The Building of Peace in a Changing World: The Debate and the Critic on the Concept of Peacebuilding

Abstract

The paper analyzes the emergence and the evolution of the concept of peacebuilding in the international context of the post-Cold War, focusing on its implementation within the United Nations (UN). The goal is to elucidate the theory behind the practice of the United Nations towards countries emerging from violent conflicts. The essay argues that the theoretical concepts of peacebuilding are object of intense international debate since the Cold War. This debate has helped to highlight the limits and conditions for applying this concept in the peace operations conducted by the United Nations since 1945. To this end, the article was divided into three sections. The first section adopts a historical perspective of the concept, addressing its operationalization at the United Nations during the Cold War, when peace was predominantly conceived as the absence of interstate military conflicts. From the 1960s, the work of the Founding Fathers of the Peace Studies, such as Johan Galtung, launched a new look at the concept of peace, which come to be related not only with the cessation of armed conflicts between States, but also with topics such as development and human rights. The second section analyzes the theoretical and conceptual extension of the concept of peace in the post-Cold War, in which the end of bipolarity in international relations has had a direct impact on United Nations peace activities. Finally, the third section contains a critical approach to the concept of peacebuilding, highlighting the international debate on its limits and on its conditions of application in the contemporary times. The analysis of literature on the subject allows the confirmation of the hypothesis, given that the practical and theoretical limits of the concept of peacebuilding impose the continuity of the international debate in this area, which is essential for strengthening the United Nations in the contemporary world. The article thus contributes to the academic efforts that seek to understand the United Nations peacebuilding activities, demonstrating that some of the challenges faced by this organization have conceptual origins.

KEYWORDS:
peacebuilding; United Nations; development; local ownership; coordination