Peacebuilding as the Link between Security and Development: Is the Window of Opportunity Closing?
Publisher: Necla Tschirgi
Volume: 25 pages, pdf
Description:
Since the end of the Cold War, it has become common-place to assert that peace and development are intimately linked and that the United Nations (UN) and other international actors need to address the twin imperatives for security and development through integrated policies and programs. Shedding its early definition as “post-conflict reconstruction,” the term “peacebuilding” has broadened its scope in the 1990s to encompass the overlapping agendas for peace and development in support of conflict prevention, conflict management and post-conflict reconstruction. While there has been some progress at both the international and country levels to operationalize peacebuilding, the results are ad hoc, tentative and uneven. This paper examines peacebuilding practice since the 1990s with a view to understanding achievements made to date, as well as identifying outstanding political, institutional and operational challenges. The paper argues that the window of opportunity that had opened in the 1990s enabling the UN and other international actors to begin dealing with security and development through integrated peacebuilding approaches might close in the changed international climate after September 11, 2001, unless serious efforts are made to move the peacebuilding agenda forward.