LorIn recent years, it has become commonplace to call for regional approaches to peacebuilding, particularly in the Horn of Africa. Internal conflicts can spill over and cause instability at the regional level, while regional instability can prevent growth and development at the national level. Border regions can become zones of danger and backslide into conflict and poverty. In the Horn of Africa, refugees, weapons and combatants can easily flow through the region’s porous borders. This makes even more stable states in the region unable to stop armed raiding across their borders from states struggling to control and govern their territory. For example, there is the threat of border conflicts over strategic natural resources (particularly oil) between North and South Sudan spilling over into neighbouring states with interests in imports or pipelines.
It stands to reason that interlinked conflicts require an approach that goes beyond a single conflict or a single country.
But what does “regional peacebuilding” mean? How is it operationalised in the Horn? Have such regional efforts been effective thus far and how can
future initiatives be rendered even more so? In order to better understand regional peacebuilding work taking place in the Horn of Africa, LPI Institute conducted a desk review, a series of interviews as well as workshops to answer some of these questions.
The desk review, finalized in late 2012, covered 146 actors operating in the Horn of Africa. Twenty-three organizations (all but six of which were also included in the desk review) were interviewed and/or participated in a workshop held in Kampala in spring 2013.
These actors ranged from many types of organizations; from small grassroots NGOs and regional civil society networks, to think tanks and international NGOs that operate all over the world, and everything in between.