As part of Geneva Peace Week 2018, the Graduate Institute co-organised a panel discussion with the PeaceNexus Foundation entitled, “How can investors and companies contribute to the goal of Building Peace”. The event, which included a keynote address by the President of the Kofi Annan Foundation and contributions from representatives of Microsoft, Nespresso, Pury Pictet Turretini & Cie, the PeaceNexus Foundation and the Canton of Geneva, was chaired and moderated by Achim Wennmann, Senior Researcher at the Graduate Institute’s Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding, and also co-founder of Geneva Peace Week. The discussion emphasised the importance of finding innovative solutions for sustainable investment in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG16. It also illustrated how mindsets are starting to change and enable stronger partnerships across sectors and institutions in support of peaceful and inclusive societies. In a recent interview, Achim Wennmann discussed the role of Geneva Peace Week to advance such cross-cutting partnerships.
Geneva Peace Week was created in 2014 by the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, the Graduate Institute and the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG). Why was it necessary?
Geneva Peace Week responds to the need to expand the space about dialogue and negotiation as the primary tool to resolve conflict and build peace. Geneva plays an important role in this respect because such dialogue and negotiation—or ‘peace diplomacy’— happens here on a daily basis. Often, such processes are discrete and only insiders know about them. Geneva Peace Week was created with the objective to change this and highlight how many different actors contribute to sustaining peace in so many ways and in so many places. Geneva Peace Week also underlines that each and every person, actor and institution, has a role to play in building peace and resolving conflict; it is not just a task for experts but something that concerns all of us. Geneva Peace Week therefore opens a space for ‘silo-busting’ and experience sharing across institutions and sectors to innovate how we go about building peace.
Why was this year’s theme, “Building Peace in a Turbulent World”, chosen? And what was your key take-home point on this theme?
This year we wanted to emphasise the urgency of finding peaceful solutions for the growing risks of violent conflict, building on the lessons from history and the needs for future peacebuilding practice. My main take-home was that we have to get better at embracing uncertainty. Whatever we do to build peace and resolve conflict, we need to rethink the concepts and tools we use to do so. In the face of geopolitical change, the western peacebuilding project seems orphaned and is being overshadowed by populism and militarism. At the same time, the voices of youth and women around the world are getting louder. They do not want to be included into political systems they consider illegitimate and they do not want to follow leaders they do not trust. Geneva Peace Week showed that we have moved on from a narrative of ‘giving voice’ towards one of building new political platforms and social movements. In the face of these developments, the stakes for reinventing peacebuilding are high and the expanding transnational relations across continents may offer a space for this reinvention at different levels.
What’s your vision for Geneva Peace Week in the future?
After this year’s edition, the Graduate Institute, United Nations Offices at Geneva (UNOG) and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform agreed that Geneva Peace Week has achieved proof-of-concept. While we will jointly assess what we want to achieve in the years to come, I think the vision of a big tent that accommodates a wide variety of perspectives will keep its merit, especially in a world where there is less oxygen for critical discussion and consensus building. This big tent is also important in enabling participation from a broad range of organisations that all have a role to play in building peace in their own specific way. Finally, I believe in Geneva Peace Week as a platform for an ever more transnational world that wants to find solutions to violence and war through dialogue and negotiation. There is much work to do and many places to start. The extent to which Geneva Peace Week inspires leadership for peace and emboldens people to ‘walk the talk’ and act to prevent conflict and build peace should be the ultimate measure of its success.
Geneva Peace Week has become a reference in the international peace agenda and has grown into a major happening in Geneva, involving over 65 events organised by more than 120 partners during five days in 2018.