What is Peacebuilding?

Peacebuilding as a concept started to appear in official United Nations (UN) policies in the 1990s. However, the focus was on peacekeeping, the deployment of neutral, international forces to reduce violent conflict and try to keep the “peace.” Today, we know that peacebuilding is more than just reducing violent conflict and “keeping the peace.” 

But what exactly is peacebuilding? We get this question a lot, and honestly, we haven’t done a good job of communicating what peacebuilding is and why it matters.

We are the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), a network of 200+ organizations working in 181 countries to prevent and reduce violent conflict and build sustainable peace. Peacebuilding is in our name, and we are working to reframe narratives so we can better communicate the importance of peacebuilding to the public, policymakers, donors, the private sector, and beyond. AfP conducted years-long, multi-method  research  on how certain narratives can effectively explain the “what” and “why” of peacebuilding. The research found that the most effective narrative about peacebuilding is one of connection—that building peace and supporting peacebuilding in one part of the world benefits everyone. We can’t lead with and constantly deliver crisis messaging. Instead, we need to show that peacebuilding is actionable and—rather than a passive end state—something built by all of us through ongoing hard work.

But when you search for a definition of peacebuilding, it’s technical, wonky, and complex. Here's one example:

Peacebuilding covers a broad range of measures implemented in the context of emerging, current, or post‐conflict situations and which are explicitly guided and motivated by a primary commitment to the prevention of violent conflict and the promotion of a lasting and sustainable peace.”  _{(from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2008)} 

And here's another one:

Peacebuilding involves a range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development. Peacebuilding strategies must be coherent and tailored to the specific needs of the country concerned, based on national ownership, and should comprise a carefully prioritized, sequenced, and therefore relatively narrow set of activities aimed at achieving the above objectives.”  _{(from the UN Peacebuilding Support Office, 2010)}  

If these definitions don’t make sense, we don’t blame you. We know they’re super wonky and difficult to understand. Definitions like these are part of the problem. 

In 2018, AfP and its members worked to get peacebuilding officially acknowledged as a word in multiple dictionaries, including  HarperCollins ,  Macmillan , and  Cambridge University Press . But in digital documents, a red squiggly line forms underneath the word “peacebuilding,” and that’s annoying! 

Show us how you build peace—check out our  #PeaceIs page , where you can submit your practical and actionable peacebuilding program. Learn more and submit your story  here !