Call for Abstracts

Beyond the Comprehensive Peace Agreement: The Political Economy of Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in Liberia, 2003 - 2023

Overview

The signing of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on August 18, 2003, marked the end of the Liberian civil conflicts, which led to the death of an estimated 250,000 people and displaced about half a million. The signing of the CPA ended the war and marked the beginning of an arduous peacebuilding and state-building process.

The decade-and-half-long conflict left Liberia’s state institution nearly dysfunctional and with limited capacity to deliver services. Though the country continued to project sovereignty throughout, it lacked the means to exercise the core functions of a modern sovereign – security and basic social service delivery. These conditions, coupled with the proliferation of armed groups whose combined membership totalled around one hundred thousand combatants, Liberia’s relapse into conflict was a distinct possibility. This grim prediction was premised on the history of thirteen failed peace agreements signed between 1990 to 1996.

In contrast, however, Liberia broke with the pattern of the failed peace agreement, transitioning from war to peace. Indeed, despite deep conditions of fragility and limited state capacity, twenty years after the signing of the CPA, Liberian is now where the outbreak of another civil war seems remote. Liberia has defied many grim predictions, including Paul Collier’s theory that civil war increases the risks of more war and that ‘about half of all post-conflict countries are more likely to relapse into conflict within a decade’ (Collier 2008). Liberia did not. Instead, a combination of factors, including sustained international engagements, initiatives to maintain elite stability and cooperation, grassroots communities’ agency and resilience, governance and political reforms and civic engagement, have kept the peace and facilitated state-building in Liberia for two decades since the CPA.

What separates the Accra Agreement from all previous accords? How did Liberia avoid another war? What kept Liberia’s elite stable and committed to the peace agreement they signed in 2003? What has been the nature of cooperation between grassroots communities and the elites? What is the perception of the TRC Report in Liberian politics? What institutions or policy reforms built the current environment for peace in Liberia? And how has state capacity been harnessed to deliver services, maintain stability, and forge sovereignty? This proposed volume explores these questions and many more on Liberia’s initiatives, progress, and challenges of peacebuilding and state-building after the Comprehensive Peace Accord 2003.

This will be a Ducor Institute for Social and Economic Research publication. Authors whose abstracts would be selected will be invited to present papers at Ducor’s Development Policy Seminar in September 2023. Authors/researchers are encouraged to submit an abstract on any question/topic of peacebuilding, post-war state building in Liberia over the last 20 years, centring on any of the themes below:

  • Disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration

  • Reconciliation and Transitional Justice

  • Security sector reform

  • Rule and judiciary reform

  • Electoral politics, political participation, and democratization

  • Governance and public sector reform

  • Civil society and civic engagement

  • Constitutional reform

  • Elite stability and political settlement

  • Service delivery and development

  • Economic policy growth and Development

  • Foreign direct investment and economic development

  • Women’s Rights, feminism, and Peacebuilding

Abstracts must be between 200 and 400 words and demonstrate how the proposed theme/topic connects to the broader theme of peacebuilding and state-building in Liberia between 2003 and 2023. Selected authors will be invited to a conference or seminar on the 20th anniversary of the peace accord. Proposed papers are expected to be discussed at the workshops, and authors will be encouraged to collate feedback from their presentations to develop their full comprehensive reports. All abstracts must be emailed to abweah.ci@gmail.com by 15 August 2023.