It is well known that international organisations often face limitations in involving local populations in their peacebuilding and development interventions. This happens despite the "local turn" that has been on everyone's lips in peacebuilding research and practice for some years now. Karolina Kluczewska (Ghent Institute for International and European Studies) and Anna Kreikemeyer (IFSH) seek a new explanatory approach to this problem. In their research paper they argue that international organisations have persistent difficulties in engaging with local populations mainly because local and international patterns of ordering show fundamental differences. Using the Central Asia region as an example, the authors demonstrate that cultural beliefs and norms, everyday practices, institutions and issues of power are very different locally and internationally, and all too often meet with mutual misunderstanding or even ignorance.
The paper is published in the series Global Cooperation Research Papers of the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in Duisburg. It can be downloaded here.
An IFSH Policy Brief is dedicated to the topic from a policy advisory perspective. Learn more here.