Rally Behind Liberia's Peace

There's reason to celebrate the tremendous progress Liberia has made since it's devastating civil war, a conflict that so dismantled the country that militias crossed into other neighboring countries for loot, supplies, and recruits. It was a conflict of poverty, and diamonds; of fleeing families, and growing trade enterprises. Finally, it took challenging reconciliation, and war crimes trials, to transform Liberia's political tension into a political process.

Now, after about ten years of reconstruction, there remains serious risk of a return to conflict, but the area is fortunate to have a strong leader in Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and a decent amount of the right kind of post-war development to curb ethnic and social infighting for some time. The greatest lesson the globe can take away from Liberia is that peacebuilding and conflict transformation is most successful when carried out in peacetime, as a very early preventive measure, and as a substantial follow-through in reconstruction, not dropped out of the back of an airplane in the middle of an active war.

For more on Liberia's success and to contribute to that vital follow-through effort to prevent future return to conflict, follow UN's humanitarian media aggregator on Liberia. This will keep you up to date on the kinds of humanitarian aid and development projects going on there. The Liberia Peacebuilding Office, a product of the UN's peacebuilding fund, is a good starting point for studying how official conflict mitigation and transformation efforts were conducted. Though it will take a closer look in the local media to see if these projects actually worked, it's still right to follow these proposals.

Finally, the U.K.'s Department for International Development just released a briefing on working in conflict-affected and fragile states, offering a global view.

If you are concerned for peace in West Africa and beyond, try either donating in support of peacebuilding and conflict-mitigation efforts (best ones are those which are not just people sitting in a room, but projects which integrate conflict transformation into livelihood or economic works linking formerly opposing communities) or supporting a campaign to press policy-makers and donors to prioritize these kinds of things. Ideally, Liberia will solidify, and remain peaceful for some time. Actually, much of what's worked for Liberia may be strong enough for preventing an escalation of ethnic conflict elsewhere, like Nigeria.

Photo credit: Arddu (Liberian dancer)