Georgia’s Dangerous Anti-LGBTQI+ Law

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Credit: Vano Shlamov/AFP via Getty Images

LONDON, Sep 30 2024 (IPS) – Georgia’s ruling party has put LGBTQI+ people firmly in the firing line ahead of next month’s election. On 17 September, parliament gave final approval to a highly discriminatory law that empowers the authorities to censor books and films with LGBTQI+ content, stop discussion of LGBTQI+ issues in schools, ban people from flying rainbow flags and prevent Pride events. The law excludes LGBTQI+ people from adopting children, bans gender affirmation surgery and refuses to recognise same-sex marriages of Georgians conducted abroad.

Latest troubling development

Georgia’s anti-LGBTQI+ law breaches a wide range of international human rights commitments. And it’s a repeat offence: in May, a bill became law designating civil society and media groups that receive at least 20 per cent of funding from international sources as ‘pursuing the interests of a foreign power’. The ‘foreign agents’ law will enable vilification, fuel public suspicion and tie organisations up in lengthy compliance procedures.

President Salome Zourabichvili, who is independent of the ruling Georgian Dream party, vetoed the foreign agents bill, calling it a ‘Russian law’, also the view of the mass protest movement that rose up to oppose it. But presidential powers are weak, and parliament quickly reversed the veto. Zourabichvili – Georgia’s last directly elected president, with future presidents to be picked by parliament after her term ends in October – has also pledged to veto the anti-LGBTQI+ law. But a similar parliamentary override seems certain.

Georgia Dream says its anti-LGBTQI+ law, known as the law on ‘family values and the protection of minors’, is needed to defend ‘traditional moral standards’. It also said its foreign agents law was needed to stop international funders sponsoring ‘LGBT propaganda’ and fomenting revolution.

Both laws are part of a growing climate of state hostility towards civil society, in a country that once stood out as an ex-Soviet state that broadly respected civic freedoms. Last year, the European Union (EU)-Georgia Civil Society Platform – a body established as part of negotiations towards the country potentially joining the EU – criticised a sustained government smear campaign against civil society. Freedom House pointed to growing harassment and violence against journalists.

The anti-LGBTQI+ law reflects a reassertion of influence by the Georgian Orthodox Church, the country’s dominant religion, and a closer alignment with Russia. The foreign agents law imitates one introduced in Russia in 2012, which paved the way for intense repression of civil society, while Georgia’s anti-LGBTQI+ law is also strikingly similar to that passed in Russia in 2013, which has been extensively used to criminalise and silence LGBTQI+ people.

The two laws can only move the country further away from the stated goal of joining the EU. They place Georgia at a fork in the road: the government and the church clearly see it as a socially conservative country that legitimately belongs in Russia’s orbit. But others – the many people, overwhelmingly young, who’ve protested and faced state violence in return – represent a different Georgian identity: one that’s democratic, inclusive and European.

Vilification and violence

Hostility has made it harder for Georgia’s LGBTQI+ people to claim visibility. Last year, violent far-right attacks forced the cancellation of the Tbilisi Pride parade. The authorities have consistently failed to ensure the safety of participants. When people first marched on 17 May 2013, they were attacked by a mob that included members of the clergy. In 2021, extremist groups also attacked journalists covering the event, as the police stood by and did nothing.

In 2014, the year after Pride first mobilised, the Church declared 17 May – the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia – to be Family Purity Day, an event marked with a public holiday. This year, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze joined thousands at the Family Purity Day march in Tbilisi. In contrast, such was the level of hostility that Tbilisi Pride organisers decided to only hold virtual events. LGBTQI+ people were denied the chance to do the very thing Pride events exist for: assert visibility and normalise their public presence.

The new law reverses some recent progress civil society achieved in shifting homophobic social values, with young people particularly showing more tolerant attitudes. But now the law will have the effect similar legislation has had elsewhere: giving the green light to stigmatisation, vilification and violence. Activists have pointed to the recent murder of one of the country’s few high-profile transgender people, model Kesaria Abramidze, as a grim sign of what may come. Extremist groups can only be emboldened, confident the law is on their side when they commit acts of hatred.

The upcoming election

Georgian Dream seeks a fourth consecutive term when the country goes to the polls in October. With the opposition divided, it seems certain to come first again. But its support fell in the last election and opinion polls suggest it’s lost more votes since. Possibly worried about keeping its majority, it’s opted to vilify an already excluded group of people.

Georgian Dream may think hostility towards LGBTQI+ people and civil society groups is safer electoral territory than a more explicitly anti-western, pro-Russian stance. But its recent decisions signal how it will rule if its electoral strategy pays off: not by upholding the rights of all Georgians but by putting the interests of its socially conservative supporters first, and by tailoring policies to please Vladimir Putin.

Georgian Dream still pays lip service to the idea of joining the EU, but the party’s billionaire financier and behind-the-scenes leader Bidzina Ivanishvili recently made his position clear, accusing western countries of being part of a global conspiracy to drag Georgia into a repeat of its ill-fated 2008 war with Russia. Georgian-Russian relations have warmed since Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in 2022.

The EU, for its part, reacted to the foreign agents law by suspending financial aid and Georgia’s accession negotiations. It must take a firm line and make clear Georgia won’t be allowed to join until the human rights of all its people are recognised and civil society is respected.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

A longer version of this article is available here.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org.

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UN Women Leaders Network to convene a diverse group of women leaders worldwide to advance women’s rights and leadership

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The UN Women Leaders Network was launched this week on the sidelines of the 79th UN General Assembly. It is the first permanent network of its kind, composed of intergenerational and intersectional women leaders, and its members represent the change needed in the traditional image of leadership today.

The network includes both emerging and more established leaders across ages, regions, and professions. The network will work together to promote the increase and advancement of women in leadership and decision-making spaces worldwide, and functions as a platform to a diverse group of women leaders to discuss and exchange ideas, solutions and experiences as leaders, community-builders and decision-makers.

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Members of the newly launched UN Women Leaders Network unites a global intergenerational and intersectional group of women leaders advocating for women's leadership and participation in decision-making. Members of the newly launched UN Women Leaders Network unites a global intergenerational and intersectional group of women leaders advocating for women's leadership and participation in decision-making.

Members of the newly launched UN Women Leaders Network unites a global intergenerational and intersectional group of women leaders advocating for women’s leadership and participation in decision-making. Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown

Chaired by the Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Sami Bahous, and created in partnership with the Government of Iceland, the UN Foundation, and the Council of Women World Leaders, the network will operate in support of UN Women’s work on women’s leadership. As the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action approaches in 2025, and world leaders are being called on to recommit to gender equality and women’s rights and empowerment, the network will serve as champions for diversity in leadership.

The network includes leaders such as Amanda Nguyen, CEO and Founder, Rise; Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, President of Mauritius (2015 – 2018); Aya Chebbi, Former African Union Special Envoy on Youth and Founder of Nala Feminist Collective; Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank; Hibaaq Osman, Founder and Chairperson, ThinkTank for Arab Women, the Dignity Fund, Karama and the Centre for the Strategic Initiatives of Women; Janet Mbugua, Author, Advocate and Founder, Inua Dada Foundation; Joyce Banda, President of Malawi (2012 – 2014); Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia (2010 – 2013); Julieta Martinez, Climate Justice and Gender Equality Youth Activist; Kathleen Hanna, Musician, Author and Feminist Activist; Kimberlé Crenshaw, Civil Rights Advocate, Scholar and Co-Founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum; Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 2011; Melanne Verveer, Executive Director, Georgetown Institute of Women, Peace and Security, Georgetown University; Roxane Gay, Author, Professor and Advocate; and Tarja Halonen, President of Finland (2000 – 2012). A full list of the current leaders can be found here.

Once fully mobilized, the network will consist of a group of 100 women leaders.

/Public Release. View in full here.

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Activists Call on World to ‘Imagine’ Peace, End Nuclear Arms

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Peace

The panel for the session on “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World without Nuclear Weapons.” Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS

The panel for the session on “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World without Nuclear Weapons.” Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS

PARIS, Sep 27 2024 (IPS) – In any discussion of world peace and the future of humanity, the issue of nuclear arms must be addressed, and now.

That was the message from a range of delegates at the “Imaginer la Paix / Imagine Peace” conference, held in Paris September 22 to 24, and organized by the Sant’Egidio Community, a Christian organization founded in Rome in 1968 and now based in 70 countries.

Describing its tenets as “Prayer, service to the Poor and work for Peace,” the community has hosted 38 international, multi-faith peace meetings, bringing together activists from around the world. This is the first time the conference has been held in Paris, with hundreds traveling to France, itself a nuclear-weapon state.

Occurring against the backdrop of brutal, on-going conflicts in different regions and a new race by some countries to “upgrade” their arsenal, the gathering had a sense of urgency, with growing fears that nuclear weapons might be used by warlords. Participants highlighted current and past atrocities and called upon world leaders to learn from the past.

“After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been blessed with many who have said ‘no’—’no’ a million times, creating movements and treaties, (and) awareness… that the only reasonable insight to learn from the conception and use of nuclear weapons is to say ‘no’,” said Andrea Bartoli, president of the Sant’Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue, based in New York.

Participating in a conference forum Monday titled “Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Imagining a World Without Nuclear Weapons,”  Bartoli and other speakers drew stark pictures of what living in a world with nuclear weapons entails, and they highlighted developments since World War II.

“After the two bombs were used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humans built more than 70,000 nuclear weapons and performed more than 2,000 tests. Still today we have more than 12,500, each of them with power greatly superior to the two used in August 1945,” Bartoli said.

Despite awareness of the catastrophic potential of these weapons and despite a UN treaty prohibiting their use, some governments argue that possessing nuclear arms is a deterrent—an argument that is deceptive, according to the forum speakers.

Anna Ikeda, program coordinator tor disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International. Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS

Anna Ikeda, program coordinator for disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International. Credit: AD McKenzie/IPS

Jean-Marie Collin, director of ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a movement launched in the early 2000s in Australia and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017), said that leaders who cite deterrence “accept the possibility of violating” international human rights.

“Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy cities and kill and maim entire populations, which means that all presidents and heads of government who implement a defense policy based on nuclear deterrence and who are therefore responsible for giving this order, are aware of this,” Collin told the forum.

ICAN campaigned for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was adopted at the United Nations in 2017, entering into force in 2021. The adoption came nearly five decades after the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which entered into force in 1970.

The terms of the NPT consider five countries to be nuclear weapons states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. Four other countries also possess nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel.

According to a 2024 ICAN report, these nine states jointly spent €85 billion (USD 94,6 billion) on their atomic weapon arsenals last year, an expenditure ICAN has called “obscene” and “unacceptable.” France, whose president Emmanuel Macron spoke about peace in broad, general terms at the opening of the conference, spent around €5,3 billion (about USD 5,9 billion) in 2023 on its nuclear weapons, said the report.

The policy of “deterrence” and “reciprocity,”  which essentially means “we’ll get rid of our weapons if you get rid of yours,”  has been slammed by ICAN and fellow disarmament activists.

“With the constant flow of information, we often tend to lose sight of the reality of figures,” Collin said at the peace conference. “I hope this one will hold your attention: it is estimated that more than 38,000 children were killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Children!”

All those killed—an estimated 210,000 people by the end of 1945—died in horrific ways, as survivors and others have testified. Delegates said that this knowledge should be the real “deterrent.”

At the forum, Anna Ikeda, program coordinator for disarmament at the UN Office of Soka Gakkai International, a global Buddhist movement, described testimony from a Hiroshima a-bomb survivor, Reiko Yamada, as one she would never forget.

“She (Yamada) stated, ‘A good friend of mine in the neighbourhood was waiting for her mother to return home with her four brothers and sisters. Later, she told me that on the second day after the bombing, a moving black lump crawled into the house. They first thought it was a black dog, but they soon realized it was their mother; she collapsed and died when she finally got to her children. They cremated her body in the yard,” Ikeda told the audience with emotion.

“Who deserves to die such a death? Nobody!” she continued. “Yet our world continues to spend billions of dollars to upkeep our nuclear arsenals, and our leaders at times imply readiness to use them. It is utterly unacceptable.”

Ikeda said that survivors, known as the “hibakusha” in Japan, have a fundamental answer to why nuclear weapons must be abolished—it is that “no one else should ever suffer what we did.”

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

‘We Need Competitive Elections so Only Truly Committed States Are Elected to the UN Human Rights Council’

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Sep 26 2024 (IPS) –  
CIVICUS discusses the upcoming election of new members of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council with Madeleine Sinclair, New York Office Director and Legal Counsel at the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR).

The Human Rights Council plays a crucial role in addressing global human rights issues and serves as a platform for activists and victims of violations. Its 47 members represent different regional groups. In October, 19 states will stand for 18 seats, with the Asia-Pacific region the only group with more candidates than seats. Many of the candidates have poor human rights records, and one – Saudi Arabia – stands out for its extremely serious rights violations. Civil society calls on UN member states to reject Saudi Arabia’s candidacy and uphold human rights standards when selecting members of the UN’s top human rights body.

Madeleine Sinclair

Why is the election of UN Human Rights Council members important?

As happens every year, the Human Rights Council will soon renew one third of its membership through a secret ballot election. On 9 October, all 193 members of the UN General Assembly will vote for the 18 members who will sit on the UN’s main human rights body from 2025 to 2027.

Elections should provide an opportunity to elect candidates with a strong human rights record. According to the Council’s membership criteria, candidate states should demonstrate a genuine commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights through domestic and international action. They should also demonstrate a willingness to address emerging challenges and crises to ensure the Council’s effectiveness.

How competitive will this year’s election be?

Unfortunately, this election will be nowhere near as competitive as it should be, with only 19 countries standing for 18 seats. These seats are divided among the UN’s five official regional groups, each of which presents its own slate of candidates. But only the Asia-Pacific slate is competitive, with six candidates vying for five seats, while the other four slates are closed, meaning they have as many candidates as seats available. Africa has five candidates for five seats, Latin America and the Caribbean has three for three, Eastern Europe has two for two and Western Europe and Others has two for two.

This election is less competitive than last year’s, when 17 candidates contested 15 seats. Only Latin America and the Caribbean and Eastern Europe had more candidates than seats, resulting in the defeat of Russia. In 2021, all 18 candidates running for 18 seats were elected, receiving between 144 and 189 votes out of a possible 193, despite some having extremely problematic human rights records.

Unfortunately, non-competitive elections are common, with fully closed slates being presented four times since 2008. Other elections have seen only one or two competitive slates. The problem with non-competitive races is they deprive voting states of the opportunity to rigorously evaluate and select candidates based on their records and commitments, potentially compromising the quality of the Council.

But even in closed slates, it’s still possible for unopposed candidates to fail if they don’t receive at least 97 out of 193 votes. In 2023, for example, Burundi and China received the lowest number of votes in their regional groups, sending a message that their candidacies were not fully supported. ISHR encourages voting states to evaluate all candidates carefully and withhold votes from problematic ones, even in closed slates.

Who are the candidates in the October election?

Candidates in this year’s election include Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, The Gambia and Kenya from the African group. In the Asia and Pacific group, Cyprus, South Korea, the Marshall Islands, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Thailand are running. Latin America and the Caribbean is represented by Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico. Iceland, Spain and Switzerland are the candidates from Western Europe and Others, while the Czech Republic and North Macedonia are running for Central and Eastern Europe.

This year, one candidate has a particularly poor human rights record: Saudi Arabia. It has closed civic space and has been repeatedly included in the UN Secretary-General’s reprisals report and accused by UN experts of committing war crimes in Yemen. Due to these serious concerns, we are actively campaigning against its election in the Asia and Pacific group.

What’s the role of civil society in this process?

Civil society, including ISHR, has a crucial role to play in advocating for a more effective and accountable Human Rights Council. One of the key areas where reform is needed is closed slates. Competitive elections are essential to ensure that only states with a genuine commitment to human rights are elected.

ISHR has created scorecards to assess and compare the candidates based on their history of cooperation with human rights mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review and their engagement with civil society, UN treaty bodies and special procedures. These criteria provide a solid understanding and clear overview of a country’s human rights record and therefore its suitability to sit on the Council. While we understand no country has a perfect record, these criteria aim to provide valuable insights into each state’s commitment to upholding human rights and its potential role on the Council.

In addition to our scorecards, our annual joint pledging event with Amnesty International provides a platform for states to present their candidacies, make strong, public commitments as potential members and receive direct feedback and critical questions from civil society. If all candidates participated in this event, it would increase the political cost of refusing to participate or failing to submit formal pledges and commitments. Such engagement would make it harder for states with poor human rights records to seek a seat without facing scrutiny.

What should be the Council’s priorities?

The Human Rights Council is vital in amplifying the voices of rights holders, victims and human rights defenders, providing them with a platform to expose violations and demand accountability. To fulfil this role effectively, its priorities must focus on being credible, effective and accessible. It should continue to focus on upholding international law universally, supporting the remote and hybrid participation of civil society and ensuring that demands for accountability are promptly addressed.

A credible and effective Council can only function if its members fully cooperate with its mechanisms and adhere to objective human rights criteria. At a time of increasing conflict and crisis, often rooted in repression and human rights violations, the Council’s role in promoting accountability and justice is more important than ever. States should support the work of human rights defenders, whose efforts to prevent violations, document abuses and provide essential services are essential to crisis resolution.

To address these conflicts, states must apply human rights standards consistently. Selective or inconsistent application of standards undermines the international framework and the credibility of those involved. International human rights law, when applied consistently and in a principled manner, remains the best guide to achieving a more just, peaceful and inclusive world.

Get in touch with ISHR through its website or Facebook page, and follow @ishrglobal on Instagram and @ISHRglobal and @Madeleine_ISHR on Twitter.

 

World Governments, NGOs Announce $350m Investments in Sexual and Reproductive Health Services

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Population

Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA’s Executive Director. Credit: UNFPA

Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA’s Executive Director. Credit: UNFPA

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2024 (IPS) – On the heels of the Summit of the Future and the sidelines of the United Nations High-Level Meeting Week, governments and philanthropies pledged to commit at least USD 350 million to boost family planning, sexual and reproductive health and supplies on the national and global level. As enshrined in the newly-adopted Pact for the Future, seeking new international finance models is critical to solving the issues that the world faces today. The decision to pledge forward is a demonstration of commitment to ongoing health issues.

On September 24, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Family Planning 2030 (FP2030) and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) invited prominent figures across the private, development and government sectors to promote political will on the matter of sustainable investments towards sexual and reproductive health (SRH). 

“Investing in reproductive health supplies is a ‘best buy’ for development, empowering women, improving maternal and newborn health outcomes, and uplifting economies,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA’s Executive Director.

When speaking on UNFPA’s partnerships with the co-organizers, Kanem remarked: “What we’re doing is transforming lives. The life of a girl in her community, the life of an adolescent in her city, and empowering communities and families to be able to harness and take control of their futures.”

“So much of our world has been made possible by family planning,” said Dr. Samukeliso Dube, Executive Director of FP2030. “By enabling more women to shape their lives and futures, family planning has helped women to finish their education, join the workforce, ascend to leadership positions, and achieve their dreams.”

Donor countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Spain, announced pledges to the UNFPA Supplies Partnership, which delivers modern contraceptives and maternal health supplies to women and girls in low-income countries. Through this partnership, UNFPA has helped to prevent 1.6 million child deaths, 254,000 maternal deaths, and 2.6 million unsafe abortions. The contributions to UNFPA could potentially save up to 9000 women and girls worldwide. As Anneliese Dodds, UK Minister for Development and Women and Inequalities, remarked, investing in SRH was “critical to making sure that women have the power.”

Speakers representing their countries’ governments pledged their support through domestic financial investments. The governments of Madagascar, Nepal, and the Kyrgyz Republic, for example, announced domestic financial commitments that would invest in SRH services in their countries.

Madagascar announced a contribution of USD 15 million to procure health supplies through UNFPA. Their minister of public health, Zely Arivelo Randriamanantany, added that their goal was to increase access to contraceptives by over 50 percent. Arzu Rana Deube, foreign minister of Nepal, announced the government’s commitment of USD 600,000 to purchase high-quality contraceptives. Renat Mavlyanbai Uulu, Advisor to the Minister of Health, of the Kyrgyz Republic, announced a commitment of USD 119,000 to domestic resources for family planning commodities.

Feri Anita Wijayanti, a registered midwife from Indonesia. Credit: UN

Feri Anita Wijayanti, a registered midwife from Indonesia. Credit: UNFPA

As UNFPA Chief of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Ayman Abdelmohsen told IPS, the commitments to domestic financing are significant; it shows that in “allocating from their own resources… and [making] budgetary allocations,”  these governments will prioritize SRH without relying on foreign donors. It is in line with UNFPA’s compact agreements with 44 countries, through which countries will build up their capacity to provide comprehensive reproductive health through their own resources.

Despite the predicted growth in contraceptive access and maternal health by 2030, the current financing gap why this is still far off in the future. The gap currently sits at at least USD 1.5 billion in the world’s poorest countries.

Throughout the event, the speakers emphasized the ‘transformative’ power of SRH in countries. That to invest in SRH is to invest in girls’ and women’s’ agency over the health and life choices. In guaranteeing women’s sexual and reproductive health, it pays forward in protecting families and communities. In terms of financing, every dollar spent on family planning can yield more than 8 dollars in benefits for families and societies.

Investing in healthcare also goes forward to the practitioners within the sector. As Feri Anita Wijayanti, a registered midwife from Indonesia, explained to the panel, many communities rely on the expertise of midwives, whose responsibilities extend “far beyond delivering babies,”  for they are at the frontlines to address other health issues.

“Every second in every corner of the world, midwives work tirelessly to protect the lives of women and babies, and to provide sexual and reproductive health services,” she said. Midwives have the power to save an estimated 4.3 million lives each year by 2025. We urge you to invest in us, to believe in the transformative power of midwives and to begin by investing in sexual and reproductive health.”

The commitments made by countries and the private sector are a step forward in closing the considerable financing gap. They come at a time where senior leadership within the UN, namely the Secretary-General, has called for countries to explore innovative and sustainable financing to address global inequalities. The commitments made at this event demonstrate that despite the challenges to SRH, there is political will in support of, and it can be mobilized to ensure this care for all.

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Cultivating a Culture of Peace

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Opinion

UNDP’s peacebuilding work in Afghanistan coordinates efforts, from international to local, and ensures community members, particularly disadvantaged groups, have a meaningful role in shaping their future. Credit: UNDP Afghanistan

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2024 (IPS) – As global peace hits its lowest point since the Second World War, the International Day of Peace on September 21 offered a critical moment to reflect on and strengthen our peacebuilding efforts.

This year’s theme, ‘Cultivating a Culture of Peace’, is a powerful reminder that for peace to be possible, everyone must play a part.

This sentiment is at the heart of the UNDP’s conflict prevention and peacebuilding work, which we call an ‘area-based approach’. Under this model, we ensure that all those who are working towards peace within a community are working together, and towards a common goal.

The work is tailored to the specific needs and conditions of each particular community, and is locally-led. Peace has its greatest chance when communities come together to address the underlying causes of tension or conflict.

Conflict is on the rise

Today’s conflicts are driven by complex factors including shifting global power dynamics, weak governance, rising inequalities, and a range of interconnected threats such as climate change, crime, and terrorism.

The toll of armed conflicts is staggering. By the end of 2023, conflict-related deaths had surged dramatically. Over 117 million people have been forcibly displaced. Violence has cost the global economy an astonishing US$19.1 trillion. Two billion people, one quarter of the world’s population, live in conflict zones.

If we don’t invest sufficiently in peace, we can’t hope to reverse these trends. Yet, international resources are increasingly focused on immediate humanitarian relief rather than at the root causes of conflict.

The OECD estimates humanitarian aid in fragile contexts has reached a historic high of 27.7 percent of the Development Assistance Committee’s official development assistance, while peace building funding has fallen to a 15-year low of 10.8 percent.

In response, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s vision for building a more peaceful world, the New Agenda for Peace, calls for greater international cooperation and a decisive shift towards prioritizing conflict prevention.

To effectively address the root causes of violence It emphasizes the importance of national ownership, people-centred strategies, and peace financing. One way of meeting the promise of the New Agenda for Peace is to employ an area-based approach.

Area-based responses keep local communitiess at the centre of the peacebuilding process. Credit: UNDP Syria

What is an area-based approach?

It delivers tailored recovery and development based on context and conflict analysis. It works with local authorities, community groups, and local businesses to analyze and plan locally tailored solutions. In places such as Syria it ensures that responses are locally rooted, and keeps communities at the centre of the process.

Local communities, including vulnerable and excluded groups, define the priorities of area-based approaches. This inclusive engagement creates a shared sense of purpose, which is the foundation for building peace.

In Mozambique this has helped address localized conflict and foster resilience, including ensuring meaningful local participation in navigating entrenched social and political barriers.

In southern Iraq, UNDP is using an area-based approach to harmonize crisis response coordination, basic service delivery, livelihood opportunities, and protection for at-risk groups. It addresses the many facets of recovery and resilience simultaneously, helping build a foundation for lasting peace.

Area-based approaches also provide a coordination framework for international organizations to assess local needs, and design cost-effective responses.

UNDP’s work in Afghanistan coordinates efforts, from international to local, increasing effectiveness and value for money while also supporting local ownership. This ensures that community members, particularly disadvantaged groups, have a meaningful role in shaping their future.

Leveraging over 30 years of experience, UNDP has found area-based approaches to be highly effective in addressing some of the key barriers to peace, such as poverty, inequality, and weak governance.

However, these approaches are not a panacea.

There are challenges in ensuring meaningful participation. Among them are coordinating diverse stakeholders, sustaining long-term impact, managing varying expectations, and overcoming capacity constraints. To be effective peacebuilding programmes must be integrated into broader frameworks, such as national prevention strategies, efforts to mitigate strategic risks, and international cooperation.

Despite their challenges, area-based approaches have great potential for preventing conflict, fostering peace and building community resilience. We’re already seeing the dividends in Mozambique, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

By focusing on people-centred solutions, fostering national ownership and addressing the root causes of conflict, area-based approaches play a critical role in cultivating a culture of peace from the ground up.

Naysan Adlparvar is Core Government Functions and Research Advisor, UNDP; Giacomo Negrotto is Local Governance Specialist, UNDP; Adela Pozder-Cengic is Core Government Functions Specialist, UNDP

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