Understandings of Local Ownership
Von Billerbeck, Sarah B K. 2016. In Whose Peace? Local Ownership and United Nations Peacekeeping, edited by Sarah B K von Billerbeck, 48-77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This article examines how the concept of local ownership is interpreted in different visualizations of peace, ranging from the narrow scope of participation in liberal peacebuilding to communitarian peacebuilding’s emphasis on local leadership and an enabler role for external actors. Thus, the text ultimately highlights the contradiction inherent in the peacebuilding approach favoured by international actors such as the UN – despite the emphasis placed on self-determination as a principal value of the United Nations, the organization has come to prioritize meeting operational goals above maintaining this normative commitment to member states.