Peacebuilding
I just spent an incredible 3 days with 1,800 people around the world talking about how to build peace today and into the future. It was the first ever PeaceCon 2020 sponsored by the Alliance For Peacebuilding, The Institute for Economics and Peace and many more international organizations focused creating the world we want to live in.
There were many thoughtful dialogues about what the future holds and how we can best prepare and meet the challenges, including implementation of the 2019 Global Fragility Act. Foremost among these ideas are
Engaging young people who will bear the brunt of future economic and societal problems.
Look outside our circles to find the unusual partners that will build more powerful collaborations.
Collect data on conflict in order to understand what is happening and challenge negative narratives. We have to use the same dynamics to view conflict in the US that we use to analyze conflict in other countries.
Look forward to conversations about race, reparation, reconciliation and resilience.
Step away from politics and find ways to just be human together. Question our biases, break through our otherness, seek connection and relationship, fight disinformation and misinformation and look for ways to listen to the stories of others and find common ground.
And finally, we as peacebuilders must walk the talk. How does what we do align with what we say. What are the stories we tell ourselves about how we show up in these moments of great challenge and what are the values inherent in those stories? This is the North Star we must navigate toward.
I am left with immense hope because of the people I met who are working tirelessly around the world to do this work. None of us are alone. I feel more committed than ever to keep doing my little part of this much bigger and extremely critical work.
The Institute for Economics and Peace and many more international organizations are focused creating the world we want to live in. We know there are many examples of violence, injustice and oppression around the world and this year of Covid19 has exacerbated those, especially for women, indigenous and people of color and refugees. The pandemic pushed the global poverty level up 9%, the first rise in many years of downturns, and it may not end there. We face major downturns in trust in the media and all of our institutions except the military. Despite this great challenge, there is equal measures of hope. What made this 3 days so inspiring was that the entire focus was on how to understand where we are and build a more positive picture, beyond the blame and finger-pointing that usually frame our public dialogues and social media feeds. There are efforts around the world to address diversity, equity and inclusion – both for women and people of color. We know that the more women are at the table of peacebuilding, the longer and stronger the peace agreements are. And this conference saw powerful women from across the globe taking on this task.
Author: Betsy Mulligan-Dague | JRPC Executive Director 2005-2021
