Monthly Archives: October 2018

By Mille Bojer

During Geneva Peace Week 2018, the Conducive Space for Peace (CSP) Initiative has chosen to host an accelerator at the SDG Solution Space. The accelerator brings together 5 multi-stakeholder cohorts working in conflict-affected contexts on innovative practices involving international-national collaboration on peacebuilding.

The idea of an “accelerator” originally comes from the startup world, primarily out of Silicon Valley.  When we first had the idea of using this word for a peace-oriented process, inspired by the Electricity Innovation Lab (eLab) Accelerator hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute, I was not convinced it would be well received.  I thought “accelerate” may be a great verb for technology and energy transitions, but it won’t be appropriate for the peace space, where more common words are rather “facilitate”, “enable”, “strengthen” and so on.  But as we tested the idea, the feedback was very positive.  The freshness and energy of the concept was welcomed.

What our accelerator has in common with the ones in Silicon Valley is that it is cohort-based rather than focused on individual entrepreneurs, that part of the value it provides is through connections and mentoring, and that its purpose is to fuel and accelerate a high-potential initiative in a short and concentrated amount of time.  It is however not focused on start-up businesses nor is it associated with an investment fund, and some of the ingredients of success are very different and tailored for the peace-building domain.

Our diverse group of facilitators from Reos Partners and Magenta Studios provide a structured learning and design process, while advisors offer customized content and tailored feedback for each team’s unique project. The process moves iteratively between cohort time, plenary time, learning sessions, and cross-cohort learning/feedback. The CSP Accelerator will help unlock opportunities for the cohorts to move forward more effectively, helping them to tackle their particular complex problems in an energetic, focused, and collaborative environment.

The cohorts participating in the accelerator are each composed of a mix of international and national peacebuilding actors working on complex issues such as enabling locally owned sustainable youth-led dialogue platforms in targeted/ conflict-sensitive locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina; linking local digital innovation in peacebuilding with elite mediation efforts to enable broad and deep participation in high level peace negotiations on Syria; placing the local population at the centre of the peace-building system in Mali through systemic action research; and supporting and accompanying young female peace leaders in playing effective roles in peace building (in South Sudan, Liberia, Nepal). Some of these initiatives are ideas recently brought into existence while others are collaborations that are well under way.

The cohorts each offer a partial and practical answer to the question: “What would an institutional framework for peacebuilding support look like that is better fit for sustaining peace and preventing violent conflict than what we see today?”  This is the question behind the larger CSP initiative, which grows out of the increased attention to how some practices of international engagement in conflict affected countries can have a negative impact, and a recognition of the need for new forms of collaboration on peace-building.

In this sense, the Accelerator needs to work on both the “outer dimensions” of strategies, tactics and intervention design as well as the “inner dimensions” related to leadership, values, assumptions, and mindsets.  In this sense, the CSP initiative offers a self-reflective space where international actors (including IGOs, ICSOs and bilateral donors) can ask themselves how they are part of the problem, and to creatively and in collaboration with national level stakeholders carve out feasible, effective, and sustainable ways forward.

By Mie Roesdahl

More than 2 billion people live in fragile and conflict affected states today. By 2030 it is likely that most of the world’s poor will live in fragile and conflict affected states. This forecast corresponds with the increasing number of conflicts the world has witnessed throughout the last two decades. The number of conflicts increased from 99 in 1996 to 136 in 2016, while the total number of deaths related to violent conflict increased from 71.940 to 103.180 in the same period of time. With a devastating 60 percent recurrence of old conflicts, international support must focus on building sustainable peace and preventing violent conflict.

Supporting peacebuilding in more effective ways does not mean that international donors or international peacebuilding organisations should come up with the solution of how to do it better in a concrete conflict affected context. It means providing a ‘conducive space’ for local actors to bring about these solutions themselves.

There is a proliferation of policy developments – including Goal 16 of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Pathways for Peace by the World Bank and the UN, the Review Of The United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, the High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, and the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States of the International Dialogue for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding – that point, on the one hand, to the need to enhance international support for long-term peacebuilding and conflict prevention efforts while on the other hand, to the need for change in the way support is provided. All of these reports point to the institutional challenges in supporting sustainable peace.

While at policy level there exist a strong recognition that conflict-affected areas present unique characteristics and that a different approach to programming is needed in such contexts, donors and institutional partners are not successful in reconciling institutional and programmatic requirements with what is needed to create conducive conditions for peacebuilding at the local level. Instead, we need to look to the institutional framework and practices embedded in development aid architecture to address the challenges in support to and collaboration on peacebuilding.

In general, there has been a gradual change in the framework of development assistance and diplomacy in recent years, which has significantly changed the terms on which peacebuilding is implemented. Among the systemic changes that have elicited new problematic practices with relevance for effectiveness of peacebuilding are the following:  Smaller local organisations – with the ability to implement strong and innovative peacebuilding efforts – have difficulties accessing funds due to comprehensive donor requirements for proposal development, few donor mechanisms available that administers smaller funds (with the declining capacity in donor organisations), lack of technical support to small CSOs to develop proposals (often in a language other than their own). Furthermore, donor requirements for monitoring and evaluation provide less opportunity for joint learning and for using lessons learned for ongoing development. Results based management requires a pre-defined framework of indicators which steers the implementation process and makes it more difficult to take advantage of windows of opportunities, adapt to changing conditions, and test innovative approaches. And finally, predictability of funding from donor agencies has declined, making long-term programming (for long-term peace-building processes) more difficult. Short-term and transitional programmes (3-5 years), have lacked impact due to a mismatch between the timeframe of such efforts and the time needed to promote sustainable peace.

While there is plenty of evidence of these challenges, there is less emphasis on how to address these challenges in practice. And while recognized widely within the system itself, the challenges have largely been considered necessary, unavoidable, and irreversible. The aim of the Conducive Space for Peace initiative is to take on this challenge, and to facilitate a shift from rhetoric to system transformation and new practice.

Conducive Space for Peace (CSP) is a collaborative partnership that explores how to effectively promote sustainable peace and bring about institutional change in the international system of peacebuilding support.  It works through developing and supporting new and innovative ways of collaboration on peacebuilding that puts local actors at the center of peacebuilding efforts. The aim of the Conducive Space for Peace initiative is on the one side to generate evidence in a manner that is convincing to decision-makers and thus mobilize a strong motivation for change, and on the other side to develop knowledge of alternative ways to support peacebuilding and innovative ways to facilitate institutional transformation within the international infrastructure for peace.