What Can Faith-Based Forms of Violent Conflict Prevention Teach

religions

Article

What Can Faith-Based Forms of Violent Conﬂict

Prevention Teach Us About Liberal Peace?

Laura Payne

Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, Coventry CV1 5FB, West Midlands, UK;

laura.payne@coventry.ac.uk

Received: 7 January 2020; Accepted: 25 March 2020; Published: 3 April 2020

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 

Abstract:

Faith-based actors are often recognised as contributors to both conﬂict and peace. However,

their work to prevent violent conﬂict, rather than bring an end to or recover from it, is largely

unexplored. This is despite the growth of conﬂict prevention as a global social norm and ﬁeld of

practice. Based on collaborative research with faith groups and organisations in Nigeria, the Solomon

Islands and Zanzibar (Tanzania), this paper examines faith-based forms of violent conﬂict prevention.

It argues that faith-based approaches exist on a spectrum, from instinctive and ad hoc initiatives

run by individuals and local places of worship to large-scale, systematised interventions led by

global faith-based development organisations. Yet, while faith-based approaches to violent conﬂict

prevention vary in form and function, they are consistent and distinctive in their emphasis on building

resilient relationships at the local level, modelling forms of prevention embedded within local culture

and that recognise the emotional and spiritual dimensions of transformative change. Faith-based

approaches oﬀer insights valuable to the wider conﬂict prevention ﬁeld, which is increasingly

critiqued for its liberal underpinnings and emphasis on technical and technological solutionism.

Lessons emerge for others implementing prevention programmes, who could adapt elements of

the unhurried, values-led, relationally sensitive approach demonstrated by some faith-based actors,

albeit within their own structural limitations. Policymakers should support such adaptations and

expand their view of prevention to explicitly include faith-based forms of activity, as to do otherwise

risks missing opportunities and reproducing existing failures.

Keywords:

conﬂict prevention; faith; religion; liberal peace; peacebuilding; religious violence;

technocracy; technology

1. Introduction

From the atrocities of Boko Haram and Daesh to the state-sponsored persecution of Myanmar’s

Rohingya, religiously framed violence dominates headlines and plagues lives. On the ﬂip side, religious

actors are also recognised for their eﬀorts to disavow violence and support peace. Whilst both of these

constructs are familiar, the roles that religious actors play in preventing outbreaks of political violence

are largely unknown (Haider 2016). Based on case studies from Nigeria, the Solomon Islands and

Zanzibar, this article introduces examples of faith-based conﬂict prevention at local and national levels.

It considers the contexts in which faith-based conﬂict prevention occurs and the forms it takes, from

reﬂexive oﬀers of sanctuary and safe passage to early warning and response to long-term eﬀorts to

address structural conﬂict drivers and challenge cultures of violence. It investigates how faith-based

approaches conform with, contradict and extend conventional “liberal peace” wisdom and what

the implications of this are for conﬂict prevention as a ﬁeld of practice.

Faith-based actors range in form, from local faith groups and places of worship, some informally

constituted, to international development agencies and global religious movements. All derive

inspiration and guidance from the teachings and principles of their faith or a particular interpretation or

Religions 2020, 11, 167; doi:10.3390/rel11040167 www.mdpi.com/journal/religions

Religions 2020, 11, 167 2 of 16

school of thought within that faith (Clarke et al. 2008). In times of violent conﬂict and in the aftermath,

some seek to build peace and lay foundations for recovery, shaping their existing activities to

support peacebuilding or taking on new roles. Some faith-based actors function very similarly to

non-faith-based peacebuilding actors—in larger faith-based international development agencies, in

particular, day-to-day working practices may be largely indistinguishable from others in the sector.

Recent years have seen major faith-based humanitarian organisations enter peacebuilding

programming in a more sustained way. Organisations such as Islamic Relief, Christian Aid and

Tearfund have recalibrated their activities in conﬂict-aﬀected areas, supplementing conﬂict-sensitive

development work with activities more explicitly framed as peacebuilding. This responds to growing

donor interest, both in partnering with faith-based organisations (Duﬀ et al. 2016) and in peacebuilding.

As engagement has increased, debates around working with faith-based actors have matured. Questions

of appropriate forms of partnership have come to the fore, along with concerns over instrumentalisation

of faith partners and low levels of faith literacy within the development sector. New platforms for

partnership have been created, along with “principles” (DfID 2012) and “partnership notes” (UNHCR

2014) to guide interactions.

The growth in faith-based peacebuilding has coincided with the development of conﬂict prevention

as a distinct global norm and ﬁeld of practice. The latter provides a framework to consider

the preventative contributions of faith-based actors, but so far, the literature on the two subjects

remains largely separate. This contrasts with the wealth of literature on religion and countering

violent extremism or religion and atrocity prevention, which both have a similarly proactive approach

to addressing violence. Recognising this knowledge gap, the article integrates the literature on

conﬂict prevention, liberal peace and faith-based peacebuilding and analyses the implications of

faith-based initiatives for the prevention agenda and liberal peace more generally. It is signiﬁcant in

a number of ways. Firstly, it contributes to the knowledge base on conﬂict prevention by expanding

the view to include faith-based initiatives, which opens up space for critical reﬂection of current

prevention practice and reveals new pathways for reform. Secondly, it contributes to debates within

the faith-based peacebuilding literature, as it sets out the parameters of faith-based conﬂict prevention,

as yet unestablished, and identiﬁes avenues for further research in this underexplored area. Finally, this

article recommends ways to adapt programming to enable deeper engagement as calls for prevention

grow stronger.

The paper continues with a brief methodological overview. It then provides a brief overview of

approaches to religion within peace studies, recognising the ambivalent heritage that religious actors

have as instigators and inhibitors of violence. Section 4 examines conﬂict prevention, charting its

evolution from generic aspiration to global social norm and ﬁeld of practice, and Section 5 considers

conﬂict prevention as an extension of the liberal peace agenda. Section 6 documents case studies

of faith-based forms of conﬂict prevention, identifying common themes linked to the faith-based

organisations’ dual identities as local and spiritual actors. Three persistent weaknesses of conﬂict

prevention are then unpacked in order to examine the extent to which faith-based initiatives conform

with, contradict and extend conventional “liberal peace” wisdom. The ﬁnal section concludes, reﬂecting

on the extent to which faith-based initiatives can add value and identifying pathways for future research.

2. Methodology

The data that inform this research were collected through two projects. The ﬁrst was The

Faith-Based Conﬂict Prevention and Early Warning Scoping Project, a collaboration between academics and

the Anglican network of churches, the world’s third largest church grouping. The project analysed

the experiences of faith groups working to prevent conﬂict in Nigeria and the Solomon Islands through

interviews, focus groups and participant observation at meetings and workshops, exploring what is

distinctive about faith-based approaches. In the Nigerian cities of Jos and Kaduna, researchers engaged

with 249 respondents across 30 organisations in 32 sessions, observing interfaith organisations as well

as Christian-led initiatives. In Honiara, Solomon Islands, researchers interviewed 23 leaders from faith

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organisations and other entities, interacting with 98 additional respondents through workshops and

faith group activities. Respondents included members of the Melanesian Brotherhood, an Anglican

religious order of lay brothers unique for its large size and relative youthfulness, as the option to

renew vows intermittently makes it a popular choice for young men to live in a spiritual community

for a ﬁxed time. In both contexts, respondents included a mix of ordained faith leaders and lay

people, peacebuilding practitioners and development workers, community members involved in

peacebuilding activities, and donors and policymakers.

Data also come from a second project, From Early Warning to Response in Preventing Violence:

Transforming Conﬂict Through Citizen Engagement, in collaboration with the Action Support Centre

(South Africa). Through participatory action research, the project investigated the eﬀectiveness of

information, communication and technology (ICTs) in conﬂict early warning and early response

initiatives. This paper includes insights from Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania, where

the local partner was the Zanzibar Interfaith Centre.

A full analysis of the conﬂict dynamics in each area is beyond the scope of this paper, but extensive

conﬂict analyses were conducted with partners in each country to situate the research, mapping

conﬂict issues, key stakeholders and peacebuilding assets. In all cases, respondents identiﬁed multiple

competing forms of conﬂict. In Nigeria and Zanzibar, respondents identiﬁed religious dimensions

to conﬂicts, though this was not necessarily the central issue. Often, religion was the fault line upon

which opinion was divided or a surface narrative framing other concerns. In Zanzibar, for instance,

a prescient issue for respondents was unease with rapid modernisation and Westernisation, epitomised

through mass tourism. Zanzibaris receive minimal ﬁnancial beneﬁt from this, whilst struggling to cope

with the associated uncontrolled migration and perceived moral decay (Keshodkar 2013). According

to local partners, religion intersects by providing an Islamic moral traditionalism as an alternative to

“Western” immodesty and decadence. In all areas, religion was identiﬁed as one of many identity

markers inﬂuencing peace and conﬂict dynamics, alongside others such as ethnicity, indigeneity

and class.

For both projects, the interviews, focus groups and workshops were designed by a mixed team of

academic researchers and faith-based research partners. For each session, responses were transcribed

by two researchers who later validated their ﬁndings with each other. Data were grouped into themes

by the team, and synthesised ﬁndings were later presented to a wider group of external stakeholders,

both faith-based and secular, who have experience and expertise in the sector.

As the literature review will show, the academic exploration of faith-based forms of conﬂict

prevention is in its infancy. An empirical approach, based on case studies, was chosen to gain an

overview of the substance, extent and impact of faith-based conﬂict prevention initiatives. The format

of knowledge exchange with faith-based partners was also important, as it provided ways to bridge

contextual and thematic expertise, mitigate asymmetric power relationships, avoid extractive research,

recognise colonial legacies and ultimately “do no harm”. The methodology reﬂects a move towards

participatory approaches and knowledge networking with religion and development (Bompani 2019)

and peace studies (Verkoren 2006) more generally. These forms of research come with challenges,

notably the possible inﬂuence of partners’ biases on the research process and ﬁndings. Researchers

were mindful of this and introduced checks and balances, including systematic research design

and external feedback, but ultimately found that working within mixed academic/practitioner and

secular/faith-based teams supported a research culture that was conscious of positionality, reﬂective

and frank in assessing successes and failures.

In analysing faith-based forms of conﬂict prevention, both projects avoided seeking grand theories

and narratives to “explain” the phenomenon. Scholars have often highlighted the pitfalls of making

sweeping statements regarding the roles of religious actors in peace and conﬂict, instead recognising

the overall “ambivalence of the sacred” (Appleby 2000; Philpott 2007). Ultimately, this article seeks to

identify what faith-based forms of conﬂict prevention can be, rather than what they deﬁnitively are.

Religions 2020, 11, 167 4 of 16

3. Religion, Conﬂict and Peacebuilding

Links between religion, conﬂict and violence are complex and much interrogated, but those

between religion and peacebuilding receive less attention. This reﬂects a tendency of scholars to

study peace through its absence rather than its presence and the biases of a largely secular academy

(Shannahan and Payne 2016). Within the social sciences, religion is often side-lined, including in

disciplines such as international relations (Johnston and Sampson 1994) and development studies

(Bompani 2019). Within peace studies, however, a strong and coherent body of scholarship around

religious engagement in peacebuilding has emerged. Many analyses of this coalesce around Appleby

(2000) work on the “ambivalence of the sacred”, which acknowledges that religious actors are

important “purveyors of ideas” (Haynes 2011) capable of driving both conﬂict and peace. Scholars

have examined a spectrum of diﬀerent forms of faith-based action, including in mediation, dialogue

and track-II diplomacy (Bercovitch and Kadayifci-Orellana 2009; Toft et al. 2011; Johnstone and

Svensson 2013), humanitarianism, development and displacement (Ager et al. 2015), and post-conﬂict

reconstruction, reconciliation and trauma resolution (Putman et al. 2011). Case studies document

initiatives within Christianity (Sampson and Lederach 2000; Appleby 2000; Johnston and Sampson

1994), Islam (Abu-Nimer 2003) and non-Western religions (Galtung and MacQueen 2008; Neumaier

2004). A growing body of work also highlights the role of religious women in peacebuilding (Hayward

2015; Hayward and Marshall 2015).

4. The Evolution of Conﬂict Prevention as a Global Norm and Field of Practice

In essence, conﬂict prevention is the eﬀort to prevent tomorrow’s violence today. As such, it is

relevant at any stage of conﬂict where violence is anticipated. It requires the proactive identiﬁcation

of conﬂict triggers and a subsequent response to prevent violence from breaking out or escalating

and thus entails both foresight and action. Operational prevention responds to the imminent onset of

violence through early warning and response, often using monitoring data provided by ﬁeld monitors,

volunteers or the public. Flagship initiatives have emerged, including CEWARN, an East African model

to prevent cross-border pastoralist conﬂicts through stakeholder collaboration, information sharing

and formulating response options. Structural prevention addresses the underlying causes of conﬂict,

aiming to transform these for the long term. The drive for prevention stems from the recognition that

prevention is cheaper than cure (Chalmers 2006) and awareness that conﬂict is a barrier to progress,

exacting a heavy toll on human life and on economic, social and political systems. It also reﬂects a turn

to discourses of prevention and precautionary policymaking more generally, in areas as varied as

health, early years interventions, poverty, criminality and climate change (Coote 2012; Gough 2013).

Conﬂict prevention is at the United Nations’ (UN) core, with its renowned preamble beginning,

“We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge

of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind

. . .

”. Its development as

a global norm and ﬁeld of practice came in the Boutros-Ghali era, with the development of “preventative

diplomacy” in the 1992 Agenda for Peace. Successive Secretary Generals maintained focus, with

Annan shifting to a “culture of prevention”, Ban Ki-Moon declaring 2012 the “year of prevention” and

current Secretary General Guterres declaring prevention the number one priority. The Responsibility

to Protect (R2P) was adopted by all UN member states in 2005, with the UN developing early warning

capacity to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

At the regional level, the European Union (EU) adopted conﬂict prevention as an explicit objective

through the Lisbon Treaty (Vanheusden 2010). The African Union (AU) developed preventative tools

within the Africa Peace and Security Architecture. In 2017, it adopted the AU Master Roadmap on

Practical Steps for Silencing the Guns by 2020. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

has focused on “preventative diplomacy”, a state-centric approach to prevent conﬂict between member

states while respecting strong norms of sovereignty that exist within the region (Della-Giacoma 2011).

Other regional and sub-regional organisations have their own frameworks. Whilst the development

of prevention architectures at regional level is undoubtedly positive, they do not always live up to

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expectations. Wulf and Debiel (2009) cite the diﬃculty of navigating diﬀerent values and conceptions

of sovereignty, lack of coordination and capacity and dominant regional powers as stumbling blocks.

The practice of conﬂict prevention originally lagged behind its development as a global norm

(Aggestam 2003) but has grown signiﬁcantly. Whilst early generations of operational prevention tended

to be internationally driven, recent initiatives are likely to be community focused and technology

enabled. Local actors are now perceived to have several advantages over international organisations,

including ﬂexibility, eﬃciency, approachability and familiarity with culture and context. Forms of

programming have become more imaginative, with interventions based on crowdsourcing, GPS

mapping and big data being piloted and mainstreamed. Alongside civil society programmes, there

has also been a “privatisation” of prevention, with the business sector developing its own initiatives

in response to public pressure (Hauﬂer 2004). These tend to focus on the extractive industries, with

a prominent example being the Kimberley Process Certiﬁcation Scheme for diamond mining (Hauﬂer

2010).

As conﬂict prevention has developed, criticisms have emerged that its practice appears weak

compared to its promise (Aggestam 2003; Matveeva 2006; Wulf and Debiel 2009). Operational

and structural approaches are not always well aligned, reﬂecting their divergent understandings

of conﬂict and prevention (Aggestam 2003). Indicators that facilitate operational prevention can

have a “straight-jacketing” eﬀect and provide a negative basis for analysis, measuring communities’

risks and exposure to violence but not their resilience and capacities (Anderson and Wallace 2012).

Challenges exist in relation to the credibility and reliability of evidence and a persistent gap often

remains between warning and response. Community-based organisations may have been brought into

the fold, but international actors often engage in ways that are extractive (Saferworld and Conciliation

Resources 2016), for instance by harvesting early warning data from local partners upon which they

are unable to act. Such engagement lacks eﬀectiveness and is ethically questionable, as it depletes local

partners of time and energy without the prospect of results.

Finally, the analysis and critique of conﬂict prevention has been hindered by a lack of conceptual

clarity. Firstly, the term is overused within the peace studies literature and peacebuilding sector,

where “prevention” is often used interchangeably with “peacebuilding” and “conﬂict resolution”. This

imprecision risks embracing initiatives where the term prevention has been adopted but the preventative

element is not well developed. Secondly, the term conﬂict prevention is underused by local actors,

including faith-based actors, who may have their own vernaculars or reject the labelling of their work

this way. So, the challenge is two-fold: adopt a wide deﬁnition and the distinction with other forms of

peacebuilding is unclear; adopt a narrow deﬁnition and local and faith-based initiatives may be excluded.

This article strikes a balance by including all activities that are discernibly preventative, irrespective of

whether the terminology of prevention is applied and by excluding activities that are claimed to be

preventative but not demonstrated to be so. To assess preventative eﬀect, the article utilises Coote (2012)

distinction between upstream, midstream and downstream interventions. Upstream interventions

seek to prevent harm before it occurs, targeting structural causes, midstream interventions mitigate

the eﬀects of harm and are usually targeted at “at risk” groups and individuals, and downstream

interventions cope with the consequences of harm. Upstream and midstream interventions are included

within the analysis, whereas downstream interventions are excluded. This allows the study to exclude

forms of action that are based on what one respondent referred to as “the ﬁre brigade approach”, where

action is only taken reactively.

5. Conﬂict Prevention as an Extension of Liberal Peace

Liberal peace claims to provide a universal ideology for peace, based on an international

order of rational, democratic, secular, free-market and human rights-abiding states, together with

technical processes and technologies to achieve it. For critics and proponents alike, it represents

the internationalisation of a particular form of government—free market liberal democracy (Sabaratnam

2011). In conﬂict and post-conﬂict countries, liberal peace generally focuses on the structural reform

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of domestic institutions, the failures of which have arguably created the conditions for conﬂict to

emerge. These reforms may seek to establish or alter the country’s constitution, institutionalise

democracy or raise capacity within key state functions such as the legislature, judiciary and security

services. Such processes are political and very technical and so engender forms of peacebuilding that are

top-down and highly professionalised. They are often promoted by the international community, which

provides substantial engagement and sometimes muscular intervention in the way of humanitarian

and development aid, peacekeepers and even occasionally full-scale military occupation. Whilst

such substantial reforms may be contentious and destablising for any country, they are frequently

enacted within “fragile states where customary law, traditional authorities and informal “indigenous”

institutions often hold greater sway than the state (Boege et al. 2009).

Liberal peace has its strengths, particularly for those whose rights are insecure. Yet, it also has

signiﬁcant ideological baggage, including Eurocentrism, technocentrism and historic connections with

empire (Richmond and Ginty 2015). Richmond (2009) argues that in many post-conﬂict environments,

local opinion perceives liberal peace to be “ethically bankrupt, subject to double standards, coercive

and conditional, acultural, unconcerned with social welfare, and unfeeling and insensitive towards

its subjects”. Imposed from above, it risks degrading into violence if its universal aspirations are not

reﬂected on the ground (Richmond 2009). Critiques of liberal peace have come from those who seek

improvements in theory and practice but fundamentally accept the paradigm and those radically

opposed (Chandler 2010). Many critiques revolve around notions of the “everyday” and the “local

turn”, which recognise increased assertiveness by local actors and a loss of conﬁdence by some

international actors (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). The concepts of “hybridity” and “post-liberal

peace” have also emerged, attempting to draw out more complex understandings of relationships

between the local and the international in peacebuilding. However, these have also been critiqued

by pro-liberal scholars, who argue that these concepts have not pointed to a clear alternative path for

peacebuilding and that liberal peace has still done more good than harm (Paris 2010).

Historically, religion and liberalism have been uneasy bedfellows. Cavanaugh (1995, 2009)

charts how early proponents of the modern state system perpetuated a “myth” of religious violence

to legitimise its liberal and secular foundations. He argues that much of this so-called religious

violence was actually “resistance of local elites to the state building eﬀorts of monarchs and emperors”

(Cavanaugh 2009, p. 177). Today, the liberal peace paradigm still struggles to contend with religion,

particularly where it challenges secular sovereignty (Mullin 2010). Religious traditions are also forced

to reckon with liberalism, generally operating within the paradigm with varying enthusiasm. Religious

actors must also consider their own culpability for atrocities perpetrated under ostensibly liberal

state-building, such as colonialism (Lynch 2015). Yet, as Gopin (2015) reminds us, it is easy to overstate

the diﬀerences between liberal peace and religious models, as enlightenment principles such as peace,

human rights and democracy are also rooted in religious texts and practices.

Over the past several years, religious peacebuilding scholars have begun to deconstruct liberal

peace and its implications for faith-based peacebuilding. Appleby and Lederach oﬀer a corrective in

their concept of strategic peacebuilding (Lederach and Appleby 2010), which pursues peace with justice

(“justpeace”) and embraces elicitive methods that foreground indigenous knowledge and culture over

expert input, shifting agency further towards the local (Appleby 2015). In substance and approach,

strategic peacebuilding articulates at least a partial rejection of liberal peacebuilding, which Appleby

characterises as “Western, bureaucratic, ends-driven, materialist and top-down” (Appleby 2015, p. 190).

Given the overwhelming pervasiveness of the liberal peace paradigm, the development of conﬂict

prevention as norm and practice has necessarily taken place within it (Hauge et al. 2015). Most forms

of conﬂict prevention have shorter term goals than peacebuilding, geared more towards the aversion

of violence and the maintenance of stability, but its function is ultimately to provide an enabling

environment for liberal peacebuilding. The practice of prevention also shares key characteristics with

liberal peace, with its privileging of external knowledge and models and its technocratic approach.

The literature examining conﬂict prevention as a liberal peace project is small but critical. Jacobsen

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and Jacobsen and Engell (2018) argue that prevention is an extension of liberal interventionism. Their

view is that interventionism has retreated but has been replaced by new forms of technology-enabled

intervention under the rubric of prevention. Others argue that liberal peace approaches to prevention

can undermine communities’ capacity to prevent conﬂict, for instance by omitting to identify what is

already working locally (Anderson and Wallace 2012) or by emphasising security and political reform

at the expense of socio-economic changes (Hauge et al. 2015).

Many of the key criticisms of conﬂict prevention emerge from its ideological underpinnings in

the liberal peace. Here, this paper brieﬂy analyses three—its technocratic disposition, overreliance

on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and short-termism. These are not the only

criticisms of liberal peace, and they are not all to which liberal peace should be reduced. However, they

are prominent and observable hallmarks of the concept that can be readily operationalised and thus

provide a framework for comparing classical liberal peace interventions with those implemented by

religious actors. The paper revisits these three areas again later to consider the potential value added

by faith-based approaches.

5.1. Technocratic Disposition

Technocracy has its advantages, especially in conﬂict-aﬀected environments (Mac Ginty

2018). However, liberal peacebuilding has been criticised for being increasingly technocratic and

professionalised, which poses barriers to local ownership and participation. Kurtz and Meyer (2018)

argue that technocratic understandings of conﬂict prevention are now widespread, based on positivist

conﬂict forecasting and toolbox approaches to “what works”, delivered with a heavy dose of “wishful

thinking” about warning–response dynamics. They call for greater focus on the “art” of conﬂict

prevention, paying closer attention to the informal, individual and political dimensions of the endeavour.

Religious peacebuilding scholars have also underlined the creativity and discernment needed for

sustainable peacebuilding, which technocracy and formulaic approaches can stiﬂe. As Lederach

(2001, p. 203) notes, “Authentic reconciliation will never be packaged and delivered at drive-through

windows”.

5.2. Over-Reliance on Information and Communication Technologies

ICT for conﬂict prevention has had some high-proﬁle successes, such as the Ushahidi

project’s mapping of election violence

and Una Hakika’s countering of misinformation through

its “WikiRumours” software.

At their best, ICTs facilitate information sharing, communication and

coordination, all of which are essential for collective action. Yet, they are not neutral tools, and their

deployment is both shaped by and shapes political economy. Where violence arises from a breakdown

in communication or a lack of accurate information, tools that improve these can theoretically help to

prevent violence (Martin-Shields 2013). However, of course, ICTs are not a panacea. Trust is a crucial

element in peacebuilding (De Juan and Pierskalla 2014), and where this is low, ICTs may not be eﬀective

(Leach 2016). So far, evidence on the impact of technology-enhanced conﬂict prevention initiatives is

mixed. Projects have often misﬁred, promoting supply-driven technical ﬁxes, introducing unfamiliar

and unsustainable technology and pushing technological solutions onto political problems (Leach et al.

2015).

5.3. Short-Termism

Sustainable conﬂict prevention involves substantive institutional reform to address structural

drivers of conﬂict, requiring long-term engagement. Yet, the temporal aspect of prevention is often

Ushahidi means “witness” in Swahili. The Kenyan platform originally emerged to track post-election violence in the country

in 2007–2008 but has now been used for many purposes across Africa.

Una Hakika means “You are Certain” in Swahili. The initiative seeks to verify information and counter rumours.

Religions 2020, 11, 167 8 of 16

overlooked by donors and policymakers. In fact, the liberal peace toolbox seems a hindrance to

appropriate timing, given that donors tend to withdraw their engagement when risks escalate and

political actors only engage when the risk of violence is high or violence is already present (United

Nations and World Bank 2018).

6. Faith-Based Conﬂict Prevention

There have been very few substantive analyses of faith-based violent conﬂict prevention in

the academic literature. Notable exceptions include Hertog (2010), who explores the peace-inculcating

values and ethics of religion and the potential of these for violence prevention, and Palihapitiya (2018),

who considers faith-based early warning systems. A small number of policy-focused reﬂections exist

(Haider 2016; Perchoc 2016). This is despite the fact that initiatives have long been common at the local

level, where religious actors are well placed to respond to early signs of violence and are increasingly

being adopted by international faith-based NGOs. National-level religious leaders often have public

platforms to raise the alarm as peace deteriorates. Internationally, many larger faith traditions have

secretariats and representatives at global institutions, through which they can raise issues on the global

stage. As examples, the Holy See is a permanent observer state at the United Nations, and the Anglican

Communion also retains a representative to the United Nations in Geneva and New York.

In all of the case studies, respondents evidenced a range of faith-based conﬂict prevention

initiatives. During the conﬂict in the Solomon Islands, young monks slept on the battle lines in

a “middle camp” between warring militias. They provided security at the airport, allowing planes

importing vital goods to land and preventing further deterioration of law and order. Church leaders

escorted people in danger, providing safe passage and sanctuary. In the aftermath, monks collected

weapons on behalf of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), preventing

retaliatory gun violence. Church leaders mediated local disputes around land to prevent them spiralling.

They brokered interpersonal and communal reconciliation and healing and ran training workshops on

non-violent conﬂict resolution. Churches were instrumental in establishing a Truth and Reconciliation

Commission, which included a forward-looking set of reforms “designed to prevent a recurrence of

violence” (Jeﬀrey and Mollica 2017). When the government refused to release the Commission’s report,

one Bishop controversially leaked it to the media.

In Nigeria, religious peacebuilding initiatives were mostly led by local faith-based NGOs with

strong ties to religious communities. Conﬂict prevention activities included the formation of conﬂict

early warning and response teams and GPS mapping of violence. One organisation literally counted

the costs of conﬂict with villages (what is the cost of a dead cow, a burned-out building, the loss of

a breadwinner). Thinking long term, another organisation ran interfaith youth livelihood programmes,

including a residential farm bringing together Christian and Muslim youth from diﬀerent ethnic

groupings in shared dormitories. Women’s faith groups ran religious literacy classes with prisoners,

pushing back against attempts to justify violence through religious doctrine. A high point for religious

peacemakers was the signing of the Kaduna Peace Declaration of Religious Leaders in 2002. Musa

(2016) argues that this had an immediate preventative eﬀect: when Kaduna’s Muslim youth rioted

against Nigeria hosting the Miss World Beauty pageant, Christian and Muslim leaders were proactive

in quelling violence. A total of 250 people were killed in the Miss World riots; two years previously,

the shari’a riots claimed over 2500 lives.

Finally, in Zanzibar, a Joint Committee of Religious Leaders regularly sought to deescalate tensions

by dispelling rumours and appealing for calm. An interfaith organisation ran activities to promote

peace during elections, improve community policing and enable youth to advocate for peace. They

have also set up more than 300 local peace committees throughout the island to monitor peace.

An in-depth analysis of the Committee’s work has been conducted by Langås (2019).

Religions 2020, 11, 167 9 of 16

In all cases, respondents could identify highly localised indicators of potential violence. These

included chieftain disputes, lorries on the road at night (signifying illicit activities and the breakdown

of law and order), violence in neighbouring areas, the unexpected arrival of strangers, rumours

circulating by SMS, a ban or curfew on motorcycle drivers, adversaries relocating cattle, circulation of

leaﬂets in the market and proselytising during other faiths’ religious holidays. Longer term indicators

included “irregular” migration (with irregular in this instance referring to migration against customary

practices), ethnic segregation/ghettoisation of inner-city areas, the sweeping aside of unaddressed

grievances and rapid cultural change/Westernisation. Respondents could also connect these to global

triggers, including the Danish cartoon controversy of 2002, in which a Danish newspaper published

cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, and the fall of Gaddaﬁ in Libya, which

increased access to small arms.

In conducting their prevention activities, faith-based actors were found to beneﬁt from three

forms of overlapping capital: local capital, on the one hand, and religious and spiritual capital on

the other. In this article, local capital refers to the strengths and advantages that local actors may

have by virtue of their positioning and proximity to communities. As such, it is an extension of social

capital, a term popularised by Putnam (2000) to denote a public good derived from “connections

among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from

them”. In the case studies, local faith-based organisations often utilised local capital—they were quick

to pick up on and interpret subtle changes in conﬂict indicators, given their familiarity with local

norms, culture, practices and vernacular. They were also known entities with an existing store of

goodwill upon which to draw.

Religious capital refers to the practical contributions made by faith groups based on their resources,

while spiritual capital refers to the ethical, theological, scriptural and spiritual values that energise

this (Baker 2009). Some deﬁnitions combine both forms of capital under the same heading of either

“religious” or “spiritual”, but there is greater conceptual clarity in separating the two. “The spiritual is

associated with the personal, the intimate, the interior and the experiential, contrasted with ‘religion’,

which is associated with the oﬃcial, the external and the institutional, often picking up negative

connotations of the hierarchical and patriarchal along the way” (Guest 2007; Heelas 2002). Of course,

a long tradition of philosophers, from Marx (1844) to Weber (1964) to Bourdieu (1987), highlight that

the use of religious and spiritual capital is not always benign. Few religious peacebuilding scholars

would dispute this—indeed, it is further evidence of the ambivalence of the sacred.

In the case studies, faith-based actors strongly utilised their religious capital. Most had access to

well-located premises for meetings and activities. Often, religious leaders had access to other local

leaders, including those in politics, media and the aid sector. In Nigeria, some faith leaders had their

own TV talk shows. Depending on their circumstances and institutional structures, many leaders

could escalate matters to national and international leaders through denominational, ecumenical and

interfaith networks. Faith groups also had their own ﬁnancial resources, which, though small, oﬀered

a level of stability and continuity.

Critically, faith groups also utilised their spiritual capital. Activities observed by the research

team were distinctly value driven, emphasising concepts of justice, compassion and human ﬂourishing

and aﬃrming these through prayer and the use of religious doctrine, storytelling and symbolism. This

was done as a matter of conviction, rather than utility, but nevertheless had the potential to allow

people to move beyond their own interests and look at the common good. The use of religious ritual

and symbolism was often important for communities—in the Solomon Islands, the hands of former

combatants were symbolically washed when they handed over their weapons, signifying a spiritual

cleansing that was meaningful for them. Respondents explained how prevention activities were

designed to connect at an individual’s innermost levels, going beyond the cognitive to enter what

some might see as a spiritual realm or what others might see as an emotional or psychological one.

Religions 2020, 11, 167 10 of 16

Only church vehicles could pass through the [militia] camps, but once our vehicle was stopped.

The priest came back and told me, and I said ‘go and tell them that vehicle is a church. If they hold it,

they are holding a church’. (Christian faith leader, Solomon Islands).

This readiness to engage more deeply is important, as emotions are an essential part of transforming

conﬂict (Bramsen and Poder 2018). It also gives activities credence: “You need some theological basis,

or this is just a government agenda” (Christian faith leader, Nigeria).

Of course, faith-based engagement in conﬂict prevention is far from perfect. Some religious actors

are openly hostile to such initiatives and may even be key conﬂict protagonists. In Nigeria, respondents

explained that hate preaching by religious leaders contributes to violence: “Before preaching was very

balanced, but today it can be too extreme” (Muslim faith leader, Nigeria). Nor are faith-based actors

immune from the creeping elitism that the wider ﬁeld of conﬂict prevention has been charged with.

“Interfaith work is all up, up, up, they will continue going up until they meet Jesus! But there are

people down there. We need to go much more local. Relationships have to be formed at a local level,

between youth” (Christian youth leader, Nigeria). Where faith groups have a middle-class bias, they

can also struggle to access those most easily mobilised into violence, who are often youth from poor

families. In the Solomon Islands, the monks of the Melanesian Brotherhood were roughly the same age

as the militias and, in some cases, had been to school with them, enabling them to build rapport. In

Nigeria, however, one civil society leader observed that religious leaders were losing inﬂuence over

youth, with implications for their prevention work: “The religious leaders aren’t following youth, they

aren’t at the football ﬁelds, and youth are major actors” (Civil society leader, Nigeria).

7. Conﬂict Prevention: Lessons from Faith-Based Initiatives?

This ﬁnal section of the paper revisits the three criticisms of conﬂict prevention set out earlier and

identiﬁes the potential added value of faith-based initiatives.

7.1. Technocratic Disposition

In the case studies, faith-based organisations tended to prioritise relationship-building and shifts

in perspective ahead of tactical attempts to moderate or problem-solve issues. After all, “When you

develop infrastructure instead of humanity, they will just come and blow it up” (Muslim faith leader,

Nigeria). Whilst some initiatives targeted particular individuals, many others focused on changing

relationships and attitudes within the whole community. This echoes the relational consciousness that

many religions embrace—and that, incidentally, many liberal thinkers tend to downplay (Hay 2000):

We don’t just tackle the youth who go and ﬁght, we consider the women who cook for them

and the men who buy them pure water, the politicians and the prominent men and women,

and the market traders who sell guns.

(Faith-based development worker, Nigeria)

Relationships between religious leaders of diﬀerent faiths were recognised as particularly

important, as they have signiﬁcant inﬂuence over their followers: “For us preventing violence

means continuous dialogue. 99% of our work is conﬂict prevention. If leaders are talking, everyone

will be calm” (Inter-faith worker, Zanzibar). The authenticity of relationship was also important, as,

otherwise, initiatives lose legitimacy: “There are people in [the Muslim faith] I can trust. One imam is

bent on telling the truth, he is educated in the Bible and the Quran. We call each other when things are

bad” (Christian faith leader, Nigeria).

7.2. The Reliance on ICTs in Conﬂict Prevention

In the case studies, faith-based actors displayed varying levels of engagement with ICTs for conﬂict

prevention. In some countries, such as Nigeria, organisations make substantial use of technology.

In others, such as the Solomon Islands, they do not. The key factors mediating this appear to

be the availability of communications infrastructure, local culture and donor priorities. None of

Religions 2020, 11, 167 11 of 16

the respondents idealised technology, and many emphasised that analogue communications are still

relevant in their context. Flyers stir hostilities in Zanzibar markets; newspapers distort information in

Nigeria. In the Solomon Islands, word of mouth is still a critical form of information exchange, given

the low penetration and prohibitively high costs of modern telecommunications:

Not everyone has a radio. A newspaper costs 5 dollars—two packets of noodles. When

people don’t get information, they create their own information. And the coconut wireless is

much faster than the mobile phones.

(RAMSI representative, Solomon Islands)

Generally, faith-based organisations were discerning in their use of technology, recognising when

it helped and hindered. In some cases, respondents were wary because of instances in which technology

has helped to incite violence by spreading rumours:

After [recent youth violence] we asked what caused the problem? The youth said rumours.

This is the disadvantage of technology. The illiterate, semi-literate don’t have the sense or

time to say this sort of rumour is not true, or let me verify it. They just react.

(Muslim faith leader, Nigeria)

However, faith-based organisations are not invulnerable to technological misadventures either.

One organisation ran a successful conﬂict early warning initiative based on monitoring teams comprised

of local volunteers, who were able to refer issues to the organisation for early mediation. Based on

this, an international donor oﬀered to sponsor a technology-enhanced project whereby local people

could report incidents by SMS, which could then be plotted on a GPS map in an incident room. Before

long, the project became redundant—an expensive duplication of the existing initiative but requiring

additional technical skill that few in the organisation had mastered.

7.3. Short-Termism

Where faith-based actors are reliant on donor funding, they are subject to the same timing issues

encountered by other organisations. Often though, faith-based organisations have access to their own

resources, which enables them to engage reﬂexively over a longer period of time. In the case studies,

faith groups ran some activities that were intentionally short-term and operational, but much of their

work was also structural, designed to break the cycle of violence over generations. Moreover, when

respondents were asked about their perspective on timing, their call was not to speed up, but to slow

down, and to invest in long-term initiatives that lay the foundations of peace:

To me, [conﬂict] prevention sounds like an immediate solution, but actually we need to

do our homework. A whole generation has grown up with hatred in their hearts, in their

families and communities. So we need to pay more attention there.

(Christian faith leader, Nigeria)

8. Conclusions

There has been a demonstrable “turn” to both religion and the local in recent years. This article

investigates actors in both of these domains of conﬂict prevention, who in this case overlap, in order

to question some of the conventional assumptions about prevention that emerge from its roots in

liberal peace.

Having documented faith-based conﬂict prevention initiatives in three countries, this article has

argued that in some cases they appear to make a meaningful impact in reducing violence. However, to

what extent can the successes of local faith-based organisations be attributed to their localness, their

faith-basis or both? Clearly, there are instances where localness is key, as this enables organisations to

“read” situations and respond appropriately. However, there are also instances where an organisations’

religious character can play a decisive role—for instance, in persuading former combatants to give up

Religions 2020, 11, 167 12 of 16

their weapons and be spiritually cleansed. Ultimately, the organisations in the study had both local

capital and spiritual and religious capital and used them both.

In some ways, the faith-based approaches studied here conform with “liberal peace” wisdom,

as they aﬃrm the fundamental soundness of investing in conﬂict prevention through peacebuilding

initiatives and the practical gains that can be made. This is unsurprising, as they exist within a wider

liberal framework and use many of the same models and approaches. Faith-based approaches also

provide some useful counterpoints, highlighting liberal peace’s susceptibility to quick wins, formulas

and technological solutionism. These are serious weaknesses within the liberal peace framework,

identiﬁed through existing critiques, but none are insurmountable. Indeed, they could all be addressed

through reform of the liberal peace agenda, or failing this, could be partially oﬀset by adaptations in

current programming. Faith-based approaches oﬀer glimpses of such adaptations, many of which

could be replicated by others. Firstly, they foreground values such as justice, compassion and

human ﬂourishing. For faith-based actors these values are religiously inspired, but they are also

universal values that the wider peacebuilding sector can seek to engender. Secondly, faith-based

approaches emphasise the importance of relationships, recognising their signiﬁcance in explaining

people’s behaviour and motivation for change. This is habitual for many faith traditions, which

stress relationality and the common good, but contrasts with the liberal peace view of the individual

as self-governing. Thirdly, faith-based approaches allow participants to engage deeply, bringing in

diﬀerent dimensions of their experience, including spirituality and emotion.

Expanding our view of conﬂict prevention to include faith-based actors also addresses

a methodological blind spot. Generalisations about conﬂict prevention are becoming more

commonplace as the ﬁeld develops, but they cannot hold true unless they capture the entirety

of the endeavour, including initiatives that are faith-based, secular and hybrid. Faith-based initiatives

require us to think about peacebuilding vernacular and how far it does and does not travel, and in

so doing, it reminds us to scrutinise how accurately and strategically actors use the term “conﬂict

prevention” in general.

The case study approach used in this article was adopted as a ﬁrst step to exploring a largely

unresearched topic. Based on its ﬁndings, several pathways for future research have emerged. A

theological exploration of the underpinnings and expressions of conﬂict prevention norms in diﬀerent

faith traditions would add another dimension to existing insights. The current research has also

focused on faith-based actors at the leadership level, but what about ordinary religious people? As

one respondent would have it, “Many people have no sympathy for dialogue or prevention, they

are not theologically convinced. We see the same faces in dialogues, they are interfaith practitioners.

What about ordinary people, what theological basis do they have?” (Muslim faith leader, Zanzibar).

Is this true, and if it is, does it matter? Finally, another dimension to explore lies in the diﬀerences

between faith-based conﬂict prevention and countering violent extremism initiatives, which also

involve religious groups in preventative actions. Would the two concepts provide similar insights into

the liberal and the local, and if not, how would they diﬀer?

Funding:

This research was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council through the Faith-based

conﬂict prevention and early warning scoping project, grant number ES/L002116/1. The APC was funded by RCUK

through a block grant to Coventry University. The Zanzibar Case Study was funded through Making All Voices

Count, an initiative supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the US Agency for

International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and

the Omidyar Network, and implemented by a consortium consisting of Hivos, IDS and Ushahidi.

Acknowledgments:

Organisations that have contributed to the projects underpinning this research include

the Anglican Alliance (UK), the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Reconciliation Ministry (UK), the Action Support

Centre (South Africa), Local Peace Committees in Gauteng Province (South Africa), People’s Voice for Peace

(Uganda) and the Zanzibar Interfaith Centre (Tanzania).

Conﬂicts of Interest:

The author declares no conﬂict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study;

in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish

the results.

Religions 2020, 11, 167 13 of 16

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