Is peacebuilding donor-driven? Inside the dynamics and impacts of funding peace

The field of peacebuilding and development has engaged in vital discussions on ethical reflective practice, critical pedagogy, and ongoing concerns (Lederach 1997; Miall et al. 2011) about what I have begun to call ‘donor-driven peace’. Key issues have concerned top-down approaches, increasing militarisation of aid, development and peacebuilding policy, and differing priorities between donors and civil society actors. The US Institute of Peace (USIP), the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AFP) and others have led conversations among scholars and practitioners on the need for an ongoing conversation between donors and implementers regarding the objectives, values and ontology of peacebuilding and development interventions; these dialogues have also focused on monitoring and evaluation to ensure donor objectives are met. Lederach (1997) captured the inherent tension between the requirements of funders and the complexities of peacebuilding some time ago when he observed, ‘Peacebuilding is about generating adaptive and dynamic processes. Some aspects of peacebuilding — for example, training projects and the development of manuals — do fit well within the “project” approach. For the most part, however, and certainly in the case of funding and evaluation, project-oriented thinking may well limit rather than facilitate peacebuilding.’

It is fair to say that questions around the funding sources of our work have been one of the most contentious subjects of debate in the field of peacebuilding and development for decades now. Points of debate have included the ethics of a party to a conflict also acting as a donor, or questions of whether locals affected by the conflict actually control the resources or agenda. We should be compelled to ask to what extent our practices and approaches have actually changed as a result of ongoing debate, efforts at reform and self-critique. Further, to what extent has the conversation generated ideas and solutions, as opposed to critique, which might provide practical alternatives to funding from governments (especially governments who have been party to a conflict) or major donors such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department for International Development (DFID) or the United Nations, with their power centres, so to speak, in North America or Europe? In response to the concerns of Global South civil society, such major funders and development professionals have worked to engage local actors and create new frameworks that they believe will generate dialogue and accountability.

It is a truism of conflict analysis that power inequalities will always be a driving source of conflict, especially that of the intractable, violent sort. On those grounds it can be argued that addressing the power imbalances between (often wealthy, Western) donors, implementers (from a variety of backgrounds) and constituents (community members seeking resolution to the conflict) is essential for our work to address structural violence and thus be sustainable and indeed ethical. How can this relationship between donors and recipients best be characterised, and what is the impact on our efforts to sustainably (over time) and durably (throughout hardships) build peace? Most importantly, how can we move the dialogue beyond debate and critique to the development of alternatives that will improve peacebuilding and development practice, empower Global South communities and transform global conflict dynamics?

Philanthropic data seems to corroborate local communities’ concerns regarding the exclusion of subaltern actors. This is despite the ongoing debate surrounding whose priorities are being pursued, and persistent expressions of concern by some within the peacebuilding community that such exclusion must be interrupted. Indeed, a recent report from the Peace and Security Funder’s Group suggests that the dynamic of elite organisations funding primarily other elite organisations remains in place, and the field of peace and conflict resolution is not an exception.¹

Primary funding areas and priorities, according to data from the same 2011 report, are addressing transnational threats, domestic preparedness, controlling and eliminating weaponry, preventing and resolving violent conflict, and promoting international security and stability. The bulk of funding goes to the category of policy analysis and research. The smallest priority category appears to be ‘Track II’ (civil society), where presumably most peacebuilding or conflict transformation programming would fall. This data underscores why the question of how to make donors more responsive to the priorities of communities who can define their own needs, remains urgent for scholars and practitioners of peacebuilding and development.

To just this task our authors have turned. As they note (see especially Hippolyt Pul and Ismael Muvingi), donor and local priorities not only sometimes do not harmonise but are actually often in tension with each other. Often, they argue, the underlying dynamics of the conflict remain or are even further entrenched. While the authors in this special issue do not offer consensus on the best way forward, important themes and recommendations for donors and practitioners emerge. One essential lesson is that culturally foreign values and epistemological assumptions that are embedded into development projects and the grant-making process itself can be harmful to local peacebuilding efforts. Pul, Muvingi and Reina Neufeldt in particular examine this theme. Pul engages the example of Liberia, among others, to demonstrate how the military and security priorities of international donors took precedence over local healing, reconstruction and development, as prioritised by those who endured the conflict. While locals, especially women peace leaders, were focused on economic justice and rebuilding livelihoods in the wake of civil war, international donors prioritised retributive justice (e.g., arrests and trials of those defined as war criminals). Pul argues ultimately that non-Western bodies and ways of life are defined as a threat (his discussion of aid response to the Ebola crisis is particularly striking) and, rather echoing Edward Said’s seminal notion of orientalism, result in a need to render the African ‘other’ more recognisable and similar to those in the West.

Conflicting cultural values and worldviews challenge donors and local civil society actors alike. Muvingi explores this theme through his examination of donor impact on transitional justice, observing that the efforts in many ways to professionalise transitional justice have resulted in processes of ‘justice’ that many who suffered during the conflict find irrelevant, culturally foreign and at times even painful. Muvingi emphasises that the values and worldview embedded within transitional justice and related donor/aid processes, despite their framing by proponents as neutral and thus presumed to be unproblematic, are far from so, but rather are necessarily embedded in their own cultural and historical context. Exploring the case of Rwanda, among others, Muvingi illuminates the hidden imperative of transitional justice and other aid processes to foster a neo-liberal economic environment suitable for Western investors. In a similar vein, Luca Raineri’s brief on donor intervention in Mali narrates how Western security and domestic political priorities drove programming choices; he argues that as a result, local priorities were trampled on and socio-political divisions, as well as economic corruption, deepened. Moritz Schuberth’s brief on how and whether to engage armed local actors in Haiti, sometimes involved in criminal activities, relates a similar lesson. Christopher Pallas, similarly, discusses new research on stakeholder dialogues with regard to aid reduction in states affected by conflict, arguing that donor entry into a local context can disrupt local civic actors and the peacebuilding and development processes they had put into place.

The trouble with ostensible cultural neutrality and a related narrow focus on quantitative indicators to measure a programme’s success is also elaborated by Neufeldt. Her discussion turns the lens towards a subject not examined nearly enough — the assumptions, both practical and ontological, embedded within the peacebuilding grant process. Her examination of USAID’s grant-making tracks how the process has evolved over the past number of years in an effort to improve impact and technical implementation of the peace and reconciliation process. Ultimately she concludes, similar to Pul and Muvingi, that a strict focus on quantitative indicators to evaluate project results prioritises technocracy over felt human needs and misses much in terms of addressing what drove the conflict to begin with. Her analysis also highlights that the technical requirements embedded within the grants — such as English language, statistical or computer skills — restrict some local actors from being able to apply at all.

Local perceptions of the irrelevance or even bad faith of donor programming and priorities remains a challenge. Kate Flynn’s brief on Cyprus critiques the notion of evaluating a programme’s purported success without considering sustainability and impact. Nicholas Micinski’s briefing relates the dilemma of donor programmes reaching only a small handful of elite youth who repeatedly join the sponsored workshops — –‘frequent flyers’ within the NGO world. He describes how implicit donor values or programmatic priorities which are not accepted by locals result in suspicion of donors and entrenchment of the social divisions that underlie the conflict. Hilmi Ulas’s brief on divided Cyprus provides a further example of this challenge; the author argues that donor risk-aversion in terms of addressing the most contested political issues, the ones of most salience to those living with the conflict, has severely limited their ability to achieve an impact for peace in local communities.

Despite the consistent critiques of donor’s approaches, the relationship between donors and local actors is complex. Addressing this, Vandy Kanyako explores the questions of donor-driven peace via the case of Sierra Leone. Usefully highlighting the paradox of dependency on donors, without whom many of the country’s post-conflict peace processes might not have even occurred, he details ways in which donors overlooked important grassroots voices and prioritised tangible products (such as training or TRCs) at the expense of ‘people-centred’ processes which are so vital to restoring the relationships at the heart of any conflict. He also observes that donors at times misunderstood the context in which they were working and the manner in which their disbursement of aid prioritised and empowered certain local actors and reinforced the marginalisation of others — thus risking a reproduction of the dynamics that drove the conflict to begin with.

We offer this special issue as a means of furthering the dialogue regarding the passionately contested role of elite and powerful donors in supporting priorities that are not reflective of felt needs of those involved in the conflict — or priorities that are indeed militarised. As each of these articles and briefings details, the power imbalances between donors, recipient countries and civic groups remain stark and salient. This is a call for scholarly and practitioner action on questions including: What prevents the power imbalances from being transformed? Will new frameworks such as the New Deal succeed in empowering local peacebuilders? Are these the same dynamics that entrenched power imbalances between the Global North and Global South in the 20th century? If major private donors and Western government donors are not achieving the impact needed, what other alternative aid processes and institutions need to be developed?

Presently, some involved in the field of peacebuilding are celebrating the inclusion of Goal 16 (the ‘peace goal’), in the new global Sustainable Development agenda — Agenda 2030, with the hope that it will be a transformative one that creates shifts and entry points to address many of the challenges raised in this issue. Authors Gary Milante and Suyoun Jang offer an important reflection on how progress towards peace can be measured in this framework. They compare the efforts within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) process alongside the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS ‘New Deal’) process — the latter an effort of countries affected by conflict and fragility (the g7+), civil society, and international partners (including donors).

Particularly within the development and especially implementation of these global frameworks, scholars and practitioners must keep attention towards the needs of communities. Are there funding means, models or processes outside the ‘aid industrial complex’ available to local communities in those cases where donor priorities do not harmonise with local priorities? Would the development of smaller-scale donors empower local actors? Are mechanisms or models of community self-funding or other kinds of person-to-person aid possible, as Chris Brown’s briefing suggests? Most importantly, how can aid be demilitarised?

Further scholarship is needed on these questions, in particular through the scholarship of engagement (Duckworth & Kelley,2012). An engaged, participatory research approach can help scholars and practitioners remain focused on local priorities within the host country. These questions require urgent answers. This issue’s authors insightfully further these scholarly and practice debates, and move the peacebuilding and development community towards viable 21st-century solutions to addressing the persistent need for empowerment of local actors.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cheryl Lynn Duckworth

CHERYL LYNN DUCKWORTH, PhD, is Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution and Peace Education at the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies, Nova Southeastern University.

Notes

1 http://static1.squarespace.com/static/521b8763e4b03dae28cd3e72/t/523a62f9e4b00be6bfa667f5/1379558137843/PSFGreport_Jan2011.pdf