Peace is often negotiated far beyond the places where people suffer from draconian laws, discrimination, outright aggression, sexualized violence, armed strife, natural disasters, or plunder. More recent attempts to reflect local demands and needs in political processes in (post-)conflict areas were unable to sufficiently do so and continue to impose ideas of peace that are fundamentally elitist, Eurocentric, and postcolonial. Local peace agency is all too often overlooked, silenced and misrepresented within the traditional frameworks and processes of the international community.
This online conference brought together activists, peace practitioners, and scholars from South Sudan, Bosnia, and Lebanon in order to voice and debate the importance of local visions of political legitimacy, justice, and peace. It thereby wants to highlight the constitutive character of subaltern peace agency for negotiating peace and at the same time its precarious position due to the various power asymmetries towards the national and the international.
Conference Local Peace Formation Asserting Subaltern Visions of Political Legitimacy 2023 - YouTube