Management of External Reliance

Abstract

The case study chapters of this volume examine four behavioural patterns of local peacebuilders as stated above. They examine how the four types of ownership promotion have been employed in the two areas, focusing specifically on the strategies local actors utilize to develop their unique models of peacebuilding, the distinguishing features of each of these, and their limitations as models of authentically local peacebuilding. This chapter introduces a contrasting approach to ownership development, that entails grassroots peacebuilders’ efforts to reduce the influence from external donors by gaining more financial independence. One popular way is to develop income generation schemes, in which funding sources are sought from collaboration with local communities and their own services for work partners. Moreover, local peacebuilders frequently adopt two types of actions to reduce their over-reliance on a small number of external supporters: diversification of partnership and local coalition building. While these efforts are unlikely to bring about complete autonomy for local peacebuilders, successful examples significantly increase their negotiation power vis-à-vis the demands from external actors, in terms of selecting the programmes to be initiated and those which will continue to operate, and determining operational features.