Perceiving Each Other

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the interaction between local and international peacebuilding actors in Ituri. It demonstrates that their perceptions of their own and each other’s resources, capacities and legitimacy differed. This had three consequences. First, international peacebuilding actors excluded local peacebuilding actors from strategy-making and thus initially neglected the local priority of social cohesion. Second, international peacebuilding actors only included local peacebuilding actors in the implementation stage of their statebuilding programs, which meant that local actors could only marginally adapt them to local realities. Third, when international peacebuilding actors took up the priority of social cohesion after the end of the transition marked by the elections in 2006, they crowded out and duplicated local peacebuilding actors’ work, rather than complemented it. Thus, despite the fact that both local and international peacebuilding actors’ priorities were relevant, their lack of cooperation left important gaps.