Why Peacebuilders are “Blind ” and “Arrogant ” and What to do About it

Peacebuilders are blind when they fail to be sen-sitive to local context, and arrogant when they do not secure local ownership for peacebuilding ef-forts. Extant research suggests that this lack of at-tention to context and ownership go a long way in accounting for the relative lack of success of peace-building efforts, and so it is an issue that should be addressed by policy makers. Now, the importance of securing local ownership for peacebuilding ef-forts have since long been recognized as critical to long-term success of peacebuilding efforts. The problem is that it is not implemented in practice. Why is this so? The report argues that it has to do with two implicit assumptions that are rarely dis-cussed and reflected upon in peacebuilding circles. The first assumption is that universal knowledge is more important than local knowledge. The sec-ond assumption is that international legitimacy is more important that domestic legitimacy. Together, these two assumptions make peacebuilding em-phasize building and social engineering at the ex-pense of facilitation, mediation and conflict reso-lution. Because of its expertise, experience and international standing in peace and reconciliation work, in on-going efforts to professionalize peace-building at the UN, and in UN reform efforts more generally, the Norwegian MFA is ideally placed to address these shortcomings of current peace-building practice. Three areas are singled out as central to make peacebuilding less blind and arro-gant: i) public-political debate about the appropri-ate ends of peacebuilding; ii) institutional reform at the UN; and iii) the development of new hiring guidelines, training modules, and best practices