This paper looks into the role of nongovernmental actors in peace processes, utilizing the case of Aceh as a tool for an analysis. The paper produces some tentative hypotheses on the role of non-governmental third parties in peace processes.
Southeast Asian (neorealist and constructivist) scholarship on peace and conflicts often assume the natural monopoly of states as agents in the security game. Also regional political rhetoric emphasise the role of states as actors of security. Yet member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have never had militarized inter-state disputes that have led to casualties. All the main conflicts in the region have been fought between civil society movements and states (or two or several civil society movements). Thus challenges to Southeast Asian security do not come from state actors, but from non-state actors.
Key findings:
- The case of Aceh enables us to identify non-governmental actors in various roles in peace processes. These actors can be pressure groups that make violence and human rights violations costly. They can also be facilitators, mediators and implementers of peace processes. In case of donor groups, nongovernmental actors can have crucial roles in the transformation of economic structures of conflict, and they can help create the transparency needed for any peace process. Non-governmental actors can be identified as conflicting parties, constituencies of the conflicting parties, and as supporters of the overconfidence of the conflicting parties on their positions. Thus one should not take a categorical position on the role of different types of actors in conflict and peace processes. It is not important who does something, but what is being done. When compromises are encouraged, when violent action is discouraged, then peace is served. However, when solidarity activity encourages unfounded overconfidence, when enemy actors are resisted instead of violence itself, there peace is not necessarily served. Non-governmental groups can choose their sides by choosing their strategies, not by choosing their identity.
- One case study can reveal what is possible, but not what non-governmental actors always or normally do or can do in peace processes. However, success in one case gives support to the hypothetical position that non-governmental actors can be useful and perhaps even be crucial by using certain mechanisms and methods in peace processes. In Aceh it was important for the facilitation and for the creation of the political will to negotiate, that non-governmental actors and pressure groups pin-point problems and help government acknowledge that they existed. Furthermore, individuals and non-governmental groups were useful in matching of people, creating forums where enemies can meet, and helping the sides to accept that “peace is made between enemies not between friends.” In addition to mechanisms one can, on the basis of experiences of Aceh peace process, hypothesize on the situations where non-governmental actors can be especially useful and when they are not likely to be particularly useful.
- In some processes of peacemaking, broadness of participation is not only useful, but a necessity. Whenever contacts and legitimacy are needed, broad civil society participation and non-governmental activity are a necessity. However, whenever large scale power and persuasion is needed, official international institutions are often more useful than non-governmental actors. Whenever only a few people can sabotage an element in a process, official, monopolized structures of governance are needed.
