Research On Japan's Peace-building Assistance In Africa

Peace-building is a security governance mode which the United Nations proposed to solve the internal conflicts of a country after the Cold War,with the aim of ensuring lasting and sustainable peace after conflicts through the basis and structure of peace-building.Peace-building is rich in connotation,which positively absorbs the idea of “positive peace” in peace studies,the international relations' theory of “democratic peace”inneo-liberalism,and “human security” in the new international security concept.These theories and studies endow peace-building with intrinsic value,political vision and humanitarian mission.In practice,Africa has become the major region of the United Nations' peace-building activities because of its frequent internal conflicts.Peace-building activities were initially implemented within the framework of the UN peacekeeping operations,with the key goal of political reconstruction in the post-conflict countries.Its goals began to diversify with the continuous development of practice,going far beyond the narrow domain of peacekeeping operations.In the meantime more and more actors have been taking part in peace-building activities,playing an increasingly important role.Driven by the strategy of political big power,Japan concerned and participated in the internal conflict governance of African countries earlier.In terms of the plan of governance,Japan generally followed the Western peace paradigm of “liberal and democratic” building,and meanwhile valued the role of development according to its own experience of foreign aid,adding a great amount of social and economic support into the specific activities of peace-building assistance,in the purpose of setting up a set of development-oriented peace-building patterns and finally having the discourse power in the African security governance.With the change of reality,Japan's peace-building assistance have crossed the limit of peace-building,not restricting to supporting conflict-preventing and peace-consolidation in post-conflict African countries,but extensively involving security issues such as anti-terrorism,anti-piracyand transnational crimes.Hence Japan's peace-building assistance in Africa has expanded from the traditional security realm to the non-traditional security realm and from the governance of a country's internal conflicts to the regional security governance,which enormously enriched the connotation of Japanese-African security cooperation.Japan's peace-building assistance in Africa,by its very nature,is driven by Japan's national interests,rather than based on the international humanitarian spirit.The fundamental drive of its actions is to maintain and achieve the economic,political and strategic interests of its own.Through the peace-building activities in Africa,Japan expects to meet three aspects of needs: economically to guarantee a stable supply of energy for its country but alsopromote the Japanese enterprises to seize the emerging markets in Africa;politically to contend for the right of African security governance discourse and fulfill its long-cherished wishforaccession tothe permanent members of the United Nations;strategically to intensify the strategic competition against China and in the meantime support America's counter-terrorism strategy in Africa.Due to the closer correlation with Japan's interests,the Great Lakes Region,the Horn of Africa and the Sahel have become the primary regions of Japan's peace-building activities in Africa,which is specifically reflected by stronger support in intensity,breadth and depth.Japan's peace-building assistance mainly depends on development assistance systems,however,a large number of actors in development assistance sectors are incorporated into the whole framework of peace-building aid.Moreover,Japan attaches great importance to the mutual cooperation with international development assistance partners and the construction and diffusion of concepts.Therefore,subordination,multi-subjects,multilateralism and conception are the basic features of Japan's peace-building activities.Within an expanded framework of development assistance,Japan is able to make non-military orientation of its peace-building activities stand out,make its assistance features conspicuous,and make up for the functional deficiencies of development assistance mechanism via the cooperation with other relevant actors.Specifically speaking,cooperation with defense departments and security departments seeks to improve its abilities in security issues;cooperation with non-state organizations seeks to make peace-building activities penetrate the unstable regions and the grass roots;cooperation with international organizations such as the United Nations seeks to acquire moral authority.Japan's peace-building assistance in Africa involves four realms including humanitarian aid,post-conflict state-building,regional security cooperation and international peacekeeping,in which Japan has made different contributions to Africa's peace and security and partly promoted the economic,political and strategic interests of its own country,however,it still has some goals which are difficult to realize.