Principle 7: Adopting subsidiarity.

 

The principle of subsidiarity reorients relations between local actors and other power centres following the logic of "as local as possible, as global as necessary". It places a central focus on national, subnational and local leadership to drive peace processes that are responsive and accountable to the needs of local communities. Subsidiarity involves new ways of understanding accountability and responsibility for the successful outcomes of any peace process. Who responsible for making peace sustainable? How can they be held accountable and to whom? Ultimately, local actors and individuals, including political elites, social groups and business actors, are responsible for the sustainabilityof peace processes. Each must also acknowledge that they are part of larger political, socio-economic and gendered dynamics that fuelled conflict and tensions in the first place, and that local conflicts and insecurities do not exist in isolation nor emerge in a vacuum. The idea of "common and differentiated responsibility", drawn from principles enshrined in global climate conventions, recognises that actors have different capabilities and responsibilities to contribute to peacemaking and different accountability mechanisms for their actions, consistent with The principle of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity requires active, ongoing engagement by international actors to avoid delegating responsibilities without adequate oversight, in order to hold political actors at all levels accountable for their decisions. Moving decision making closer to communities and away from universal templates for peacemaking can unleash local initiatives for peacemaking, but support and action from other levels of authority are often needed to achieve sustainable and just peacemaking. International and national level authorities have an important role to guarantee just and fair policies for all. They must also ensure that their programmes do not hinder nor override locally legitimate solutions that respect the dignity, security and autonomy of communities.

- Implications and recommendations -

• A commitment to subsidiarity recognises the primacy of local leadership and locally legitimate peacemaking solutions. Respect for subsidiarity seeks to protect peacemaking from both over and underinvolvement by international actors, characterised on the one hand by irresponsible exits that abandon critical and vulnerable local communities, or on the other by expansive claims to technical knowhow and expertise that ignore local, socially embedded knowledge. 
• Subsidiarity recognises that increasing domestic legitimacy often requires reducing the presence or visibility of international actors to enhance local accountability and cultivate context-sensitive solutions. 
• The cascading and delegation of initiative from the international to the community level must protect against putting local actors at risk and making them bear the costs of transformative efforts.

• In many places, decentralised or local service delivery (education, basic health care, access to basic needs) based on the principle of subsidiarity and acceptance of hybrid solutions, can be a key building block for legitimising broader peacemaking efforts. These should be incorporated into national-level bargains, especially where the state and national government are seen as inaccessible or dysfunctional. The population must be able to freely voice their concerns to locally accountable authorities, and efforts to build sustainable peace must be monitored, encouraged, and - if necessary - enforced by the international community. 

• Taking decisions closer to the people affected by them requires an adaptive approach to peacemaking sensitive to the specific needs of different social, economic and gender groups to participate in decision making at the local level. Peacemakers need to be open to hybrid and locally crafted solutions, while actively working to reconcile the tension between affirming universal norms and standards of justice and equality and respecting the diversity and pluralism of different societies.

• supporting national authorities to uphold institutions and initiatives that respect agreements for inclusion, power sharing, political representation and promote fair social and economic arrangements
• assisting the development of a functioning regulatory framework that encourages responsible business actors and investments and helps to overcome historically gendered economic structures 
• identifying local structures of power and hierarchies of influence that are embedded in economic, political and gendered dynamics shaping the structure of societal life
• removing obstacles to fair and equitable access to local institutions 
• encouraging local civil society actors to pledge to uphold pluralism, gender equality and values of respect for all social groups and to adhere to agreed-upon rules of the game for the resolution of conflicts and differences.

Subsidiarity obliges external actors to approach complex sociopolitical and economic challenges with humility and to create spaces for partnerships as diverse sets of actors (local, national, transnational, private, international) come together to surmount challenges. 

• Local elites, political actors and power holders have a clear responsibility to enshrine a commitment to pluralism in institutional and legal practices, including protection for minority rights (linguistic, religious, gender equality, educational) and equitable access to services for all. 

• Civil society, business actors and political associations must have their independence and security guaranteed, while committing to respect diversity and pluralism, with safeguards against hate speech, manipulation by media and political elites, and extremist or violent mobilisation. 

• International actors providing support to local and national ones including civil society, business actors and other stakeholders, should take concrete steps to protect vulnerable groups that have invested in transformative peacemaking.

Rationale

Subsidiarity recognises the importance of different roles and functions for social institutions to promote the flourishing of individuals and communities, human dignity, and pluralism. Subsidiarity is valued not only because it promotes more efficient outcomes, but because its vision mediates between Individualist ideas of human dignity and Communitarian values of the common good. A commitment to subsidiarity breaks with the polarising logic of international/ outsider versus national/local/insider actors. It acknowledges the complex reality of peacemaking processes and promotes a partnership compact based on more equal relationships that make all actors responsible within particular domains.

Agreements must develop locally legitimate solutions (federal, decentralised, layered, nested or traditional), with decisions on the substance of an agreement taken at a level that involves those it affects the most. The principle of subsidiarity incorporates this, with international actors focusing on those tasks that require external support and involvement to succeed. Efforts to build sustainable peace must be owned and made legitimate at the local level in order to succeed. The UN Secretary-General's 2020 Report to the General ود Assembly on "Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace" acknowledged that "peace is more sustainable when peacebuilding efforts are locally owned, led and implemented" and the "sustaining peace agenda" places local ownership at the heart of its approach. As experiences in Afghanistan and other places have shown, no amount of international support will matter if the peace process lacks local legitimacу.

 Yet, the practice of local ownership often falls short, and the Principles for Peace consultations revealed limitations to the concept and the practice of local ownership. Discussions on local ownership highlight the potential danger in romanticising the idea that all solutions emerge from civil society and local actors, while all problems come from national governments and international actors. Local actors too need to be accountable to, and responsible for, upholding the Covenant's principles of pluralism, humility and dignity.

Local actors are at the centre of sustaining and building peace and have vital knowledge that determines the success of those efforts, but powerful local players may promote narrow agendas, entrench forms of discrimination toward particular groups (including, but not limited to, gender groups and indigenous communities), and use their influence for exclusionary purposes. Local actors are often divided over the best and most appropriate "local" solutions. These limitations can be overcome through embracing a carefully crafted concept of subsidiarity and enhanced due diligence and conflict and gendersensitivity by external (including business) actors who recognise the need to embed solutions within an acceptable national and international framework. Local ownership can create an artificial dichotomy between international and local or national actors, while subsidiarity recognises their complex interrelationships and the need for solidarity and co-operation. Most realworld peacemaking is a mix of diverse local and international actors operating at different levels and with different contributions. While local ownership is necessary for success, so is international engagement. In Northern Ireland, sustained international support before, during and after the signing of the agreement was key to progress in the peace process. In the Sudan, by contrast, the peace process has had a high degree of national ownership and a strong gender drive, but the international community was only weakly engaged with the genesis ofthe agreement and the process, limiting support for theirimplementation and allowing the vested interests of external actors to predominate. Subsidiarity also breaks with the assumption - still widely prevalent - that international actors have the technical expertise to analyse a conflict, identify its causes and design interventions based on international best practices, with local actors playing a subordinate or implementing role. This framing of local ownership places the onus for failure on poor implementation, insufficient resources or local spoilers, rather than acknowledging the shortcomings of externally driven solutions.

Localisation involves local actors' active appropriation of foreign ideas to construct institutions and practices that are congruent with local beliefs and practices. It is inward looking and focused on adapting foreign ideas to local contexts. Subsidiarity, by contrast, is outward looking in its focus on the importance of different levels and relationships between local actors and other centres of power, all of whom are involved in constructing peace.

Subsidiarity also goes beyond the devolution of power and responsibility. While moving decision making closer to the people affected and away from the universal templates for peacemaking is desirable, subsidiarity acknowledges that support and action from other levels of authority are needed to achieve sustainable and just peacemaking. There are many circumstances under which the most local or proximate authority is unable to assume responsibility for a particular function or aspect of peacemaking. This tension is recognised in human rights law, and balances the ideas of non-interference and assistance with attention to the broader common good. subsidiarity reduces the risk that a global approach will impose local uniformity at the expense of social pluralism and diversity. While there is a presumption in favour of more local forms of association and decision making, subsidiarit