Conclusion

The concluding chapter returns to the question with which this book opened: can we know if the peace that has been established after a civil war is a stable peace? It reiterates the central finding of this volume: that more rigorous assessments of the quality of the peace can facilitate more effective external engagement in building peace after civil war. There is no single recommended approach to effective strategic assessment. As this volume has shown, it can take many different forms. Varied though the nature of strategic assessment may be, many of the principles that underpin these initiatives are shared principles. What all of them have in common is a recognition of the vital importance of contextual knowledge for the insights it affords into local conflict-relevant dynamics and their implications for devising appropriate strategies for the maintenance of peace.

Assessing Progress

This chapter examines how international peacebuilding actors assess progress towards peace consolidation. Assessments are conducted both informally through the periodic reporting of heads of missions and briefings to organizations’ member states and government ministers, and more formally through benchmarking, conflict analysis, and early warning indicators, among other practices. The chapter highlights innovative approaches to strategic assessment that have yielded insights into the robustness of peace. The chapter also examines some of the many indices and indicators of peace, stability, resilience, and the like that are produced periodically by think tanks and research institutes, including the Global Peace Index, the Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger, the Failed (now Fragile) States Index, and the Everyday Peace Indicators. For the most part, these indices conceal more than they reveal about the quality of post-conflict peace but there are notable exceptions.

Conceptualizing Peace

Different conceptions of peace have different implications for devising strategies of peacebuilding and peace maintenance. What it takes to achieve a negative peace is very different from what is required to achieve a positive peace. This chapter explores how the conceptual distinctions discussed in the Introduction map onto actual practice, with reference to the principal relevant peacebuilding actors: the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the African Union, the World Bank, and leading non-governmental organizations. What are the primary features of these organizations’ approaches to peacebuilding? How do they differ, if at all, in their understandings of the characteristics of, and requirements for, a stable peace?

Factors of Post-Conflict Peace Stabilization

This chapter (co-written with Anke Hoeffler) seeks to identify factors that contribute to post-conflict peace stabilization based on a quantitative analysis using duration (survival) analysis and a qualitative analysis examining the peace consolidation process in six conflict-affected countries. Duration analysis, a statistical method, allows us to analyse the duration of peace. The hazard rate—the rate at which peace ends—can be modelled as a function of various co-variates, such as economic growth, aid, elections, military personnel and expenditure, regional autonomy, etc. The country case studies provide more detailed information on how some countries achieved lasting peace while others failed. The country cases that are included in this analysis are: Burundi, El Salvador, Liberia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste (East Timor).

Introduction

Countries that have suffered civil war are at high risk of conflict relapse. While the international community expends billions of dollars and deploys thousands of personnel each year to help build peace in countries emerging from violent conflict, these efforts are hampered by the lack of effective means of assessing progress towards the achievement of a consolidated peace. Better assessment can inform peacebuilding actors in the reconfiguration and reprioritization of their operations in cases where conditions on the ground have deteriorated (or improved). We cannot know with certainty that a peace is stable but it is possible to ascertain the quality of a peace, and the vulnerability of that peace to conflict relapse, with higher levels of confidence.

Measuring Peace Consolidation

This chapter discusses the implications of the analysis in the foregoing chapters for international policy. What does this analysis tell us about whether it may be possible, and if so how, to assess the quality of peace? How can monitoring and assessment be improved? The chapter argues for an ‘ethnographic approach’ to strategic assessment that favours increased reliance on knowledge of local culture, local history, and especially, the specific conflict dynamics at work in a given conflict situation, particularly at the micro level. From this approach it derives a number of recommended practices, including early and continuous conflict analysis, the adoption of more precise measures of post-conflict peace, and the incorporation of local perspectives into strategic assessment. The chapter closes with a discussion of the obstacles to good practice (e.g., politicization of reporting) and how these obstacles can be overcome.

From Conception to Practice

Different conceptions of peace have different implications for devising strategies of peacebuilding and peace maintenance. What it takes to achieve a negative peace is very different from what is required to achieve a positive peace. This chapter explores how the conceptual distinctions discussed in Chapter 1 map onto actual practice, with reference to the principal relevant peacebuilding actors: the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the African Union, the World Bank, and leading non-governmental organizations. What are the primary features of these organizations’ approaches to peacebuilding? How do they differ, if at all, in their understandings of the characteristics of, and requirements for, a stable peace?