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Indigenous Peace-Making Versus the Liberal Peace

Department of Politics and the Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, University of York, York, UK, Rm17{at}york.ac.uk

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in indigenous, traditional and customary approaches to peace-making in the context of civil wars. Supporters claim that indigenous approaches to peacemaking are participatory and relationship-focused, and that peaceful outcomes have a higher chance of community adherence than template-style international peace interventions effected through the `liberal peace'. Using historical and contemporary examples, this article assesses the feasibility of a complementary relationship between customary and Western forms of peace-making. It posits that internationally supported peace operations (the liberal peace) are promoting a standardization of peace interventions in civil war situations that often fails to deliver a widely enjoyed peace. In some cases, traditional and indigenous approaches to peace-making and reconciliation can offer a corrective to the failings of the Western peace-making model. Yet, any temptation to romanticize `indigenous' and `traditional' peace-making must be resisted: instead, the concepts require careful conceptualization and interrogation. The article concludes that the structural power of Western peace-making methods limits the space for alternative approaches to peace-making and that rather than a co-existence of both forms of peace-making we are more likely to see the co-option of indigenous and traditional approaches by Western approaches.

Key Words: alternative dispute resolution • conflict resolution • indigenous peace-making • liberal peace

Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 43, No. 2, 139-163 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0010836708089080


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