Building Peace in Southeast Asia

In 2025 subnational contestation and violence are alive and well in Southeast Asia in the form of continuing conflicts within at least five countries in the Southeast Asian region. This Special Issue takes a look at these crises, why they exist, what peace efforts have been tried, and potential paths to achieving conflict resolution and transformation of conflictual relationships. This Introduction offers a review of literature on peacebuilding particularly in Southeast Asia. Notably, peace is highly relevant in Southeast Asia because, though the region has become prosperous economically, greater stability necessitates that states work towards resolving civil wars, insurgencies, and people’s grievances. Peacebuilding can also facilitate improving the human security of peoples living in Southeast Asia’s conflict zones in terms of their standard of living as well as their access to health, education, and other areas. Moreover, this Introduction emphasizes how peacebuilding is a concept entangled with legitimation, recognition, redistribution and geopolitics. At the same time, there can be liberal peacebuilding and illiberal peacebuilding—both have been tried in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the Introduction reflects on efforts by ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to help resolve conflicts in the region. It then summarizes the case-study articles in this Special Issue. In sum, this Introduction prefaces the Special Issue’s attempt to offer comparisons and contrasts of peacebuilding in Southeast Asia as well as offer hope that the cases discussed herein can provide lessons-learned in the difficulties of peacebuilding through Southeast Asian experiences so as to help others far and wide.