Guest blogger Derek Brown is Executive Director of the Peace Appeal Foundation. In this two-part blog entry, he describes the state of the art in the field of peacebuilding as we leave behind an extraordinarily conflict-ridden decade and enter a new and hopefully more peaceful one.

 Exploring Touchstone's "If": The State of Peacebuilding - Part 1

“Your If is the only peacemaker, much virtue in if” - William Shakespeare, As You Like It

As Shakespeare’s fool Touchstone noted four centuries ago, peacemaking requires the exploration of the possible. Peacemakers challenge us to look at the world as it can be: What if violence was not the means we choose to resolve conflict? What if we recognized the grievances of our enemies, What if...? This insight applies as much today as it did in Shakespeare’s time.

How to promote the exploration of “if” is then the central question all peacemakers. How do we equip and aide ourselves and others in conflict with the knowledge, material and human resources - be they ideas, insights, skills, relationships, funding, arguments, or institutions that can lead to peaceful relations?

The record of international support for peace initiatives in intra-state conflicts in the last several decades suggests that the capacity of our world to come to the aid of local peacemakers in conflicts, let alone to prevent them, is modest at best.  The experiences in Sri Lanka and Somalia this past year illustrate the limitations of international action.

No single multi-lateral or bilateral entity, no matter how large, can meet the needs of the field.  Multi-lateral institutions, from the UN, to the EU to the African Union, are severely constrained by limited financial resources and competing political agendas in their peacemaking activities. Bi-lateral governmental efforts face many of the same constraints. The lesson we at the Peace Appeal have drawn from our experience to date is that the field of peacebuilding as a whole needs to develop further so that it is adequate to the challenge at hand.

The field of peacebuilding, as distinct from the practice, is still young. The most mature segment of the field is its educational and research arm, which witnessed remarkable growth with the arrival of several dozen university-based interdisciplinary centers in Europe and the United States in the 1970’s and continuing to this day. Though universities and colleges are graduating growing numbers of future practitioners, their ranks are still small.  It may take decades before the full impact of an expanded knowledge base and professional community is felt.

Other segments of the field of peacebuilding are even younger. The field’s most prominent policy research and advocacy organization, the International Crisis Group, headquartered in Brussels, was founded in 1995. Despite its size, reputation and stature, its influence is often limited without broader constituencies advocating alongside it. In the realm of peacebuilding, examples of effective global citizen action are still few in number. Two of the best known citizen lobbying efforts, Americans for Peace Now (founded in 1981) and the Save Darfur Campaign (founded in 2004) dwarf the constituencies advocating for peace in conflicts in other regions of the globe. Yet even with their resources and clout, their impact too is limited without concrete alternatives emerging on the ground.

One of the more promising developments in the field of peacebuilding over the last several decades has been the growth of citizen organizations and networks internationally engaging in peacebuilding work both at Track II and at the grassroots level. Most operate out of the limelight working diligently to end conflicts in their own communities, societies and across the globe. While many of these efforts achieve success within local communities, or build relationships of trust at the Track II level, without the engagement and commitment of political leadership in the process of conflict transformation, securing a broader peace in a society in conflict is nearly impossible. 

(Click here to read the rest of this essay)