Sarah Njeri
My PhD research was mainly an examination of the challenges of implementing humanitarian programs such as mine action in challenging post conflict environments. The research took exception with the dominant liberal peacebuilding critiques. I argued that these mainly focused on ‘states’ and the failure of interventions in rebuilding states. This has resulted to a standardised critique as a consequence of the critics applying a broad brush across a diverse range of contexts, programmes, issues and activities. This is illustrated by the lack of scrutiny on the mine action sector and emerging contexts such as Somaliland.
Similarly, these liberal peacebuilding critics continually challenge the standardised ‘one size fits all approach’ employed by interveners, yet they take the same approach. I therefore argued that there is a need to broaden the critique to include other elements and contexts of peacebuilding which would give a nuanced critique that acknowledges the challenging realities of implementing programmes in post conflict environments.
I did this by demonstrating how as an intervention mine action has some intrinsic peacebuilding potential. However, the way mine action is implemented both globally and in Somaliland reflected the same dominant characteristics of the liberal peacebuilding critique i.e.; it is externally led; uses technical and standardised formulaic approaches; and disregards local context thus failing to secure local ownership. However, I argued that this mode of implementation have been a result of the sector’s response to global factors, processes and contexts thus shaping the way in which they implement their programmes. The liberal peacebuilding critics however attribute such implementation modalities as having led to the failure and/or limited success of peacebuilding interventions. I contend with the critics that such implementation modalities do limit the ‘peace-ability’ potential of programmes such as mine action in Somaliland; however I demonstrated that other factors beyond the implementation further contributed to limitation of this potential; these include the Sector Actors (including their relationship with the local people); the Somaliland context i.e. the historical and political context (especially the lack of international recognition), and the perception of Somaliland people.
Full Thesis Title: A Minefield of Possibilities; ‘The viability of Liberal Peace in Somaliland with particular reference to Mine Action’.
Supervisors: Professor Donna Pankhurst
Similarly, these liberal peacebuilding critics continually challenge the standardised ‘one size fits all approach’ employed by interveners, yet they take the same approach. I therefore argued that there is a need to broaden the critique to include other elements and contexts of peacebuilding which would give a nuanced critique that acknowledges the challenging realities of implementing programmes in post conflict environments.
I did this by demonstrating how as an intervention mine action has some intrinsic peacebuilding potential. However, the way mine action is implemented both globally and in Somaliland reflected the same dominant characteristics of the liberal peacebuilding critique i.e.; it is externally led; uses technical and standardised formulaic approaches; and disregards local context thus failing to secure local ownership. However, I argued that this mode of implementation have been a result of the sector’s response to global factors, processes and contexts thus shaping the way in which they implement their programmes. The liberal peacebuilding critics however attribute such implementation modalities as having led to the failure and/or limited success of peacebuilding interventions. I contend with the critics that such implementation modalities do limit the ‘peace-ability’ potential of programmes such as mine action in Somaliland; however I demonstrated that other factors beyond the implementation further contributed to limitation of this potential; these include the Sector Actors (including their relationship with the local people); the Somaliland context i.e. the historical and political context (especially the lack of international recognition), and the perception of Somaliland people.
Full Thesis Title: A Minefield of Possibilities; ‘The viability of Liberal Peace in Somaliland with particular reference to Mine Action’.
Supervisors: Professor Donna Pankhurst
less
Related Authors
Interests
Uploads
Papers by Sarah Njeri