From Participation to Influence: Reflections from the First UN Peacebuilding Week

The inaugural United Nations Peacebuilding Week, held from 22–26 June 2026 in New York, created an important space for Member States, UN officials, civil society organisations and peacebuilding practitioners to reflect together on how the international system can better sustain peace. This came during a time of global geopolitical division, shrinking civic space and financial pressure. For Peace Direct, the week offered an opportunity to continue elevating the expertise and experiences of local peacebuilders in often distant international spaces and to learn alongside others working to strengthen locally led peacebuilding.  

We participated in several conversations, supported the participation of Kaltumi Abdulazeez of LEGASI in Nigeria, and co-hosted a vital conversation to maintain momentum to shift rhetorical support of the locally led agenda to implementation. The presence of local peacebuilders in international spaces over the years has become more difficult, particularly because of visa barriers and limited resources. Kaltumi’s attendance created opportunities for a local peacebuilder to engage directly with senior UN officials, Member States and civil society actors.

Across these spaces, one message came through clearly: meaningful inclusion is increasingly moving beyond consultation. Local peacebuilders are already shaping priorities and practice in their communities, and international institutions have an opportunity to deepen the ways their knowledge and leadership inform decisions. 

When local peacebuilders enter the room 

One of the most memorable moments came during discussions within the Core Group of the UN–Civil Society Dialogue on Peacebuilding. Much of the conversation focused on strengthening civil society partnerships and improving engagement with the UN. The discussion also created an important opportunity to bring local peacebuilders and communities more directly into the exchange, ensuring that their perspectives could inform and enrich the conversation.

Her contribution was a reminder that local peacebuilders are not abstract beneficiaries of international policy. They are practitioners and knowledge holders whose experience can deepen and challenge global conversations about peace. 

We are grateful to the Core Group for the openness and receptiveness with which Kaltumi’s contribution was received. The willingness of members to listen, reflect and engage seriously with her perspective demonstrated the value of creating spaces where local peacebuilders can speak for themselves and contribute directly to the discussion. 

Kaltumi also met directly with the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support. Their exchange created space for a local peacebuilder to communicate directly with senior UN leadership about what communities are experiencing and what local actors are already doing to build peace.

Local peacebuilders are already present, leading and shaping peace in their communities. Therefore, they also need to be more strategically integrated within UN spaces with dignity, credibility, and recognition. Once this is achieved, the next step is to turn that presence into sustained influence that will collaboratively shape decisions, resources and priorities.

Measuring Peace: what kind, and for whom?

During Peacebuilding Week, we also participated in the launch of the Peacebuilding Impact Hub Report, an important initiative seeking to strengthen how the peacebuilding community understands and demonstrates impact. The discussion raised a fundamental question: What kind of peace are we talking about, and for whom are we measuring it? 

Peacebuilding impact cannot be understood only through indicators developed far from communities experiencing conflict. Communities may define progress through changes that are relational and difficult to quantify: greater trust; reopened dialogue; reduced fear; stronger participation by women, youth, or people with disabilities; or the ability to resolve disputes without violence.

Prevention presents an additional challenge because much of its success is precisely what never happened. A violent confrontation that did not occur, a dispute that did not escalate, or a community that did not fall into cycles of retaliation can represent significant peacebuilding achievements. Yet these outcomes are difficult to measure because they concern futures that were avoided. This is why local knowledge is indispensable to peacebuilding evidence. Local peacebuilders often know whether tensions have changed long before those shifts appear in formal indicators. 

If peacebuilding is to be locally led, communities should have a role not only in implementation but also in defining what success looks like and how it should be measured.

From consultation to co-creation 

This principle also applies with discussions taking place within the Core Group of the UN–Civil Society Dialogue on Peacebuilding. The Core Group and the Dialogue represent an important institutional innovation, creating a structured space for civil society and the UN to exchange perspectives on peacebuilding policy and practice. 

The Dialogue has been creating meaningful opportunities for civil society to contribute ideas and recommendations for a few years now. Encouragingly, the Core Group has begun carrying this work forward in subsequent meetings, creating space to revisit proposals, refine priorities and strengthen follow-up. We see incredible value in this emerging practice and in the broader direction of travel toward co-creation, trust and sustained institutional engagement. One practical approach could be to ensure that the principal recommendations emerging from each Dialogue cycle are shared with senior UN leadership and connected with the parts of the system best placed to respond. Depending on the issue, this could include the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) and Peace Operations (DPO), Peacebuilding and Peace Support Office (PBPSO) or the Peacebuilding Fund. Others may involve Resident Coordinators, UN country teams, UN Development Programme, peace operations, the Peacebuilding Commission or other relevant bodies.  

This would not mean that every recommendation automatically becomes UN policy. Rather, it would create a clearer pathway for follow-through and make civil society participation more consequential.

An opportunity for the next Secretary-General 

The coming leadership transition creates a particularly important opportunity. The Office of the next Secretary-General could help advance the transformation of the UN by strengthening the connection between civil society, local peacebuilders and system-wide decision-making.  

The accumulated recommendations of the UN–Civil Society Dialogue on Peacebuilding could form part of the transition to the next Secretary-General, providing a direct window into perspectives and priorities emerging from civil society and communities closest to conflict. The role of the next Secretary-General should not be to centralise implementation. Rather, the Office could provide political leadership to connect institutions operating through separate mandates, encourage system-wide follow-through and help ensure that knowledge originating from communities reaches the places where strategic decisions are made.  

From visibility to influence 

Our experience during Peacebuilding Week reinforced an important distinction: visibility is not the same as influence. A local peacebuilder speaking at a UN event matters. But meaningful participation can go further. 

Did the intervention change the conversation? Did local knowledge reach decision-makers? Did institutions reconsider how they define success, allocate resources or design policy? 

Kaltumi’s engagement illustrated this possibility. Her presence mattered not simply because a local peacebuilder was visible at the United Nations, but because her intervention helped deepen the discussion and bring community-level experience directly into a global policy space. 

These reflections point toward another distinction: the difference between change and transformation. Change can mean creating new meetings or adjusting procedures. Transformation means changing relationships and power: who defines the agenda, who controls resources, whose knowledge is considered legitimate, who decides what success looks like and who is accountable for implementation. 

The first Peacebuilding Week created important space for these conversations and demonstrated a willingness across the peacebuilding community to experiment with new forms of engagement, bring together actors who do not always share the same spaces, and place local leadership, impact and participation more firmly at the centre of the discussion. That deserves significant recognition. The inaugural Peacebuilding Week should be seen not only as a successful gathering but also as the beginning of a platform that can become increasingly connected, inclusive and consequential.  

Future editions can bring even more local peacebuilders and communities directly into the room, strengthen the Core Group of the UN–Civil Society Dialogue, connect recommendations more clearly to decisions and resources, and build stronger mechanisms for follow-up across the UN system. 

Let us imagine together a future in which no local peacebuilder has to say, “I hear how you are talking about us”, because they are already in the room—heard, respected and helping shape the decisions that affect their communities and the future of peacebuilding. 

If the first UN Peacebuilding Week marked the beginning of that journey, it is a beginning worth celebrating, protecting and carrying forward with ambition and hope.