Explore our publications, from research papers and series to educational materials, covering all aspects of conflict transformation and peace promotion.
This report is the first in the Policy Insight Series on gender-inclusive conflict transformation, which will be published throughout 2022 and 2023. This first issue aims to contextualise and critically review current policies and practices in peace negotiations and post-war transitions, based on testimonies shared by network members during activities conducted since 2018, and complemented by relevant academic references. Through a participatory process of joint analysis, the series will present the experiences, aspirations and lessons learned from women in or associated with RLMs with regard to gender-inclusive approaches to peace negotiations and post-war peacebuilding.
Year2022
Author(s)Claudia Cruz Almeida, Véronique Dudouet, Victoria Cochrane-Buchmüller
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase of mass nonviolent movements around the globe, taking the street and the online space to demand radical reforms towards greater democracy, justice, peace or equal rights. External support to nonviolent movements can help prevent violent escalation, mitigate repression, protect civic space, facilitate conflict transformation and foster sustainable peace. In a global context where the shrinking of civic space is coupled with the proliferation of protests, the European Union needs to develop a strategy to deal with nonviolent movements consistently and effectively. This paper explores the role that different EU institutional actors can play in supporting nonviolent movements and puts forward some basic recommendations to develop a more coherent conceptual framework and factor peaceful protests into the EU’s external action.
This manual accompanies the documentation of intergenerational voices of women who were involved in the struggles for social, economic and political equality in Mindanao. These documentaries, in film and in print, give rich opportunity for reflection and discussion - among former female combatants, their children, but also more generally for those supporting a peacebuilding path for communities in the Philippines and beyond. The manual combines the films and storytelling booklet produced with a simple guide of how to organize, structure and harvest dialogues using them with an aim to strengthen peacebuilding action.
Corruption and violent conflict are interlinked in deep and complex ways. This U4 Issue considers how corruption as an element of conflict systems could be addressed during peace processes and how peacebuilders can support political efforts to curb corruption and promote accountability during transitions from war to peace. Now is the time to bridge the contributions of peacebuilding and anti-corruption practitioners in the quest for a sustainable transformation process.
The international community is currently facing a dilemma: although building trust between representatives of state institutions and the population is one of the fundamental components of cooperation between donors and recipient countries of support services in the security sector, we are observing worldwide that trust in state institutions fades. Confidence-building initiatives between citizens and, for example, the police and the military obviously do not always contribute to improvement. Therefore, basic assumptions about the role of trust and how trust-building works in conflict societies must be questioned.
A shifting state system, a dysfunctional market and a restless global society face rising economic inequality and mass migration, accelerating polarisation and extremism, and urgent demands for decolonisation, racial justice and an end to gender-based violence. Current economic and political models offer little reprieve, and in some cases seem to be fuelling disorder rather than promoting the order or stability they aim to achieve. How will the peacebuilding field respond or transform given these challenges?
Local governance is changing in Yemen, with far-reaching effects on the way state institutions function, on central-local relations, and on service provision and citizens’ experiences of the state. Earlier Berghof research (Rogers 2020) highlighted the ways in which war and Houthi policy were re-drawing central-local relations and the functioning of local governance in the areas under Ansar Allah’s control. This paper complements that investigation by examining the changes under way in the areas under the control of the internationally recognised government.
Together with the United Nations DPO DDR section, our team working to improve international support to transformation processes of non-state armed groups after wars and conflicts, organised a workshop with international experts in Berlin.
Kriege in vielen Weltregionen, Polarisierung, Hass und Hetze in der eigenen Gesellschaft und globale Krisen wie der Klimawandel und die Pandemie schüren massiv die Zukunftsängste von Kindern und Jugendlichen. Sie suchen nach Antworten, wie das Zusammenleben im Kleinen und Großen gelingen kann. Schulen leisten einen großen Beitrag, wenn sie ihren Schüler*innen Lern- und Erfahrungsräume bieten, in denen sie kreative und lösungsorientierte Antworten auf aktuelle Herausforderungen suchen können. Schüler*innen wollen die Möglichkeiten zum gewaltfreien, konstruktiven Umgang mit Konflikten, Hass und Gewalt kennen lernen sowie Ermutigung und Befähigung zu eigenem (Friedens-)Engagement erfahren.
