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundation for sustainable peace and development. It is a complex, long-term process of creating the necessary conditions for sustainable peace. Peacebuilding measures address core issues that effect the functioning of society and the State, and seek to enhance the capacity of the State to effectively and legitimately carry out its core functions.
History of peacebuilding
As World War II ended in the mid-1940s, international initiatives such as the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions and The Marshall Plan consisted of long-term post-conflict intervention programs in Europe with which the United States and its allies aimed to rebuild the continent following the destruction of World War II. The focus of these initiatives revolved around a narrative of peacekeeping and peacemaking.
After several decades saturated in this narrative, in 1975 Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung coined the term "peacebuilding" in his pioneering work "Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peacebuilding." In this article, he posited that "peace has a structure different from, perhaps over and above, peacekeeping and ad hoc peacemaking... The mechanisms that peace is based on should be built into the structure and be present as a reservoir for the system itself to draw up. ... More specifically, structures must be found that remove causes of wars and offer alternatives to war in situations where wars might occur." Galtung's work emphasized a bottom-up approach that decentralized social and economic structures, amounting to a call for a societal shift from structures of coercion and violence to a culture of peace. He catalyzed a major shift in the post-WWII global narrative by emphasizing how political, economic, & social systems need to address the root causes of conflict and support local capacity for peace management and conflict resolution.[6]
Then, as the Cold War and the various phenomena of its fizzling came to a close (e.g. civil wars between Third World countries, Reagonomics, "Bringing the State Back In"), American sociologist John Paul Lederach further refined the concept of peacebuilding through several 1990s publications that focus on engaging grassroots, local, NGO, international and other actors to create a sustainable peace process, especially with respect to cases of intractable deadly conflict where he was actively mediating between warring parties.[9][10][11] From a political-institutional perspective, he does not advocate the same degree of structural change as Galtung.[12] However, Lederach's influence in the conceptual evolution of peacebuilding still reflects Galtung's original vision for "positive peace" by detailing, categorizing, & expanding upon the sociocultural processes through which we address both direct and structural elements of violent conflict.[13]
Peacebuilding has since expanded to include many different dimensions, such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration and rebuilding governmental, economic and civil society institutions.[6] The concept was popularized in the international community through UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's 1992 report An Agenda for Peace. The report defined post-conflict peacebuilding as an "action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict".[14] At the 2005 World Summit, the United Nations began creating a peacebuilding architecture based on Kofi Annan's proposals.[15] The proposal called for three organizations: the UN Peacebuilding Commission, which was founded in 2005; the UN Peacebuilding Fund, founded in 2006; and the UN Peacebuilding Support Office, which was created in 2005. These three organizations enable the Secretary-General to coordinate the UN's peacebuilding efforts.[16] National governments' interest in the topic has also increased due to fears that failed states serve as breeding grounds for conflict and extremism and thus threaten international security. Some states have begun to view peacebuilding as a way to demonstrate their relevance.[17] However, peacebuilding activities continue to account for small percentages of states' budgets.[18]
