Many professionals working in conflict areas recognise that peacebuilding and statebuilding ultimately depend on the efforts of local people and institutions. Yet local peacebuilding is often equated with community-level projects that are too small for governments to handle and that can only have a limited impact.
Peace Direct believes that locally led peacebuilding can operate on a large scale. Its concept paper, Ripples into Waves, uses four external case studies to show how local peacebuilding initiatives have succeeded on a national scale and made a real impact on violent conflict.
Click here to download Ripples into Waves (pdf) (http://www.insightonconflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Ripples-into-Waves-concept-paper.pdf)