The Challenging Dynamics of Global North-South Peacebuilding Partnerships: Practitioner Stories From the Field

Abstract

Critical dynamics arise when Northern-based outsiders partner with local insiders in the Global South. This article investigates how power asymmetry, funding challenges, and other crucial dynamics impact on North–South partnerships through the lived experiences of both Northern- and Southern-based ‘peacebuilding’ practitioners. Practitioner narratives from Nepal, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Nigeria and Kenya provide insights into the complexities of what it means to be in partnership. Despite the skills of seasoned conflict resolution and peacebuilding professionals to help transform conflict settings, pervasive asymmetry in access to resources and donor relationships leads to problematic dependency. It creates numerous challenges for successful collaboration and vertical coordination between local, national and international actors. The article concludes with several considerations of how peacebuilding practitioners, and their organisations, might improve partnerships, including ways to ‘decolonise’ peacebuilding efforts by further utilising local knowledge, methods and skills, and shifting control over resources and project implementation to local insider-partners.

Keywords::

• North–South
• partnerships
• outsiders-insiders
• peacebuilder
• practitioner
• asymmetry
• dependency
• power
• narratives

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seth B. Cohen

SETH COHEN is a facilitator, mediator and trainer. He has a PhD in Conflict Analysis & Resolution from George Mason University and is founder of Intercultural Peacebuilders, a 501c3. Currently, Seth works for USACE's Institute for Water Resources and its Conflict Resolution & Public Participation Center of Expertise.