A Need for Common Understanding: Peacebuilding Commission and Its Challenges

Muhadi Sugiono2

Department of International Relations/

Center for Security and Peace Studies

Gadjah Mada University

The Peacebuilding Commission was established on December 20^th, 2005 through a joint resolution of the UN Security Council (S/RES/1645) and the General Assembly (A/RES/60/180). Earlier this year, the Commission submitted a report to the General Assembly on its first year of operations done in two countries: Burundi and Siearra Leone (2007). In the report, the Peacebuilding Commission clearly indicates that the works of the Commission in the two countries have provided lessons learned for better peacebuilding policy and practice in the future. At the same time, the Commission also identifies serious challenges ahead. One of the most serious of them is how to encourage engagement of the wider but more cohesive stakeholders in the peacebuilding activities. This challenge, however, is not merely technical and organizational one. Underlying this challenge are conceptual, structural as well as practical issues. This paper deals only with the conceptual issue of the challenges facing the Peacebuilding Commission.

Peacebuilding is not a simple concept. As a consequence of more positive understanding of peace, peacebuilding is now not only associated with the efforts to bring about a condition without military or physical conflicts (negative peace), but also with those to end structural violence as well as to provide enabling conditions for individual development (positive peace). Peacebuilding consists of comprehensive activities with long term vision of stable and lasting peace. Instead of focusing on the conflict itself, peacebuilding must also necessarily deal with all the tasks intended to address problems commonly emerge in post-conflict or even preconflict environments.

While it is undoubtedly highly contested as a concept, peacebuilding has at least four components: security, political, economic development and justice, and reconciliation.

Security component of peacebuilding consists of activities intended to establish conditions within which those former conflicting parties as well as society in general can engage and interact with one another safely, confidently and non-violently. The essence of peacebuilding activity in relation to security is demilitarization of conflict through Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. It has to bring about the decision of the combatants to forgo violence as a means either for change and to commit to peace. In other words, security aspect of peacebuilding is a ‘prerequisite’ for other aspects of peacebuilding (Solomon, 2005, p.19).

The very success of demilitarization, however, is closely related to other components of peacebuilding. As armed conflicts tend to bring social, political as well as economic benefits to particular groups of people, demilitarization will only be attractive to those groups as long as it is accompanied by incentives to compensate their lost of such benefits.

While security component is ‘an absolute prerequisite’ for peacebuilding, political component is necessary for the attainment of lasting peace. Political component of peacebuilding is intended to built or to change political institutions, mechanism and processes as a means to manage group conflict without using violent but using ‘authority and legitimacy’ (Cousins and Kumar, 2001, p. 12). The need to address political component of peacebuilding is based on two different arguments. First, the absence of viable political mechanism leads the conflicting parties to turn into violent means of resolving conflict. In such cases, peacebuilding must involve the design or the building of such political arrangement. Second, the presence of political arrangement which does not work properly is also one important cause of conflict. As such, peacebuilding should also open up the space for political change. In either case, the sensitivity to local or country specific context is required for a successful peacebuilding. There is no single political arrangement that suits all societies, not a particular form of democracy such as majoritarian democracy of the Westminster syste (Sisk, 1996, p. 29). A bottom up rather than top-down process of designing political arrangement, therefore, has a greater chance of success in the peacebuilding in terms of political component.

Economic component of peacebuilding means promoting peace through economic development. This has two complimentary purposes. First, activities of peacebuilding need to attract wider engagement of the people in the peace-time economy rather than war-time economy. It should also make war-time economy as impractical practices. In short, peacebuilding activities mean transforming the economy, from that of war-time to that of peace-time. It is important to note, however, that peacebuilding cannot achieve its goals unless economic issues are seriously addressed. This is for quite strong reason. As one report published by International Peace Academy notes, ‘the possession of arms is not just a function of ongoing insecurity but is also an important economic asset’ (International Peace Academy, 2003, p. 1). The consequence is that peacebuilding will undoubtedly be costly. But, maintaining conflict or war is still a lot more costly.

Finally, while peacebuilders’ attention tended to be focused on security, political as well as economic components of peacebuilding, no less important is the component of justice and reconciliation. This component, however, is the most neglected in the peacebuilding activities. As the end of war and conflict undoubtedly leaves behind broken and traumatized societies, ‘emotive, perceptual, social-psychological as well as spiritual dimensions’ of post-conflict societies must necessarily be addressed (Lederach, 1997, p. 29). 

Peacebuilding must be aimed promoting reconciliation not only among the conflicting parties, but among the wider parts of society in general. Reconciliation is a step towards the restoration and the rebuilding of war- or conflict-torn communities. The very success of reconciliation, however, presupposes that peacebuilding also addressed the issue of justice. The failure to address the issue of justice will hamper any peacebuilding efforts.

Given the complexity of the concept of peacebuilding, a common understanding is necessary for peacebuilding to succeed. This common understanding means that those engaged in the peacebuilding activities must depart from a common view of what peace is all about. Reflecting to the contemporary discussion of the notion of security, it is also important to provoke such debates on the meaning and the referent object of peace. At issues are two questions. The first question is related to the meaning of peace: what do we mean by peace?. The second question is related to the referent object of peace. Put simply, peace to whom?. While those engaged in peacebuilding seem to have reached common understanding of what constitutes peace,3 the answer to the question of the referent object of peace seem to be still debatable. As such, unless a common understanding on such issue is reached, it is still a long way to go until peacebuilding iniiatives can reach their desired goals.

References

Cousins, Elizabeth and Chetan Kumar,eds., Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies, Boulder, Co.: Lynne Riener Publishers.

International Peace Academy, 2003, Transforming War Economics: Challenges for Peacemaking and Peacebuiding: Report of the 725^th Wilton Park Conference, New York, December.

Lederach, John Paul, 1997, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Washington, DC.: United States Institutes of Peace Pess.