Why ‘Insight on Conflict’?
Insight on Conflict provides information on local peacebuilding organisations in areas of conflict. Local peacebuilders already make a real impact in conflict areas. They work to prevent violent conflicts before they start, to reduce the impact of violence, and to bring divided communities together in the aftermath of violence. However, their work is often ignored – either because people aren’t aware of the existence and importance of local peacebuilders in general, or because they simply haven’t had access to information and contacts for local peacebuilders. We hope that Insight on Conflict can help redress the balance by drawing attention to the important work of local peacebuilders. On this site, you’ll be able to find out who the local peacebuilders are, what they do, and how you might get in touch with them. Over half the organisations featured on Insight on Conflict do not have their own website.
“Donors are struggling for information such as this. The security situations in these countries mean that international staff postings are one to two years at the most. In the case of Pakistan, we go from crisis to crisis (floods, assassinations, large scale terrorist attacks) and staff are usually caught up in the reactive work that these situations generate. As a result, we struggle with transfer of institutional memory regarding credible local organisations and everyday conflict events (which when analysed make sense of our bigger issues). In donor and civil society circles we also talk increasingly about bringing our efforts together to have a greater impact on the issues we work on. People still struggle though, with making the connections and placing their initiative within the larger context of social sector work taking place. Lastly, although we admit the issues associated, due to lack of information we struggle with the ‘entrenched partners’ phenomenon i.e. we continue to work with local organisations on our radar, rather than branching out and taking calculated risks.
“In my view, the above make great selling points for Insight on Conflict. You provide local context and maps, local stories, local contacts. Invaluable!”
Official, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Pakistan
Read more endorsements for Insight on Conflict.
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Who are we?
Insight on Conflict is a project launched by Peace Direct, the UK-based charity that finds, funds and promotes local peacebuilders in conflict areas around the world. Peace Direct wants to change the balance of power and resources between local people and outsiders so that local peacebuilding is central to all strategies for managing conflict.
Photographing Peace – Ted Gifford
How do we work?
We work with local peacebuilders, to promote their work and tell their stories. Our team in London work with Local Correspondents in each conflict area who build relationships with peacebuilders and gather information on their work for publication on the site.
Who is ‘Insight on Conflict’ aimed at?
Insight on Conflict is not an academic website, or aimed only at specialists. We believe the stories of peacebuilders should be accessible and relevant to anyone interested in conflicts. We think people both in conflict areas and interested outsiders will find the information useful, for making contacts, research, and gaining a fuller understanding of the potential impact of local peacebuilders. If you do find this site helpful, or it has helped you make connections, please tell us!
Who do we feature on Insight on Conflict?
We feature local peacebuilders; local people, working towards peace. We’ve worked from the definition in the respected ‘Reflecting on Peace Practice‘ project, that peacebuilders should be working towards two basic goals:
- Stopping Violence and Destructive Conflict; and
- Building Just and Sustainable Peace.
All groups featured on Insight on Conflict should be working with these goals in mind. We only feature groups that are non-partisan – not groups who work with only ‘one side’ in a conflict.
Peacebuilding is a broad and expanding field. Peace Direct believes too much focus goes on ‘top level’ peacebuilding, such as negotiations between governments and international bodies, whilst ignoring the work of smaller, locally-based groups. We hope that Insight on Conflict can help redress the balance, and the focus of the site is on the local groups and individuals. At the same time, we want to offer people a view of peacebuilding in each conflict area, so where relevant we have provided information on the work of larger organisations.
If you are aware of stories or peacebuilding groups that we have missed and you think we should cover, please let us know.
Disclaimer
We strive to provide a valuable reliable resource with Insight on Conflict. We cannot however guarantee impartiality or total objectivity, nor do we present ourselves as a totally comprehensive ‘directory’ of local peacebuilding in a particular area. It is not in the scope of the project to verify and evaluate in detail what is being said to us. If you would like more details about the information in a specific area, please don’t hesitate to contact the Project Manager: ruairi@peacedirect.org. We would also like to hear from you if you have any suggestions on how we might improve the site, or other information that you think will be useful for us to include.
Funding
This project was supported in part by an anonymous US foundation.