Short Abstract

Post-conflict peace requires a ceasefire but also calls for insiders' action. This panel explores transitional challenges and local agency's impact in building sustainable peace and development. We invite scholars and experts from the Global South to share insights of what works and what doesn’t.

Description

The difficulty of transiting from war to peace in the aftermath of violence poses a serious challenge to peace, security and development in theory and practice. This is found in a broad range of violent conflicts ranging from civil wars and insurgencies against the State to communal conflicts between identity groups. This difficulty seriously undercuts post-conflict development and security with intermittent violence leaving many communities in fragile situations. This has been observed in many contexts, most notably in Africa, including the Sahel region, the Horn of Africa, Nigeria, South Sudan and Central African Republic. Third-party mediation and interventions have often proved unsuccessful, criticised for being imposed from outside and lacking local agency and ownership. More broadly, the ‘local turn’ in peace-building has called for local forms of agency, knowledge and expertise to be applied in conflict settings in attempts to bring about sustainable peace. But to what extent has this happened in practice and how successful has local agency been?

This panel welcomes papers that examine such bottom-up approaches to building peace in conflict-prone settings. We anticipate papers that explore various local initiatives and experiences. Possible themes include: limited or non-activation of local agency; non-romanticisation of ‘the local’, given possible local discriminatory practices; alternatively, what does ‘emancipatory peace’ look like; and what roles can third-party mediators play? As a multi-dimensional challenge, we welcome papers from scholars and practitioners from multi-disciplinary perspectives that document experiences, practices and views from the Global South on local agency for sustainable peace and development.

This Panel has 3 pending paper proposals.
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