Abstract
Recurrent violent conflict undermines the human development of millions: what takes decades to build, can take seconds to destroy. The challenge is to find an effective way of engaging with states to assist in the transition from war to peace. This is the main problem that this book has addressed. It has investigated the post-Cold War policy of peacebuilding where international donors assist war-affected states to rebuild and develop in such a way that war will not recur. While helping other states in this transition is morally the right thing to do, there is now a sense among donors, particularly since 9/11, that the instability created by protracted civil wars poses a real threat to their own. In Sri Lanka, during the Norwegian-negotiated ceasefire, peacebuilding was the overarching policy approach adopted by the main donor organisations. The peace process was unusual because the donors took a prominent role, prioritising economic recovery issues in the hope that a peace dividend would encourage widespread support for a negotiated settlement.
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Chapter 6 Building Peace or Buying Time?
2 M. Turner and D. Hulme, Governance, Administration & Development: Making the State Work (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997) pp. 4–6.
3 J. Owen, ‘The foreign imposition of domestic institutions’, International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 2 (2002) pp. 388–389.
4 See M. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars (London: Zed Books, 2001) and N. Cooper, ‘Picking out the pieces of the liberal peaces: Representations of conflict economies and the implications for policy’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2005) pp. 463–478.
7 ‘Declaration in support of the peace process in Sri Lanka’, Oslo Peace Support Meeting, 25 November 2002. http://www.peaceinsrilanka.com/insidepages/Internationalsuppoer/OsloMeeting/Declaration.asp, date accessed 8 March 2005.
8 O. Richmond, ‘UN peace operations and the dilemmas of the peacebuilding consensus’, International Peacekeeping, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2004) pp. 83–101.
9 O. Richmond and J. Franks, Liberal Peace Transitions: between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009) p. 4.
10 European Union Election Observer Mission, ‘Sri Lanka parliamentary elections 2 April 2004, final report’ (European Union, 2004) p. 2.
12 O. Hathaway, ‘The cost of commitment’, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 5, No. 5 (2003) p. 1834.
14 UN Human Rights Council, ‘11th special session of the Human Rights Council: “The human rights situation in Sri Lanka”’ – Tuesday 26 and 27 May 2009, Resolution ‘S-11/1 Assistance to Sri Lanka in the promotion and protection of human rights’, 27 May 2009. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/11/index.htm, date accessed 24 April 2010.
18 P. Harrold and S. Sardesai, ‘The dynamics of conflict, development assistance and peace-building: Sri Lanka 2000–05’, Social Development Notes, No. 23 (World Bank Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction Unit, 2006) p. 2.
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© 2011 Sarah Holt
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Holt, S. (2011). Building Peace or Buying Time?. In: Aid, Peacebuilding and the Resurgence of War. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306349_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306349_7
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