Throughout the world, countless peace efforts occur far from capital cities, often below the radars of national leaders and international peacebuilders. And, remarkably, these solutions work.

Everywhere that there is violence, there are also ordinary yet extraordinary people fighting it.... They are courageous, smart, innovative citizens taking risks for what they believe in. They are people who understand the ins and outs of violence in their village or neighborhood--and find ways to confront it.

Everywhere that there is violence, there are also ordinary yet extraordinary people fighting it....They are people who understand the ins and outs of violence in their village or neighborhood--and find ways to confront it.

Model interveners often challenge the enduring stereotypes about local people. They point to authorities who have the expertise, competence, motivation, and work ethic essential to peacebuilding, and to ordinary citizens who are intelligent, selfless, and trustworthy. They emphasize that host populations have far more relevant knowledge, contacts, and means to resolve their own predicaments than interveners usually believe.

...to end violence from war—and address lesser conflicts at home—we have to fundamentally change the way we view and build peace.

International peacebuilders will need to act in novel ways that are likely to challenge deeply entrenched cultural norms and jeopardize numerous organizational interests. They will have to learn how to support grassroots conflict-resolution efforts. They will have to integrate bottom-up and top-down strategies to fully address the local, national, and international sources of tensions.

International peacebuilders have their own world, with its own rituals, its own customs, its own beliefs, its own roles, its own stars, its own villains, its own rules, its own taboos, its own meeting places – in brief, its own culture.

The Congo case is representative of a broader problem with international interventions. International peacebuilders often neglect to address the local causes of violence.

I was so eager to make a difference in the lives of war-affected populations that I did not pause to reflect on the practices I followed while trying to accomplish this goal. It was not until I stepped outside of the expatriate bubble that I realized what an odd, self-contained community we interveners were.