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Business and peace

This paper was written as part of the research initiative entitled Engaging the Business Community as a New Peacebuilding Actor. It is a joint project of the Africa Centre for Dispute Settlement (ACDS), CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA), and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project aims to fill the large gap in evidence regarding the effectiveness of business efforts for peace, providing a framework and practical guidance for more effective planning and evaluation of businesspeace initiatives, policies and practices. The paper is in the process of revision for publication. Comments, critiques and corrections are welcome. The literature on business and peace posits a number of ways in which international business may play a deliberate, positive role in supporting peaceful development in a particular conflict-prone environment, ranging from job creation to the importation of international norms and standards. The conflicting evidence suggests, however, that there is no set of business activities which can be characterized as unambiguously peace-positive. Rather, it appears that it is not only what businesses do, but the manner in which they do so, the alliances of which they are part, and the context in which their actions unfold that may be more determinative of their impact. The fact that these insights are not more central to contemporary debate highlights that most analysis of business and peace, emerging as it does largely in response to the literature on the causes of conflict, seems profoundly disconnected from the contemporary peacebuilding literature. That literature reflects practice that increasingly deemphasizes specific tools or approaches in favor of conflict systems analyses and questions for strategic engagement. Current modes of analysis may therefore invite policymakers, corporate actors and their partners to fall into conceptual traps that lead to suboptimal outcomes or even unintended negative consequences with relation to business and peace. They may also de-emphasize the capabilities, relationships, resources and enabling factors required for businesses to be constructive peacebuilding actors. This review surveys the state of play in the business and peace literature broadly construed, analyses gaps, and suggests new questions to guide both further research and strategic thinking in the field.