1st Edition
Routledge Handbook of African Peacebuilding
Africa lies at the centre of the international community’s peacebuilding interventions, and the continent’s rich multitude of actors, ideas, relationships, practices, experiences, locations, and contexts in turn shapes the possibilities and practices of contemporary peacebuilding. This timely new handbook surveys and analyses peacebuilding as it operates in this specifically African context.
The book begins by outlining the evolution and the various ideologies, conceptualizations, institutions, and practices of African peacebuilding. It identifies critical differences in how African peacebuilders have conceptualized and operationalized peacebuilding. The book then considers how different actors sustain, construct, and use African infrastructure to identify and analyse converging, differing, or competing mandates, approaches, and interests. Finally, it analyses specific thematic issues such as gender, justice, development, democracy, and the politics of knowledge before ending with in-depth analyses of case studies drawn from across the continent.
Bringing together an international line-up of expert contributors, this book will be an essential read for students and scholars of African politics, post-conflict reconstruction, security, and peace and conflict studies.
Introduction: Whose Peacebuilding? Power, Politics, Practices
Bruno Charbonneau and Maxime Ricard
Part I: Institutions
1. From Peacekeeping to Peacebuilding: Towards a UN Peace Continuum
Alexandra Novosseloff
2. The United Nations and the African Union: Partners or Rivals in Peace Operations?
Arthur Stein and Marie-Joëlle Zahar
3. Peacebuilding via Security Sector Reform and Governance? The Case of West Africa
Niagalé Bagayoko and Eboe Hutchful
4. Preventing Conflict-Induced Forced Displacement in Africa: UNHCR, the AU and the Rhetoric and Realities of 'Root Causes'
Marina Sharpe
Part II: Themes and Debates
5. African Mediation in High-Intensity Conflict: How African?
Laurie Nathan
6. Justice and Reconciliation in Africa: The Emergence of the African Union Transitional Justice Policy
Tim Murithi
7. The Politics of Knowledge and an African Transitional Justice: Analysing Africa as a Constitutive Outside
Ulrike Lühe and Briony Jones
8. Local Peacebuilding: The Reflexive Encounter Between a Subaltern View and a Practitioner in Côte D’Ivoire
Jeremy Allouche and Patrick Zadi Zadi
9. Women, Gender and Peacebuilding in Africa
Nina Wilén
10. Development and Peacebuilding
Jonathan M. Sears
11. Peacebuilding and Democracy in Africa
Daniel Eizenga
12. The Climate Crisis and Its Challenges for African Peacebuilding
Bruno Charbonneau, Peter Läderach, Marc-André Boisvert, Tatiana Smirnova,
Grazia Pacillo, Alessandro Craparo, and Ignacio Madurga
Part III: Case Studies
13. Peace by Delegation? The G5 Sahel’s Quest to Build Sustainable Peace
Ousmane Diallo
14. Counterinsurgency and Peacebuilding in Somalia and Mali
Bruno Charbonneau and Louise Wiuff Moe
15. Peacebuilding in The Gambia: Sustaining the Gains and Addressing Potential Threats to the Process
Festus Kofi Aubyn
16. The Politics of Transitional Justice and Peacemaking in a Non-Transition Context: The Case of South Sudan
Kuyang Harriet Logo
17. Peacebuilding in Guinea-Bissau: Challenges and the Way Forward to Sustaining Peace and Security
Fiifi Edu-Afful and Ruth Adwoa Frimpong
18. Stability for Whom and for What? The Ivorian Peacebuilding Experience Under Alassane Ouattara
Maxime Ricard
Conclusion: African Peacebuilding for Whom and What? Bringing the People Back In
Cyril Obi
Afterword
Biography
Bruno Charbonneau is Full Professor of International Studies and Director of the Centre for Security and Crisis Governance (CRITIC) at Canada’s Royal Military College Saint-Jean.
Maxime Ricard is West Africa Researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research (Institut de recherche stratégique de l’École militaire, IRSEM, France) and holds a PhD in political science from Université du Québec à Montréal. He is also Associate Researcher at the Centre FrancoPaix of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair in Canada.
This handbook as a whole will be of greatest interest to scholars who study peacebuilding processes in Africa. Individual chapters could be valuable sources of insight and citation for scholars working on specific subjects, whether certain tasks (e.g. security sector reform) or the countries that are the foci of case studies. I am sceptical that Western policy makers and many UN officials will respond positively to the critiques of their efforts that run throughout the handbook. This is not to say that criticisms from the Global South perspective are invalid, but they run counter to orientations that still reflect the liberal model of peacebuilding.
-- Paul F. Diehl, Independent Scholar
