African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on February 16, 2008
African Affairs 2008 107(427):243-259; doi:10.1093/afraf/adm086
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The Business of Peace: Raiding and Peace Work along the Kenya–Uganda Border (Part II)
Dave Eaton (staius_murcus{at}yahoo.ca) is a PhD student in the Department of History at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. The author would like to acknowledge the Killam Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Dalhousie University for their generous support during the writing of this article. Special thanks are owed to Andrew Juma, Milcah Achola, Rachel Andiama, Kelly-Jo Bahry, Rob Blunt, Michelle Bourbonniere, Kim de Vries, Gary Kynoch, Mark Longole, Gabrielle Lynch, Friederike Mieth, and Danielle Walters, as well as two anonymous reviewers.
Peace work is big business along the Kenya–Uganda border. Each year, new groups are created thanks to the generosity of major donors while others disappear due to corruption and mismanagement. This cycle has continued for decades and, despite an absence of tangible results, millions of dollars continue to flow into the bank accounts of peace groups in the North Rift. As the first part of this article suggests, the focus on the so-called ‘root causes’ of violence may well be responsible for the dismal performance of the peace industry. However, the behaviour of peace NGOs in the field has been appalling. Peace meetings are often only held so NGOs can display an engagement with the conflict, despite the dangers created by such events. Other groups are dominated by politicians who use money earmarked for peace work to fund their political ambitions. Better monitoring is the obvious solution, but local groups have been able to avoid this by exaggerating the security risks of visiting the region. Others argue that offloading peace work responsibilities to CBOs might lead to better results, but in the highly ethnicized North Rift smaller groups are rarely able to transcend their local roots. This article concludes that the peace industry is deeply flawed, and requires a complete overhaul in order to have a beneficial impact on the region.