Description
Stabilization is a concept employed to designate policies that use civilian and military tools with the aim to create ‘a safe and secure environment, establishing the rule of law and promoting the conditions for social well-being’ (Muggah 2013). The disillusionment regarding ambitious liberal peacebuilding interventions of the late 1990s and early 2000s and the emergence of new security concerns have led NATO countries and the UN to increasingly embrace stabilization. However, although the literature has focused on international stabilization operations, stabilization has also been employed by actors in the Global South to address political and criminal violence. This paper looks at the extent to which stabilization has been appropriated and readapted by countries and regional organizations in the Global South. Providing evidence from Africa (where the African Union has led stabilization operations) and Latino America (where several governments have launched stabilization policies), it argues that actors from the Global South have not only adopted Western understandings of stabilization but they have also contributed to the development of stabilization doctrines. It also assesses whether the claim that stabilization is increasing securitization and marginalizing peacebuilding holds in the context of interventions led by actors in the Global South.
