Why is peacebuilding important?
Worldwide, conflict has increased over the last ten years. Peacebuilding is more critical than ever. Conflicts drive 80% of all humanitarian needs, and at the end of 2021, over 89 million people had been forced to flee their homes because of ongoing crises.
Peacebuilding also recognizes the importance of the decolonization of aid. There is increasing criticism of those who try to enforce peace through military means only to see the conflict worsen. In the past, many peacekeepers and peacebuilders have been Western and white, imposing solutions from above with little regard for those who have suffered the conflict and those who have understood its need.
Concordis works with people who live where conflict is fought and felt. We facilitate dialogue amongst different groups and equip them with the skills they need to be effective local peacebuilders. A grassroots approach also means paying attention to issues often ignored by top-down approaches, like herder-farmer conflict, crime at shared markets, and sexual violence.
By focusing on the issues that directly affect people where they live, like banditry, cattle rustling, and sources of livelihood, we can build confidence in peacebuilding and lay solid foundations for collaboration on the “bigger issues”.
Peacebuilding Examples
Some examples of peacebuilding are dialogue conferences or investments in infrastructure.
Dialogue.
Dialogue conferences can help bring leaders of different groups together to find common ground. Exchanges offer a chance to work out solutions and make agreements without violence.
For instance, in Abyei, a contested territory between Sudan and South Sudan, we have held workshops with farmers, transhumants, and pastoralists, enabling them to plan the routes and timing of cattle movements before the seasonal movement of herders to prevent conflicts over land and cattle. This has often included setting up early warning systems and agreements on taxation to create clear incentives for following agreed routes in exchange for secure passage of the cattle.
Infrastructure
Facilities such as shared markets provide people with interdependent livelihoods - somewhere they can do business, earn a living, and buy goods. Secure livelihoods mean that people are less likely to resort to things like theft, another source of conflict. Markets offer a place for different people to meet and communicate, helping them to tackle differences before they escalate into conflict. Shared markets demonstrate to groups formerly in conflict that peace is possible and gives them a shared reason to maintain that peace.
Bridges are another example of infrastructure. These connect different communities formerly separated by conflict and allow them to trade more freely with each other. In this way, they can find a better price for their goods and travel more freely between communities.
The World Bank, “Fragility, Conflict & Violence”, September 30 2022, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/overview
UNHCR, “Figures at a Glance”, https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html
