Civil society actors have important potential for peacebuilding on the international, regional and
local level. Support for civil society should be further developed as a key element of development
and peace politics, in particular in post-war regeneration and peacebuilding. An important
challenge is to include civil society actors from the very beginning in all phases of war-to-peace
transition – from peace negotiations and implementation of agreements to post-conflict
peacebuilding. Inclusion is important for several reasons. First, it is the only way to integrate
perspectives of broader society and civilians, instead of responding exclusively to the needs of
armed groups and negotiating only with former or still-active warlords. Second, it is the only
way to include the perspectives of women, as the gender-related campaigns inspired by UN
Resolution 1325 have demonstrated. Third, inclusiveness also increases the chance of reaching
a broader political and social consensus that is necessary to make peace agreements sustainable.
In general, civil society has strong potential to promote citizens’ identification with the
polity. It can create social consensus as a basis for political reforms, as democracy, with all its
values and norms, must be learned at the grass-roots level of society. The same applies to
peaceful conflict resolution. Civil society organisations are indispensable for peacebuilding and
in particular for processes of reconciliation between hostile communities. In the field of dealing
with the past they are often the first ones to give important impulses that influence the discourse
on issues of truth and justice. On the other hand, as the Bosnian case has shown, civil society
initiatives come to their limits in situations where the political status is contested or where
institutions of a polity are not accepted as legitimate by significant parts of the population.
It is important to recognise that, ultimately, civil society initiatives in fragmented societies
can only influence political change to a limited extent. Therefore, donor agencies and
international partners should not overload civil society in war-torn societies with exaggerated
expectations. Civil society actors have certain capacities and clear limits that should be clearly
acknowledged. At the same time, unspecific criticism and a general denial of civil society’s
potential contribution to peacebuilding and conflict transformation is also unhelpful.
In order to generate effective peacebuilding potential, NGOs need to communicate among
themselves so as to avoid doubling or dispersing of efforts. But they also need to search for
alliance partners in parliaments, governments and administrations. The challenge is to forge
peace alliances “horizontally” between civil society actors on the local, regional, national and
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international level – and at the same time create vertical alliances of individuals and groups on
different levels of society. As John Paul Lederach (1997) has outlined, there is a need to build
peace from the bottom up, the top down and the middle out. Yet the methodologies for crossing
and linking activities between different levels are not very well developed.
Last but not least, self-reflection of roles and activities remains an important challenge for
civil society actors who decide to intervene as outsiders. They should reflect whether their
activities are embedded in questionable post-war reconstruction endeavours designed according
to “liberal peace” blueprints, or even contribute to legitimate the use of force for the end of
reproducing the liberal order (Richmond 2005, 32). Experience in several cases of intervention
has shown that building state institutions and developing society in post-war societies cannot
simply follow models of western democracies but has to reflect the respective cultural context
and historic experience.
Consequently, external support for local civil society actors must be improved. Quality is
needed instead of quantity. Much more could be done in order to better channel international
aid so that it serves those stakeholder groups that want to participate proactively in the
regeneration and construction of a new society. This means that cooperation partners must be
selected carefully according to the contributions they can make to addressing social needs. To
this end, funding schemes must be better attuned to the specific needs and dynamics of the local
actors so that activities can be planned over the longer term. Selection of appropriate local
partners is also crucial to avoid the possible misuse and waste of resources. Building civil
society does not necessarily mean setting up new NGOs, but also working with existing
traditional social actors (Paffenholz/Spurk 2006, 53ff.) and opening up spaces for citizens’
participation in and through mechanisms of local self-management. At the same time,
international actors have to make sure that they do not undermine the efforts of local civil
society peace initiatives which are working in the conflict situation, especially by imposing
their own agendas. In any case and by all means, international actors (IGOs as well as
governments and INGOs) should be aware that civil society cannot be “created” entirely from
the outside. External support can only strengthen but not entirely create local capacities.