Abstract.docx

Abstract This project draws on literature on Security Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, focusing particularly on Humanitarian Intervention and Conflict Resolution. These two have been mostly inspired in the literature as well as in practice by Liberal Peace, which represents an agreement on “Western-style democratization, ‘good-governance’, human rights, the rule of law, and developed open markets” Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver Richmond, “Myth or Reality: Opposing Views on the Liberal Peace and Post-War Reconstruction”, Global Society 21 (2007), p.492. as a driving force behind what is considered to be peace and how to achieve it. This was created in the post-Cold War era and culminated in the production of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in 2001. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICSS), The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001). Since then, and because of the recurrent failure of humanitarian intervention in several parts of the world, there have been calls to integrate local initiatives of intervention into that discourse in order to better address conflict situations. Significantly, the call to create a global civil society to respond to wars has been combined during the past decade with a call to engage ‘civil society’ and other local formations in the process. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003). This research attempts to engage critically with this debate on three basic levels based on the fieldwork findings: on one level, it examines and problematises the meaning of ‘civil society’ in the African context and particularly the role it plays in intervention and conflict resolution. On the second level, it explores the local/community-based formations available and the significance of their incorporation. Although the local element has been highly romanticised lately, this research attempts to critically examine these initiatives and highlight significant concerns within their structures and practices. This leads to the third level, which is an examination of the challenges facing these local formations on the societal, state and international levels, with regard to intervention and conflict resolution. This analysis will be done in relation to the two case studies examined through the qualitative fieldwork: Darfur (Sudan) and Somaliland (Northern Somalia).