Social Science Research Council

The ‘peace audit’ owes its origins to the idea of the social audit; common to both processes is the idea of institutional accountability, individual responsibility, and social/community involvement in the establishment of collective objectives. The concept and practice of the peace audit emerged from the work of the peace studies program of South Asian Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), Katmandu, in their efforts to further a ‘sustainable peace’ in the many conflicts racking that region.

Modified following trials and implementation in Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Baluchistan, and the Indian northeast, the peace audit may be understood as a process of social evaluation characterized by dialogue and pluralism seeking to engender or reestablish collective trust. The evaluation instruments lead to a determination of the threshold for minimal justice, a necessary and unavoidable step on the way to reconciliation. Dr. Ranabir Samaddar, who is responsible for the theoretical formulation of the peace audit puts it in the following way: “[the audit] grounds itself in the present to glance back at the past, not to understand how we have reached this stage, but to know how we can escape that stage and go beyond the follies, binds, traps, and compulsions that made up the past.”

The elements of the peace audit emerge from a careful analysis of the many failed peace accords in South Asia, and from participation in successful processes. The peace audit is both qualitative and quantitative, research-based and practice oriented, and is based on the recognition that peace is only sustainable when the process leading to reconciliation is democratic and transparent, when human rights are treated as central to the desired outcome, and when there is a plurality of ‘peace constituencies’ – political activists, human rights campaigners, religious figures, jurists, women’s rights campaigners, and academics -- participating in it. Peace, in other words, is not a singular outcome, but inherently a plural phenomenon. Respecting its plurality means recognizing the limits of monolithic legal accords signed by belligerent parties. Going beyond accords whose primary purpose is to bring an end to armed violence means recognizing the important of social trust – accommodation, compassion, dialogue, civility, co-existence -- in engendering a sustainable peace beyond the cessation of violence. The common minimum step for sustainable peace, this approach argues, is the collective determination of the conditions of minimal justice. As Samaddar puts it, “justice is the site on which dialogue takes place, restores the moral content of trust and strengthens the political ethic of democracy.”