A functioning and inclusive political settlement rather than institutional capacity narrowly conceived is necessary for building legitimacy across society for any new ‘post-conflict’ dispensation.
Ebola created mental barriers between contaminated and ‘clean’ regions that raised national security concerns. These barriers stripped people of their identity – they became viruses themselves – and of their social ties, keeping families and communities apart.
Ma Ma Lwin is a talented Myanmar entrepreneur. With her gentle manners and her ‘light version’ of Myanmar dishes, intercepting the Western tastes of a growing group of expats willing to experience the local food, she has transformed an abandoned rooftop in a Muslim district near downtown Yangon into a successful restaurant. In early 2020, it was time for her to scale up. With the money she had earned, she opened a new restaurant in the heart of the old city, paying advance rent for the whole year. But as Yangon enters its ninth month of lockdown, and expats have left the country en masse, Ma Ma Lwin is now nearly broke.
Behind well-established and fixed peacebuilding ‘models’ there always lies the danger of normativity and of a lack of flexibility. Rather than a model, it seems much more promising to foreground a frame within which to design more reflexive, adaptative and respectful peacebuilding strategies.
State-centric frameworks are problematic in building strong and just institutions in war-torn societies.
