ABSTRACT
Critical scholars in the global South have long articulated an alternative vision of world peace to the normative one that has been promoted by the international community. They have critiqued the liberal peace-building framework that has emanated from the global North and subsequently been universalised by international multilateral organisations. Such critiques intensified after the ending of the Cold War, when civil wars in the global South were considered as having non-ideological causes, and the peace frameworks became more formulaic – essentially top-down, externally imposed, and neglectful of local dynamics or mechanisms for peace. Since the 1950s, successive attempts have been made by states and regional organisations based in the global South to address their own problems and devise strategies for peace that are locally relevant and sustainable. This has become urgent in a context where states in the global North are reluctant to increase funding for, and commit troops to, United Nations peace-keeping missions. This chapter uses peace-building on the continent of Africa to explore the critique of the liberal peace and to address the turn to, and effectiveness of, South–South peace-building.
