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INFLUENCING PEACE AND POLICY

Our vision is of a world where local people are able to find their own solutions to their conflicts. To achieve this, they need funding and recognition from everyone involved in conflict resolution. 

Whether it is international aid agencies or conflict-zone governments, UN peacekeepers or local fighters, we want all players to understand and mobilise the huge potential of local peacebuilders. 

We want to change the balance of global peacebuilding altogether, so that local peacebuilders – ‘insiders’ – are the first resort in any conflict resolution activity. We know they can’t do everything themselves, but we also know that they have the knowledge, the commitment and the local status to prevent future wars and make peace work. 

The world’s current approach to preventing and resolving conflicts is not working. Forty per cent of wars restart within ten years of a peace treaty being signed. We are convinced that this is because conflict resolution activities are mainly led by ‘outsiders’ – international ‘experts’ who are flown in for a crisis. What is needed is peace built from the grassroots up, turned into reality on the ground, and local peacebuilders are the future for this. 

So we want to see local people given the power to build their own better futures. We want to see them become leaders of their own peace and development programmes, not contractors for outside agencies. And we want to see their activities multiplied far beyond what we can fund ourselves. 

So we work internationally to persuade those with power, funds or influence to adopt our vision. We seek partnerships with like-minded organisations.