Our Work
These two strands of work are mutually reinforcing. Together, they contribute to changing how collaboration happens across borders and to building conditions for more just, sustainable and locally grounded peace and governance.
Civic agency, legitimacy and collective action across borders
- How shared civic calls for action and legitimacy are formed beyond the nation-state.
- How people and movements organise coordinate and act together across borders in sustained ways.
Shifting the logics of global collaboration and governance
- How legitimacy, accountability and power are currently defined and practised in global cooperation.
- How collaboration can move beyond incremental reform toward more people-powered approaches.
Bridging civic-led alternatives and institutional change
- How civic-led alternatives connect to institutional spaces without being diluted.
- How reform-minded actors navigate constraints while opening space for more equitable collaboration.
Grounding systems change in local practice and reciprocity
- How working locally informs, challenges and strengthens global systems-change work.
- How reciprocity and accountability are practiced across unequal contexts and relationships.
Strengthening people’s capacity to deliberate, organise and act together across borders to determine their own lives and futures.
RCS stitches together a translocal civil society infrastructure, co-building relationships, processes, and governance frameworks that enable civic actors to be collectively powerful globally and amplify their impact in their own contexts.
Across contexts, civic organising is vibrant and creative, yet often fragmented with lacking and polarising resources.
Communities and movements generate solutions rooted in lived experience, but without translocal civic infrastructure they lack the connective tissue and legitimacy to make decisions beyond the local level, so people-powered approaches struggle to shape the systems that affect their lives.
- Co-design of the initiative around civic assemblies and citizen-carried deliberative processes, grounded in the realities and aspirations of participating civic networks
- Relationships and collaborations with civic networks and social movements in East Africa, West Africa, Latin America and Europe for piloting of assemblies
- Early coalition-building in the regions, focused on shared questions of legitimacy, coordination and collective agency beyond borders
- Exploration of translocal coordination and governance mechanisms for the coalition
We are strengthening the emerging coalition, clarifying shared purpose and exploring how deliberation, coordination and governance might be connected over time. This includes identifying where and how civic assemblies and citizen-carried processes could be piloted, and what forms of infrastructure would be needed to support them across contexts.
We are taking a deliberate, co-stewarded approach that prioritises relationship-building, trust and shared ownership across participating networks. Rather than launching a fixed model, we are working with civic actors to collectively shape the next phase of the initiative at the regional and translocal levels.
If you would like to explore collaboration or learn more, get in touch with us.
RESPACE is a Scenario-based initiative and community to explore how global collaboration for peace could evolve in a rapidly changing world by reflecting on uncertainty, challenging assumptions and imagining alternative futures for collaboration.
RESPACE uses futures thinking as a practical tool for sensemaking, learning and strategic reflection across civic and institutional contexts.
Global collaboration for peace is under growing pressure from intensifying conflicts, geopolitical fragmentation and shrinking space for cooperation. Many actors are navigating uncertainty without the space or tools to think beyond incremental adaptation.
RESPACE responds to this moment by opening space to question long-held assumptions and explore different pathways for collaboration at a time of profound systemic change. It helps actors move beyond incremental adaptation by exploring different futures, clarifying robust next steps, and preparing to advance transformative scenarios.
- Co-development of four interconnected transformative scenarios for global collaboration for peace by 2035, together with Network for Empowered Aid Response and Reos Partners
- Engagement of 23 changemakers from different regions, sectors and professional backgrounds
- Use of scenarios by educators, peacebuilding organisations, civil society networks and grassroots groups to support learning, dialogue and strategic reflection
- Contributions to wider conversations on the future of peacebuilding, including engagement linked to UN-related processes
Learn more about RESPACEÂ
We are deepening translocal connections, supporting working groups that explore resourcing, engagement and solidarity infrastructures and using the scenarios to inform institutional reflection and reform processes without prescribing fixed solutions.
In Phase 2, we are supporting RESPACE to evolve from a reimagining initiative into a platform for ongoing sensemaking, collaboration and experimentation. The focus is on stewarding the community, enabling shared learning and supporting actors to apply the scenarios in their own contexts.
Interested in using the RESPACE scenarios in your work? Get in touchÂ
Supporting efforts inside international institutions to reshape how cooperation is organised, governed and justified.
This focuses on working with change agents and leaders to transform practices, relationships and assumptions that shape peace and development systems from within.
Across international institutions, individuals and small teams are experimenting with more relational, participatory and power-aware approaches. Yet these efforts often remain constrained by established incentives, procedures and governance architectures.
Without shifts in how international cooperation is structured and legitimised, transformative practice struggles to sustain or scale.
- Contributions to UN peacebuilding reform debates, including the Peacebuilding Architecture Review
- Engagement in CSO–UN dialogues and processes linked to the Summit of the Future
- Participation in selected policy and multilateral forums where civic legitimacy and participation are being re-examined
- Development of reflections and knowledge products that translate civic and systems insights into practical frames for institutional actors to effect transformation
We are engaging in spaces where cooperation norms and architectures are being shaped, contributing grounded perspectives to conversations about reform and renewal.
This includes bringing learning from civic practice and futures work into institutional settings, supporting reform-minded individuals and small teams to reflect, connect and advance new approaches from within. We focus on strengthening relationships, shared language and practical pathways so change does not remain isolated or short-lived.
