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The term peace is controversial and sometimes perceived as a concept imposed by external forces or as a superficial solution that fails to address deeper systemic issues.
Peace with special regards to international peacebuilding efforts are sometimes accompanied with concerns that they often prioritize stability over justice.
Numerous reports from various news sources reveal that those efforts can reinforce existing inequalities and overlook the root causes of conflict. UN peacebuilding missions are in a crisis of legitimity and due to various reasons often fail to effectively fulfil their goals leading to a critical view of the institution in countries like, for example, Kashmir, Palestine, Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar. This leads to a growing scepticism as well as the recognition that international peacebuilding initiatives may perpetuate the status quo or worse marginalize local voices. This critical perspective should be heard and join the list of the conventional understanding of peace because it urges a re-evaluation of how peace is pursued and understood globally. Examining the concerns can also help festival makers to gain a clearer picture of the complexities involved in achieving lasting peace.
There has been interesting conversation problematizing the term, framing Peace as a 'dirty word' commenting on the complicated nature of the term in various places. Find here one example from Kashmir, but there are others such as Palestine/Israel and even Cyprus, where the term is not accepted: "Why Peace is a Dirty Word in Kashmir?" by By Riyaz Wani, 19/8/18 on Tehelka.com
Long read: Mira El Mavla (Expert Atelier Nicosia 2022) on Complexifying Peace
"I am MENA program manager with a small Global non-profit called Build Up. I am based in Beirut where peace, peacebuilding, conflict, arms and no arms, crisis and no crisis is all very prevalent and in the headlines all the time. I would like to provoke a little bit today and speak about some concrete examples and about how peace is spoken about in my context and then maybe end with some kind of cautious food for thought and actions.
I can offer you a personal account of an experience with the terms peace and peacebuilding that are a bit civil society oriented because of my work experience. But they are also very personal and very painful and very serious and really affect people's lives. They offer a contrast between the flowery image of what peace and peacebuilding might be versus what we can see on the ground and places that are globally known as hot conflict-stricken areas or fragile contexts.
What brings me peace is the notion that peace and peacebuilding can be complexified. And I have made peace with the fact that peacebuilding is a term that seems to have been created to bring peace to the minds of colonizers and the systems that they control.
How do we define Peace and Peacebuilding at Build Up?
Peace is not just the absence of violent conflict but a society in which everyone can thrive. To build peace is to use non-violent means to reconcile differences and to collectively transform relationships and structures in a way that is inclusive just and sustainable.
At Build Up we have been trying to complexify the term for some time now. We ask what it means to say negative/positive peace. We try to separate between how peace and violence affect us as individuals and the root systemic causes that cause radical change that harms people. On this journey of a defining and complexifying peace and peacebuilding I couldn't help but kind of bring together the common threads that I see from Lebanon where I'm from and from Yemen which is a place that I've worked.
Systemic Peacebuilding in Lebanon
In Lebanon there are multiple layers of financial crises, maybe some of you heard, we had a really big explosion two years ago. That incident wasn't armed at all and wasn't a 'war kind of conflict' or anything that divided the city per se. But it destabilized and disoriented a whole population and called for a lot of intervention from outside to ameliorate some of the effects of the violence that was struck on the people.
We had a peacebuilding process after the Civil War in Lebanon which happened from 1975 to 1991 and we are still seeing its remnants today. We are still seeing people who come in and want to do peacebuilding interventions about formerly conflicted groups trying to have dialogues together etc. This is a legacy that still lives in Lebanon now. It is interesting that peacebuilding remained something that people wanted to intervene on the basis of after something like the Beirut explosion where you can very clearly define a unidirectional institution (the regime) which caused this damage, death and destruction to people.
Yet, it was the individuals who had this narrative thrust upon them of finding peace. It was something that needed to start with individuals on the insides, something that organizations and institutions would encourage people to find as their responsibility and to then bring to their communities and try to live that legacy forward. It was frustrating to see that responsibility thrust upon individuals when the problem was clearly systemic.
There is a root cause that is causing chronic violence or a chronic absence of peace in the lives of people in this country and yet there is no responsibility taken from the big institutions from where this violence comes from.
Harmful Narratives in Yemen
And it was also striking to see how this was happening in Yemen. The harmful narratives that indeed started to make peace a dirty word. Not because people don't want peace but because the people who were advocating for peace started to become synonymous with harmful actions done to communities on both sides of the conflict.
Even those who were neutral, started to fear us (e.g. Build Up) coming in with an intervention that was labeled “peacebuilding”. Because for them it meant that we were on the side of oppressive governments who came in top-down and with unidirectional narratives, and who did not understand what it means to erase neutralize and sanitize language to a point where we cannot even talk about conflict anymore. And that's not what peace is.
We can't have peace when we erase conflict, we can only have it when we engage with the conflict that surrounds us."
(This text is an exerpt of Miras speech at the Atelier For Young Festival Managers in Nicosia 2022)
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