In this Brown Bag Lunch discussion, Odeh Nasser Najadah, head of the Palestinian Ka’abneh Furijat municipality, and Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, director of the planning and community department in the West Bank at Bimkom, will discuss Israel’s planning policy and its consequences on Palestinian communities and on conflict and peace dynamics. Participants are welcome to bring their […]

In her latest book entitled ‘Extralegal groups in post-conflict Liberia: How trade makes the state’, Dr Christine Cheng studies the aftermath of the Liberian civil war and shows how extralegal groups emerged as a product of livelihood strategies and of the political economy of war. She analyses the trajectory of extralegal groups in three sectors […]

The Colombian Truth Commission was established in 2019 to respond to the rights of over 8 million people who the State acknowledges to be victims of the armed conflict. Thousands of these victims fled the country and are now living in Europe. The Truth Commission has an unprecedented mandate of engaging with the diaspora and […]

The populations in the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin (LCB) regions face a range of challenges and threats to their human security due to ongoing conflicts and crises. In particular, young women and men under the age of 25, who make up about two thirds of the population living in the regions, face frequent exposure […]

Last year was supposed to be a moment of celebration and reflection for the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda, as it marked the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Yet, the COVID-19 crisis spoiled these plans and, more importantly, created—or rather compounded—challenges to the Agenda around the world. As […]

In peacebuilding and conflict transformation processes, organisations working in and on conflict suffer from ‘shrinking spaces’ by governmental, business, or far-right activities, and develop maladaptive coping practices such as overplanning, reactivity, siege mentality or utopian visions. How should donors react to this? Based on his article entitled ‘Creating Clarity in Conflict?’, Torge Kuebler will discuss […]

Women's economic inclusion is central to realising women's rights, gender equality, and the meaningful participation of women in peace and transition processes. In this Virtual Brown Bag Lunch, we will examine the role of business in strengthening women's economic inclusion and their contributions to peace. We will also reflect on how the European Union may […]

The international community faces an era of alarming, prolonged and recurrent conflict. The persistent increase in violent conflicts underlines the pressing need to re-imagine and reshape our collective approaches to building and sustaining peace. Many peace agreements fall apart or are not implemented at all; we urgently need a new framework of principles and standards […]

As the world continues to grapple with the direct and indirect consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding its impact on peace and conflict has become a political, humanitarian, and development imperative. To account for the possible effects of COVID-19 on overall conflict dynamics, Mercy Corps undertook research using a systems-level approach in three conflict-affected countries: […]

As peacebuilding and conflict prevention efforts are challenged by an increasing number of conflicts, experts and practitioners are advocating for re-examining the architecture of international support to peacebuilding, and developing a more sustainable approach. Key international institutions have now recognised that local actors hold the key to sustainable peace in their own communities. At this […]