Paper short abstract:

This study examines how local communities invent innovative practices that enable them negotiate and adopt peace architectures, and how the local conflict resolution practices can inform and support peacebuilding at national and international levels.

Paper long abstract:

The field of peace studies lays an overwhelming emphasis on resolving international and national conflicts, while very little attention is focused on peacebuilding at the community level. Remarkably, communal conflicts affect a vast number of people,especially in Africa; and contributes to poverty and underdevelopment in local communities. However, as conflicts and violence develop in communities, the local people and and their leaders invent innovative methods and practices that enable them negotiate and adopt peace architectures. Customary peacebuilding methods and practices emerging from local communities can inform and support peacebuilding at national and international levels.What can we learn from local communities about conflict resolution that could help us address the crucial global challenge of peacebuilding? This is the main question this study will attempt to address. The study is situated in the Igbo speaking areas of South-East Nigeria. It examines how evolution in forms of leadership shapes the way communities negotiate peace and results in the invention of innovative leadership and peacebuilding practices. The study analyzes how communities negotiate to the tension between Western Dispute Resolution System (WDRS) and Customary Dispute Resolution System (CDRS), and why community leaders and members prefer either or a combination of the two dispute resolution systems. The study concludes that specific forms of leadership produce specific dispute resolution systems. Finally, it suggests how the idea of 'leadership for peace' can be promoted, and how lessons from the experiences of Nigerian local communities could be shared globally.