Abstract

With the end of the Cold War, civil war became the most common form of armed conflict, and liberal notions of peace have been actively adopted in major international peace-supporting activities since the 1990s. Although international peacebuilding activities rapidly increased in terms of their number, size, and forms, the activities were primarily initiated and led by international organizations and nation states from the global North (mainly European and North American). They were, therefore, firmly underpinned by the liberal notions of peace. As a result, the liberal prescriptions for peace were embedded in the conflict response programmes, whether they are peacemaking, peacekeeping, or peacebuilding operations.