Local NGOs and Autonomous Maneuvering

Abstract

Chapter 8 discusses local NGOs peacebuilding in the rural communities of Sierra Leone in the context of liberal peacebuilding. The chapter analyzes three local-global peacebuilding initiatives – Hope Sierra Leone, Fambul Tok and CAPS – that have made attempts to address some of the challenges of introducing tenets of the liberal in communities where people continue to follow their sociocultural practices. By doing so, the chapter makes an attempt to understand the complex field that these three organizations have to maneuver and the compromises that must be made in order to achieve external funding. However, it also argues that due to the very fortified nature of contemporary external peacebuilding, which effectively isolates international staff from extensive engagement with locals, this also opens up a space for autonomous maneuvering from local innovative actors such as Fambul Tok and Hope Sierra Leone who are able to build extensive local-global networks. This provides for an agency that allows for some autonomy, but it is an autonomy that has to operate within certain boundary frames of how post-conflict peacebuilding should be approached.