African regional organizations like the African Union (AU), ECOWAS and IGAD are increasingly important actors in resolving conflicts and building peace on the continent. In so doing, these organizations follow the aim of not only addressing the most immediate challenges to peace and security on the continent, but to also do so in a sustainable way, preventing future conflicts and creating the conditions for long-term peaceful societal coexistence. At the level of policy doctrines, sustainability has become a key concept in matters of peace and security and sustainable peacebuilding a guiding idea for how to build peace today. This effectively implements a key insight from peace and conflict research: that (societal) peace ultimately requires more fundamental transformations than the cessation of violence. But what is sustainable peacebuilding? And how can it be achieved under conditions of a complex web of actors involved in peacebuilding today?
Contrary to these policy ideas, the diverse peace and security practices of African regional organizations have been critiqued for so far predominantly focusing on the most immediate challenges and for favouring short-term and top-down measures at the expense of more long-term, integrative, and comprehensive engagements as laid out in the policy frameworks. Against this background, the conference engages the two interrelated questions: What does sustainable peacebuilding mean for different actors (local, national, regional, international, etc.)? And what are enabling and constraining factors for (more) sustainable peacebuilding by African regional organizations?
Antonia Witt will present on Violent Extremism and Anticipatory Governance in Ghana at the second panel ‟Local-International Tensions in Sustainable Peacebuilding" and chair the forth panel ‟Politics of Sustainable Peacebuilding within African Regional Organizations"
When: Monday, November 27, 09:00 – Tuesday, November 28, 2023, 17:00
Where: Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy (LECIAD), University of Ghana and via Zoom
The entire program and the link to the Zoom Call can be found on the MIASA website.