Agency & peacebuilding: the promise of local zones of peace

International peacebuilding has expanded rapidly in the two decades since the Agenda for Peace was published. Alongside this growth of peacebuilding has come the realisation that many peacebuilding projects conceived of and sponsored by the international community have failed to meet their own objectives or, more importantly, failed to have been embraced fully by those they were supposed to help: the individuals and communities attempting to rebuild their lives in post-conflict countries. Critical analysts discuss the current state of peacebuilding and model what they see as the post-liberal peacebuilding paradigm. In doing so, they point to agency as a missing element in local peacebuilding practice. This paper unpacks and theorises agency as a form of human need and proposes the use of zones of peace (ZoPs) as one method for engendering local agency while encouraging good governance, transparency and accountability in local peacebuilding projects.