A new policy brief, released Tuesday (April 11) by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, offers insight on how sustainable peacebuilding can be practiced.
Drawing on case studies from civil wars, such as those in Colombia, Central African Republic, Guatemala and Northern Ireland, the brief was written by a team of scholars, practitioners and policymakers and edited by Josefina Echavarría Alvarez of the University of Notre Dame and Catherine Panter-Brick and Bisa Williams from Yale University. The policy brief builds on conversations generated during the Colloquium on Strategies for Sustainable Peacebuilding: Implementation and Policy, an event held last November that attracted a diverse pool of attendees with wide-ranging experience as academics and practitioners.
Echavarría Alvarez, who convened last year’s colloquium, is an associate professor of the practice at Notre Dame and director of the Kroc Institute’s Peace Accords Matrix.
“Peace agreements represent the beginning — not the end — of a reform and reconciliation process that must be inclusive and participatory throughout its duration,” she said.
“Evidence shows that public buy-in of an agreement by a range of stakeholders, including those of local communities directly affected by violence and armed groups, leads to better outcomes.”
“This brief crystallizes new ideas in the field of peacebuilding — such as ways to support the meaningful inclusivity, legitimacy and sustainability of peace agreements,” said Panter-Brick, the Bruce A. and Davi-Ellen Chabner Professor of Anthropology, Health and Global Affairs at Yale University.
The timing of the policy brief’s release complemented President Joe Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland this week, marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of violence of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict that began in the late 1960s.
In another nod to the anniversary, the Kroc Institute and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, also at the University of Notre Dame, will co-host an in-person roundtable on the Good Friday Agreement at 3:30 p.m. April 14 at Notre Dame. Echavarría Alvarez will join panelists from the University of Oxford to discuss peace processes and treaties in a comparative framework. More information can be found here.
