Making the Case for a Regional Approach to Peacebuilding

Since the early 1990s, peacebuilding has emerged as a new agenda at the United Nations and among key international actors. Lying at the intersection of development and security, peacebuilding encompasses socio-economic, political, diplomatic, military and security dimensions. Currently, peacebuilding policies and programming deal primarily with issue or country specific challenges, as most violent conflicts now occur within, not among, states. Arguing that contemporary conflicts are actually transnational in nature, this article proposes a complementary level of analysis and action for more effective peacebuilding: viewing peacebuilding from a regional conflict framework and identifying regionally-grounded approaches to address the twin challenges of security and development. Specifically, the article draws attention to regional variations in conflict formations and dynamics, and to their peacebuilding implications. It concludes that a regional approach to peacebuilding requires new analytical tools, creative mechanisms of collaboration among local, regional and international actors, strengthening of regional and sub- regional organisations, and ultimately, significant reform of the current architecture of international development and security.