LOCAL PEACEBUILDING

Their most powerful tool is knowledge. Knowledge of the system. Knowledge of the history. Knowledge of the people. Knowledge of the culture. Every conflict is different. That’s why the local knowledge they possess is vital.

Think of conflict like an epidemic. When enough people are inoculated against a disease, it stops spreading. Similarly, when enough people in an area are using non-violent ways of dealing with conflict, violence can be halted.

Anyone can be a peacebuilder, and the approaches they use are creative and varied.
• It could be women in a market, determined to keep violence out of the market by creating a forum in which disputes can be resolved.
• It could be local business men, raising money to buy back weapons to reduce the arms in circulation.
• It could be a group of young people setting up a radio station to transmit programmes that show different communities successfully living together
• It could be a former militia commander, using his influence to turn people away from the pursuit of violence to building peace.
• It could be a teacher, developing and teaching a peace curriculum.
• It could be an imam and a priest, helping communities of different religions to understand each other better.

People don’t always need money to start these initiatives. But to be effective in the long term they need resources to expand and reach out to more people, to connect to people in power and create political as well as personal change.

That’s where funding from Peace Direct can make the difference between progress to a lasting peace, or a relapse into violence.