Bringing the Local Back In: Haiti, Local Governance and the Dynamics of Vertically Integrated Peacebuilding

Abstract

In recent years, ‘the local’ has moved to the forefront of the contemporary peacebuilding debate, as evidenced both by growing scholarly interest in ‘the local turn’ in peacebuilding and by the emphasis on legitimate, inclusive politics in policy discussions surrounding the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States. What is less clear, however, is how community-level peacebuilding activities can be effectively integrated with longstanding efforts to build peace by building viable, accountable state-level institutions; there remains, in other words, a conceptual and empirical gap between top-down and bottom-up peacebuilding processes. This article draws upon a case study of community-level peacebuilding and violence reduction in the urban slums of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince to illustrate the importance of vertical integration for sustainable peacebuilding. It argues that in the absence of explicit linkage — in particular through local-level institutions of governance — with broader statebuilding processes, community-based peacebuilding efforts may ultimately prove to be more palliative than transformative.

Keywords::

• peacebuilding
• Haiti
• community violence reduction
• local governance

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the financial support of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI 1d Collaborative Research Award — 2012) in the preparation of this article.

Notes

¹ As Lederach and others have suggested, horizontal integration may also involve efforts to strengthen linkages among actors across various cleavages, including bureaucratic/institutional, ethnic, or class divides.

² For further information on the CNDDR and other CVR initiatives, see Donais and Burt (2014).

³ Absent a comprehensive, independent assessment of the CNDDR experiment, it remains difficult to assess with any confidence the programme's overall impact, with the CNDDR's own final report claiming little more than that ‘some armed elements have been reintegrated’ (CNDDR 2011, 4).

⁴ Since the causes of, and solutions to, violence are varied and interrelated, it remains difficult to demonstrate with any degree of confidence the extent to which particular interventions ‘cause’ particular social consequences.

⁵ By way of comparison, New York City's homicide rate was less than 7 per 100,000 in 2011 (Daniel 2012).

⁶ Author interview, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

⁷ More information on MINUSTAH's CVR activities can be found at http://www.minustah.org/activites/cvr/?lang = en

⁸ Parts of this paragraph are drawn from Donais and Burt (2014).

⁹ Author interviews, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

¹⁰ Constitution of the Republic of Haiti, 1987, Art. 86; English translation available at http://pdba.georgetown.edu/constitutions/haiti/haiti1987.html

¹¹ Author interviews, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

¹² Author interview, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

¹³ Author interview, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

¹⁴ Author interview, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

¹⁵ Author interview, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

¹⁶ Author interview, Port-au-Prince, February 2014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy Donais

TIMOTHY DONAIS is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, where he teaches in the field of peace and conflict studies. His current research focuses on ‘ownership’ questions in the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, drawing on field research from Bosnia, Haiti, and Afghanistan.