Multi-Track Diplomacy and 21st Century Peace Building

The rising incidences of violent conflicts around the world, is posing grave challenges to the security establishments of most countries. Clear pointers to the upsurge in this phenomenon are the closely related issues of the globalization of terrorism, increase in cross-border crimes, escalating cases of civil wars, upsurge in armed militancy, rising cases of drugs and arms trafficking, the AIDS pandemic, etc – developments that pose, perhaps, the gravest challenges to global peace and security. From the Middle East to Africa, from South America to Europe, from the Orient to other far flung corners of the world, the cauldrons of violent conflicts continue to boil ferociously, spewing forth bitter concoctions of destruction, despair and death, in the process.

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On the African front alone, violent conflicts are estimated to have produced over 9 million refugees and internally displaced persons (Shah. A: Conflicts in Africa; www.globalissues.org). In the Congo alone, over 5 million people have died since 1998, while South Sudan’s decade-long rebellion is thought to have cost more than two million lives according to the International Rescue Committee (See Gettleman. J: Africa’s Forever Wars; www.ForeignPolicy.com)

From incidents as recent as the East African Food Crisis, North African Unrest, Cote d’Ivoire Crisis, the Niger Delta Crisis and Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria, the Sierra Leonean and Liberian Civil Wars, Conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Rwandan debacle, the AIDS Crisis, to countless other crises lost in antiquity, Africa has been a bloody theatre of war. This is the sad story across much of Africa, where nearly half of the continent’s 53 countries are home to an active conflict or a recently ended one. Quite places like Tanzania are the lonely exceptions; even tourist-filled Kenya blew up in 2008.

This piece examines an evolving approach to Peace Building – a subject that has formed the fulcrum of discourses on both global and national peace and security in recent times – the main theme of this essay, from which all the topics on this subject matter have been drawn. The approach in question is Multi-Track Track Diplomacy, the most comprehensive approach to contemporary Peace building. It is a contribution to growing interests in this field, and an addition to already published works in this area of peace studies and practice. It became expedient in the face of growing concerns over the continued failures by stakeholders to find more effective and long-lasting solutions to the burgeoning challenges posed by violent conflicts to nations across the world, especially in the Third World. In the following lines, the key concepts – Multi-Track Diplomacy and Peace-Building – are briefly defined, sequel to outlining how each aspect of the former works in ensuring the success of the later.

Now, what is Multi-Track Diplomacy? Multi-Track Diplomacy is a multi-disciplinary view of peace building. It assumes that individuals and organizations are more effective working together than separately, and that ethnic and regional conflict situations involve a wide and intricate web of parties and factors that require a systems approach. Each track in the system brings with its own perspective, approach, and resources, all of which must be called upon in the peace building process (Conflict Management Training Manual, 2001: Pg 48).

Peace Building on its path is an intervention initiative that is meant to bring about peace. It is one of the major categories of intervention – others are Peace Making and Peace Keeping – apart from other initiatives that are projected towards providing humanitarian aid or emergency assistance, provide immediate means of survival for populations at risk, etc. Peace-building does not focus on conflict behavior, but on the underlying structural, contextual and attitudinal causes of violent conflicts, such as unequal access to employment, hostility, fear, human right abuse, marginalization of certain groups, etc. It is low-profile work that can continue throughout the stages of a conflict. But it is more effective at the de-escalating stages of conflicts or in the earlier stages before the conflict becomes open. The multi-Track Diplomacy spectrum, as treated in this discourse, is as it operates across all stages of the peace building process.

The Multi-Track procedure is a nine-level (initially eight-level) response technique that explains the utilitarian values of collaboration in peace practice – the effectiveness of a coordinated approach to peace building. These nine-level multi-track analyses include: Track 1, Government; track 2, Non-governmental/Professional; Track 3, Business; Track 4, Private Citizens; Track 5, Research; Track 6, Activism; Track 7, Religion; Track 8, Funding; Track 9, Media. We now move on to examine the functions of each track/approach and their relevance to the peace building process.

Track 1, Government, sets agenda for other tracks, due to the preeminent position it enjoys as the engine hub of a given political system. It involves the utilization of command functions and the deployment of political institutional capabilities to conflict and peace intervention and management. It entails the use of the state’s instruments of coercion in ensuring peaceful relations and stifling all likely threats to the peace. This approach is reliant on the use of force, and gives less room for creativity in conflict situations. It is very rigid, but has the advantage of having resources that could be readily mobilized in response to crisis situations. The track consists of the security forces and other administrative apparatuses of the state.

The Non-governmental and Professional approach constitutes Track 2. This track covers inputs from individuals and groups working from outside state institutions – such as civil society groups or non-state actors, organized labour, faith-based groups, identity-based groups, issue-based groups, media and other critical stakeholders – local NGOs, peace practitioners acting as facilitators of the peace process. The flexibility of this track creates room for it to either complement government’s efforts in a particular area, or assume full responsibility for finding solutions to some critical issues that government is undecided about. Apart from the challenges of funding, unregulated conduct and lack of resources, this track offers a lot of resourcefulness, flexibility, and a relative degree of transparency.

Business constitutes Track 3. This is a conflict and peace intervention approach that unites socio-economic opportunities and responsibilities. It is an initiative that promotes a peaceful order for business to thrive. This track is motivated by the need for a robust interface between business corporations and their host communities. It is premised on the thinking that host communities should benefit from their relationship with corporations that do business on their turfs. Ideally, this has a vast financial resource available for conflict and peace building initiatives, but is often overlooked due to corporate greed and corruption.

Private Citizens constitute Track 4. This track embodies all the private initiatives that are undertaken by concerned individuals to check conflicts and promote peace. This approach offers room for the people themselves to be involved in the peace process by making inputs that determine the tilt and outcome of peace processes.

Track 5, Research, Training and Education constitutes the intellectual nucleus of the peace building process. It is the brain of the system. It contributes to the system by helping generate analytical tools, critical information on peace and conflict issues, which can be utilized in studying the nature, dimensions and dynamics of conflicts, and in hashing out effective policies to facilitate the peace process. Its only shortfall is that it portrays information not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

Activism constitutes Track 6 of the system. It involves the activities of individuals and organizations who position themselves as champions of justice. The quest for the respect or protection of the inviolable, universal and natural rights of man, are at the fore of the activities of this track. Actors in this track see themselves as the defenders of the oppressed, marginalized, and deprived segments of the society; social crusaders who are committed to restoring some level of parity between the operators of the state systems and the ordinary man on the streets. It beams the searchlight on all forms of structural violence existing in the society, and acts to redress them. The major problem with this track is its tendency to generate conflicts, and become parties to disputes.

Track 7 constitutes Religion. This involves the contributions of faith-based organizations to the peace building process. Track 7 is a value-based approach that views God as supreme over His creations. It promotes strict adherence to moral codes of conduct – the need for love, patience, tolerance, justice, equity and other virtues to guide human conduct and relations. In heterogeneous societies, this approach helps build bridges across divisive value-based issues. The major shortfall of this hub is that it does not take the plurality of most human societies into cognizance, and has the likelihood of becoming a base for conflicts, rather than being a solution.

Funding constitutes Track 8. The activities of donor agencies in peace building are covered by this track. The effects of this track on the peace process are more felt in third world countries and emerging democracies, where the incidences of bad governance, corruption, poverty and other social deficits have made the support of funding agencies to peace building efforts highly critical. There are different reasons why donor agencies fund peace initiatives: to secure better lives for people, to promote national interests, or to promote justice.

Media constitutes Track 9. The crucial role of information gathering and dissemination is covered by this track. The media helps in generating and molding opinions around crucial issues. Its functions affects the other tracks in the hub, and has the ability of influencing the context, dynamics and outcomes of conflicts, transform the attitudes and conduct of conflict parties and stakeholders. But the profit motives of most media organizations, most times, makes them compromise on their objectivity, resulting in situations where some of them become parties to conflicts they are supposed to help find solutions to.

A constructive combination of the functions of all the tracks listed in this hub can help build solid synergy that can aid the peace building process. Despite the separate functions performed by each of the tracks, they are united by the singularity of their objective – creating societies that are equipped to prevent conflicts from metamorphosing into violence, and to transform them into positive, productive peace, when they do become violent. A systems approach to peace building, which involves collaborations among organizations involved in different aspects of peace work or whose activities promote peace, remains the major hope for peace in an increasingly conflict-prone world. Peace building capabilities resides in many, not a few. Individuals and organizations are more effective working together than separately. Conflict of any kind involves a large and intricate gamut of parties, thus necessitating a systems approach.

In conclusion, with particular reference to the avoidable scenarios in most third world countries, where violent conflicts have become the major challenges to national development and growth, there is an urgent need to reassess all conflict management and peace building initiatives currently being employed in checking this monster. Over reliance on Track 1 – the state – as the major purveyor of peace, which has resulted in the increasing escalation of conflicts that would have been easily checked through better coordinated management approaches, calls for immediate paradigm shifts in the intervention initiatives currently being employed in these less developed parts of the world? Governments cannot do it alone, due to the high demands running state institutions places on them.

The effectiveness of the activities of individuals and organizations working outside the bureaucratic bottlenecks of government, can contribute meaningfully, effectively and decisively towards complementing the critical roles governments play in promoting, protecting and projecting peace.

God save world!

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