Enhancing the Efficacy of Religious Peacebuilding Practice: An Exploratory Evidence-Based Framework for Assessing Dominant Risks in Religious Peacebuilding
Centre of Religion, Reconciliation and Peace, University of Winchester, Winchester SO22 4NR, UK
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Religions 2019, 10(12), 641; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10120641
Received: 2 October 2019
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Revised: 4 November 2019
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Accepted: 7 November 2019
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Published: 20 November 2019
The ‘risk assessment’ in peacebuilding has become a standard, if sometimes slightly formulaic and performative, element of project design and written proposals. Largely driven by donor requirements and organisational procedures, the relatively new discipline and practice recognised as ‘Religious Peacebuilding’ has taken on many of the elements of ‘secular’ peacebuilding, including the risk assessment. This means that organisations increasingly have to attempt to understand the associated risks to projects with a religious dimension often without any specific guidelines, and in many cases, any relevant knowledge or previous experience of working with religious actors in peacebuilding. Consequently, the primary objective of this paper is to propose the first risk assessment framework for peacebuilding projects which explicitly focus on religious dimensions and actors. The framework is based on analysis of case studies and project evaluations from a number of contexts; and has the potential to make a tangible difference to the efficacy and impact of peacebuilding projects in a variety of post-conflict contexts. This paper will also briefly consider how the proposed framework relates to contemporary theoretical debates concerning the instrumentalization of religion, and increasing technocracy in peacebuilding theory and practice.
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Keywords:
religion; religious; peacebuilding; reconciliation; risk assessment; instrumentalization; technocracy
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Owen, M.; King, A. Enhancing the Efficacy of Religious Peacebuilding Practice: An Exploratory Evidence-Based Framework for Assessing Dominant Risks in Religious Peacebuilding. Religions 2019, 10, 641. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10120641
AMA Style
Owen M, King A. Enhancing the Efficacy of Religious Peacebuilding Practice: An Exploratory Evidence-Based Framework for Assessing Dominant Risks in Religious Peacebuilding. Religions. 2019; 10(12):641. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10120641
Chicago/Turabian StyleOwen, Mark, and Anna King. 2019. "Enhancing the Efficacy of Religious Peacebuilding Practice: An Exploratory Evidence-Based Framework for Assessing Dominant Risks in Religious Peacebuilding" Religions 10, no. 12: 641. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10120641
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