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post-colonial attempts at nation-building did in fact end in failure. So
today the misnomer  failed state actually should refer to a failure to
establish the state in the first place. Within the embryo of nascent post-
colonial states lay the problems that today have led to their de-legit-
imation. Writing about the post-colonial political trends in African
states in 1961, Frantz Fanon argued that  this tribalising of the central
authority, it is certain, encourages regionalist ideas and separatism. All
the decentralising tendencies spring up again and triumph, and the
nation[-state] falls to pieces, broken in bits .60 To complement this view,
Ali Mazrui notes  that Africa is experiencing a high-risk rebellion not
only against the colonial state but sometimes against the state per se as a
mode of governance. Many African societies are ill at ease with the state
as a system of governance .61 The fragmentation of states is, however,
not exclusively an African phenomenon. The secession of Timor-Leste
from Indonesia, the potential irredentism of the Kurds from Turkey,
Iran and Iraq as well as the potential secession of Kosovo from Serbia
all illustrate the potential contagion of collapse that exists today.
In a seminal volume entitled Collapsed States, edited by William
Zartman, this internal implosion is described as a condition in which
the basic functions of the state are no longer performed, as analysed in various
theories of the state. As the decision-making center of government, the state is
paralysed and inoperative: laws are not made, order is not preserved, and societal
cohesion is not enhanced.62
Furthermore, a collapsed state  as a territory . . . is no longer assured
security and provisionment by a central sovereign organisation. As the
authoritative political institution, it has lost its legitimacy, which is
therefore up for grabs, and so has lost its right to command and conduct
public affairs .63 Therefore when disintegration affects a state fuelled by
58 the ethics of peacebuilding
sub-national conflict then the moral  legitimacy and the moral  right of
the  state to exercise authority are substantially diminished. In this
context, conflict resolution and peacebuilding become a deeply moral
issue. Sustainable peacebuilding will only be achieved when the inter-
national community can begin to ethically entertain alternatives and
innovative forms of political association. The solutions should not be
pre-given, since it may be the case that the majority of ethnic groups
may embrace a statist framework. Rather, a more ethical way forward
would be to ensure that conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes
also accept the possibility of establishing and constituting post-statist or
post-national frameworks which would fundamentally alter the tradi-
tional understanding of the state. Only by enabling sub-national groups
working in tandem with governments to frame a system of political
coexistence can we begin to genuinely address the issue of peacebuilding.
STATE-CENTRIC MECHANISMS FOR CONFLICT
RESOLUTION AND PEACEBUILDING
As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, traditionally the
international mechanisms for conflict resolution and peacebuilding have
a strong inter-state bias which means that disputes involving non-state
actors are more or less confined to, and constrained by, these ap-
proaches. Mark Hoffman suggests that:
the substance of deep-rooted conflicts beneath the contours of Cold War con-
frontation had direct implications for the approaches taken toward conflict
management. During the Cold War, complex conflicts were handled through
the traditional means of coercive diplomacy and crisis-management in the context
of superpower rivalry and competition.64
These conflict resolution mechanisms sought to contain rather than
resolve conflicts. As Hoffman further notes:
the efficacy of the approaches needs to be seriously questioned. The flawed
assumptions on which they are based, the inherent contradictions they entail
and their largely unsuccessful history in promoting sustainable solutions to violent
conflict are part of the legacy of the former Cold War system.65
As such, these mechanisms could not adequately address the  underlying
sources of conflicts and often exacerbated them.66
It is clear that today, as during the Cold War, the international peace
and security issues generated by the legitimate claims of sub-national
groups are not adequately being addressed. As Carment notes,
realist  theories of international relations view ethnic conflict as an
the morality of conflict resolution 59
epiphenomenon  a by-product of the interaction between the processes
of state building and an anarchical system .67 As a consequence the
privileging of one group of actors (states) in the international system
over another arrested the development and evolution of effective con-
flict resolution mechanisms. The former Special Representative of the
UN Secretary-General for the former Yugoslavia, Yasushi Akashi,
makes a similar point when he observes that  because the role of the
United Nations in conflict resolution has been expanding and has
become increasingly complex, there is a need for a strategy to cope
with the new challenges . . . the complex underlying causes of the
[Yugoslav] conflict have often been obscured .68 In the particular case
of Yugoslavia there was a proliferation of mandates that were difficult
or impossible to implement because they were not clearly defined. Fred
Riggs argues that  at the state level, all members of the United Naions
now belong to a self-preservation club in which the maintenance of
existing state boundaries has become a top priority .69 With the demise
of interstate conflict and the significant increase in intra-state conflict
the international system s official conflict resolution mechanisms have
not kept up with these geopolitical transformations. For example, the
1993 Declaration of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government
of the Organization of African Unity (OAU  the predecessor to the
African Union), on the establishment of a mechanism for conflict
resolution, revealed its statist bias by noting that  the mechanism will
be guided by the objectives and principles of the OAU Charter, in
particular, the sovereign equality of Member States, non-interference in
the internal affairs of States .70 Elsewhere, this author has criticised the
inability of this mechanism to genuinely address sub-national con-
flicts.71 In particular, the mechanism was compelled to respect  the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Member States, their inalienable
right to independent existence, the peaceful settlement of disputes as
well as the inviolability of borders inherited from colonialism .72 In the
long run the legacy of such a policy can only serve to exacerbate conflict.
The lack of a clearly defined approach to addressing the emergent reality
of sub-national groups in conflict with states can only lead to the
inefficacy of conflict resolution mechanisms which, according to Kamal
Shehadi, lack  the track record and the credibility to reassure a com-
munal group that it will not be left at the mercy of a more powerful
group or state .73 Contemporary inter-governmental conflict resolution
processes are inherently  incapable of effectively mediating complex
international disputes .74
60 the ethics of peacebuilding
CHARTING A POLITICAL ETHIC OF
RESPONSIBILITY: TOWARDS A MORAL
FRAMEWORK FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND
PEACEBUILDING
The changing context of contemporary international relations is cur- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]