Abstract

In the Northern region of Ghana in the mid-1990s a coalition of NGOs came together to mediate an end to a large-scale inter-ethnic conflict. This essay develops the theoretical concepts of conflict and peace narratives to show how this process was able to transcend the violence. It also examines how the NGO-mediated negotiations compared and related with concurrent state initiatives. NGO advantage derived from the social capital that these organisations had accumulated through local service provision, and the perceived neutrality of the talks they arranged, highlighting the complex relationships between the provision of services, state resources and conflict resolution effectiveness.