2.1 Peacebuilding challenges, joint session with UNU CPR - Discussant Adam Day and audience Q&A
Channel: UNU-WIDER
Date: 09/06/2022

UN Secretary-General Guterres has described investments in peacebuilding as both “a bargain” and “a prerequisite for development”. Heeding this optimistic view, funding for peacebuilding grew steadily over several years and was at a record high going into the COVID19 pandemic—though recent post-COVID trends suggest a worrying decline. This funding supported an increasingly complex network of peacebuilding actors working toward the resolution of conflict, the restoration of trust, and the building up of local capacities to avoid the relapse of violence. Yet, despite these investments—and sometimes because of them—the conditions for peace in many places have yet to materialize. 

This session will navigate firsthand, on-the-ground accounts of peacebuilding efforts in Colombia and Myanmar, exploring networked responses to conflict prevention and development in both countries. Focus will then turn to a different kind of network and explore how networks of identity, as reflected in the diversity of peacekeepers, have been empirically shown to impact the ability of UN missions to keep peace.  The session will conclude by exploring the challenges of peacebuilding in settings governed by autocratic regimes and the ways in which peacebuilding investments may unintentionally enable authoritarian tendencies, despite the stated goal of more inclusive forms of governance.

More at https://go.unu.edu/ZGq6q