Description
With the end of statebuilding missions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, large-scale interventions of countries from the Global North in post-conflict environments and their approaches of ‘building liberal democracies’ or ‘stabilize fragile states’ are increasingly questioned. Calls for a decolonisation of peacebuilding efforts and a greater involvement of the Global South, and local communities, are growing louder. But major contributions of countries from the Global South are nothing new. Countries such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, or Turkey have been increasingly involved in security and peace missions, and have contributed to peace- and statebuilding frameworks at the UN level that provide alternatives to the mainstream liberal peace paradigm. In this series of two panels, we explore what this greater involvement means for both norms and practices around interventions from both a current and historical perspective. We are discussing how the involvement of countries from the Global South in UN commissions and dialogues has reshaped policies and architecture of UN peacebuilding, and how everyday practices of peace- and statebuilding in missions have had an impact on the reframing of norms at the mission as well as international level. The second panel discusses what the shift towards non-Western involvement means for interference in peace- and statebuilding missions.
