Dr Helen Berents1, Dr Caitlin Mollica2
1Griffith University, Australia, 2University of Newcastle, Australia
Biography:
Dr Caitlin Mollica is a Lecturer in Politics at the Newcastle Business School. Caitlin's research is interested in youth agency and participation, transitional justice, gender, access to justice and human rights. Her work applies a human rights approach to post-conflict policy to reveal the factors that enable and the barriers that constrain inclusive governance. Her primary research considers the engagement of young people with transitional justice, reconciliation and human rights practices in the Asia-Pacific. Caitlin's work draws on international relations, international law and feminist theories to explore these themes.
Her current research examines the relationship between youth-led organisations and donors in the context of the international mandate for youth-inclusive peacebuilding outlined in United Nations Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security.
Caitlin has a PhD in Political Science from Griffith University and an MA in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University. She has worked in the public service and the NGO community.
Abstract:
In this paper we develop and outline a conceptualisation of ‘foundational peacebuilding’. The idea of foundational peace emerges from the established literature on local, everyday, and micro peacebuilding and takes seriously a theorisation of peace from the situated, local sites of people’s experiences.
This conceptualisation draws on thirty-five youth-to-youth interviews undertaken with young peacebuilders in Afghanistan, Myanmar, and South Sudan. These exchanges made clear that the actions of those who are marginalised by structures of power and excluded from formal, institutional sites of peace negotiation are foundational if invisible to the success of durable peace.
We are interested here in the activities people themselves see as crucial for creating the conditions of peace. It sees these peace activities as underlying the edifices of institutional peacebuilding; the term foundational is used deliberately to invoke the foundation stones, the strong base, on which peacemaking is undertaken. We extend existing scholarship on everyday peace to argue that formal peacebuilding cannot succeed if the foundational elements of peace are present in society to facilitate and enable lasting change.