Briefing on the Principles for Peace Initiative

Date: Thursday 23 June 2022
Time: 15:30-16:30
Venue: Eigtveds Pakhus, Strandgade 25d, 1401
Registration: Please email [email protected] by Wednesday 22 June.

The Principles for Peace initiative is a collective and participatory effort to develop principles and standards to support national and international actors to craft more effective and inclusive approaches to peace. The Principles for Peace Initiative aims to bridge the gap between policy and action by enabling local, national and international actors to craft more inclusive peace processes and develop new Principles for Peace. As the international community faces an era of alarming, prolonged and recurrent conflict, many contexts have seen increase in humanitarian needs and prolonged violence cycles. The persistent increase in violent conflicts underlines the pressing need to re-imagine and reshape our collective approaches to building and sustaining peace while also considering decades of experience from humanitarian and development action and the importance of synergies across the humanitarian, development and peace areas.

The initiative is, among others, supported by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Peace and Stabilisation Fund. Other funders include Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Swedish, German, Swiss, and Dutch foreign ministries. The thought leadership of the initiative is spearheaded by the International Commission on Inclusive Peace (ICIP) with commissioners including General Roméo Dallaire, Yves Daccord, and Sanam Naraghi Anderlini (please find the full list of commissioners see https://principlesforpeace.org/international-commission/).

The initiative’s global participatory and interdisciplinary process has anchored the work of the Commission in a solid base of knowledge and evidence, sustained engagement with high-level and local voices including inputs from over 60 countries as well as in practical and lived experience, pragmatism, and political feasibility. The Commission’s work is further enabled by a Ministerial-level Steering Committee, a coalition of 120 organisations forming the P4P Stakeholder Platform, a Research Committee of eminent scholars, and a dedicated independent Secretariat hosted at Interpeace.

The Initiative’s flagship is the Peacemakers’ Covenant, which lays out the foundations and philosophy behind the Principles for Peace, and the different approaches, policies, and practices that will accompany them as well as a partnership compact to reflect relations of respect, reciprocity and dignity. At present the Covenant introduces four shifts in policy and practice around longer-term and dynamic process oriented nature of peacemaking; role of external actors in working with local actors; how peace processes reconfigure state-society relations; and way for social groups to interact towards pluralist and inclusive outcomes. The Commission will present the Covenant at the end of 2022 which will be followed by a focus on anchoring the principles in the international systems and establish effective monitoring and accountability mechanisms to ensure their implementation.

This 60-minute exchange will be hosted by Conducive Space for Peace. Hiba Qasas, Director of the Principles for Peace Secretariat, will share the findings of the global process of consultations held by the initiative and discuss the emerging principles and avenues for engagement for Danish Civil Society Organizations. The briefing will contribute to and influence ongoing work of the ICIP to develop principles and standards as part of the Principles for Peace framework allowing to share and capture lessons learned by humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors.