How Local Communities in a Country are the Key to Peace

By letting local communities define humanitarian interventions, positive peace workshops ensure that activities are culturally sensitive and viable in the local context.

How Local Communities in a Country are the Key to Peace

IEP research reveals that improving levels of Positive Peace is a solution to many of the common social and economic maladies afflicting countries worldwide.

Countries that score poorly across all eight pillars of peace are invariably plagued by violence, war and civil conflict.

Therefore, an awareness of the attitudes, structures and institutions that are conducive to peace is essential for community leaders and key stakeholders living in these countries to engage effectively with the peacebuilding process.

IEP has identified concrete ways in which countries can invest in Positive Peace, thereby improving resilience, mitigating the risk of violence, and reducing the economic toll of conflict.

There are two ways in which countries can begin the process of change, they can:

• Stimulate the whole system and target all eight pillars simultaneously. This kind of system-wide improvement creates the environment for a virtuous cycle of peacebuilding. Each pillar intervention must be practical for the current political dynamic, it must make a substantial impact, and must affect the system over the short and long-term.
• Target and boost the weakest Positive Peace pillar by developing the right policies and actions. The growth of the weakest pillar – due to the interconnectivity of Positive Peace — will have a cascade effect on the other pillars, resulting in collective improvement.

Positive Peace Workshops to Activate Positive Peace

One of the ways IEP assists in the process of implementing and actualising Positive Peace is through Positive Peace workshops.

These are unique, IEP developed programs, which account for the nuance of local contexts and provide relevant and targeted courses to key stakeholders at the sub-national and community level.

Positive Peace workshops not only edify community leaders and local politicians on how to improve Positive Peace on an individual and communal level, but also facilitate an ever-widening global network of peacebuilding professionals.

IEP has conducted successful Positive Peace workshops in several countries, including: Zimbabwe, Uganda, Libya and Mexico. Here are highlights from some of our workshops:

• Positive Peace for Colombian Youth
• The Ugandan Literacy Project
• Peace Workshop in Tunisia
• Empowering civil leaders for a sustainable change 
• Empowering girls in Mexico
• South Sudanese Community in Australia Work on Building Peace

To ensure optimal results, IEP Positive Peace workshops are underpinned by the following principles:

• They are guided by a participatory and locally-focused strategy.
• The approach for the Positive Peace workshops is based on the fundamental concepts of local ownership, local leadership and multi-stakeholder partnership. 

Positive Peace Workshops are sensitive to the intricacies of local dynamics. 

By letting the local communities define what the interventions should be, workshops ensure that the activities are culturally sensitive and viable and appropriate in the local context.

They are designed to complement and not disrupt other more formal or technocratic peacebuilding approaches.