Advancing Peacebuilding from the Ground up

Abstract

For many years, scholars and practitioners have been struggling with problems of local ownership in international organizations-led peacebuilding. Despite the discourse surrounding giving ownership to local communities, top-down approaches prevail in practice and often lead to counterproductive outcomes. Ethnographic fieldwork has proven that international organizsations could achieve a better understanding of local experiential perspectives on conflict and peace. Here, we point to key features of local peace and suggest how international organizations could better incorporate peaceful local agency, cope with power imbalances and advance strategies for peacebuilding from the ground up.