From silos to networks

Who are peacebuilders?  What do they do? Where do they come from?  Do they work together, and if so, how?  These are the questions that Peacebuilding 2.0: Mapping the Boundaries of an Expanding Field seeks to answer, according to Melanie Greenburg of the Alliance for Peacebuilding.   The report, developed by the Alliance with help from the Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice and the United States Institute of Peace, will be released this summer.  On Friday, representatives of these groups launched the report with a discussion of its highlights.

We have entered a new era of peacebuilding, according to Necla Tschirgi of the Kroc Institute.  Over the past decade the world has experienced prolonged conflict and militarization.  By some measures, people may be less violent, but tensions have flared over environmental, food and energy issues.  The funding for organizations like the United States Institute of Peace is at risk and more and more of the U.S.’s international aid is coming under the Department of Defense’s purview.

The Peacebuilding Mapping Project (PMP) administered two surveys for Peacebuilding 2.0. The first, given to Alliance for Peacebuilding members, received 44 responses and showed that peacebuilders work in 153 different countries in pre-conflict, conflict mediation, and post-conflict.  Roughly 90% of the organizations surveyed focus on basic peacebuilding processes, like building trust and social cohesion, and they put these processes to work in a variety of areas, including women’s issues, youth issues, and development.  Despite such a wide mandate, 60% of the organizations operate on a budget of less than $500,000 and 25% on a budget of less than $50,000.

The PMP gave the second survey to a wider range of organizations working in many different fields and 75 responded.  Fifteen replied that they do not identify directly as peacebuilders, but eleven of these fifteen report that they have peacebuilding projects.  Many of the organizations in this survey tend to be older and better endowed.  Few have mission statements that include conflict-related language.

There are several important implications of this data.  First, there are gaps in our knowledge.  There is no clearly identifiable shared body of methodologies or principles. It is not clear how peacebuilding or peacebuilding-related organizations network and work together.  Second, changes must be made to improve future peacebuilding efforts.  Practitioners, academics, and politicians must recognize the wide range of organizations that are involved in peacebuilding and use a “conflict sensitive lens” for work related to conflict.   The field must become more cohesive so that different organizations can easily collaborate.

A panel including Hrach Gregorian of Institute of World Affairs, Joceyln Kelly of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Sharon Morris of Mercy Corps, John Agoglia of IDS International, and Paul Williams of Public International Law and Policy Group discussed the implications of Peacebuilding 2.0 in their own professional contexts.  Morris explained that Mercy Corps projects are most successful where peacebuilding and development work are combined, but collaboration is difficult because the two groups of practitioners do not know how to talk to each other.  Agoglia explained the need for greater cooperation between the Department of Defense and peacebuilding organizations.  Williams agreed that communication is a problem and added that in conflict situations, there are often a number of organizations interested in helping, but officials are not able to coordinate so many players.  Kelly concluded that transitioning from “silos” to “networks” is essential in order to address all of the problems people face in conflict zones.

Gregorian said that in the 80’s, people were wondering if peacebuilding was even a field.  Today we are discussing the established field’s boundaries.  This shows how far peacebuilding has come, but also shows what we need to work on in the future.