Building Sustainable Peace

This volume is a critical reflection on what has come to be known as peacebuilding. The reality is that while "peacebuilding" has been practiced for sometime in many hot spots around the globe, the theory of peacebuilding has been left behind. The contributors to this volume have made a valiant effort to marry the practice and the theory of this complex and intricate tool. Peacebuilding involves a number of diverse instruments and players, and much like an orchestra, the instruments must be finely tuned and the players must work in concert in order to produce anything resembling a coherent approach to post-conflict reconciliation and sustainable peace. Its ultimate goal is to prevent and or resolve violent conflicts, create or restore peaceful conditions and lay the foundation and building blocks for an enduring peace through the strengthening of institutions of governance. This naturally should involve both social engineering and societal transformation from a culture of violence to a culture of peace - what we consider as 'structural peacebuilding'. However, to facilitate this transition, we need to have a clear understanding not only of the nature of already established war cultures, but of the presuppositions we bring to the understanding of those cultures. We then need to understand not only what is required to construct a peace that is durable but also how to do so in order not to recreate the unsustainable institutions and structures that originally contributed to conflict. This is not an easy exercise, but the contributors to this volume are up to the task. They draw out from the accumulating data and experience on peacebuilding operations those elements and recommendations that can assist policy makers in advancing sustainable peace in war ravaged states. Each chapter systematically describes the multiple tasks, tools, and actors involved in addressing both proximate and structural causes of conflict. They demonstrate that the real challenge for scholars and practitioners involved in observing or carrying out peacebuilding activities is to stand back from the prevailing understandings of what peacebuilding ought to be and critically assess the burgeoning activities which fall under the label of peacebuilding. The authors in this volume have begun this process, using a cosmopolitan ethics framework as a guide. Such a framework holds out hope that conflict and competition can be conducted non-violently, humanely, decently, and honorably so that, in the end, the goal of peacebuilding - sustainable peace - can be achieved.