Reflection On Peacebuilding

peacebuilding actors while at the same time performing a central role in working with those in the corridors of power in decision-making and its implementation.

At IJR for example, one of the issues I have dealt with for my six months stay is to get an increased understanding of how the policy briefs, position papers, special issues, and documents generated by way of research feed into actual policies and programs by other actors including, state and non-state actors in the peacebuilding field. I have reflected on this same theme in some of my journals I wrote earlier. There are clear and overwhelming lessons of best practices that have been documented by the different program initiatives at IJR. However, these lessons are not adequately

Whilst experts advocate that peacebuilding interventions should be designed to reflect the unique political and socio-economic contexts, it does not mean that peace project design and government policy interventions should ignore the lessons and best practices emerging from similar contexts.
My vision as a professional peacebuilder is reflected in the above discourse. I imagine myself working at the intersection of both the practice and also having the opportunity to use evidence from the ground to influence policy/program formulation particularly, at the levels of the state.

My experience in IJR has greatly influenced this vision. Before I started my internship at IJR, I did not have the opportunity to participate in the policy, research, and documentation part of the peacebuilding field. My previous focus has primarily been on the practice mainly at community-level. However, the opportunity to work on the aspects of policy and research has offered me an increased understanding of how effective results could be achieved if peacebuilders were to operate at both levels.

Areas of peacebuilding practice that I am most suited for and the peacebuilding issues I hope to address in the

Unlike most people, I got interested and started working in the peacebuilding field as a result of my transferable skills and personal traits. In other words, as a result of a need, I identified through my work to build bridges I used the skills I got from my job, such as community mobilizing, people skills, and communication to kick start my peacebuilding career. I never had any education-based knowledge or skills specifically related to peacebuilding. As a result of this, my key strengths are in my creativity and resourcefulness coupled with my people skills to turn potential volatile situations into peace. I am able to quickly learn and examine what pertains in a certain social context and work with the people to develop an enabling environment. My strengths are also reflective of the peacebuilding areas that I am suited for (figure 1). For example, my first test-case of peacebuilding was when I negotiated a settlement between two ethnic groups who almost engaged in a violent clash because of contested uses of a water source one of my projects provided for the two villages to promote off-season farming. I achieve this and helped transform many other situations through my adaptability, creativity, willingness to immerse myself in the community during project