Peacebuilding and Human Security: A Constructivist - Hermeneutic Approach Earl Conteh-Morgan

Peacebuilding and Human Security: A Constructivist-Hermeneutic Approach

Earl Conteh-Morgan
Professor of International Studies
University of South Florida
conteh-m@chuma1.cas.usf.edu

Current peacebuilding efforts whether in Africa, Asia, or Europe are largely characterized by a language of power, exclusion, or defense of an international order that does not adequately address issues of emancipation and inappropriate impositions. In most cases of peacebuilding (reconstruction efforts after conflict resolution) it is the integrity of the state that is often given security. Insecurity is, in other words, synonymous with an attack on the integrity of the state. As a result of this unidimensional, state-centric view of security, many states confronted with civil strife have been unable to resolve their difficulties. Besides, many peacebuilding efforts undermine the emphasis on human security because people are viewed as the "means" to political stability as opposed to being the "end" of all peacebuilding efforts. People are also viewed as the means to a stable state conducive to the infiltration of globalization trends. Current emphasis on peacebuilding responds only to the symptoms of insecurity - open disputes that escalate into open violence. The state-centric UN/NATO/ECOWAS peacekeeping/peacebuilding efforts are not neutral efforts; rather they perpetuate policy practices primarily in the interest of the power elite.

Any analysis of the relationship between peacebuilding and human security should therefore begin from a broad conceptualization of human security that takes into consideration the individual, situated in broader social structures. Such a conceptualization should include:

1. Individual sources of human insecurity - harmful actions directed against people or property with visible and immediate consequences. Examples are banditry, lootings, intercommunal strife, and the like;

2. Institutional sources of human insecurity - harmful actions and neglect of institutions that undermine human rights and human security. Examples are dilapidated schools and hospitals, or collapsed welfare systems especially in developing countries, and the like;

3. Structural and cultural sources of insecurity - harmful actions and results linked to new modes of thinking and cognition in society at large, including international society. An example is the many aspects of neoliberal morality - for example, economic restructuring mandated by the international financial institutions.

In order to guarantee human security at the personal, institutional, and structural-cultural levels, power relations and relations of power should be underscored within a socio-cultural context. In others words questions like the following, among many others, should be thoroughly analyzed:

1. What is the underlying structure of privilege to the formation and conduct of domestic politics?

2. How is daily life affected by the historical constructions of race, gender, class and culture, and their impact on individuals, institutions, and structures?

3. What effect do the construction and reproduction of exploitative class/power elite identities have on the theory and practice of peacebuilding and human security?

In other words emancipation or sustainable peacebuilding occurs when one understands the true nature of things - class, gender, racial equality, etc. A great deal of peacebuilding deals with issues of security within a positivist-rational epistemology. Culture and identity and interpretive "bottom-up" approach to peacebuilding are crucial for understanding human security of marginalized individuals, groups, and communities. Human security is a situation/condition of injury/threats to an individual's, group's, or community's well-being, including freedom from direct attacks on physical and psychological integrity. To ensure such security involves the understanding of, or elimination of human insecurity located at the structural, institutional, and personal levels of society. It involves an attempt to understand human security/insecurity in terms of those who experience them. What motivates the dissatisfied to agitate, as well as their beliefs as marginalized individuals should be seriously taken into account, instead of merely imposing on them. In sum, the material as well as the socio-cultural context should be considered a critical factor to human security and peacebuilding.

Peacebuilding with a view to alleviating human insecurity involves transforming the social and political environment that fosters intolerable inequality, engenders historical grievances, and nurtures adversarial interactions. This may mean the development of social, political, and economic infrastructures that produce tolerable inequality and/or prevent future violence. In other words, the focus is on dismantling structures that contribute to conflict - in particular moving beyond short-term functions of maintaining a ceasefire, demobilization and disarmament, and monitoring competitive elections among former adversaries. The main objective of the analysis is to apply these peacebuilding criteria to a specific case of postwar reconstruction such as Sierra Leone, Angola, and the like.