IPI HomePublicationsPolicy Papers › Ending Wars and Building Peace

 

print print  |  share share back back

Policy Papers - March 12, 2007

Ending Wars and Building Peace

This publication is part of the CWC Working Paper Series [read more about this publication series]

Charles Call and Elizabeth Cousens

 

 

Growing recognition of the possibility of success, as well as of the cost of failure, has spurred a range of efforts to reform the practice of international peacebuilding, including the creation in 2005 of a new UN Peacebuilding Commission and its related mechanisms, a Secretariat Peacebuilding Support Office and a Peacebuilding Fund.

However, both experience and scholarship point to a series of chronic weaknesses in international peace efforts, which these and other reforms are meant to overcome and which we discuss below. They also point to more fundamental questions about the complexity of postconflict transitions, the mismatch between expectations for rapid recovery and processes that have historically taken considerably longer, and the crucial issue of state-society relations as well as the types of state institutions needed to sustain peace, especially in poorer countries where, not coincidentally, most armed conflicts occur. Whether external actors have the knowledge, tools, resources or legitimacy to contribute to what is frequently referred to as statebuilding is, in our view, central to the question of the efficacy of international peacebuilding.

Contact Us

Adam Lupel | Publications
E-mail

Recent Events

March 11, 2010
Gabon’s Bongo: “We Must Wake Up and Embrace Prevention”
President Ali Bongo Ondimba marked Gabon’s presidency of the UN Security Council this month by addressing an overflow audience of diplomats at the International Peace Institute on March 8th.

March 10, 2010
Secretary-General Ban, Gabon President Bongo at IPI Dinner
On March 8th, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined fourteen Security Council ambassadors for a dinner at the International Peace Institute to honor Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba.

March 08, 2010
US Official: "No Trade-Off Between Our Security and Our Values"
“International Counterterrorism Policy in the Obama Administration: Developing a Strategy for the Future” was the subject of a well-attended address at IPI on Monday, March 1st by Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the US Department of State.


View More