need of peace and stability for development essay

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Peace and stability must be at the heart of the global development agenda

Every minute, someone dies from armed violence somewhere in the world (pdf), according to human rights groups and peace campaigners. Though the number of international conflicts has decreased in recent decades, achieving lasting global peace remains an elusive goal.

Next week, world leaders will gather at the UN headquarters in New York to discuss, among other topics, a new global development agenda. The body's eight millennium development goals , which include the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, expire in 2015, giving UN member states the opportunity to shape the future of development. They also have the chance to position peace and stability at the centre of the debate.

In countries marred by conflict and disaster, development tends to focus on promoting economic growth and progress in specific social sectors such as health and education. Fundamental issues for lasting peace and stability – rule of law and justice, good governance, social cohesion, economic and environmental sustainability – are often left at the margins.  

If we continue with the current model, the already costly global and local implications will increase. We are seeing increases in the recurrence, longevity and diffusion of conflict, the incidence and severity of disasters, degradation of the environment, depletion of natural resources, transnational crime, volatility in societies previously characterised as stable, financial crises and various forms of inequality. These trends are interconnected.

At the UN development programme (UNDP), where our mandate directs us to respond to crises and support long-term progress, it is our experience that sustainable development is tied to the advancement of lasting peace and stability. 

To my surprise, I often hear arguments against including peace and stability in a new global development agenda. One of the most common of these arguments is that building long-term peace and stability is separate from the work of long-term human development. In fact, peace and stability do not fall outside of the boundaries of development. The two must go hand in hand.

Violence not only claims lives, but also unravels the very fabric of society, leaving schools and hospitals destroyed and a devastated population suffering the physical and psychological toll. If we look at the facts, nine out of 10 countries with the lowest human development index have experienced conflict within the past 20 years, and about 40% of fragile and post-conflict countries relapse within a decade .

Investing in peace, stability and transparent and accountable governance is fundamental to long-term development and prosperity. In Ghana, once known for political instability, military coups and violence, nationally led efforts with international support to address inter-ethnic tensions and promote dialogue across all sectors of society has paid off.

Ghana boasts 25 years of stability, four peaceful elections and has achieved significantly larger and more rapid increases in its human development index (HDI) than predicted for countries at a similar level of HDI value in 1990.

Another argument I often hear is that mixing peace and security efforts with development work can compromise national sovereignty. The reality is that early action to address the root causes of crisis, such as social inequality or low access to justice and security, is key to preventing brewing tensions from escalating into full-blown conflict. Waiting for the security council to intervene under "exceptional circumstances" may prove too late for many thousands of people.

In today's world of social media and instant connectivity, ideas and even violence can spread like wildfire. One dramatic and tragic act of protest by a fruit seller in Tunisia  ignited simmering tensions across borders in the region.

The uprisings that followed were a reflection of tensions and social and economic inequalities that had been beneath the surface for years. Had an alternative development pathway based on inclusive growth and the rule of law been followed, the outcome could have been different.

Some also argue that we cannot work effectively towards these goals because peace and stability cannot be measured . Though our experience with measuring progress against these outcomes is more limited than our experience with measuring progress towards socioeconomic outcomes, the fact that they are measurable is beyond dispute.  A plethora of initiatives, tools and mechanisms exist for the purpose of identifying and measuring conflict- and violence-prevention outcomes, including within the UN organisations. 

In Timor-Leste, for example, when returning refugees and internally displaced people destabilised the country's fragile peace between 2007-09, the UNDP and its partners trained community mediators to decrease tensions around land ownership and helped the government to establish a department for peace-building. Up to 13,000 families were able to return peacefully to their homes by 2010.

To evaluate these and other results, UNDP tracks success in terms of milestones a country achieves – from accepting the need for development and conflict prevention to including such prevention (pdf) within national policies.

While armed violence and conflict continue to take lives, destroy infrastructure and deplete employment opportunities, their most destructive force lies in derailing states and societies from their long-term development goals and prospects for a better future. During the forthcoming discussions surrounding the next global development framework to succeed the millennium development goals, world leaders must work together to include peace, good governance and stability at the centre of the debate.

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5 experts on how to advance global peace and stability in a new era of geopolitics 

The war in Ukraine signals a new era of geopolitics. Image:  REUTERS/Stijn Swinnen

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Mark leonard, samir saran, ivo daalder.

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• Russia's invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a new era of geopolitics.
• Global crises over security, economics, energy and the environment abound.
• Leaders signal ways to advance global stability and peace.

The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2022 convenes at the most consequential geopolitical and geo-economic moment of the past three decades and against the backdrop of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears to have signalled the emergence of a new geopolitical era – one that is being shaped by heightened and hostile competition over security, economic, energy, and ideological interests.

To respond to this new reality, the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Geopolitics is reflecting on the role leaders must play to address urgent humanitarian and security challenges as they simultaneously advance long-standing economic, environmental and societal priorities.

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Five members of the council discuss what they see as priorities in the advancement of global peace and stability, and the steps that could be taken to stabilize specific sectors that are frontlines of conflict.

'Helping Ukraine defeat Russia's invasion is the key priority '

Ambassador Paula Dobriansky, Co-Chair, Global Future Council on Geopolitics

While Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity, which are threatened by Russia, merit support, a great deal more is at stake. Putin’s blatant aggression, if successful, will destroy the post-World War II European security architecture and will legitimize the use of force as a legitimate instrument of statecraft, making warfare a permanent feature of the international system.

Meanwhile, Moscow’s war crimes and genocidal strategies, unless their perpetrators are held accountable, will strip warfare of all limitations, and render it particularly brutal and destructive. To prevent these calamitous developments from occurring, helping Ukraine decisively defeat Russia's invasion is the key priority.

But, while mishandling Russia's aggression against Ukraine would cause grave regional and global problems, tackling it well is likely to produce considerable security benefits. Indeed, there is already abundant evidence that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and many, albeit not all, Asian democracies are cooperating to an unprecedented extent in supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Moscow.

The unfolding NATO accession by Finland and Sweden is but one example of the growing NATO strength. The commitment by Germany to increase defence spending to comport with NATO's 2% of the GDP benchmark, will both greatly augment its military capabilities and help reduce long-standing trans-Atlantic tensions over burden-sharing. This cooperative network can and should be sustained and might well evolve into a broader democratic partnership for handling a range of security threats.

Fragility and conflict in one country often has consequences around the world. This has been evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous climate emergencies as well as the war in Ukraine and the ensuing refugee crisis. Regions affected by conflict are particularly vulnerable to the devastating impacts of these crises. Urgent relief, supported by public-private partnerships, remains necessary in acute crises but it is essential those efforts are supplemented by long-term investments that help affected communities recover and rebuild.

The World Economic Forum is working with partners to identify and scale solutions in fragile parts of the world. The Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative seeks to unlock private capital so it flows into financially sustainable opportunities that benefit vulnerable communities. The Global Future Council on the New Agenda for Fragility and Resilience provides guidance to humanitarian and development actors as well as the private sector to improve support to local actors and facilitate responses that strengthen community resilience.

To learn more and get involved in initiatives that are improving millions of lives, contact us .

'Rather than ending connectivity, we should try to devise rules and norms that take the sting out of it '

Mark Leonard, Director, European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)

In the longer term, we need to rebuild the European security order and prepare for a world of unpeace. We do not just see the tragedy of war in Ukraine – every aspect of globalization is being turned into a weapon. Putin is using high energy bills, refugees, disinformation and cyberattacks to weaken Ukraine and the countries that are supporting it.

In response, many governments have cut Russia off from the global financial system, diversified their energy supplies and tried to decouple their economies and societies from Russia. Many countries, citizens and companies across the world will be inadvertent victims of this conflict.

In my book The Age of Unpeace I show how the good and bad features of connectivity are inextricably entwined – and that it is impossible to untangle them without destroying many of the biggest advances in our civilization. Rather than ending connectivity, we should try to devise rules and norms that take the sting out of it or disarm it. If the Cold War was eased by arms control, the equivalent for our age is “disarming connectivity”.

The consequences of the war in Ukraine will be far-reaching 

What do sanctions help achieve an expert explains, 'it is imperative for those with voice and influence to be equally creative in the pursuit of peace '.

Samir Saran, President, Observer Research Foundation (ORF)

The Russia-Ukraine war has reached an unstoppable force-immovable object impasse. The political emotions invested in it are appreciable, but it is moot if they are worth the unfolding human tragedy and resultant upheaval in the global economy. Post-pandemic recovery, patchy and uneven in any case, has been seriously imperilled by a worldwide inflation in food and energy prices. Governments and societies far away from Europe are feeling the pressure. It is imperative for those with voice and influence to step up and be equally creative in the pursuit of peace.

The war has only exacerbated the pandemic’s continuing hollowing out of global supply chains. From Shanghai to the Steppes, from finance, commodities and resources to components and finished goods, chokepoints have strangulated world markets. There is an urgent need to both de-crinkle supply lines, as politically feasible, and diversify supply lines, as economically practical.

Finally, as summer temperatures soar in South Asia and beyond, climate change is an everyday, every-person crisis. The commitment to climate finance and green technology flows to countries such as India, where the battle for our ecology’s future will be truly and meaningfully fought, is loud; the action is muted. This has to change – now.

'Rules-based order must be sustained and strengthened'

Ivo Daalder, President, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

The 20th century was divided into two halves: the first was characterized by two world wars that killed over 100 million people; the second by the longest period of great power peace in history. The essential difference between the two eras was the prevalence of a rules-based order based on the concepts of collective security, shared prosperity, and respect for the rule of law. All of these rules have been violated by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Our most important priority must be to ensure Moscow fails in its evil designs on a neighbouring country and to make upholding the rules-based order the most important, collective responsibility of those states committed to, and benefitting from, that order. This responsibility falls on all states – not just those who have responded most swiftly to Russia’s aggression.

While states no doubt differ on the best way to respond to Russia, there can be no doubt that it is in the fundamental interest of all of them that the rules-based order is sustained and strengthened lest we return to a world of the early 20th century, where the strong did as they will and the weak as they must.

Ukraine, inflation and pandemics: the big issues in a changed world, according to historian Adam Tooze

These 3 charts show the impact of war in ukraine on global trade, 'peace and security require being judicious about joining the right dots'.

Lynn Kuok, Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow for Asia-Pacific Security, International Institute for Strategic Studies

Advancing global peace and security will require the world to connect the dots across regions but refrain from linking them where unwarranted. While many in Asia see what is happening in Europe as a fairly contained event that does not risk reshaping the global order, this neglects its implications for international law if not properly addressed.

Countries that sit on the fence on this issue, rationalizing that Europe is far away, overlook how an assault on the rules-based order in one part of the world hurts it everywhere. In the same way that – quite apart from economic repercussions – developments in Europe should concern Asia, Europe should not neglect the Indo-Pacific as it battles a crisis closer to home. Though less dramatic than open conflict, the slow burn of an eroding rules-based order also hurts peace and security. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, international law was being undermined in Asia, most notably by China’s actions in the South China Sea.

It is equally important, however, not to make erroneous linkages which are counterproductive. China and Russia have proclaimed a “no-limits” partnership, but Beijing’s response since their joint statement in early February suggests discomfiture over Moscow’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine or at least how it has gone so wrong. While there are likely natural limits to the China-Russia partnership and the acts of the two countries are not equivalent, this appears irrelevant to the at times cynical propensity to paint the two countries with the same brush.

Doing so, however, is a mistake if one’s goal is peace and security. Framing the contest as one between liberal democracies and authoritarian states unnecessarily deepens divisions, makes cooperation difficult, alienates potential partners, and opens up strategic space to China. Peace and security require being judicious about joining the right dots.

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On SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

When the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted, Goal 16 was seen as truly transformative, formally linking, for the first time at the United Nations, development, peace, justice, and good governance. Some of its more ambitious targets include significantly reducing all forms of violence, ending abuse and violence against children, promoting the rule of law, reducing illicit financial flows and corruption, and developing accountable and transparent institutions.

But Goal 16 was not adopted without controversy. Many countries argued against the intrusion of peace and security, and even more so justice, considerations into the development sphere, and would have preferred that the goal be dropped altogether. Other countries maintained that this goal was central for them and that their support for the 2030 Agenda hinged upon it.

Nearly three years later, progress on Goal 16 is uneven, and there is considerable doubt that it can be achieved at its current implementation rate. Challenges arise in all countries, including Canada, and are likely to become more acute given current trends, particularly those related to violence.

Violence worldwide is on the rise and becoming increasingly complex and multidimensional. Almost half the world’s people have been affected by political violence over the last fifteen years, with lower-income countries bearing a disproportionately high share of the burden of armed violence. Yet developed countries are not immune — in many parts of the developed world, different forms of violence are also on the rise. Canada itself faces domestic challenges in addressing issues of violence and homicide, particularly against women and children.

Canada is also facing challenges in other related areas of Goal 16. Issues of justice for Indigenous Peoples have been much debated but insufficiently addressed over the past four decades. Comprehensively combatting transnational organised crime and illicit financial flows are elusive goals for Canada as well.

The challenge will be linking these subnational priorities with national strategies.

A common impediment for countries attempting to implement Goal 16 is the yawning gaps in reliable data, making it difficult to measure progress in meeting the goal’s targets. Fragile and conflict-affected states, in particular, often have incomplete, imperfect, or a total lack of data. The countries of the world vary hugely in their capacity to collect, monitor, and track indicators.

Moreover, obstacles to reaching the goals of SDG 16 are increasingly encountered in urban areas. Populations in cities are expected to increase to almost 70 per cent by 2050, and cities register higher homicide rates than rural areas. The challenges found within ‘fragile cities’ — characterised by rapid, unregulated urbanisation; high levels of inequality, unemployment, and violence; poor access to key services; and exposure to climate threats — mean that Goal 16 must be addressed at the subnational level.

In this context, one possible approach to accelerate the pace of implementation is to link national and local-level policies, providing greater support to subnational governance institutions. Local and regional governments in many countries have already recognised this, arguing that new institutional arrangements and channels of coordination need to underpin more effective, accountable, and transparent institutions, as well as more responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making. This is necessary for local governments to become more responsive to their communities, and for states to deliver on Goal 16.

Positive initiatives are currently underway that illustrate how this is happening. New forms of participatory decision-making — such as in budgeting and in enhancements to city housing, service delivery, and slum conditions — have led to improvements in public security and urban safety. Local governments have been working internationally and nationally to share relevant information and innovative, frequently data-driven, solutions.

The challenge will be linking these subnational priorities with national strategies. For example, Canada’s progress in implementing its Federal Sustainable Development Strategy 2016–2019, which focuses on the environmental aspects of the SDGs, does not sufficiently account for Goal 16, even though one of the aims of the strategy is to build safe, secure, and sustainable communities. However, at the provincial level, many strategies overlap with the SDGs — without specifically mentioning them — focusing on employment, education, and environmental concerns, but less commonly on violence and justice.

Achieving implementation of Goal 16 is a daunting task globally, for poorer countries in particular. The plethora of targets and indicators aiming to guide them tends to create white noise. Some countries have been felt disempowered by the ambition and wide spectrum of the 2030 Agenda, as much as they have been able to harness its potential for energising society. This has represented an obvious downside in practice to the United Nations’ otherwise admirable effort to design an all-encompassing agenda.

National governments will get to showcase their achievements at the United Nations High Level Political Forum, which is reviewing Goal 16 in 2019. Until then, greater effort is required nearly everywhere to achieve implementation of national policies towards this goal. Improved links between the national and subnational levels will move us all in the right direction.

This essay is part of Awakening — a collection of essays and artwork exploring sustainable development, organized by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, Canada.

David M. Malone

Dr David M. Malone is Rector of the United Nations University and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Integrated Approaches to Peace and Sustainability

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• Ayyoob Sharifi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8983-8613 5 ,
• Dahlia Simangan 5 &
• Shinji Kaneko 5  

Part of the book series: World Sustainability Series ((WSUSE))

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Peace and sustainability are already widely recognized in academic discourses as intrinsically related. Despite this, there is still a lack of integrated approaches to peace and sustainability in policy and practice. This could undermine efforts aimed at developing peaceful and sustainable communities. In this chapter, we first explore how approaches toward the nexus between peace and sustainability have evolved over time. Next, we elaborate on the need for integrated approaches that show the complex and dynamic interactions between peace and sustainability. Finally, we discuss that this volume sheds light on the peace-sustainability nexus through various lenses, focusing more on issues related to politics and governance, refugees, media, women, culture, and religion. The examples highlighted in this volume make a case for the better integration of peace and sustainability in local and global policies and practices. However, much remains to be done to better understand the dynamics of the nexus between peace and sustainability. There is a need to further work on channels through which peace and sustainability are linked. These include, for instance, issues related to the environment, health, resources, ethics, justice, and economy. Therefore, we encourage researchers and policymakers to do more research on these issues to explore other opportunities for the integration of peace and sustainability.

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Sharifi, A., Simangan, D., Kaneko, S. (2023). Integrated Approaches to Peace and Sustainability. In: Sharifi, A., Simangan, D., Kaneko, S. (eds) Integrated Approaches to Peace and Sustainability . World Sustainability Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7295-9_1

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Peace and development

SIPRI looks at the long-term causes of insecurity to understand how societies identify and navigate paths to sustainable peace.

Developing and sustaining peace requires an understanding of the root causes of conflict and insecurity. SIPRI looks at what fuels conflict and what drives long-term, positive change by analysing economic, social, political and environmental factors. We contribute to both research and dialogue in order to inform policy and practice to forge a path to peace. 

Our work in this field is broad, with topics ranging from corruption in the security sector, inclusive peacebuilding to climate change. Conflicts are rarely caused by one single factor; often several issues play a role to reinforce and exacerbate each other. Our analysis is also multidisciplinary and applies a variety of social sciences and methods. SIPRI’s research reflects the complexity of conflict drivers and the relationships between them, as well as how they differ across contexts.

A crucial part of SIPRI’s work on peace and development is the   Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development . Held every spring, the Stockholm Forum brings together senior researchers, policymakers and practitioners to discuss and address the most pressing peacebuilding issues.

RESEARCH THEMES

SIPRI looks at the effects of climate change on peace and security.

The Environment of Peace initiative looks at how to secure peace in a new era of risk.

SIPRI seeks to improve the understanding of the relationship between food, security, stability and peace. For this work, SIPRI has agreed a multi-year partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

SIPRI focuses on systems of governance, their effects on local populations, and their relationship to the emergence of armed conflict or sustainable peace in a given setting.

SIPRI focuses on the conditions necessary to resolve conflicts and the effects of positive peace in promoting sustainable development.

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Why we need to “Rethink Stability” – Challenges & Recommendations

“Stabilisation” has become a major part of the international toolbox in conflict affected areas. Despite their stated purpose of reducing violence and laying the structural foundations for longer-term security, these efforts have too often not only failed, but on occasion made conflict worse.

In response, Interpeace in partnership with Atlantic Council , led a two-year initiative called Rethinking Stability with the support of the Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik (BAKS) and the financial support of the Governments of Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Through five dialogues on three continents, in-depth research, and discussions with over 1000 policymakers, academics, practitioners, and citizens experiencing stabilisation initiatives, the project aimed to revisit and question the conceptual and operational norms behind stabilisation efforts and improve the prospect of future work contributing to lasting peace.

The initiative culminated in two reports: the first, Challenges to the Stabilisation Landscape: The case for Rethinking Stability , describes the specific challenges that have hindered stabilisation efforts; and the second Recommendations paper , suggests operational ways to address them.

Key challenges & Lessons Learned

The experiences of twenty years of stabilisation interventions in Iraq, Mali, DRC, Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere will significantly shape future efforts. To meaningfully rethink, redo and improve the ways in which stabilisation activities are conducted, it is critical to draw the correct lessons from these experiences.

At present, ambiguity around what ‘stabilisation’ is and how it is done has led to competing priorities among security, humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding actors. This has made it difficult to develop a clear strategic vision of success around which actors can orientate their different strands of work, resulting in poorer peace outcomes for conflict affected populations.

Compounding this definitional and strategic ambiguity has limited conflict analysis. Working from incomplete conflict analyses has seen stabilisation efforts stall, or else operate in conflict insensitive ways. As such, efforts have listed and lingered, with little success in transforming the social and political drivers of conflict that would permit a safe exit strategy.

Moreover, people affected by conflict have rarely been given sufficient opportunities to design the stabilisation activities that shape their lives. In pursuit of ‘returning the state,’ stabilisation efforts tend to get stuck at the elite level in capital cities, hindering a much more inclusive process that impedes broader national input, ownership and support. This continues despite clear evidence that overly focusing on the central government, securitising one set of elites, and turning national capitals into fortresses, is no recipe for stability. Exploitative elites, corrupt bureaucracies, and captured or poorly functioning institutions have all been propped up in the interests of immediate stability, only to emerge later as significant obstacles to reform and new sources of popular grievance. This version of ‘stability’ can only be sustained by continued international military support, and is far removed from the inclusive, self-sustaining stability that people living in conflict affected areas require.

Indeed, securitised responses alone are unfit to meet what are really political, social, and economic drivers of instability. These need to be addressed through multi-disciplinary and integrated approaches able to complement each other. This has serious implications for staff recruitment, retention, and incentivisation, not to mention where funding is directed and to what end.

Learning and adaptation is difficult in unstable areas. Movement can be limited as can access to reliable data, whilst contexts can change quickly. However, resources must be apportioned to make evaluation and learning a critical component of every stabilisation programme despite these challenges. Otherwise it is verging on impossible to know whether progress is being made and where to adapt and improve. Beyond resources and capacity, the culture of stabilisation may need to shift. Stabilisation is very difficult work with setbacks highly likely. However, there is evidence that on occasion there has been pressure for staff to demonstrate success when, in fact, efforts have not been going to plan at all. All actors will need to arrest this trend and foster a culture of honesty, reflection and support. Only then can failures become learning moments rather than missed opportunities to improve.

The first paper dives deeper into these and other challenges and begins to show how more inclusive political strategies, principled approaches and realistic timelines may generate better stabilisation outcomes for people.

Actionable Recommendations

For those working on stabilisation who will have to grapple with these issues in the near future, the answers cannot be framed around the same logic of securitisation that has defined the past. Instead, the challenge will be to describe, with much more clarity, how stabilisation activities will contribute to the development of genuinely inclusive political processes able to improve governance, and construct systems, networks and institutions necessary to recognise and respond to the real grievances behind people’s instability.

To that end, and although stabilisation is understood in different ways, actors appear to agree on three central tenets around which more integrated and principled work could be designed:

•  Stabilisation activities should improve the stability and peace of communities in active armed conflicts.
• It is fundamentally a political process and cannot be attained by security arrangements alone.
• It should be temporary and transitional, designed to achieve the peace conditions required for legitimate stability, so that international actors can move away from security and other functions that should be the preserve of host governments.

Peace conditions are changes that conflict affected populations themselves deem necessary for durable peace and stability. Introducing it marks an important reframing of what achieving genuine stability entails. Peace conditions are put in the center of the recommendations paper, which refocuses stabilisation work on collectively understanding and responding to the political and social drivers of instability in each context. The paper makes 30 recommendations, divided across Strategic Planning, Operations, and Learning & Adaptation. Three key recommendations include:

• Ensure stabilisation efforts are locally and nationally owned by defining peace conditions jointly with key stakeholders. These can offer a strategic framework to guide action and measure progress, and a shared agenda for the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, promoting the right action by the right actor at the right moment.
• Plan exits and encourage inclusive political transitions from the start. Plans will change over time, but decisions on when and how to exit and transition should not be tied to temporal deadlines or international political whims, but based on progress towards the achievement of peace conditions indicating it is safe to do so.
• Design theories of change that are rooted in political economy analysis and describe how activities will solve the real problems driving instability. Theories should not privilege state authority discourses, but improve trust, resilience, and the social contracts at the core of positive peace. This approach is likely to require more support for hybrid governance solutions, and a stronger focus on resilience and prevention.

Realising peace conditions will certainly require smarter policies, practices, and resources used, and some of the recommendations address this. However, as a field, the larger challenge will be to change our stabilisation habits and processes that have brought us to where we are. Some may find this aspiration, and perhaps the very notion of peace conditions, naïve. Yet, as current stabilisation efforts stall, any serious effort of Rethinking Stability obliges us to decide what we need to improve both as individuals and institutions to make sure that future efforts are a wholesale improvement on how we currently operate. We hope these recommendations can support that process of introspection and change, and refocus future efforts on what has too often been a secondary consideration: achieving inclusive and sustainable peace for people living in conflict affected environments.

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Lot te Knudsen   Ambassador, European Union to the United Nations in Geneva

Lotte Knudsen was previously the Managing Director in the European Union’s External Action service, in charge of global and multilateral issues, as well as human rights. She also served in the European Commission in a number of different posts. She was in charge of developing international relations in DG Justice and Home Affairs, before becoming Director, first on Security, including counter-terrorism issues; then on Justice issues, including legislative negotiations, in DG Justice; and in DG development dealing with thematic issues from migration, to health and human development. Earlier she also worked in the Relex DGs on EU/US relations and the EU Accession negotiations; in the Commission Secretariat General as well as in the Foreign Office in London, on a two-year secondment. She studied at the Ecole National d’Administration in Paris and the College of Europe in Bruges.

Kirsti Kauppi   Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Finland to United Nations in Geneva

H.E. Kirsti Kauppi, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Finland. Before Geneva, Ms. Kauppi served as Ambassador of Finland to the United States (2015 – 2020). She was Director General for Political Affairs (2012 – 2015) and Director General for Africa and the Middle East (2009 – 2012) at the MFA in Helsinki. She served as Ambassador to Austria and Permanent Representative to the UN-related international organizations in Vienna (2005 – 2009), where she also served as the Finnish Governor in the IAEA Board of Governors, including vice chair of the Board. Since joining the MFA in 1983, Ambassador Kauppi has served in the Finnish Embassies in Berlin, Washington and Bangkok and at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the EU. In the MFA, her positions have included heading the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy Coordination Unit and serving as advisor to the State Secretary. Ambassador Kauppi holds Master ́s degree in Economics from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. In addition to her native Finnish, Ambassador Kauppi speaks English, Swedish, German and French.

Hiba Qasas   Director, Principles for Peace Secretariat

Hiba Qasas served at the United Nations for 16 years in various leadership and expert roles at headquarters and in Arab States. Former Chief of the Crisis Prevention and Response Office in Geneva. Former UN Women Country Representative in Iraq. Coordinated Crisis Prevention and Response with UNDP’s Crisis Bureau at headquarters and led programmes at UNDP office in Jerusalem. Ms. Qasas has 18 years of experience in policy, programming and partnerships in development, peace and humanitarian contexts. Ms Qasas is a Palestinian national and holds a Master of Sciences in International Cooperation for Development from the European School for Advanced Studies, University of Pavia, Italy.

Sacha Meuter   Head of Policy and Research, and Legal Advisor, Fondation Hirondelle

Sacha Meuter is Head of Research and Policy, and Legal Advisor at Fondation Hirondelle. Sacha has been researching and working with media in fragile contexts for more than 15 years. At Fondation Hirondelle, he develops partnerships with academic actors, think tanks and international organizations to design and implement media impact assessment studies, to elaborate online and offline media monitoring tools and to improve media support policies. His work includes regular field missions, including in the Sahel and Central Africa. Sacha also seats on the boards of The New Humanitarian and Trial International.

Anne-Marie Buzatu   Vice President & Chief Operations Officer, ICT4Peace Foundation

Anne-Marie Buzatu is the Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of ICT4Peace Foundation. An international lawyer by training, she also worked for several years in the information technology sector as a web developer and database administrator. Anne-Marie consults with governments and international organizations and develops and delivers capacity building in the areas of cyber (human) security policy, multistakeholder approaches to governance and impacts of private commercial actors on human rights. She has also published several policy papers and articles in the areas of private security and cybersecurity.

Lisa Schirch   Richard G. Starmann Sr. Professorship Chair in Peace Studies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

Dr. Lisa Schirch is Richard G. Starmann Sr. Chair and Professor of the Practice of Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Schirch is also a Research Fellow for the Social Media, Technology, and Peacebuilding program for the Toda Peace Institute. Schirch is the author of eleven books including most recently Social Media Impacts on Conflict and Democracy (2021).

Alex Krasodomski-Jones   Digital Policy Researcher, Chatham House

Alex is in charge of Digital Policy at Chatam House since August 2022. Before that, he used to be researcher and Director of the Center for the Analysis of Social Media at the UK think-tank DEMOS. He has authored more than a dozen major reports on digital election integrity, content moderation practices, digital regulation and the intersection between tech and politics. He led the centre’s visual analytics practice, and provided written and televised comment for the BBC, CNN, Wired, the Spectator and other outlets.

Annika Erickson-Pearson   Head of Community Management, Geneva Peacebuilding Platform

Annika Erickson-Pearson is a facilitator, event manager and researcher, currently heading community management at GPP. She works to build connections, community, and collaboration between various peacebuilding actors in and out Geneva on a variety of topics, including environmental peacebuilding. Annika is an experienced community organizer, political advocate and event manager, working with nearly a dozen NGOs over the past nine years, including the Conference on World Affairs, Represent.Us, Run for Something, StartingBloc, and the Global Campaign for Education.

She holds a Master's degree from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva where her research focused on urban violence and gang desistance policies in the U.S.

Cecilia Sanchez-Bodas   Programme Specialist, UNICEF

Cecilia Sanchez-Bodas is currently part of the team in UNICEF Headquarters that coordinates and supports the humanitarian response for major current emergencies and leads on the efforts to implement the triple nexus in both humanitarian and development UNICEF  programmes. Cecilia is a certified nurse holding a Master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She has worked in humanitarian and development contexts with iNGOs, the Red Cross and the UN in Africa, Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean regions.

Julius Jackson   Technical Officer, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Julius Jackson is a Technical Officer (Protracted Crises), working for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) based in Rome. He has held a variety of positions with FAO since 2002, including managing development projects, and leading the large-scale emergency flood response in Pakistan from 2010-2012. Between 2013-2015 he coordinated technical support to develop the Committee on World Food Security’s global policy for food security and nutrition in protracted crises. He created and leads the Conflict and Peace Unit under the Office for Emergencies and Resilience, supporting context analyses, conflict-sensitive programme design and how FAO’s work can contribute to peace. This underpins FAO’s work across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus, and how this can be better operationalised. He holds a BSc in politics from Plymouth University and an MA in international conflict analysis from the University of Canterbury.

Kevin Babila Ousman   Interim lead of the Interagency Policy for Emergency Unit, World Health Organization (WHO)

Kevin Ousman is a Cameroonian/American with over 15 years of public health experience (clinical, field/field and academia). He is interim lead of the Interagency Policy for Emergency (IPE) unit in WHO’s health emergency program in Geneva. The IPE unit manages humanitarian policy issues and serves as the liaison office with other humanitarian UN agencies. Prior to this role, he coordinated the Infection Prevention and Control unit in the WHO Health Emergencies program for the Africa Region. Mr. Ousman holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and an Masters of Science with a Health Systems Management concentration from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Mr Ousman has published extensively covering health systems issues and practical public health interventions (mainly in infection prevention and control interventions in health emergency response in humanitarian settings).

Nieves Thomet   Employment for Peace Specialist, International Labour Organization (ILO)

Nieves Thomet joined the ILO in 2001, as a partnership officer. From 2004 to 2008, she coordinated an ILO Local Economic Development program based in Maputo, Mozambique, and later a Social Dialogue for Peace program covering Sahel and Western Africa based in Dakar, Senegal. From 2008 to 2018, Nieves worked as an international consultant for different organizations in many fragile contexts, such as Haiti, Lebanon, Colombia, the Sahel as a specialist on knowledge management and program development related to livelihoods and decent work promotion in fragile settings. In September 2018, Nieves joined ILO’s Coordination Support Unit for Peace and Resilience as decent work for peace specialist. Her work in the ILO focuses on enhancing conflict sensitivity and peace responsiveness across employment and decent work programs in fragile settings. Nieves holds a BA from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and a Master degree from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva. She is French and Spanish, and grew up in Brazil.

Peter Läderach   Principal Scientist, CGIAR

Principal Scientist at CGIAR and Co-lead CGIAR Climate Security, based in Dakar, Senegal. Led the expansion of CIAT's Climate Action program to Central America, Africa and Asia, with extensive work experience in more than 15 countries. Twenty years of research experience in food systems transformation to support developing countries in alleviating poverty, adapting to and mitigating climate change, building resilience and peace. Peter holds an MSc in Geography and a PhD in Tropical Agriculture, he published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and books.

Albert Souza Mülli   Peace Responsiveness Advisor, Interpeace

Albert joined Interpeace in May 2022 as Peace Responsiveness Advisor after nearly eight years as a Governance and Conflict Adviser with the UK Department for International Development (DFID)/Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Officer (FCDO). With DFID/FCDO, Albert worked in Pakistan, Myanmar, Libya, and South Sudan, advising UK Ambassadors and Ministers, national governments, and UN officers on issues including police reform (Pakistan), ceasefire negotiations (Libya), and local- level peacebuilding (Libya/South Sudan). Prior to joining DFID, Albert worked as a camp manager in South Sudan and a peacebuilding programme manager in Kenya/Uganda. Albert has a MA in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

Caroline Pellaton   Corporate Operations Manager, Geneva Water Hub

Caroline Pellaton holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Geneva. She joined the Geneva Water Hub in June 2018 as Corporate Operations Administrator and member of the direction committee. She contributes to define the strategies and orientations of the GWH as well as linking with the major donors. Her work consists also of monitoring the achievements and implementation of the activities. She contributes to the work on shaping the legal framework on water in armed conflicts as well as some other operational activities. Previous to the Geneva Water Hub, she worked over 10 years as a country level program manager in the Water and Habitat Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross in emergencies and post conflict environments in various contexts such as Sri Lanka, Niger, Republic of South Sudan, Central African Republic, Yemen and Jordan.

Leonard Fried Strategic Partnerships Advisor at Interpeace.

Based in Brussels, he manages the political relations with EU member states and other governments. He has previously worked at the European Parliament and at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES). Leonard holds a Master of Science in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a Master of Arts in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies from the College of Europe in Bruges, and a Bachelor of Arts in European Studies from Maastricht University.

Julian Arach   Youth advocate from Uganda, Youth Lab Great Lakes programme

Julian Arach is a 22-year-old Ugandan pursuing a bachelor’s degree of Arts in Economics at Makerere University in her final year. She is passionate about peacebuilding. As a recognition of her unwavering commitment to peacebuilding, Julian has been selected as a member of the YouthLab project—an Interpeace-led project in partnership with 6 civil society organizations in Burundi, DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda—that aims to position the youth in the African Great Lakes region at the forefront of peacebuilding initiatives and processes. She is serving as a one of the six Young Innovators in Uganda, a group of young people who constitute the cornerstone of the program.

Anjli Parrin   Associate Director of the Project on War Crimes and Mass Graves, Human Rights Clinic and Institute, Kenya

Anjli Parrin is a Kenyan human rights advocate and lawyer. She is currently a visiting clinician at the University of Chicago Law School where she directs the Global Human Rights Clinic, which works alongside partners and communities to advance justice and address the inequalities and structural disparities that lead to human rights violations worldwide. She is visiting from Columbia Law School. Anjli conducts human rights factfinding, investigations, and advocacy around the world. Her practice and research focuses on the areas of armed conflict, international criminal law, transitional justice, forensic science and human rights, discrimination and inequality, decolonizing human rights, and the right to health. She has worked alongside forensic scientists to carry out complex war crime investigations, including for the International Criminal Court; successfully proposed new law on exhumations for hybrid courts; and provided trainings to judges, lawyers, police, gendarmerie, NGOs and victims associations on the law and science of suspicious death investigations. She has also developed programs to advance peer support for human rights advocates around the world, and advocated for action to address racial injustice in the child welfare system in the US. Anjli holds a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, a master's degree from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and a bachelor’s degree from the London School of Economics. She is admitted to practice law in New York.

Anita Ernstorfer   Principal and Owner, Untangle (LLC)

Anita Ernstorfer works globally through her advisory and research firm Untangle. Her main substantive expertise is in the areas of systems change and complexity approaches, peacebuilding, dialogue and mediation initiatives and conflict sensitivity/Do No Harm. For the past 20 years Anita has worked in a range of contexts across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. She accompanies strategy, program and change processes with multi-mandate organizations, facilitates collaborative learning engagements and collective impact efforts. Anita supports and advises leadership and program teams to help their organizations work more effectively in transitional and conflict-affected settings. Previously, Anita was the director of the peacebuilding effectiveness practice at CDA Collaborative Learning, and a peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and conflict sensitivity adviser with UNDP and UNICEF. She is a Senior Associate with Interpeace, directs the ‘effective advising in complex contexts’ professional development course, and supports Interpeace’s global initiative on peace responsiveness. Contact: [email protected]

Martine Kessy Ekomo-Soignet   Founder, URU and Peace & Development Watch, Central African Republic (CAR)

Martine Kessy Ekomo-Soignet graduated with an  Master 2 in  Geo-Politic, International Security and  Sociology (Catholic Institute of Paris),and today has 10  years of experience in the field of development and research on issues of peace and security and more specifically on youth and civil society in Central African Republic. She is a community leader and founder of the national NGO URU, which works for the effective participation of young people in the peace and recovery process in the Central African Republic. The organization now covers 14 of the country's 16 prefectures.  At the same time, she represents PeaceDirect in the Central African Republic, a British NGO working primarily to promote peace efforts by civil society organizations in conflict zones.  In 2016, she was appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations (Ban Ki-moon) as an expert on the Study on Youth, Peace and Security Agenda, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2250 (Youth, Peace and Security). She has since been a member of the Global Coalition on Youth, Peace and Security. Through its commitment, it becomes the focal point of the United Nations Headquarters for the implementation of Agenda 2250 in the Central African Republic and  briefed, in plenary session, the Security Council on the urgency of strengthening efforts to help young people contribute effectively to the resolution and prevention of conflicts around the world. In 2019, she was selected to participate in the USIP Generation Change Fellows Program. She worked as a national consultant to the government of the Central African Republic in the development of its first national strategy for the prevention of Radicalization and Violent Extremism. In 2021, she is appointed as member of the Board of Trustees of PEACEDIRECT U.K. and was appointed as member of the group of experts of UNDP in charge of the review of the continental (Africa) strategy on Governance and Peacebuilding. On a global scale, Kessy contributes to various journals and research dealing primarily with issues of youth, peace, security, and development. 

Thomas Wagner Ambassador, Deputy permanent observer of the EU to the United Nations in Geneva

September 2020 Ambassador, Deputy permanent observer of the EU to the United Nations in Geneva; 2017 - 2020 Director of the French Institute in Copenhagen;  2013 - 2017 Deputy Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations in Geneva;  2011 – 2013 Diplomatic Counsellor at the French Ministry of Interior;  2007 - 2010 Deputy Head of Mission, French Embassy in Copenhagen;  2002-2003 Counsellor at the Permanent Representation of France to NATO;  1999-2002 First Secretary at the Permanent Representation of France to the Disarmament Conference; 1996-1999 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Strategic affairs, security and disarmament directorate), Paris;  1995-1996 Third secretary, French Embassy in Ndjamena;  1994 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Strategic affairs, security and disarmament directorate), Paris; 

Camilla Ojala Chair of the UN Youth of Finland and the Finnish UNESCO Youth Delegate

Camilla Ojala is the chair of the UN Youth of Finland and the Finnish UNESCO Youth Delegate. She has also actively taken part in the drafting process of Finland's recently published National Action Plan on the UNSCR2250: Youth, Peace and Security through the 2250-network that has brought together different youth associations and interested youth to collaborate with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in the NAP-process. Camilla continues to be an enthusiastic advocate for youth participation and the YPS-agenda nationally through the UN Youth of Finland and the National Youth Council Allianssi, as well as internationally through the European Youth Forum's Youth, Peace and Security Coordination Network and in her work as the UNESCO Youth Delegate. She studies International Encounters at the University of Helsinki with a focus on peace and conflict studies.

Scott M. Weber President of Interpeace

Scott M. Weber is a French and American specialist in peacebuilding and conflict prevention and is the President of Interpeace, an international organization for peacebuilding.

Initially created by the United Nations in 1994 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland,  Interpeace , supports locally-led peacebuilding initiatives in more than 21 countries in Central America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In January 2018, Interpeace was officially recognized as an international entity by the Swiss Federal Council of Government Ministers. This acknowledgement reaffirms the important role played by the organization in peace processes worldwide.

Prior to his appointment to the role of President on 1 July 2018, Scott served as Director-General of the organization from 2005-2018, providing direction to the organization and overseeing its operations, partnerships and budget. As President, Scott is responsible for strategy, positioning and resource mobilization to grow the organization’s impact, influence and reach.

Prior to joining Interpeace, Scott worked at the  United Nations , in the Office of the  United Nations Director-General in Geneva  (UNOG) and in disaster preparedness

Scott believes strongly in education as a means to shape young generations of global citizens and a more peaceful and inclusive world. In his spare time, he works with schools and universities to integrate Peace Education into their teaching practices and curricula. He is committed to diversity and inclusion and is a member of the  International Gender Champions .

In recognition of his record of professional accomplishments, his commitment to society and his potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world through his leadership, Scott was selected as a Young Global Leader by the  World Economic Forum  (WEF) in 2009. Each year the Forum recognizes “the 200 most distinguished young leaders below the age of 40 from around the world.”

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Economics and Russian from  Georgetown University  and Certificates of Executive Education in Leadership from  Harvard University’s JFK School of Government  and  Oxford University’s Saïd Business School .

Bread and peace: Linking economic development with peacebuilding

• Phil Vernon
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Despite peacebuilding successes, the world is still too violent

The wars in Syria and other parts of the Middle East are a vivid testament that, despite major gains for peace across the world in the past few decades, much more needs to be done. The Global Peace Index score, as measured by the Institute for Economics and Peace, has decreased in recent years. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, at least 1.4 billion people live in around 50 fragile, conflict-affected countries. The situation of people in places as diverse as Yemen, Libya, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Philippines, Mali, India, Colombia, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Ukraine, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Central African Republic – and in countries where political, gang- and crime-related instability and violence prevails – reminds us of the need to focus local and international efforts on peacebuilding, as a critical part of development.

How to build prosperity and peace at the same time

• Decent livelihoods. When people are gainfully employed in decent work (employed, or self-employed), earn enough to live with dignity, and are treated fairly, they have a stake in stability. Decent livelihood opportunities which are accessible to people from all sectors of society help minimise exclusion and maximise social mobility. This obviously requires per capita economic growth.
• Capital. When people can accumulate economic assets securely, to provide them with a cushion in time of need, to improve their income, and to invest in and improve the economy, and can do so in a way that is fair to others, they not only have a stake in stability but are also more empowered to say ‘no’ when politicians and warlords try to foment violence. Their capital may be individually or jointly owned and managed, including by the community or the state as in the case of welfare safety nets.
• Revenue and services. When the state, or other legitimate authorities, collect sufficient tax revenue, and invest it to provide the infrastructure and services needed for the economy and peace to flourish, they increase systemic resilience to violence. It is important they do so fairly and strategically, with both economic growth and strengthening peace as explicit policy intentions.
• Environmental and social sustainability . The right kind of economic development can enhance or at least avoid damaging the environment, and enhance or at least avoid undermining peace-positive attributes in society. This implies effective governance.

Multi-stakeholder effort for peace

Intentionality, ambition and early planning are key.

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Peace as a pre-requisite for development

Jerry White was a 20-year-old college student when, on a camping trip in Israel, he stepped on a landmine and lost his left leg. A Massachusetts native, he spent the following year in Israel, learning not just how to walk again but also how to live as a survivor in society. Thirteen years later, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. But this was merely the beginning. Today, Jerry and his organization Survivor Corps are setting out on a more difficult journey: to build a world where there are no victims, only survivors.

Unlike Jerry, Neichute Doulo grew up in conflict-stricken Nagaland, a region in India comprising 17 different hill tribes. The area was never fully conquered by the British and its residents have carried that proud legacy into their battle against the state of India, one of the longest running secession movements in history. Convinced that Nagaland will not have a viable future (regardless of the outcome of the conflict) without indigenous small-scale industry, Neichute created Entrepreneurs Associates (EA) to foster a new generation of socially responsible business entrepreneurs that strengthen the Naga economy and allow youth the opportunity to actively contribute towards shaping a positive future.

Jerry and Neichute are classic social entrepreneurs, people who come up with new ideas to solve intractable social problems and work relentlessly to execute them in order to achieve lasting social impact; in this case, that of preparing society to overcome the effects of violent conflict. But why is building peaceful societies so critical for economic and social development?

No Development without Peace

Peace is a pre-requisite for development as a whole because it creates an enabling environment for the fundamentals of a society’s progress: human capital formation, infrastructure development, markets subject to the rule of law, and so on. In the absence of peace, education and health structures break down, systems to provide infrastructure disintegrate, and legal commerce is crippled. Critically, peace also frees up resources, both financial and human, that would otherwise be diverted to controlling (or creating) violence.

Intuitively, we’ve long known that peace and development go hand in hand – generally speaking, the more peaceful a society, the more prosperous and stable. But we’re only now starting to understand the economic costs of violent conflict. Over the last ten years, in about 60 countries, violence has significantly and directly reduced growth – in Brazil, 5% of GDP is lost due to violence and crime; in El Salvador it is 25%.  The economist Paul Collier has shown that, on average, annual GDP growth of a conflict-affected country is reduced by 2.3% as a result of the conflict.

Moreover, there is a strong relationship between business enterprise and peace. In a 2008 worldwide study conducted by the United Nations Global Compact, 80% of senior managers felt the size of their markets grew with increasing peacefulness and 79% felt costs decreased with improving peacefulness. Yet, only 13% were aware of the metrics and tools that shed light on the peacefulness of the markets in which they operated. Businesses can play a central role in peace building, since they have an interest not just in profitability but the longer term stability of the markets in which they operate. Recognizing this, Daniel Suárez Zúñiga is developing a series of steps that the private sector in Colombia can follow in order to build peace. These include identifying ways to make business practices more transparent, resolving internal conflicts more constructively, and directing their attention to communities in ways more cognizant of social justice.

The Urgency of Now

Increasingly, peacebuilding is not just an economic necessity but a fiercely urgent one. Climate change, food and water scarcity, and the global economic crisis are all projected to exacerbate violent conflict in the years ahead as resources become scarcer, political instability rises, and inter-group tensions flare. For instance, a National Intelligence Assessment, prepared for American policymakers in 2008, predicted that the impacts of changing climate would emerge as a significant source of political instability over the next few decades, with water shortages in particular likely to create or exacerbate international tensions. Just this past July,  there were community killings over water shortages in Bhopal, India when a family was falsely accused of stealing water from a pipe. Food shortages in Kenya and Nigeria are also of international concern, with Kenya especially on everyone’s watch list given its relatively recent tryst with election violence. Indeed, the US National Academy of Sciences published fresh research in November 2009 indicating that, across Africa, violent conflict is 50% more likely in unusually warm years and is often connected to depleting food supplies. As these forces make themselves felt with ever-pressing urgency, it is critical that we learn how to live and work together peacefully to overcome these challenges to our planet.

The Social Entrepreneur’s Response

When facing a society in conflict, social entrepreneurs respond very much like they would to other social problems. They identify the root of the problem and look for the levers and jujitsu points that they need to press in order to change the nature of the system. As Jerry White got involved in the global anti-landmine campaign, he realized that the most important voice of all was missing from the debate: that of landmine survivors, the vast majority of whom are civilians. Through this crucial (and deceptively simple) insight – that the most authentic and compelling voices against destructive weapons are the civilians who are maimed and left bereft by them – Jerry introduced a new player in the global battle to rid the world of weapons such as landmines and cluster bombs. At the same time, he transformed previously disempowered victims into a powerful movement of survivors. Survivor Corps currently runs healing and rehabilitation programs in 59 countries and has successfully organized global movements to change international norms and laws regarding the use of such weapons.

Far away from the negotiating tables of the UN, Neichute Doulo, the first ever college graduate from his village in Nagaland, understood that one of the biggest drivers of the Naga conflict was that young people had few options to channel their energies towards something productive – Indian security forces did not allow groups of youth to simply hang out. Furthermore, the local economy was being taken over by immigrant businesses from other parts of India, which exacerbated Nagaland’s unemployment problem and increased the frustration and resentment felt towards the Indian state. On the other hand, Naga culture had well-developed social institutions – churches and village councils – that could play key roles in mentoring and fostering youth activity but were prone to look at business and commerce with a jaundiced eye. Believing that socially responsible businesses were the key lever to unlocking many of these problems, Neichute’s organization began to recruit a corps of Naga business leaders to pool their resources and goodwill towards helping youth entrepreneurs get off the ground, all the while mobilizing churches and village elders to play mentorship and cheerleading roles.

Today, there are 80 Ashoka Fellows like Jerry, Neichute, and Daniel working to prevent violent conflict. From their innovations, patterns and principles are emerging, insights that can point us towards the best solutions for resolving conflict in our world. Like Jerry White, many social entrepreneurs understand that those most affected by violent conflict are often the best people to lead us away from it. Like Neichute Doulo, others approach conflict from another angle altogether: creating a mutually beneficial environment outside the conflict that indirectly provides incentives to all to refrain from violence. A soon-to-be-published paper by Ryszard Praszkier and Andrzej Nowak in Columbia University’s  Journal of Peace Psychology argues that this approach, which they call the employing of “positive attractors,” is often more successful than traditional negotiation and conflict resolution processes. In other words, peace becomes a collateral benefit, sneaking up on both parties before they know it.

There is still, of course, a place for traditional conflict resolution. Indeed, many social entrepreneurs are devising innovations in the manner in which conflicts are negotiated and resolved within or between societies. But if there’s one characteristic that distinguishes the social entrepreneur’s response from that of many leading political voices, it is that you don’t build peace by carving out your ideological territories. Rather, you engage the very people affected by the conflict, harnessing and redirecting energy towards a better alternative. It requires a shift in the way we often think about conflict, a shift that one social entrepreneur likens to “kissing a tiger.”

Only by being willing to “kiss the tiger” will we ultimately reverse the predicted escalation of global conflict, replacing it with an increasing number of peaceful societies well positioned for economic growth and social development and, by extension, social enterprise.

This article was originally posted on the Ashoka Peace blog. We are reposting here as the Ashoka Peace blog has now merged with Insight on Conflict.

Roshan Paul, originally from Bangalore, India, now works with Ashoka in its Washington, D.C. global office. A graduate of Davidson College and the Harvard Kennedy School, he is especially interested in how to enable social entrepreneurship in the hardest parts of the world

Sarah Jefferson works in Ashoka’s headquarters in Washington DC, helping to conduct the global search and selection of social entrepreneurs. She received her BA from Lehigh University and her LLM in International Human Rights and Criminal Law from The University of Edinburgh, prior to joining Ashoka.

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Essay on Peace

500 words essay peace.

Peace is the path we take for bringing growth and prosperity to society. If we do not have peace and harmony, achieving political strength, economic stability and cultural growth will be impossible. Moreover, before we transmit the notion of peace to others, it is vital for us to possess peace within. It is not a certain individual’s responsibility to maintain peace but everyone’s duty. Thus, an essay on peace will throw some light on the same topic.

Importance of Peace

History has been proof of the thousands of war which have taken place in all periods at different levels between nations. Thus, we learned that peace played an important role in ending these wars or even preventing some of them.

In fact, if you take a look at all religious scriptures and ceremonies, you will realize that all of them teach peace. They mostly advocate eliminating war and maintaining harmony. In other words, all of them hold out a sacred commitment to peace.

It is after the thousands of destructive wars that humans realized the importance of peace. Earth needs peace in order to survive. This applies to every angle including wars, pollution , natural disasters and more.

When peace and harmony are maintained, things will continue to run smoothly without any delay. Moreover, it can be a saviour for many who do not wish to engage in any disrupting activities or more.

In other words, while war destroys and disrupts, peace builds and strengthens as well as restores. Moreover, peace is personal which helps us achieve security and tranquillity and avoid anxiety and chaos to make our lives better.

How to Maintain Peace

There are many ways in which we can maintain peace at different levels. To begin with humankind, it is essential to maintain equality, security and justice to maintain the political order of any nation.

Further, we must promote the advancement of technology and science which will ultimately benefit all of humankind and maintain the welfare of people. In addition, introducing a global economic system will help eliminate divergence, mistrust and regional imbalance.

It is also essential to encourage ethics that promote ecological prosperity and incorporate solutions to resolve the environmental crisis. This will in turn share success and fulfil the responsibility of individuals to end historical prejudices.

Similarly, we must also adopt a mental and spiritual ideology that embodies a helpful attitude to spread harmony. We must also recognize diversity and integration for expressing emotion to enhance our friendship with everyone from different cultures.

Finally, it must be everyone’s noble mission to promote peace by expressing its contribution to the long-lasting well-being factor of everyone’s lives. Thus, we must all try our level best to maintain peace and harmony.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Peace

To sum it up, peace is essential to control the evils which damage our society. It is obvious that we will keep facing crises on many levels but we can manage them better with the help of peace. Moreover, peace is vital for humankind to survive and strive for a better future.

FAQ of Essay on Peace

Question 1: What is the importance of peace?

Answer 1: Peace is the way that helps us prevent inequity and violence. It is no less than a golden ticket to enter a new and bright future for mankind. Moreover, everyone plays an essential role in this so that everybody can get a more equal and peaceful world.

Question 2: What exactly is peace?

Answer 2: Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in which there is no hostility and violence. In social terms, we use it commonly to refer to a lack of conflict, such as war. Thus, it is freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.

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Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

Hyper-Polarization, COVID, Racism, and the Constructive Conflict Initiative Read about (and contribute to) the  Constructive Conflict Initiative  and its associated Blog —our effort to assemble what we collectively know about how to move beyond our hyperpolarized politics and start solving society's problems. 

By Rebekah Korver

Introduction

Peacebuilding, humanitarian aid, and international development are a trio of fields that overlap both methodologically and conceptually but may not work together in international communities. Even though there are significant advantages to processes and services provided to communities by working together, the cultures of these organizations as well as the funding requirements encourage independent work. The separation of these sectors causes an additional layer of division in conflict zones, as an opportunity to both offer more cohesive services and facilitate peace are lost through the lack of partnerships between these organizations. This paper will explore intersectional peacebuilding and reconciliation through engaging these three international players together, analyzing both the areas of overlap and the potential of working together for more seamless and robust peacebuilding.

Gaps in the Field

International peacebuilding is often conducted in a field already occupied by many other actors; rarely are peacebuilders the only international actors in a conflict. There may be the local community, national peacebuilders, international peacebuilders, humanitarian aid workers, development workers, local and national government actors, international government actors, and private sector players. All of these various groups have their own agendas and offer their own understandings of what peace and reconciliation would look like in this particular context. However, it is possible that a number of these groups may benefit greatly from collaboration with organizations in a different sector.

Development, humanitarian aid, and peacebuilding all work in conflict zones and all have over time solidified their own places within these communities. Humanitarian aid responds to crises with provisions for basic needs, such as healthcare, food, and shelter. [1] Development seeks to improve people’s lives, especially economically, and increase opportunities in communities. [2] Finally, peacebuilding offers tools for reconciling differences, reducing violence, and encouraging measures to prevent a return to conflict. [3] Given the overlapping focuses of these three fields, one community may be host at a given time to organizations and individuals working in all three areas. Yet proximity does not necessitate collaboration. These three fields have become entrenched in a mild turf war that is leaving gaps in services for the community and a weakening of the goals of each field.

The gaps between the work of these industries has been well documented and often spoken of, but little has been done to change the reality on the ground in communities suffering from these divisions. To start with the case of development and humanitarian aid, a common critique is that funding is isolated to either emergency funds (humanitarian aid) or poverty assistance (development) which requires organizations to choose between these types of work, leaving a muddled area between where humanitarian aid ends and development begins. [4] While organizations routinely draw distinctions between these kinds of work, individuals and communities do not move cleanly from needing aid to needing development resources, nor are the reasons for needing either service largely different. Both fields work in communities that, whether through identifiable incident or systemic limitations, find themselves unable to meet their needs. The blurring of the need for development or aid means that the division is artificially constructed by organizations for the sake of funding, leaving individuals caught in the middle without the services they need.

This gray zone between humanitarian aid and development is further complicated by the addition of peacebuilders. Given that some conflict resolution professionals espouse the theory that poverty is a predictor of conflict, [5] it can be difficult to distinguish a project on poverty done by development workers from a project on poverty done by peace workers. Jantzi and Jantzi went so far as to call the division between development and peacebuilding “an artificial dichotomy”, a constructed separation rather than an organic one. [6] While the workers themselves may feel there is a difference given the label they have placed on their work, to the communities these organizations are serving their work may all look similar. Distinguishing the work of these two professions can thus create a difference without a distinction, crowding the field with more international workers without substantive variation in the work that they are doing.

Benefits of Collaboration in Peacebuilding

The division between these spheres of international work are particularly troubling in a conflict setting, where collaboration would be highly beneficial to the communities in crisis. A more unified network of international players would potentially have an increased chance of aiding a peace process. Because humanitarian aid and development workers are often in a community for a more extended amount of time than international peacebuilders, these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have the benefit of building trust among community members. [7] When the assistance they provide has been done well, humanitarian aid and development NGOs may be in a better position to bring community leaders together for peacebuilding than a new actor would be because they have already earned their place in the community through the practical work of providing services such as healthcare and job training. Peacebuilders coming into the community from the outside with the abstract goal of peace may face a harder time gaining the confidence of the community than those who have already been present for years providing aid.

Additionally, NGOs have in some cases already started to move outside their original mandates into providing a form of governance in the communities in which they work. As organizations adopt human rights monitoring as part of their work, they begin to serve as a kind of local government, in some cases fully substituting for government when it is absent due to political upheaval. [8] When partnered with trust gained through responsible assistance to the community, this position of authority is ideal for peacebuilding. It secures the confidence of the community in the process and provides the local knowledge necessary to make peacebuilding effective. Peacebuilders working with the existing network of development and humanitarian aid would benefit from both the reputation and position of these NGOs, smoothing the path to building peace through established relationships.  

While the collaboration of organizations would be helpful in many ways, some scholars do caution against collapsing the fields of humanitarian aid, development, and peacebuilding into each other. Pugh highlights how peacebuilding security measures mixed with development can cause development activities to fail. [9] The addition of force placed onto development often causes the poverty alleviation work to falter through negative pressure. This can create a cyclical issue, as the breakdown of NGO projects can in turn further destabilize a region, which then requires more security measures. Yet this cycle may be broken through better collaboration, not less, to ensure that security is working for the good of the community including the development work being done there, rather than as a spoiler for the work of the NGOs.

An additional concern is over humanitarian aid becoming politicized like development or peacebuilding as this will make it harder for aid to reach areas of need. [10] Governments may deny aid into their countries if they feel that it is coming with political expectations. This means the loss of neutrality of aid may jeopardize access for individuals in crises. Franke reiterates this concern over politicized humanitarian aid, while acknowledging that neutrality is increasingly challenging the more extensive the aid offered. [11] If a small amount of aid is offered for a short amount of time, neutrality is easier. In cases where aid is long-term and widespread, neutrality is harder to achieve. This is an important point, as post-Cold War conflicts are increasingly intrastate conflicts, [12] making the neutral distribution of humanitarian aid both more important and more challenging as the combatants and victims are increasingly hard to tell apart. However, these are recommendations for maintaining independent identities as organizations, not for dismissing collaboration. This may also pose the question of whether neutrality ought to be the distinguishing characteristic of humanitarian aid, which is research beyond the scope of this paper.

Driving Factors in Organizational Divisions

Despite the reasons for collaboration, there are significant pressures against humanitarian aid, development, and peacebuilding working together. As mentioned earlier, ‘siloed’ funding is the key reason why these fields are often in contest instead of alliance. By dividing up funding streams by type of organization, it places limitations on organizations from expanding out to more blended or inclusive work. Labeling fundable activities as either peacebuilding, development, or aid necessitates that organizations define their projects by these terms, even if projects in different sectors would otherwise not be distinguishable from each other. [13] Additionally, moneys for the middle ground between aid and development are scarce and intersectional projects are difficult to garner support for because these projects do not meet the clean categories that have been prescribed. This format for funding also contributes to a competitive relationship between agencies even within each field, causing conflict internally between same-sector organizations as they compete for grant moneys.

Because organizations have had to define themselves by the set categories of donors, a firm isolation has developed between these fields. Humanitarian aid and development have come to believe that they are fundamentally doing different work and subsequently have created what Kay-Fowlow calls “two [cultural] solitudes” in international work: two isolated frameworks and perspectives on the international field that do not come together. [14] Aid NGOs grew out of natural disaster and war relief, making their culture centered around short term solutions to basic needs. [15] Development NGOs began in economic poverty alleviation, which created a culture of long term involvement in communities. [16] These cultural distinctions in their histories have been solidified in donor requirements. Since the funding is divided, the organizations believe they must still be substantially different in the work they do and the approach they take. If the organizations are substantially different, what reason would they have for talking to each other – or so goes the reasoning. The ‘cultural difference’ between NGOs perpetuates a divide between them that makes collaboration unlikely, if not dangerous to funding. Yet as humanitarian aid increasingly lingers in countries longer than the originally intended short-term assistance, the lines become blurred between aid and development. [17] However, since the money is ‘siloed’, it becomes important for humanitarian aid to dig deeper into their definition of difference from development or else risk losing funding. 

Finally, breakdowns in the overall models of peacebuilding, development, and aid are limiting their work individually and collectively. Increasingly, organizations are shifting to a business model and away from an assistance model, an idea cultivated from the reasoning that improving efficiency improves effectiveness. [18] NGOs are looking to the private sector for suggestions of how to run their organizations, adopting a desire for deliverables and return on investment. Delivery and branding are increasingly part of the work being done, adding a corporate sheen to the industry. These business principles cycle back into the sense of competition present among the NGOs, without improvement to the assistance they offer to communities. Viewing international assistance like a business can lead to poorly considered programs that prove the point that efficiency and cost-effectiveness do not inevitably lead to successful outcomes. Examples of this are humanitarian aid providing food packages containing ingredients that are inexpensive but not part of the diet of the people being served or offering programs that are ‘proven’ models without assessing the unique needs of the community. [19] Corporate thinking has shifted the models and goals of NGOs toward focusing more on money than on people, which makes working with other organizations for the good of the communities even harder.

Recommendations for Collaboration

Given all the effects of siloed moneys, the first change to the system to allow easier collaboration would be to remove or loosen the categories of funding. If peacebuilding, development, and aid were allowed to share or blend grants for projects that served their communities best, this might inspire more creative thinking on the part of the agencies. The clear demarcations between organizations would be given permission to relax. Gaps between fields and duplicated services would be lessened through the expectation from the funders that organizations would work together. Activities would cease to be categorized by industry, e.g. a peacebuilding program or a development program, allowing for more nuanced understandings of community needs. Donors would also be encouraged to look more closely at what a community is asking for instead of simply endorsing development work in a developing country or peacebuilding in a conflict zone.

By removing the funding labels, organizations will be able to broaden their mandates to better serve communities. NGOs would be able to think beyond their narrow focuses to a more expansive view of community interests and what the NGO can provide. An example of this is the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), Turkey’s largest NGO, which has reframed its work as “humanitarian diplomacy” or peace mediation and advocacy in addition to their humanitarian aid. [20] They chose to look at humanitarian crises holistically and realized that they would be in the practice of providing aid for generations if they did not incorporate a measure of peacebuilding to their work. So they began to serve as a mediator and advocate for peace within the conflicts they were serving. While this is the full collapse of politicized peacebuilding into humanitarian aid which Ferris and Franke feared, IHH decided that they would rather risk this than to get in the business of drawn out humanitarian relief when the causes of the crisis could be diminished with mediation. More aid and development organizations being willing to broaden their missions to include peacebuilding has the potential to shift how conflicts and crises are approached to better serve communities in need.

Collaboration for peace would also be improved through shifting focus from results to what Smith calls “cumulative impact”. [21] The existing results-based system incentivized organizations to keep doing the same things: short-term projects with limited results. These results may be ‘good’ but may be mistaken as the whole of the organization’s goals. Smith argues that what peacebuilding and development suffer from is a lack of destination: individual projects and programs that do not make up a cohesive picture of what they are aiming toward. Tschirgi offers a similar critique, highlighting how international assistance has lost a clear strategy, focusing instead on short-term projects. [22] If organizations were to take a more long-term, wholistic view of their work, then the positive effects of collaboration may become clearer. Strategic planning might even make collaboration for peace necessary for the success of a significantly broader mission than simply the completion of the next project. The intersection of development, humanitarian aid, and peacebuilding could serve as a powerful nexus for more peaceful communities where the needs of those in crisis and poverty are met with an eye toward international players working themselves out of the picture, not just independently through to the next grant cycle.

Within the international assistance sector, collaboration is the exception rather than the rule. The effect of funding silos, business principles, and competition have worn deep divisions between peacebuilding, development, and humanitarian aid. Yet the benefits for communities if organizations were to work together are substantial enough to raise the question of whether the entire system should not be changed toward a broader, more wholistic view of what is valuable and possible. Continuing to focus on the deliverables of short-term projects sets organizations into a narrow mindset of considering only the results of their own work. Considering a more complete picture of the work of ever actor in the community would allow for a comprehensive understanding of what is being done and what may be possible for organizations to do to help communities deal with crises and conflicts. Yet this would require widespread shifts in funding and organizational cultures, changes that many are hesitant to make.

At the root of each project and mission is a theory of change, a way to understand how change is effected. In international assistance, theories of change, both implicit and explicit, drive the way organizations make decisions about their work and the projects that they will support. The existing theories of change create competition and division between these industries, as organizations are pressured to show their efficiency and differentiate themselves from other agencies for the sake of funding. [23] This drives theories of change to be centered around the individual efforts of individual agencies, reinforcing the divisions between organizations. If the theories of change were to be altered to something more inclusive of other actors within the communities, many of the forces dividing peacebuilding, development, and aid would be lessened and the effects would be felt in the communities served by these NGOs. In conflict settings, coming together to construct unified theories of change for a community would lessen the conflict between organizations and help to build better collaborative models for peace. [24] A collective theory of change created through the participation of all relevant players would create a network of agencies ready to work together for the benefit of the people they are serving. This might be a first step toward lessening the divisions and improving the work of peacebuilding, aid, and development.

Bibliography

Anderson, Mary B., Dayna Brown, and Isabella Jean. Time to Listen: Hearing People on the Receiving End of International Aid . 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, 2012.

Blin, Arnaud. “Armed Groups and Intra-State Conflicts: The Dawn of a New Era?” International Review of the Red Cross; Cambridge 93, no. 882 (June 2011): 287–310.

Collier, Paul. “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy.” In Leashing the Dogs of War , edited by Chester Crocker, Fen Olser Hampson, and Pamela Aall, 197–216. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007.

Dunn, Elizabeth Cullen. “Humanitarianism, Displacement, and the Politics of Nothing in Postwar Georgia.” Slavic Review 73, no. 2 (2014): 287–306.

Ferris, Elizabeth. “Addressing the Gap between Relief and Development.” Brookings (blog), November 30, 1AD. https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/addressing-the-gap-between-relie... .

Franke, Volker. “The Peacebuilding Dilemma: Civil-Military Cooperation in Stability Operations,” n.d., 21.

Irrera, Daniela. “Civil Society and Humanitarian Action: NGOs’ Roles in Peace Support Operations.” Perspectives: Review of Central European Affairs; Prague 19, no. 1 (2011): 85-106,121.

Jantzi, Terrence L., and Vernon E. Jantzi. “Development Paradigms and Peacebuilding Theories of Change: Analysing Embedded Assumptions in Development and Peacebuilding.” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 5, no. 1 (January 2009): 65–80.

Kay-Fowlow, Meagan. “Closing the Gap Between Humanitarian and Development Aid.” InDepth News , February 28, 2012. https://www.cigionline.org/articles/closing-gap-between-humanitarian-and... .

Milante, Gary, Jaeyeon Lee, and Lucienne Heyworth. “Forum Policy Brief, No. 9.” Stockholm Forum on Security & Development, May 2016. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2016-Forum-Policy-Brief-No-9.pdf .

Pugh, Michael. “Why a Merger of Peacebuilding and Development Would Reform Rather than Transform War-Torn Societies.” RUSI Journal: Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies; London 151, no. 4 (August 2006): 28–31.

Smith, Dan. “The Far Horizons of Peacebuilding - and the Near.” OpenDemocracy , 2012.

Snodderly, Dan, ed. Peace Terms: Glossary of Terms for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding . United States Institute of Peace, 2011.

Tabak, Hüsrev. “Broadening the Nongovernmental Humanitarian Mission: The IHH and Mediation.” Insight Turkey; Ankara 17, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 193–215.

Tschirgi, Necla. “Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Revisited: Achievements, Limitations, Challenges.” WSP International/IPA Peacebuilding Forum Conference, 2004.

[1] Snodderly, Peace Terms: Glossary of Terms for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding , 27.

[2] Snodderly, 18.

[3] Snodderly, 40.

[4] Ferris, “Addressing the Gap between Relief and Development.”

[5] Collier, “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy,” 216.

[6] Jantzi and Jantzi, “Development Paradigms and Peacebuilding Theories of Change,” 65.

[7] Irrera, “Civil Society and Humanitarian Action,” 102.

[8] Franke, “The Peacebuilding Dilemma: Civil-Military Cooperation in Stability Operations,” 9.

[9] Pugh, “Why a Merger of Peacebuilding and Development Would Reform Rather than Transform War-Torn Societies,” 30.

[10] Ferris, “Addressing the Gap between Relief and Development.”

[11] Franke, “The Peacebuilding Dilemma: Civil-Military Cooperation in Stability Operations,” 19.

[12] Blin, “Armed Groups and Intra-State Conflicts,” 293.

[13] Milante, Lee, and Heyworth, “Forum Policy Brief, No. 9,” 1.

[14] Kay-Fowlow, “Closing the Gap Between Humanitarian and Development Aid.”

[15] Snodderly, Peace Terms: Glossary of Terms for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding , 27.

[16] Snodderly, 18.

[17] Kay-Fowlow, “Closing the Gap Between Humanitarian and Development Aid.”

[18] Anderson, Brown, and Jean, Time to Listen , 35.

[19] Dunn, “Humanitarianism, Displacement, and the Politics of Nothing in Postwar Georgia,” 293.

[20] Tabak, “Broadening the Nongovernmental Humanitarian Mission,” 200.

[21] Smith, “The Far Horizons of Peacebuilding - and the Near.”

[22] Tschirgi, “Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Revisited: Achievements, Limitations, Challenges,” 16.

[23] Anderson, Brown, and Jean, Time to Listen , 46.

[24] Jantzi and Jantzi, “Development Paradigms and Peacebuilding Theories of Change,” 77.

The Intractable Conflict Challenge

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts.   More...

Selected Recent BI Posts Including Hyper-Polarization Posts

• Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Roles - Part 2 -- The first of two posts explaining the actor roles needed for a massively parallel peacebuilding/democracy building effort to work, which combined with an earlier post on strategy roles, makes up the current MPP role list.
• Lorelei Kelly on Strengthening Democracy at the Top and the Bottom -- Lorelei Kelly describes the work of the bipartisan Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress which passed 202 recommendations, many unanimously. Over 1/2 have been implemented and most others are in progress.
• Massively Parallel Peace and Democracy Building Links for the Week of March 24, 2024 -- A rename of our regular "colleague and context links" to highlight how these readings and the activities they describe all fit within our "massively parallel" peace and democracy building framework--or show why it is needed.

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" To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war " are among the first very words of the UN Charter (in its Preamble), and those words were the main motivation for creating the United Nations, whose founders had lived through the devastation of two world wars by 1945. Since the UN's creation on 24 October 1945 (the date its Charter came into force), the United Nations has often been called upon to prevent disputes from escalating into war, or to help restore peace following the outbreak of armed conflict, and to promote lasting peace in societies emerging from wars.

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Over the decades, the UN has helped to end numerous conflicts, often through actions of the  Security Council & — the organ with primary responsibility, under the  United Nations Charter,  for the maintenance of international peace and security. When it receives a complaint about a threat to peace, the Council first recommends that the parties seek an agreement by peaceful means. In some cases, the Council itself investigates and mediates. It may appoint special representatives or request the Secretary-General to do so, or to use his good offices. It may set forth principles for a peaceful settlement.

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The Security Council has  15 Members  -5 permanent (United States, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and China), and 10 non-permanent members-. Each Member has one  vote . According to the Charter, all Member States are obligated to comply with Council decisions .

Reform of the Security Council

One of the issues of major concern at the international level is the stalemate in the Council's decision-making. This deadlock, largely due to the veto power of the five permanent members, is not new and has been synonymous with paralysis for the UN on many occasions.

During its sixty-second session, the General Assembly decided to begin informal plenary intergovernmental negotiations. The discussions started in the sixty-third session and were based on proposals made by the Member States. The dialogues focused on the question of equitable representation in the Security Council, an increase in its membership, and other matters related to the Council. The goal is to find a solution that will gain the widest possible political acceptance by Member States.

• General Assembly

According to the Charter, the General Assembly can make recommendations on the general principles of cooperation for maintaining international peace and security, including disarmament, and for the peaceful settlement of any situation that might impair friendly relations among nations. The General Assembly may also discuss any question relating to international peace and security and make recommendations if the Security Council is not currently discussing the issue. 

Pursuant to its  “Uniting for Peace” resolution of November 1950 (resolution 377 (V)), the General Assembly may also take action if the Security Council fails to act, owing to the negative vote of a Permanent Member, in a case where there appears to be a threat to, or breach of peace, or an act of aggression. The Assembly can consider the matter  immediately in order to make recommendations to Members for collective measures to maintain, or restore, international peace and security.

The Assembly meets in regular sessions from September to December each year, and thereafter as required. It discusses specific issues through dedicated agenda items or sub-items, which lead to the adoption of resolutions.

The Charter empowers the Secretary-General to " bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security ." One of the most vital roles played by the Secretary-General is the use of his " good offices " – steps taken publicly and in private that draw upon his independence, impartiality and integrity to prevent international disputes from arising, escalating or spreading.

Conflict Prevention

The main strategies to prevent disputes from escalating into conflict, and to prevent the recurrence of conflict, are preventive diplomacy and preventive disarmament. Preventive diplomacy refers to action taken to prevent disputes from arising or escalating into conflicts, and to limit the spread of conflicts as they arise. It may take the form of mediation, conciliation or negotiation.

Preventive diplomacy

Early warning is an essential component of prevention, and the United Nations carefully monitors developments around the world to detect threats to international peace and security, thereby enabling the Security Council and the Secretary-General to carry out preventive action. Envoys and special representatives of the Secretary-General are engaged in  mediation and preventive diplomacy throughout the world. In some trouble spots, the mere presence of a skilled envoy can prevent the escalation of tension. These envoys often cooperate with regional organizations.

Preventive disarmament

Complementing preventive diplomacy is preventive disarmament , which seeks to reduce the number of small arms in conflict-prone regions. In El Salvador, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste and elsewhere, this has entailed demobilizing combat forces, as well as collecting and destroying their weapons as part of an overall peace agreement. Destroying yesterday’s weapons prevents their use in tomorrow’s wars.

Preventing Genocide and Responsibility to Protect

Prevention requires apportioning responsibility and promoting collaboration between the concerned States and the international community. The duty to prevent and halt genocide and mass atrocities lies first and foremost with the State, but the international community has a role that cannot be blocked by the invocation of sovereignty. Sovereignty no longer exclusively protects States from foreign interference; it is a charge of responsibility where States are accountable for the welfare of their people. This principle is enshrined in article 1 of the  Genocide Convention  and embodied in the principle of “sovereignty as responsibility” and in the concept of the Responsibility to Protect.

The Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide  acts as a catalyst to raise awareness of the causes and dynamics of genocide, to alert relevant actors where there is a risk of genocide, and to advocate and mobilize for appropriate action. The Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect leads the conceptual, political, institutional and operational development of the Responsibility to Protect. The efforts of their Office include alerting relevant actors to the risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, enhancing the capacity of the United Nations to prevent these crimes, including their incitement.

Peacekeeping

United Nations peacekeeping operations are a vital instrument employed by the international community to advance peace and security.

The first UN peacekeeping mission was established in 1948 when the Security Council authorized the deployment of the  United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) to the Middle East to monitor the Armistice Agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Since then, there have been more than 70 UN peacekeeping operations around the world.

Over 72 years, UN peacekeeping has evolved to meet the demands of different conflicts and a changing political landscape. Born at the time when Cold War rivalries frequently paralyzed the Security Council, UN peacekeeping goals were primarily limited to maintaining ceasefires and stabilizing situations on the ground, so that efforts could be made at the political level to resolve the conflict by peaceful means. 

UN peacekeeping expanded in the 1990s, as the end of the Cold War created new opportunities to end civil wars through negotiated peace settlements. Many conflicts ended, either through direct UN mediation, or through the efforts of others acting with UN support. Countries assisted included El Salvador , Guatemala , Namibia , Cambodia , Mozambique , Tajikistan , and  Burundi . In the late nineties, continuing crises led to new operations in the  Democratic Republic of the Congo , the  Central African Republic , Timor Leste , Sierra Leone and Kosovo .

In the new millennium, peacekeepers have been deployed to  Liberia ,  Côte d'Ivoire ,  Sudan ,  South Sudan ,  Haiti , and  Mali .

Today's conflicts are less numerous but deeply rooted. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, and South Sudan today, are in a second or third wave of conflict. And many are complicated by regional dimensions that are key to their solution. In fact, some two-thirds of peacekeeping personnel today are deployed amid ongoing conflict, where peace agreements are shaky or absent. Conflicts today are also increasingly intensive, involving determined armed groups with access to sophisticated armaments and techniques.

The nature of conflict has also changed over the years. UN peacekeeping, originally developed as a means of resolving inter-State conflict, has been increasingly applied over time to intra-State conflicts and civil wars. Although the military remains the backbone of most peacekeeping operations, today’s peacekeepers perform a variety of complex tasks, from helping to build sustainable institutions of governance, through human rights monitoring and security sector reform, to the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants, and demining.

Peacebuilding

Within the United Nations, peacebuilding refers to efforts to assist countries and regions in their transitions from war to peace and to reduce a country's risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities for conflict management, and laying the foundations for sustainable peace and development.

Building lasting peace in war-torn societies is a daunting challenge for global peace and security. Peacebuilding requires sustained international support for national efforts across the broadest range of activities. For instance, peacebuilders monitor ceasefires, demobilize and reintegrate combatants, assist the return of refugees and displaced persons, help to organize and monitor elections of a new government, support justice and security sector reforms, enhance human rights protections, and foster reconciliation after past atrocities.

Peacebuilding involves action by a wide array of organizations of the UN system, including the World Bank , regional economic commissions, NGOs and local citizens’ groups. Peacebuilding has played a prominent role in  UN operations  in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kosovo, Liberia and Mozambique, as well as more recently in Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste. An example of inter-state peacebuilding has been the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Recognizing that the UN needs to better anticipate and respond to the challenges of peacebuilding, the  2005 World Summit approved the creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission. In the resolutions establishing the  Peacebuilding Commission , resolution 60/180 and resolution 1645 , the UN General Assembly and the Security Council mandated it to bring together all relevant actors to advise on the proposed integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery; to marshal resources and help ensure predictable financing for these activities; and to develop best practices in collaboration with political, security, humanitarian and development actors.

The resolutions also identify the need for the Commission to extend the period of international attention on post-conflict countries, and where necessary, highlight any gaps which threaten to undermine peacebuilding.

The General Assembly and Security Council resolutions establishing the Peacebuilding Commission also provided for the establishment of a  Peacebuilding Fund & and a Peacebuilding Support Office .

The Rule of Law

Promoting the  rule of law at the national and international levels is at the heart of the United Nations’ mission. Establishing respect for the rule of law is fundamental to achieving a durable peace in the aftermath of conflict, to the effective protection of human rights, and to sustained economic progress and development. The principle that everyone – from the individual to the State itself – is accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, is a fundamental concept which drives much of the United Nations work. The main United Nations organs, including the General Assembly and the Security Council, play essential roles in supporting Member States to strengthen the rule of law, as do many United Nations entities.

Responsibility for the overall coordination of rule of law work by the United Nations system rests with the  Rule of Law Coordination and Resource Group , chaired by the Deputy Secretary-General and supported by the Rule of Law Unit. Members of the Group are the principals of 20 United Nations entities engaged in supporting Member States to strengthen the rule of law. Providing support from headquarters to rule of law activities at the national level, the Secretary-General designated the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as the joint global focal point for the police, justice and corrections areas in the rule of law in post-conflict and other crisis situations. 

Women and Children in Conflict

In contemporary conflicts, up to 90 per cent of casualties are civilians, mostly women and children. Women in war-torn societies can face specific and devastating forms of sexual violence, which are sometimes deployed systematically to achieve military or political objectives. Moreover, women continue to be poorly represented in formal peace processes, although they contribute in many informal ways to conflict resolution.

However, the UN Security Council in its  resolution 1325 on women, peace and security has recognized that including women and gender perspectives in decision-making can strengthen prospects for sustainable peace. The landmark resolution addresses the situation of women in armed conflict and calls for their participation at all levels of decision-making on conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Since the agenda was set with the core principles of resolution 1325, the Security Council has adopted seven supporting resolutions —  1820 ,  1888 , 1889 , 1960 ,  2106 ,  2331  and  2467 -. All the resolutions focus on two key goals: strengthening women’s participation in decision-making and ending sexual violence and impunity.

Since 1999, the systematic engagement of the UN Security Council has firmly placed the situation of children affected by armed conflict as an issue affecting peace and security. The Security Council has created a strong framework and provided the Secretary-General with tools to respond to violations against children.  The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict serves as the leading UN advocate for the protection and well-being of children affected by armed conflict.

Peaceful uses of outer space

The UN works to ensure that outer space is used for peaceful purposes and that the benefits from space activities are shared by all nations. This concern for the peaceful uses of outer space began soon after the launch of Sputnik — the first artificial satellite — by the Soviet Union in 1957 and has kept pace with advances in space technology. The UN has played an important role by developing international space law and by promoting international cooperation in space science and technology.

The Vienna-based  United Nations Office for Outer Space serves as the secretariat for the  Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and its subcommittees, and assists developing countries in using space technology for development.

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