Local NGOs in national development: The case of East Timor

2.5 NGOs and peacebuilding
The third relevant strand of literature comes from peacebuilding studies. The
peacebuilding literature indicates differing definitions (Cutter 2005), but peacebuilding
is often viewed as a process which occurs after violent conflict has subsided—a
‘process of socio-political engineering’ (Labonte 2003:261). The UN views it as ‘a
wide range of activities associated with capacity building, reconciliation and societal
transformation… the phase of the peace process that takes place after peacemaking and
peacekeeping’ (Maiese 2003:1). Yet NGOs may view it as a rather more allencompassing
term, which begins with early warning and conflict prevention, through
peacemaking, peacekeeping and including humanitarian intervention, and the
establishment of peace zones. Essentially, peacebuilding is ‘a process that facilitates
the establishment of durable peace’ (Maiese 2003:1) to prevent the recurrence of
violence. It involves changing the socio-economic conditions that lead to violence,
rebuilding fractured social relationships, and healing the trauma. Peacebuilding and
post-conflict literature recognises that all levels and parts of society need to be
involved, especially women, that the process needs to be long term, requires care in
economic development approaches, and that civil society, among others, has a role to
play (Castillo 2001, Maiese 2003, Menocal and Eade 2005). Peacebuilding is
distinguished from state building which refers to ‘developing the institutions of
government’ (Chesterman 2002:47), a task which in East Timor was also the
responsibility of the UN. Unfortunately, peacebuilding success is elusive as around half
of all peacebuilding efforts fail within ten years (Collier et al. 2003); and there remain
debates about the capacities, impacts and legitimacy of civil society in post-conflict
settings (Fischer 2006).
Orjuela (2003) found during violent conflict in Sri Lanka, that although local civil
society actors played a number of valuable peacebuilding roles, in particular public
awareness, trust building and ethnic dialogue across the divide, advocacy and
generating political pressure for negotiation, and contributing to reconstruction and
development, the impact of many small, disconnected activities is hard to assess. The
51