Deadline: 8-Feb-23
In partnership with the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) is proud to announce the theme for PeaceCon 2023: Beyond Fragile Ground: New Peacebuilding Architectures for Today and the Future, taking place in-person and virtually, May 3-5, 2023.
Entering its 11th year, PeaceCon is the largest annual gathering of global peacebuilders held in the United States. The new hybrid format will allow them to connect in person and continue to attract a diverse set of voices, expertise, and ideas from a global audience.
The peacebuilding field has grown significantly in the last two decades, seeing substantial wins, including the adoption of the Global Fragility Act (GFA), the United Nations (UN) Sustaining Peace Agenda, and the World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence. Yet many challenges remain.
PeaceCon 2023 convenes at a time of extraordinary global turbulence. The number of compounding crises facing the field is unprecedented.
- Even before Russia launched its unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine, the world was already experiencing a 30-year high in violent conflict.
- Recent reports have found a disconcerting increase in the total number of fragile contexts worldwide, with 1.9 billion people—24% of the world’s population and 73% of the world’s extreme poor—living in environments rife with chronic instability, conflict or violence.
- The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was not just a health crisis but also fueled global insecurity that has impacted prevention and containment of COVID-19 with long-term social, political, and economic consequences.
- Globally, climate change, food and energy insecurity, and rising dis/misinformation are all compounding and compounded by violent conflict while the greatest tool of resiliency—democracy—is backsliding as strategic competition among the world’s most powerful nations accelerates.
The peacebuilding field has grown significantly in the last two decades, seeing substantial wins, including the adoption of the Global Fragility Act (GFA), the UN’s New Agenda for Peace, and the World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence. Yet many challenges remain for the peacebuilding field.
Criteria
- PeaceCon 2023 will bring together senior officials, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners to explore how the field must evolve, with strategic foresight and innovation, to strengthen existing instruments of peacebuilding and create new strategic approaches and peacebuilding architectures to manage conflict and prevent violence during these times of tectonic geopolitical shifts.
- Join them at PeaceCon 2023 as they collectively explore what is working, how to build on these successes, and how they develop and demand practical and interconnected new peacebuilding strategies and tools for the future to shape a more effective and inclusive peacebuilding sector.
- They invite peacebuilders from across the world to share their ideas for interactive sessions, workshops, or other creative in-person or online formats, emphasizing moving beyond long panel presentations and brief audience question-and-answers.
For more information, visit Alliance for Peacebuilding.