Life after War: Lessons for Human-centred Peacebuilding from the Ivory Coast

Delving into the lives of ten Ivoirian citizens in the aftermath of the Ivoirian Civil War, this book sheds new light on how ordinary people contribute to post-conflict peacebuilding, and how it impacts their day-to-day lives. Ex-combatants contemplate the glory days of the conflict and how they have struggled to reintegrate into a post-conflict society which they feel does not want them. Survivors explain the challenges of returning home after war and dealing with trauma in a country where their families have been torn apart. Civilians discuss the ways that they have helped to build peace and the power that their knowledge of the local context has had on peacebuilding. Soldiers explore the difficulty of integrating rebels into the military at the end of a war and the ongoing challenges that this poses to military cohesion. Taken together, these stories highlight the need for peacebuilding programmes to ditch one-size-fits-all approaches in order to grapple with the specific social dynamics in post-conflict countries. This is essential reading for researchers and students of peacebuilding, international development and African studies, as well as for practitioners the world over.