Why Peacebuilders Fail

The report is entitled Why Peacebuilders Fail to Secure Ownership and be Sensitive to Context and seeks to understand why local ownership and local context are recognized as important yet seem to be of little importance in shaping peacebuilding efforts.

Ole Jacob Sending offers an explanation that locates the problem in two key assumptions that are fundamental to how peacebuilding efforts are organized. The first assumption is that knowledge about universal features and mechanisms of the liberal peacebuilding is more important than geographically specific knowledge of the post-conflict country in question. The second assumption is that the international legitimacy of peacebuilding efforts automatically translates into domestic legitimacy of peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict countries.

The NUPI Policy Brief Why Peacebuilders are “Blind” and “Arrogant” and What to do About it is based on the report. The Policy Brief proposes a number of measures to addresses the weaknesses documented in the report.