The Crisis of Legitimacy in Peace Work and the Return of ‘Peace as Force'

In this talk, Gearoid Millar examines the diminishing legitimacy of peace work as it has come to be framed in the post-Cold War era. The talk presents data from interviews with 99 peace work professionals examining what they each thought were the biggest challenges to peace that we had faced in the recent past and that we would face in the foreseeable future. Conducted over two phases that straddle a pivotal inflection point for the field (one in 2018–19 and another in 2024–25), Gearoid's research presents many voices from those who have worked either to understand (academics) or to implement (practitioners) peace work.

As these voices illustrate, one of the most common challenges these groups identified was the decreasing legitimacy of peace work; specifically, the decreasing legitimacy of the model of peace that has previously been pursued (the liberal peace) and of the actors who have most clearly pursued it (the Western states and the UN). The most worrying implication of these findings, however, is that the very concept of peace itself as a "just peace" allowing progressively more protection and emancipation for individuals and sub-state communities is also becoming delegitimated, to be replaced again by “peace as force”.

Gearoid Millar is a Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen, in the UK, where he also Coordinators both the MSc in Peace and Conflict Studies and the MSc in Policy Evaluation. His fieldwork research in West Africa has focused on examining the local experiences of international interventions for peace, justice, and development – primarily in Sierra Leone – and he has published widely about the complex and unpredictable interactions (characterised by Hybridity and Friction) between international peacebuilding interventions and the local communities and individuals who experience those interventions. He has contributed widely to the field of Peace and Conflict studies over the past 15 years, with four books and more than two dozen contributions to key journals, such as the Journal of Peace Research, Cooperation and Conflict, International Peacekeeping, the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Third World Quarterly, Peacebuilding, and many others.

This talk is hosted by PeaceRep, the Centre for Security Research and the Global Justice Academy. Please register via Eventbrite to attend.

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