Peacebuilding as action to solidify peace and avoid relapse into conflict.

 

There are many possible definitions of peacebuilding and varying opinions about what it involves. The term itself first emerged over 30 years ago through the work of Johan Galtung, who called for the creation of peacebuilding structures to promote sustainable peace by addressing the “root causes” of violent conflict and supporting indigenous capacities for peace management and conflict resolution. Peacebuilding became a familiar concept within the UN following Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace, which defined peacebuilding as action to solidify peace and avoid relapse into conflict. In 2000, the Brahimi Report defined it as “activities undertaken on the far side of conflict to reassemble the foundations of peace and provide the tools for building on those foundations something that is more than just the absence of war.” The UN’s understanding ofpeacebuilding has continued to evolve ever since.  The Secretary-General’s Policy Committee has described peacebuilding thus: “Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development. Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of thec ountry concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.”