News and Insight

Last month Conciliation Resources and Saferworld co-hosted a panel discussion to launch our new guide for facilitators on participatory gender-sensitive conflict analysis.

Our partners in Fiji, Transcend Oceania, have teamed up with Fiji Television Limited to broadcast a series of television shows focused on community engagement with peacebuilding initiatives.

Globally, one in four young people live in places affected by armed conflict or organised violence, and they account for nearly 40 per cent of all people living in conflict zones. Yet despite this, young people are too often excluded from processes to build peace. They’re mistrusted, ignored or underestimated. To ensure their inclusion in peacebuilding, sometimes we need to take a step back and first help young people change the way their communities and societies see and value them.

The Conciliation Resources team is proud to have completed our very first fundraising fitness challenge, Steps to Peace. It exceeded all expectations and raised over £12,000 to support our organisation’s vital peacebuilding work. 

This week members of the Women Mediators across the Commonwealth (WMC) network met with representatives from Commonwealth States, Lord Ahmad and Her Royal Highness The Countess of Wessex online to celebrate the work of women mediators and peacebuilders.

Alicia Kuin has facilitated over 600 conflict processes, and as a 33-year old woman, she’s usually working in spaces dominated by older men. Twenty years after the landmark United Nations Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security, Alicia reflects on the challenges she experienced as a young female mediator and what she’s learning from colleagues around the world.

Women mediators are constantly finding innovative ways to bridge the peace gap in all spaces of mediation – within communities, nationally, and across borders to engage regionally and internationally. Through our work and research we know that women are there, and always have been. But 20 years on from the United Nation’s landmark resolution on women, peace and security, women for the most part remain unrecognised and invisible and are continually denied access to the peace table and decision-making spaces.

A year ago, a ground-breaking public exhibition opened in Tbilisi, Georgia. The Corridors of Conflict: Abkhazia 1989-1995 was the first of its kind – an exhibition focused on Georgian-Abkhaz relations, the years leading up to violent conflict in 1992-1993, and its consequences. How can exhibitions like this help deal with the past, with a view to transforming conflict for the future?

Recent survey results suggest that a significant majority (70.9%) of the Georgian public think their government could take further steps to improve relationships between Georgian and Abkhaz societies. Most of them believe direct dialogue with the de facto authorities in Abkhazia is the answer. These survey results indicate a willingness by the Georgian population to embrace change in relation to the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

'The Corridors of Conflict: Abkhazia 1989-1995' was an exhibition that took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, October 2019. Based on unique archival material, the exhibition triggered reflection and debate. Creating archives, and documenting lived experience of the violent past, is important for transforming conflict. It allows people’s voices to be heard, and helps people learn from what happened, so that the same mistakes can be avoided in future.

Gender inequality is a root cause of conflict. Evidence shows that high levels of unequal power relations and gender-based violence are associated with increased vulnerability to war and the use of more severe forms of violence in conflict.* Understanding these dynamics allows us to uncover, target and transform the root causes that fuel violence and conflict.

Bossangoa is often known as the heartland of the Anti-balaka. The town, and surrounding areas, in Ouham prefecture, were at the centre of the conflict that engulfed the Central African Republic from 2012, and gave rise to the armed civilian groups. Now, as the country examines its conflict history and how to build a more peaceful future, it’s vital to understand how and why young people became involved in the violence.