Paper short abstract:

In 2021, Germany and Namibia announced an accord on compensation for the genocide committed 1904-08 by German colonial troopers. State officials promote the agreement as a strategy for peace between the former colonial power and the colonised. This claim is scrutinized through positions of victims.

Paper long abstract:

In May 2021, the German and Namibian governments announced an accord on compensation for the killings committed 1904-1908 by colonial troopers in the German colony of South West Africa with estimated 80,000 casualties. The accord combines the German acknowledgement of the historical atrocities as meaning a genocide with the commitment to implement a financial aid programme for Namibia (1.1 billion Euro to be invested over the next 30 years). The agreement is promoted by state officials from both countries as a strategy for building peace between a former colonial power and the colonised, and it received keen international attention because it is the first of its kind, attempting to compensate for the colonial past and violence. While it took five years to negotiate the accord, the outcome is not based on any consensus beyond the state-to-state level. Especially representatives of those ethnic groups that had been victimised in the 1904-1908 massacres, i.e. foremost Herero and Nama people, were continuously rallying against the negotiations throughout the years, and they organised protest marches in the Namibian capital upon announcement of the agreement in 2021. Points of criticism are the negotiation format, the composition of the Namibian delegation, the chosen framing for the offered financial compensations and finally also their actual amount and prospective beneficiaries. The case sheds light on the stakeholders‘ different conceptions of peace and of what is needed morally and financially to overcome past violence. It will be analysed with a view to the political implications of these conceptual contestations.

Paper short abstract:

Religions for Peace, a global interfaith organisation, relies on local actors to develop productive pathways to peace. I explore the role of such organisations in peacebuilding processes, and argue they sit between policy and practice, working to translate local needs to shape policy formation.

Paper long abstract:

How can non-governmental or faith-based organisations engage with local communities in conflict-affected societies to develop productive pathways to peace? Often peacebuilding initiatives are focused either on policy implementation or practical assistance to communities. It is the combination and effective collaboration between these spheres that could ensure the lasting impact of peacebuilding. I use a global interfaith organisation, Religions for Peace (RfP), as a case study to explore the role of non-sectarian, non-governmental networks in building peace processes that begin with local peace actors. Based upon 12 months of fieldwork with RfP Australia and the RfP Asia network, I examine how RfP has worked to facilitate communication and peacebuilding activities in contexts such as Myanmar, particularly through their struggles for democratic governance. As a movement, interfaith is predicated on creating a world of peace. What this ‘peace’ looks like differs amongst individuals, religions, and countries. Global interfaith organisations have emerged over the years to connect these visions of peace and develop networks to bridge local and global needs and knowledge. RfP is one such organisation which works with local actors to support peacebuilding agendas in diverse socio-political contexts. As an organisation, then, RfP International collates knowledge and provides support, so peace processes are relevant and effective for local communities instead of being led by policy from above. Ultimately, I argue, global interfaith organisations like RfP sit between policy and practice and function as essential communication networks to translate local needs to shape policy formation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses disconnects in international-communal interaction in peacebuilding. Engaging ethnographic knowledge by examples from communal ordering in the South Caucasus, it searches for innovative ways how international efforts for local ownership can match local agency for communal peace.

Paper long abstract:

The post-liberal debate on peacebuilding has considerably advanced in recent years. First, scholars have come to an increasing understanding that in their everyday lives people manage to skilfully cope with and curtail tensions related to identity and resources, even under circumstances of precarity. Second, interdisciplinary dialogues between social anthropology and critical peace studies stressed the need to account for both ideational and structural factors when exploring peace and conflict, and established that ethnographic fieldwork helps better grasp views and practices of local communal ordering. However, despite efforts to foster legitimacy on the ground and improve local ownership in peacebuilding and development interventions, disconnects between international actors and local ‘beneficiaries’ persist. Project designs and international practices continuously fail to integrate local experiential perspectives on ordering and peace formation.

This paper is interested in possibilities and limitations to translate the practices of local communal ordering into international public policies. Engaging ethnographic knowledge and discussing relevant examples of customary communal ordering in the South Caucasus, it asks if and how (inter-)national public policy could help advance effective and legitimate community-led initiatives of peaceful ordering. It draws attention to policy-oriented strategies that may allow local actors to reappropriate international frameworks (thus highlighting processes such as exploration, translation, dialogue, mutual learning; and aspects such as relationality and temporality) and increase reflexivity on the provision of material and expertise support. It demonstrates that more sensitivity in resolving practical problems of decentralization and diversity in international-local interaction could help (re-)create and sustain spaces for communal peace.

Paper short abstract:

Kalam of PNG are fringe highlanders who were fierce warriors. They have adapted their traditional social control tools to post pacification peace keeping methodologies both at home and in town settlements.

Paper long abstract:

I deal with three case histories one in Kalam territory, one in Madang and one in Lae. These illustrate the Kalam community values and methodologies for dealing with intergroup conflict. I relate these to Kalam traditional and modern identity and self image and speculate on some of the background causes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how young people’s engagement with food gives rise to possibilities for food-based peacebuilding. Building on new materialism, I offer a posthumanist peacebuilding framework that adopts a more-than-human ontology in peacebuilding.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how young people’s engagement with food gives rise to possibilities for food-based peacebuilding. Drawing on fieldwork with young people in Australia, this paper highlights some ways youth use their ordinary food practices to negotiate diversity and navigate potentially conflictual relationships. While situated in peacebuilding studies, this paper draws on new materialism, particularly Karen Barad’s agential realism, to rethink human-centred peacebuilding frameworks and understandings of agency and violence. Agential realism and peacebuilding practice share many commonalities despite evolving out of different disciplines. For instance, both frameworks regard all actors to be situated within a web of relations. They also appreciate the value of engaging with difference for the purposes of mutual growth. Building on agential realism, I offer a posthumanist peacebuilding framework that adopts a more-than-human ontology in peacebuilding.