Supporting Local Reconciliation

This chapter offers lessons from a wide variety of UN engagements in local conflict settings. Although UN missions are generally tasked to respond to national and regional crises, these are often intimately linked with local conflicts and/or centre-periphery relations between the state and its people. In fact, there is strong evidence showing that local dynamics are both a product of and contributing factor to the national political trajectory of conflict-affected countries. The chapter examines how the UN has engaged in widely differing forms of local conflict management efforts; draws lessons from past attempts to link national and local processes; and offers specific recommendations for the UN's efforts to support conflict management at the local level in Somalia.