Cosmopolitan peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone: what can Africa contribute? International Afairs 83: 6 (2007) 1055–1070 © 2007 The Author(s). Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/The Royal Institute of International Afairs DAVID CURRAN AND TOM WOODHOUSE During the last UN General Assembly of the twentieth century, Kofi Annan called for a process of ‘thinking anew’ about the role of peace operations in global politics. The international community responded to the call in a series of reform proposals, from the Brahimi Report in 2000 to the Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats and Challenges (2004) and In larger freedom (2005). Much of the debate about the evaluation of peacekeeping and its connection with peacebuilding has been conducted at the level of policy and operational aspects, with over 300 recom- mendations for reform being made in a series of major fin-de-siècle assessments and reports published in 2000. A series of high-level commissions and expert groups have conducted strategic reviews of the UN system and its function in global politics over several years. 1 Aspects of the debate, however, have also developed at the theoretical level, involving both a reconceptualization of security (from state-centred norms to what we refer to as the globalization of security around the human security norm) and also a reconceptualization of peacekeeping which has involved eforts to integrate ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power poles of activity, such that the peacekeeping force is robust enough to use force to protect populations under the emergent ‘responsi- bility to protect’ norm, but also has enough conflict resolution capacity to facilitate operations across the conflict–development–peacebuilding continuum. In conflict research terminology, such operations are enabled by both doctrine and capability to work towards security (the negative peace dimension—stopping violence and creating political and humanitarian space) and also towards development and peacebuilding (the positive peace dimension—creating space for civilian activity to work on the long-term political, economic and cultural dimensions of change in a model of conflict transformation that addresses power asymmetries, poverty and marginalization). In previous work we have defined this dual activity as cosmo- politan peacekeeping. 2 Here we suggest that the idea of cosmopolitanism, developed 1 e.g. Erskine Childers and Brian Urquhart, Renewing the United Nations (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Founda- tion, 1994); Our global neighbourhood, report by the Commission on Global Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 2 See T. Woodhouse, ‘The gentle hand of peace? British peacekeeping and conflict resolution in complex emergencies’, International Peacekeeping 6: 2, Summer 1999, pp. 24–37; T. Woodhouse and O. Ramsbotham, ‘Cosmopolitan peacekeeping and the globalization of security’, International Peacekeeping 12: 2, 2005; D. Good- win, The military and negotiation: the role of the soldier diplomat (London: Frank Cass, 2005).