From the Inside Out: Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in a Changing World Order
Report | February 2024
How can the future of peacebuilding in a changing global order look like – and what needs to be improved? Our new report “From the Inside Out: Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in a Changing World Order” presents key findings and policy recommendations for possible ways forward. They include:
- The present crisis of international peacebuilding is not only due to current geopolitical challenges but also to mistakes made in the past. Overcoming these mistakes requires a shift in mindset before changes are made in policy or procedures, and policy-makers should engage in critical internal reflections on what can realistically be achieved by whom, when and where.
- There are no cookie-cutter approaches to ending wars that always work, regardless of the context. This is true for all wars, but more so for Russia’s war on Ukraine, the first major interstate war in an era dominated by civil conflict. But one insight from the past is that peacebuilding is not a task for a few years, but one for generations – and one that needs long-term commitment and predictable funding. Any reduction in peacebuilding, humanitarian and development budgets runs counter to rising global needs in these areas.
Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hamas’s attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza or escalating violence in Sudan, Yemen or Myanmar: wars are not only increasing around the globe, but are changing in nature. They are becoming more brutal, more complex, are fought with hybrid methods and they are interlinked: the Russian war on Ukraine, for example, has been a crisis amplifier for other wars by absorbing international attention and exacerbating pre-existing donor fatigue and funding gaps.
At the same time, building peace is ever more difficult: The last large-scale UN peace operation, for example, was set up in 2014; and many internationally mediated and comprehensive peace processes have broken down in the past decade.
To obtain a better understanding of how the future of peacebuilding in a changing global order can look like and what needs to be improved, the Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung (BKHS) and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) set up the "Global Expert Group on Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding" – a network bringing together leading representatives from civil society, academia, and politics who come from conflict-affected and post-conflict countries and work on these issues in their regions.
After a year of intensive research, interviews and workshops, the report “From the Inside Out: Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in a Changing World Order” has now been published.
