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COPYRIGHT 2007 Professors World Peace Academy
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended the political violence in Northern Ireland, yet uncertainties remain about the post conflict phase of the fragile social structures that emerged. International donor agencies have provided economic assistance to encourage peacebuilding in post conflict societies such as Northern Ireland and the Border Area. This paper examines the role and effectiveness of the European Union's Peace and Reconciliation Fund through reviewing the political perceptions of senior Irish civil servants, funding agency community development officers, and local community leaders in Derry, Dublin, and along both sides of the Irish Border.
INTRODUCTION
This paper explores the role of external economic aid as a possible peace dividend in protracted intercommunal conflict. Specifically, this paper analyzes how external funding from the European Union (EU) Peace and Reconciliation, or Peace I Fund, may play an important political and economic role in promoting cross-cultural contact and reconciliation between Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland, and between the communities on both sides of the border separating the island. The Peace I Fund was established in 1994 in the wake of a Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) ceasefire.
External economic aid is intended to provide help to build peace between the communities by sustaining contact through joint venture, economic projects at the grassroots level. In order to clarify misperceptions and alleviate the burden of fear and prejudice, it is necessary to promote socioeconomic contact by focusing local community attention on the promotion of superordinate goals. (1) To help societies recover from historical violent trauma, it is necessary for economic cooperation to spill over into the political and cultural arenas to deescalate the intensity of protracted ethnonational conflict.
The socioeconomic tensions of the 1990s in Northern Ireland took the form of poverty, deprivation, and social exclusion. Economic assistance and the inclusion of marginalized persons through the EU fund programs provided a new psychological boost to community economic development and the idea of social economy. (2) The unemployment rate has continued to rise as agriculture and manufacturing have diminished. Rising unemployment has in turn created a greater urgency in the socioeconomic tensions that are likely to escalate into political violence. (3) A more holistic approach to the peacebuilding process can synchronize the interplay of socioeconomic development with conflict resolution. (4)
By engaging the respondents, persons on the front lines of the peace endeavor, this study represents a significant contribution to contemporary knowledge of the merging of development and conflict resolution in peace-building in post conflict societies. Here we discuss what the respondents reported as salient in their perceptions of how external economic assistance may be building cross-community ties, reconciliation, and intercommunal work. This study maintained an authentic commitment to focus on the respondents' interpretations of the impact of external economic assistance in building a peaceful and just society in Northern Ireland.
ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACEBUILDING
John Burton's human needs theory and John Paul Lederach's conceptual framework for peacebuilding make the strategic link between local economic development and conflict resolution. (5) Burton's human needs theory provides an analytical problemsolving approach which is an important conflict resolution tool and as a conceptual framework for organizing economic development initiatives at the grassroots level. (6) Lederach emphasizes the linkages between economic aid, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. (7) Constructive conflict transformation involves a partnership between local communities, governments and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to create funding categories related to a new vision of thinking and peacebuilding.
The provision of resources for transforming protracted conflict is not simply a matter of giving money to local community groups. As Lederach notes:
It involves creating new ways of thinking about the categories of activity and how they relate to the overall situation. It is about creating a sense of responsibility and accountability for the full implications of actions. And it is about strategic commitment to maximize the proactive elements of peacebuilding. (8)
Economic development initiatives and conflict resolution frameworks are inextricably intertwined. Local grassroots communities, NGOs and governments are to be organized and empowered in an organic and inclusive fashion to consider the social needs of the communities and to proactively engage processes that address the larger structural dimensions of conflict. Lederach suggests that this sort of organic view of process "envisions the whole body polities. It envisions peacebuilding as a web of interdependent activities, and people across all of these levels." (9)
Social change demands that communities provide a comprehensive approach that emphasizes socioeconomic, psychological and spiritual processes of transformation that are necessary to sustain the vision of where they are going. (10) Local eclectic models of conflict are important, as solutions are not easily imported from the outside. (11) Structural peacebuilding necessitates the creation of action thinking and institutional structures that help build a culture of peace. (12) Socioeconomic, psycho cultural and political infrastructures built around an organic notion of what peace is will provide avenues to effectively transform conflict.
Economic aid has become an institutionalized mechanism in the attempt to resolve conflict at the international level. (13) Prior to the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall, economic aid was an instrument of realpolitik--keeping allies within each Superpowers sphere of influence. The New World Order, however, has changed the nature of the role played by the United States (U.S.) in global economic development. (14) The U.S. role has been influenced by "domestic pressures such as aid-fatigue, budgetary strains, and a Republican-dominated Congress [which] complicates aid reorientation." (15) The U.S. now uses economic aid as an indication of its support for legitimate governments that promote Western liberal democratic values. (16) Consequently, both the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) and the European Union (EU) have linked economic aid to political progress in the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Lederach warns against throwing money at intricate and complex internal political problems in protracted intercommunal conflicts because it may exacerbate rather than ameliorate tension. (17) He proposes that "we should operate on the basis of being sufficiently aware of the consequences of our aid on local conflicts that we can avoid doing harm and aggravating the conflicts through our otherwise good intentions." (18) To ensure a positive outcome, we must use an organic approach that builds positive relationships within the community in the peacebuilding process.
Funding agency NGOs must think of the short versus long-term implications of their intervention actions within protracted ethnic conflict situations. The NGOs must allow for the participation of local grassroots groups and provide assistance to these groups in the grant application process. Funding agency NGOs must develop clear "categories of funding of action that relate directly and deliberately to the constructive transformation of the conflict." (19) One of the major criticisms of the EU Peace and Reconciliation program to Northern Ireland suggests that it was passed and implemented too quickly, resulting in a lack of focus, little clarity of objectives, and problems with indicators used to evaluate the program. (20)
A constructive conflict and peacebuilding approach emphasizes the shared responsibility of funding agencies and local communities in using economic resources for peacebuilding. (21) Local community groups must protect their own needs and not compromise or repackage their objectives to meet the criteria of the funding agencies. (22) The repackaging of community needs and issues in the fund application proposals to appease the agency results in a distortion and dilution of community interests. This issue has surfaced time-and-again during the course of the qualitative component of the field research.
Peacebuilding involves a coordinated relationship between grassroots, middle and top leadership in a process that integrates a multiplicity of approaches to peacebuilding from prejudice reduction to problemsolving workshops to formal political negotiations. (23) Sustainable peacebuilding...
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