Perceiving the War

Abstract

This chapter assesses the main issues around which the conflict in Ituri broke out: ethnicity, land and governance structures. It shows that they were not distinctively local, national or regional, but were influenced by aspects at all these levels. The first part of the chapter demonstrates how these issues interconnected to produce the atrocious war that Ituri experienced. The second part of the chapter analyzes the responses to it. It shows that most local peacebuilding actors’ perceptions were empirically-based and their priority was social cohesion, while most international peacebuilding actors’ perceptions were conceptually-based and their priority was statebuilding. The chapter argues that both sets of actors prioritized relevant issues of the conflict in Ituri. However, due to the multi-layered nature of the conflict issues, both also had limitations that could have been overcome by cooperation.