APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 72 72 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL matter of necessity, these activities are integrated into the broader peacekeeping movement around the world to allow for joint operations and support. As such, Mac Ginty points out, those adopted tend to be based on the strengths and capacities of the available peacekeeping forces, rather than those of the country suffering from conflict.55 It is important to avoid template-based, pre-packaged methods when dealing with local grass-root movements and instead focus on promoting unique solutions based on the cultural and historical contexts in which they take place. The question that should be asked is What can one learn from traditional mechanisms to help peace workers and governments in the future provide assistance to wartorn countries and societies? Resurrecting some of these traditions provides an avenue for including communities in the process, and that helps ensure a more stable and sustainable outcome.56 Furthermore, these customary institutions often address the psychological and social dimensions of conflict, which western methods fail to do.57 CONCLUSION A one-size-fits-all model for peacebuilding operations cannot be applied across the world. Peace workers, international groups, and nongovernmental organizations must instead proceed while paying attention to the historical and cultural contexts of the country and conflict in question. Institutions, particularly those dedicated to peace and justice, must be, as Weinstein points out, ‘the result of a bargain—a social compact between rulers and constituents—and it is the nature of that compact that shapes the existence, structure, and membership of the institutions’.58 Until now, too many peacebuilding efforts have been inadequately coordinated between internal and external partners. Typically the international community takes the lead, leaving the internal actors to take over unfinished and untried projects after the initial period. It is through dialogue, learning about culture and context, as well as supporting local communities in their visions of just institutions and respected mechanisms that international peace workers can provide useful tools and resources that strengthen the community and help build lasting and sustainable peace. By maintaining the original purposes of certain indigenous institutions while taking into consideration the new post-conflict context, a joint effort between the international community and the state to adapt and transform some culturally appropriate institutions may be the best option. As Mac Ginty asserts, this allows for the process as well as the definition of peace to be identified locally through grass-root movements. These types of hybrid institutions may be the answer to building a lasting and stable peace in countries ravaged by war.59 At this point in time, although western models of peacebuilding are ‘often effective in securing the quantifiable aspects of peace . . . [they are] less effective in managing 55. Ibid. 56. Patricia Daley, ‘Challenges to peace: Conflict resolution in the Great Lakes region of Africa’, Third World Quarterly, 27:2 (2006), 303–319. 57. Mac Ginty, ‘Indigenous peace-making’, 139–63. 58. Jeremy M. Weinstein, ‘Autonomous recovery and international intervention in comparative perspective’, Working Paper 57, Centre for Global Development, Washington, D.C., April 2005, 8–9. 59. Mac Ginty, ‘Indigenous peace-making’, 139–63.