Local Actors and Peacebuilding

These interrelated principles include participation, inclusion, empowerment, cultural sensitivity, and equity.

Top-down peacebuilding strategies, or peace from above, refers to the approach in which the
construction of peace depends on international and state-level official actors

Participation and inclusion, in general terms, refer to bringing and deciding who to elect as stakeholders for the most effective negotiation and decision-making processes for active engagement. 

The inclusion of subnational forces, such as non-state organizations, informal institutions, and ethnic diasporas, into the post-conflict reconstruction process becomes a decisive determinant.

Bottom-up peacebuilding strategies, or peace from below, mean that peace is derived from individual and civil society actors

The longer outsider actors remain in a post-conflict, the more they are perceived as invaders. 

Local ownership poses two dilemmas before the international community and foreign forces. First, legitimacy, which is key to sustainable peace, requires not only approval and permission by the central authority of the host country but also the inclusion and consent of wider layers of the society.

The most ideal and practical projects for post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding are the prioritization of home-grown solutions and bottom-up strategies while empowering local actors’ capacities and nurturing civil society.

Local ownership should be seen as a power transferring to the local actors which would grant them the final decision concerning peacebuilding processes, including planning, management, and implementation, rather than bestowing a participatory role or consulting them. 

The historical origins of the local ownership as a formal concept could be traced back to 1995 when OECD’s Development Partnerships in the New Global Context was adopted by the Development and Assistance Committee (DAC).

Assistance and guidance are expected from the UN during conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction.. 

The international community selects the local actors to be involved, empowered, and  to be collaborated with.  

The underlying objective of local capacity-building is to establish a self-sustainable state mechanism and developed society capable of maintaining a peaceful order to which outsider actors could shift power for maintaining it. 

Most common strategies applied by the international actors to build local capacity and local actors’ involvement in postconflict peacebuilding encompass aid donation; consolidation of security and judicial bodies; re-building of physical infrastructure; training and equipping of security, judicial, medical and educator personnel; and giving technical consultancy services and assistance.

Even though the ultimate aim of the local building is the transfer of power from international staff to local actors, premature power shift might lead to catastrophic consequences. For instance, this was the case in Bosnia in 2003, when political development showed the signs of returning to ethnic politics at the municipal level because of irregular and weakly planned power transfer to local actors. 

• Designation of capacities, priorities, and expectations:
• Enhancing security:
• Administration of justice and implementation of the law:
• Reaching local actors and transmitting information:

 Civil society’s primary roles are taking responsibility for homegrown solutions and producing grass-roots peace projects to contribute during conflict resolution and post-conflict peacebuilding. The institutionalization of grassroots is a primary goal for the inclusion of civil society to conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes.

NGOs’ activities are perceived unquestionably legitimate by local actors and the international community for their politics-free interests in comparison to the states.

The involvement of women can be classified into two groups: The first is the focus on attention to the needs of women, which implicitly refers to their vulnerability compared to men. In contrast, the second issue encompasses equality, which delineates the role of women during conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes.

The role of the media is one of the most decisive factors in both conflict resolution and postconflict peacebuilding phases. the media is expected to serve as an unbiased source of information and transmitter of untold stories from conflict zones that calls for international attention to the conflicts.