Peacebuilding amidst violence – localizing the security-development nexus
Conveners: Manuela Nilsson, Department of Peace and Development Studies, Linnaeus University and Joakim Öjendal, School of Global Studies, Göteborg University
Contact: manuela.nilsson@lnu.se
Renewed conflict, stagnating development and continued high levels of violence in many of today’s war-torn societies continue to fuel the peacebuilding discussion and underline the urgency to find appropriate responses to complex conflicts and their reconstruction. One vital part of that debate is the discussion around the nexus between security and development in order to better respond to overlapping development and security challenges. These challenges face even more hurdles when they have to be tackled amidst persistent violence, as is the case in most of today’s conflicts. Peacebuilding amidst violence also requires a much closer collaboration between civilian and military actors than post-settlement peacebuilding called for in its original conception. Under a scenario of increased civil-military interaction, there is naturally a higher degree of linkages as well as potential tensions over policy trade-offs and interests between security forces on the one hand and the traditional development efforts on the other. This further fuels the debate about the security-development nexus and its applicability to a peacebuilding process whose conditions have substantially changed. However, this debate has largely taken place among actors at the international level. Current research has so far provided little empirical evidence about how security and development policies and activities actually play out on the ground. Today’s call for a peace that takes a local turn, is grounded and allows citizen’s to become involved in the making of their own peace therefore requires the security-nexus debate to focus on the application - and applicability - of the nexus in the local context.
Advancing towards this goal, the panel wishes to critically discuss the conditions, challenges, obstacles and results of the local application of the security-development nexus by comparing case studies from a variety of countries that are currently undergoing or have in the past experienced peace building processes under ongoing violence.
23 Aug., 16:00–17:30, Ahlmann Lecture Hall
- Peace and Development: Nebulous connections, desirable confluences? Maria Stern and Joakim Öjendal, University of Gothenburg.
- Implementing the security-development nexus: an analysis of the state level in the example of reconstruction in Colombia. Manuela Nilsson, Linnaeus University
- Beyond incidents: Experience on civilian-military interaction and consequences of the international military intervention on aid delivery. A case study of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan. Kajsa Johansson, Linnaeus University.
- Local peace work in the context of Buddhist radicalization in Sri Lanka and Burma. Camilla Orjuela, University of Gothenburg.
Abstracts
Peace and Development: Nebulous connections, desirable confluences? Maria Stern and Joakim Öjendal, University of Gothenburg.
This paper revisits the ways in which the interrelationships between peace and development have been conceived in dominant tenets of peace studies and development studies, as well as in related policy discourses and enactments. Through a broad overview of the fields, it will make an inventory of various (meta-)theoretical positions and illustrate its points with some cursory observations from global policy discourses. In order to both provide a ‘state of the art’ as well as invite critical reflection on what ‘we know’ about peace and development (and peace-development), as well as what we would do well to ‘unlearn’ as well as learn, it will pose a range of questions in its probing of the fields of peace and development: What are the changing ways in which scholars and policy makers have imbued these concepts/practices with meaning?; what sorts of imaginaries of peace and development are available, how are these then animated and to what possible effect? In particular, how have the interconnections between them been conceived? Do peace and development emerge as separate values, processes, programs, promises, terminuses? Does the one occasion the other? Are they mutually constitutive? How have parameters for success and failure been determined? Whose voices have been included, and whose silenced in defining and promoting peace and development? At what scale of action are they being practised, negotiated and resisted? Building on work already undertaken on the security-development nexus (Stern and Öjendal, 2010) this paper focuses its mapping exercise on the possibilities for, and problematics inherent in, conceptions/practices of peace and development as well as ‘peace-development’ in light of the very real and pressing problems that efforts at promoting peace and development are designed to address.
Implementing the security-development nexus: an analysis of the state level in the example of reconstruction in Colombia. Manuela Nilsson, Linnaeus University
Building peace in societies broken by prolonged periods of conflict where levels of violence continue to be high is one of today’s biggest challenges. This study examines the strategies used on the ground to address both security and development concerns amidst ongoing violence. While this continues to be one of the core questions within the security-development nexus debate, no coherent strategies have been developed so far to help local actors on the ground to combine security and development policies and find a balance between the different actors involved in their implementation at the local level. To illustrate this dilemma, the article uses the case of Colombia, a country mired in decades of civil war that finally seems at the verge of achieving peace but still suffers from high levels of violence. Focus is placed here on the state actors who constitute an important intermediary level between the international goals and visions of the security-development nexus and the local communities who are the object of state policies trying to improve security and development conditions. It analyzes the Colombian government’s understanding of the security-development nexus, its peacebuilding policies, and the implementation challenges faced in the country’s highly violent environment. Particular attention is placed on tensions between civilian state and military actors and the obstacles created by those tensions. The research is based on four field research periods in Colombia between 2013 and 2016.
Beyond incidents: Experience on civilian-military interaction and consequences of the international military intervention on aid delivery. A case study of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan. Kajsa Johansson, Linnaeus University.
The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) works mainly with provision of basic services within the areas of education, health and rural development. SCA builds and runs hospitals and schools in rural Afghanistan, but also engages in the training of professionals in these areas, including for example teacher trainings and midwifery schools. SCA has around 5300 Afghan and a handful of foreign employees. The paper examines how the presence of the international military forces in general, including the Swedish forces in specific, has influenced the short- and long-term conditions for SCA to carry out development programmes. The paper analyses if and how SCA relations with its targets groups, mainly the rural population, have been influenced by the international military presence, as well as the broader question regarding if and how the international military presence has influenced the target groups trust in development actors in general, and SCA and the Afghan state in specific. The paper will be draw upon fieldwork to be carried out in Afghanistan in March-April 2016. Interviews will be done with SCA staff, including senior management, although most focused will be put on staff working directly with and in the communities, including teachers, nurses and midwives. SCA target groups, such as patient groups, students and parents, will also be interviewed mainly in focus groups. Except from Kabul, three provinces will be included namely Wardak, Balkh and Nangarhar.
Local peace work in the context of Buddhist radicalization in Sri Lanka and Burma. Camilla Orjuela, University of Gothenburg.
With religious conflict becoming a main focus of both peace researchers and practitioners, most attention has been given to radicalization of Muslims, while Buddhism has typically been perceived as a “peaceful” religion. However, recent developments in Sri Lanka and Burma/Myanmar, where radical Buddhist groups and clergy have engaged in hate-speech and even violence against the countries’ minority Muslim populations, illustrate that also Buddhism, when seen to be under threat, can be used to motivate intolerance and violence. This paper enquires into the possibilities for civil society to work for peace in the context of Buddhist radicalization and anti-Muslim mobilization in the two countries. Both states have experienced dramatic transformation recently, from war to peace and, in the case of Burma, also from authoritarian governance towards democratization. The paper builds on research carried out in an ongoing (VR funded) research project, including interviews in Sri Lanka and Burma with religious leaders and representatives, peace organisations and other civil society actors. It looks at the space of manoeuvre available for Buddhist monks and laypersons who wish to oppose the radical Buddhist groups, the response of Muslim civil society actors and the attempts by peace NGOs to foster inter-faith dialogue.
