| Summary: | Within an aid discourse which emphasises the importance of civil society and Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to development and a renewed focus by the international community on civil conflicts in the developing world, conflict-resolution NGOs (CROs) have come to assume a greater role in peace negotiations. Conceptions of peace as a process of making society more just and harmonious (cf. Lederach, 1997) overlap with holistic conceptions of development, such as human development, that seek to expand people's meaningful choices and freedom (Sen, 1999), allowing for the controversial merging of development and security agendas (Duffield, 2001). This study investigates the role and implications of CROs, which as civil society actors using NGO forms and development techniques to further peace, embody this new hybrid field. It centres around two longitudinal case studies of CRO interventions initiated in the mid-1990s, in northern Ghana and Sierra Leone, capturing change in the role and nature of CROs through a dual historical and contemporary focus. The thesis argues for the importance of path dependency (North, 1990). It shows how in the Ghanaian case a CRO affected outcomes by influencing starting points and steering talks, through choices of which actors to portray as the relevant participants and the language and goals of the mediation process. Conversely, in the Sierra Leonean case study the initiating CRO was unable to chart a path out of violence. It argues that discourses are an important form of CRO practice and develops the term 'conflict narratives' proposed by Varshney (2002) to conceptualise how they can be used to build support for certain outcomes. While refuting the assumption that sponsoring peacebuilding work is harmless (cf. Dolan, 2000) this study argues that the merging of development and security provides a conceptual arena in which lessons from CRO practice may provide inclusive and innovative ways forward.
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