The international conference on "African conflicts: Their Management, Resolution and Post-Conflict Reconstruction" splintered into three different groups on the second day with each group addressing a specific phase in the three phases of a conflict. Group 3 addressed the post-conflict phase. It examined the strategies for consolidating peace, social reconstruction and economic development.

Although the Group came up with a list of key issues that needed to be addressed as well as a list of suggestions for internal and external actors, the process of arriving at these lists featured robust debates with participants drawing from different comparative experiences.

First, group ruminated on what constitutes a post-conflict phase. Two possible answers presented themselves: the post-conflict phase refers to the period that hostilities have seized. The major weakness in this is that it failed to specifically state what point the post-conflict phase begins. For instance, is it a month, or two, a year or five years after the cessation of hostilities? Where hostilities intermittently re-occur, as in Liberia, at what point does the post-conflict phase begin?

The second option avoids this pitfall by identifying the post-conflict phase as beginning with the "cessation of hostilities based on an agreement or an agreed upon framework involving all parties/factions".

The group discussion revolved around the issues worthy of attention in the Consolidation of Peace, Social Reconstruction and Economic Development. Two preliminary observations were agreed upon at this stage:

(i) That the primary responsibility of consolidating peace rests firmly with the peoples, government and internal actors to the conflict.

(ii) That the evolution of a broad-based national consensus and of a mechanism for social and economic reconstruction is a fundamental pre-requisite to consolidating sustainable peace.

Two categories of actors are involved in a conflict - the internal and the external actors. The latter always come in to defend one of the warring parties or to be part of the peace-seeking efforts. In both respects, it is only the involvement of the internal actors that can guarantee sustainable peace. This is the lesson that conflicts in Africa have repeatedly demonstrated. Where internal actors to a conflict remain adamant on their demands or one opposed to the peace process, those engaged in the process are chasing shadows. The resolution of conflicts therefore, requires the acquisance of all warring parties. The involvement of such parties in the peace consolidation process is also a necessary condition for the sustainability and consolidation of the process.

This logically links with the need for a broad-based consensus and of a mechanism for social and economic reconstruction. This falls in two parts. Unless a broad-based consensus of the internal actors is achieved, the peace process cannot move towards consolidation. As long as a party to a conflict remains opposed to peace, there is enough ground to suspect the peace process. At another level, a state coming out of conflict is a state in disarray. Th