When looking at the failures of peacebuilding cases, one of the most strangest thing the authors found is that they fail not because of disagreement, but at the moment when everyone saying "yes, this is it." The author want to call this "false agreement."


Let us imagine. Donors, INGOs, government agencies, community leaders, armed group leaders are sitting around a table. Everyone talk about "inclusive governance." They talk about "local ownership." They talk about "sustaining peace." They nod. They write in the minutes that "all consensus have been reached." The reports look very good. But in actual reality, the meaning of these words can be as far apart as heaven and earth from one person to another.


This is the most ignored paradox of peacebuilding. Having a shared language does not mean having a shared reality (Mac Ginty, 2015). And this is my main point. Peace processes do not fail because of no shared language. They fail because the shared language hides the unshared realities.


What happen to the words?


Let us look at the word "local ownership." This word appear in every peacebuilding document, every report. But for who, it mean what? For a donor, it mean "local people participate and implement our project." For an INGO, it mean "we do community consultation and take feedback." For a local CSO, it mean "real transfer of decision-making power to local bodies." For the actual community people, it mean "our real lived reality and priorities being respected."


So in the meeting room, everyone say "local ownership" together, but in actual practice, the donor design, the INGO manage, and the community only left to give agreement. This is what Richmond (2011) has critiqued—that "local ownership" tend to become not about managing peace process, but a way to manage local people. This is not ownership. This is supervised participation wearing local clothes.


The magic word "federal"


In Myanmar peace process, there is a even more clearer example. The word "federal." Everyone use this word. All revolutionary forces hold the slogan like "abolish the junta, democratic federal union." But behind the word "federal," what is there?


For a centralist-minded person, federal mean "distribution of administrative power under one sovereignty." For ethnic revolutionary organizations, federal mean "recognition of indigenous peoples, their heritage, culture, territory and right to self-determination." For youth activists, federal mean "a equal future without dictatorship." For local communities, it mean "protection from domination and cultural disappearance."


These are not completely opposing to each other. But they also do not align. South (2008) has discussed how Myanmar peace process can be harmed when we trust the words too much and ignore the meanings. Federal can become a shared slogan before it become a shared settlement. Everyone holding the same flags but marching toward different countries.


More scary than disagreement


Disagreement is visible. You can discuss it. You can negotiate it. But false alignment is invisible. It stay quietly. This silent fake agreement allow projects to move forward, reports to be written beautifully, but when actual implementation come, everything collapse. Because everyone signed the same sentence but was imagining different worlds.


This is not only a communication problem. This is a power problem. Who get to define the key words? Whose interpretation agenda is controlling? (Barnett & Duvall, 2005). For example, if the state define "security" as "territorial control," then the whole security agenda will go toward territorial control. If local community define it as "freedom from fear," the agenda go toward human security—which may try to limit the government.


Conflict sensitivity and "meaning checking"


We peacebuilders have the principle of "Do No Harm." This was introduced by Anderson (1999), and later became wider as "conflict sensitivity." The main question of that concept is, "does our action make conflict worse or better?"


But we are still using this conflict sensitivity only at the level of material things and resource distribution. Let us imagine. We focus only on who get the rice bags and which road they go. But we ignore how meanings are constructed and who get to define them.


In my personal view, those who look at conflict sensitivity should not only ask "how do resources affect conflict?"—this has been studied quite a lot. They should also ask "how do meaning-making affect conflict?" The interpretations of language can divide people, harm them, or heal them, just like material things. This point has been made by Jabri (1996), who say that conflict begin first in discourse before it become physical war.


Sustaining peace is a matter of shared meaning


After the UN Sustaining Peace resolutions in 2016 (UN, 2016), peacebuilding came to be defined not as a short-term post-war reconstruction but as a long-term process of the whole society.


Actually, for sustaining peace, building shared meanings is not a small communication matter. It is part of the peace infrastructure. Just like we build roads and bridges, we need to build bridges that negotiate meanings. This is what Lederach (1997) said—that peacebuilding is fundamentally about transforming relationships, and to transform relationships we need to understand people's worldviews.


"Local" is not a place, it is a world of meaning


Critical scholars like Mac Ginty and Richmond (2013) introduced the idea of "local turn." This question the Western-centric, top-down liberal peace models and ask us to take seriously the agency, practices, and meanings of local people.


But when implementing this "local turn" in practice, many people see "local" as only a geographical place. They use words like "we consult with local" and "we listen to local voices." But actually, "local" is not a place. It is a world built from meanings, histories, wounds, and dreams (Escobar, 2011). To enter that world, we need the courage to go beyond the surface of words.


Why we need meaning check


To conclude, the root of conflict is not only because people disagree. Disagreement is honest. The deeper tragedy is that because people use the same words, they believe they are in agreement. Peacebuilding often start with a dictionary illusion—a false confidence that "if everyone say 'inclusion,' 'participation,' 'security,' then everyone must be heading to the same future."


But words do not become bridges by themselves. Sometimes, they are fog machines. Everyone see the same fog, but no one see clearly.


As peacebuilders, before starting a project, we should not stop at asking "do we agree?" We should begin asking "what does this word mean for you?" and "what harm can this meaning create?" The authors call this "meaning mapping." Without such checking, any peace process that move forward may not be building something—it may be just waiting for something to collapse.