{"id":6646,"date":"2021-05-04T01:36:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T23:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frient.de\/in-search-of-the-equal-partnership\/"},"modified":"2025-01-21T16:16:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T15:16:37","slug":"in-search-of-the-equal-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/artikel\/in-search-of-the-equal-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search of the Equal Partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dylan Mathews, Peace Direct, states that the barriers to inclusive peacebuilding \u2013 such as structural racism \u2013 rather persist instead of being dismantled. Is a partnership of equals thus impossible? Leading up to the Peacebuilding Forum, this article has already been published on our complementary PBF Voices Blog, which provides critical remarks on the current opportunities and challenges in peacebuilding. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The theme for this year\u2019s first Peacebuilding Forum<\/a> plenary session is \u2018Awareness, Commitment, Change: Towards a Partnership of Equals\u2019, and \u2013 like motherhood and apple pie \u2013 there\u2019s nothing much to disagree with here. Whether it is climate change, economic recovery, tackling Covid-19 and, of course, building sustainable peace, effective partnerships between different stakeholders in the system and at different levels is absolutely essential. <\/p>\n\n

And yet the truth is that the whole concept of equal partnerships is a myth, at least as it relates to partnerships between organisations in the Global North and those in the Global South. For almost twenty years Peace Direct has been supporting local efforts to stop violence and build sustainable peace and in that time we\u2019ve studied the different ways in which the peacebuilding system erects and maintains, rather than dismantles, barriers to effective local inclusion and action. There are a multitude of reasons for this, including bureaucratic inefficiency, risk aversion and most crucially \u2013 structural racism \u2013 which has seeped into every nook and cranny of the peacebuilding sector, and which the sector has been conspicuously silent about up until very recently. <\/p>\n\n

Structural or systemic racism refers to the ‘normalisation and legitimatisation of an array of dynamics \u2013 historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal \u2013 that routinely advantage white people, while producing chronic outcomes for people of colour worldwide’.<\/p>\n\n

So how does this show up in partnerships? The uncomfortable truth is that it shows up everywhere. It shows up in how neo-colonial attitudes towards communities in the \u2018Global South\u2019 translates into dominant narratives about lack of capacity and how local organisations cannot be trusted to manage donor funds. It shows up in how INGOs seek \u2018local implementing partners\u2019 while retaining as much control and direction for programmes as possible. It shows up in the humanitarian cluster system which is dominated by agencies from the Global North. And it shows up in how we define what a good partner is: usually an organisation that can manage donor money well, can speak our language and has absorbed fully our approach to M&E, compliance, reporting and theory of change. From the perspective of most local organisations, this looks very much like a one-way street, with very little equality in the partnership. <\/p>\n\n

In November last year Peace Direct held a three-day consultation on \u2018Decolonising Aid and Peacebuilding\u2019 in which over 150 activists took part in a frank and often sobering discussion about how to change the system, not tear it down. One of the loudest calls from the participants was for different, less unequal partnerships. Not one of the participants talked about a partnership of equals, perhaps because it simply isn\u2019t possible, or at least this is the case if money is involved. But that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t try a lot harder than we are right now to redress the imbalance. <\/p>\n\n

At Peace Direct, we are trying to cultivate partnerships which are less unequal and more mutually accountable with those who we work with around the world. We have a long way to go but we are committed to transforming ourselves and in turn our partnerships into something that will deliver better outcomes for everyone. It\u2019s a win-win for the whole sector if we are all willing to take the first steps, and then a few more. I hope that at the FriEnt Peacebuilding Forum we may learn how to do this together. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dylan Mathews, Peace Direct, states that the barriers to inclusive peacebuilding \u2013 such as structural racism \u2013 rather persist instead of being dismantled. Is a partnership of equals thus impossible? Leading up to the Peacebuilding Forum, this article has already been published on our complementary PBF Voices Blog, which provides critical remarks on the current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1248],"autor":[],"blog-serie":[],"fokusthema":[],"organisation":[603],"region":[],"thema_artikel":[],"class_list":["post-6646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unkategorisiert","tag-current-articles-en","organisation-peace-direct-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6647,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions\/6647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/autor?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"blog-serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-serie?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"fokusthema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/fokusthema?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"organisation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/organisation?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"thema_artikel","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/frient.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thema_artikel?post=6646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}