Chapter 4 Peacebuilding and the construction of the ‘local’
4.5 Concluding remarks
The aim of this chapter was to analyze and better understand why international peacebuilding organizations chose to construct the ‘local’ as a response to the critiques of top-down approaches.
In the aftermath of the second Congolese war resulting in the formation of a transitional
97 government in 2003, the international community demonstrated apparently strong support for political transition in the Congo. This support was premised on the assumption that strengthening political institutions through elections would legitimize them to effectively address the root causes of conflict. Several macro-scale programs were implemented and huge amounts of funding were directed towards key sectors such as DDR and SSR, the development of infrastructure and improving public administration.
While the international community has been concerned with restoration of the state authority, this chapter expanded upon substantive critiques made by scholars and policymakers of this top-down approach used by international institutions. A considerable body of literature and the failure of these approaches on the ground suggest that the international community’s intervention has failed to address the real causes of violence, namely the question of land, power and identity, which generate conflicts between local communities at the local level.
In response to these critiques, I provided examples through the programs and projects of some UN agencies and peacebuilding NGOs which have tried to follow the recommendation of addressing the conflict at the local level. This chapter discussed how the construction of the ‘local’ by international agencies largely relied on the belief that after they have been strengthened, ‘local communities’ would be capable of addressing the causes of violent conflicts. This short-cut to understanding local dynamics was partly influenced by a narrative that portrays the conflict in Masisi and many other places in eastern Congo as between opposing ethnic groups around the triangle land, power and identity, and not limited to a concrete conflict-affected category of a group of people these organizations would rely on to transform conflict and to build a durable peace.
Local community, as I have shown, is a discursive concept and under construction, whereas the Congolese legislation does not make a difference between a community and an ethnic group. It is discursive in the sense that it provides international NGOs with a narrative to raise funds, but when it comes to the implementation of funded programs, ethnic groups’ claims come to the fore.
I found that the intervention of peacebuilding organizations has not only largely focused on land issues at the expense of other key drivers of violence (identity and power), but that these organizations, under the banner of ‘local ownership,’ have also created a category of local intermediaries which play the part of brokers. These intermediaries are the Congolese organizations that were supposed to facilitate the implementation of programs. As a consequence
98 of these compromising bargains, most Congolese local organizations have not only become clients of the internationally driven peace market, but also failed to play the serious role of interface between international organizations and the local population as they are supposed to do.
Drawing on discussion by Neubert (2014) and Paffenholz and Spurk (2006) on the definition and the role of civil society, I have argued that attempts by international organizations to categorize Congolese organizations as civil society agencies were used strategically to legitimize their presence on the local level; and also as a mechanism to channel advocacy (for example about land reform) towards the Congolese authorities. It was noted that in the present configuration of international intervention, Congolese civil society organizations may continue to play the role of
‘brokers,’ having limited scope to participate in any other role due to lack of both strategy to address the causes of conflict and the necessary financial resources.
I argue in this chapter that international peacebuilding organizations have indeed considered the key drivers of violence to justify their intervention on the local level, but that the programs they implemented nonetheless failed to account for the whole of the triangle at the center of conflict.
Some of the key programs I described in this chapter lack coherence and clear strategies to incorporate all the dimensions of conflict. I have shown that to a large extent this is because both local populations and Congolese civil society organizations are ignored in the design of peacebuilding programs, also that international organizations still do not share the same vision of what is peacebuilding intervention and what is not.
Here is where the major trap in dealing with the local enters the picture. First of all, while most programs deal with land, the solutions envisaged seem to shift from the local level to the national and international levels, one example being the advocacy for land reform. Secondly, land has suddenly been taken to be merely an economic issue by peacebuilding programs, overlooking its crucial function as a factor in multi-layered conflict. This is because peacebuilding NGOs continue to receive funding from donors whose thinking and priorities lie with an economic agenda for the use of land: not only in DR Congo but in other African countries.
Finally, I examined why international organizations failed to address the entire triangle and focused mainly on land. I have shown that it is not because other dimensions (identity and power) are less relevant than land but because land fits well in the global agenda driven by international
99 donors. Although donors tend to prioritize land at the expense of other dimensions of conflict, it came out in this chapter that even by funding land-related programs, there is still a lack of a long-term strategy to address the root causes of violence and concrete population groups as beneficiaries, instead of a vague concept of local community. Land, power and identity and the related conflicts are not solely local. Although they drive violence on the local level as the literature has shown, they are structurally imbedded and overlap in a set of political, institutional and legal frameworks at different levels. Trying to address them on one level (local) is simply counter-productive. I explain this claim in the next chapter.
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