Critiques to the «liberal peace» construction in Sub-Saharan African post conflicts settings

Abstract

With the end of the Cold War, international peace-building policies were geared to promote a concrete understanding of the peace in post-conflict contexts, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. This model, called «liberal peace» because it was based on the dominant Western (neo)liberal ideas of representative democracy, market economy and conflict resolution (formal, state-one and non-based in conflict transformation), has become currently hegemonic. In this article I discuss some of the main critiques that have been made to this model implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa: first, his (neo)colonizer character, directed to protect Western interests; second, the existence of internal contradictions in areas such as democracy and human rights; third, its technical and neutral nature, considered free of political, economic, or gender connotations; fourth, his alleged uniformity and homogeneity; and, fifth, the representation of African countries as contexts which should be «saved» and with no local agency.