Assoc. Prof. Dr. Devon Elizabeth Anne Curtis 

At the end of the Cold War, there was a period of optimism about the ability of the United Nations to “build peace” in areas that had experienced conflict in Africa. Nonetheless, many of these international peacebuilding efforts did not bring about the desired outcomes. In some countries, there has been a resurgence of conflict. In other countries, post-war politics is characterized by authoritarian repression. My book provides a new explanation for the failures of international peacebuilding through looking at the case of Burundi. Burundi is a small country in central Africa that has received extensive international peacebuilding support since its civil war in the 1990s/2000s. Much of the existing scholarship says that the failure of peacebuilding can be traced to the unsuitability of liberal democracy in very different African contexts, or the issue of great power rivalry in Africa. Instead, my book focuses on the politics of peacebuilding knowledge and ideas. More specifically, it argues that the ways in which the United Nations bureaucracy translates ideas of peace into concrete programs and initiatives shuts off potentially promising alternatives. The book shows how this occurred in Burundi and how this led to problematic unintended consequences in key areas of governance, security, justice, and economy. Finally, the book discusses how peacebuilding might be re-imagined based upon Burundian hopes and aspirations.