thousand Salvadorans were killed and one million more displaced in the civil war, making it one of the most destructive in the region. Driven to the negotiating table by a military stalemate with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerrillas, the Salvadoran government under President Alfredo Cristiani invited the United Nations to mediate a settlement that would end the war. El Salvador’s civil war was to be the first in which the United Nations agreed to act as mediator in such negotiations. The negotiations began in April 1990 and continued for almost two years, during which the participation of the UN and mediation by the secretary general’s office were crucial to the successful negotiation of sensitive issues, particularly military reform. On January 16, 1992, representatives for the government of El Salvador (GOES) and the FMLN signed the peace accords that aimed not only to end the civil war but to build lasting peace. The Chapúltepec Peace Accords, named after the castle where they were signed in Mexico City, promised a new beginning for El Salvador. Hailed as a success story of United Nations peacebuilding efforts, the peace process transformed the country’s political landscape. The accords placed the military under civilian control for the first time in El Salvador’s history. State-sponsored terrorism ceased to be the modus operandi of the country’s various “security forces,” which were eliminated and replaced with a new civilian police force. Opposition parties and their affiliated organizations were legalized and, over time, functioned without fear of recrimination. The FMLN transitioned from a guerrilla movement to political party, becoming the largest party in the legislature and governing more than 50 percent of the population following the 2000 legislative and municipal elections. The party later won presidential elections in 2009 and 2014. While implementation of the accords was not without its problems, the ceasefire has never been broken. According to a 1997 report of the United Nations secretary general, “the most notable development has been that the peace process has also allowed for the opening-up of political space for democratic participation. A climate of tolerance prevails today, unlike any the country has known before.”2 El Salvador was undoubtedly freer than it had ever been throughout its history.
But all was not well in El Salvador. A mere seven years later, another UN secretary general’s report commented that the 2004 elections had “generated a wave of polarization that surpassed any seen since the signing of the Peace Agreement.”3 While the peace accords ended the armed conflict, numerous factors continued to undermine the quality of that peace. Democratic elections have become routinized, but Salvadoran voters are increasingly disenchanted with the political process. Political parties control the public discourse, and political polarization limits representation and political space. Corruption and impunity are pervasive, resulting in low levels of confidence in state institutions. Organized crime and social violence have replaced political violence, making El Salvador one of the most violent countries in the world. Successive administrations have failed to reduce the violence, and their authoritarian solutions to the problems have not only been in direct contradiction to the peace accords but have exacerbated the problem. Millions of Salvadorans still live in poverty and many are forced to supplement their families’ incomes by making the dangerous journey to the United States in search of work. More Salvadorans have left the country since the end of the war than during it, and their remittances sustain the stagnant Salvadoran economy. Twenty years after the signing of the peace accords, 62 percent of Salvadorans said that things were the same or worse than during the war, and 57 percent expressed little to no satisfaction with the functioning of Salvadoran democracy.4 While the peace accords ended the war, many Salvadorans remained dissatisfied with the quality of peace, as illustrated by the epigraph to this introduction from newly elected president Salvador Sánchez Cerén. One of the great ironies of El Salvador’s peace process is that while outsiders consider it a success, Salvadorans do not.5 All this begs the question, What happened to the peace in El Salvador?
UN Peacebuilding and the Liberal Peace
During the past two decades, the United Nations has become increasingly involved in the settlement of civil wars across the globe. Since 1989 more than a dozen civil wars have ended with UN-brokered peace agreements, including those in El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, and Guatemala. In 1992 former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali recognized that the needs of postconflict societies extended well beyond the bounds of traditional peacekeeping, which was generally limited to international conflicts and involved activities such as dispute settlement, monitoring ceasefires, and the separation of forces. In his book An Agenda for Peace, Boutros-Ghali pushes for an increase in international assistance to effectively rebuild these societies. Peacebuilding, he argues, requires that peace processes address the root causes of conflict in order to prevent any reversion to armed violence.6 The creation of lasting peace entails moving beyond the mere cessation of war and toward creating a stable, just, and reconciled society. His thesis reflects work done in the field of peace and conflict studies by theorists such as Johan Galtung, who developed the concepts of positive (eliminations of the causes of violence) and negative peace (absence of war) in an attempt to more fully define the criteria for the consolidation of peace.7 As such, peacebuilding efforts often comprised a wide variety of activities aimed at reconstructing postwar societies. These include conflict cessation (including disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of ex-combatants), institutional reform, human rights and elections monitoring, provision and training of security forces, and the repatriation of refugees. While much of this work was conducted by the UN and its programs and specialized agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also engaged in a vast array of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction activities. Among them were disarmament, education, health care, societal reconciliation, and infrastructure and development projects.
In practice, peacebuilding has often combined elements of traditional peacekeeping with statebuilding and economic development.8 As such, “liberal” peacebuilding, as it is often referred to by critics, seeks to establish democratic governments and market economies as the chief means of delivering peace and prosperity. This approach has been largely informed by the democratic peace theory, the idea that democracy reduces prospects for war between democratic states.9 While there has been increasing attention paid to the establishment of functioning state institutions, rule of law, and societal reconciliation or transitional justice, these elements have often been secondary to the dual processes of democratization and marketization.
Peacebuilding Outcomes
The results of UN peacebuilding efforts have been mixed, and measuring “success” has been difficult. Early peacebuilding missions tended to be overly broad and vague in purpose (prevention of the recurrence of conflict) and scope (extending to the many needs of postconflict societies). Moreover, there were no clear criteria for mission success beyond sustaining the cessation of armed conflict.10 In that regard, the results are discouraging: as many as one-third of negotiated settlements collapse within five years and the resulting violence may eclipse preaccord violence.11 Additionally, relatively few peacebuilding efforts have resulted in liberal democracies. In an analysis of nineteen major peacebuilding operations, Christoph Zürcher has found that fewer than half could be considered liberal or electoral democracies.12 Fewer still showed outward signs of established rule of law, societal reconciliation or economic development.13 Virginia Page Fortna’s study of the effect of peacekeeping missions on democratization demonstrates that while missions are generally effective at maintaining peace and security, they may serve to undermine democracy in the long term.14 It is worth noting, however, that this is not dissimilar from the broader experience of transitional countries that exist in what Thomas Carothers refers to as “the gray zone,” wherein countries have some characteristics of democracy but suffer significant democratic deficits.15 Dozens of countries remain trapped somewhere between dictatorship and liberal democracy, some with little prospect of making a complete transition any time soon. The modest, if not disappointing, peacebuilding outcomes resulted in the emergence of a wide-ranging critique of UN peacebuilding efforts.
Critics of liberal peacebuilding argue that it has failed to deliver sustainable peace. Roland Paris, Michael Pugh, Oliver Richmond, and others argue that the application of neoliberal economic
