The Origins and Evolution of Infrastructures for Peace

I first began to formulate the concept of an infrastructure for peace in the 1980s. During several local and national peace processes, particularly a mediation effort in Nicaragua, the support mechanisms to sustain the changes under negotiation, and which subsequently found their way into signed accords, required both conceptual and practical development. In Central America at that time, the support for the negotiations relied heavily on commissions. The innovation in Nicaragua led to the creation of commissions that functioned at local, regional and national levels, although these focused almost exclusively on the negotiation process and in some instances on short-term implementation of some key aspects in the accords. The challenge I observed at the time was how to develop the necessary support over time for the social, political and cultural change processes that formed the underlying purpose and intent of more concrete, specific agreements. Reflecting on those experiences a few years later, I proposed the idea of an infrastructure for peace as a core ingredient of a comprehensive approach to peacebuilding in Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (1997)…