IPI SEMINAR: Leveraging Local Knowledge for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in Africa
The International Peace Institute (IPI) is pleased to invite you to attend a seminar on Leveraging Local Knowledge for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in Africa on Friday, November 21, 2014 from 9:00am – 3:30pm.
Please find the seminar agenda here.
Featured Speakers include:
Yasmin Khodary, Governance Program Manager at the UNDP Social Contract Center in Egypt
Nestor Nkurunziza, Professor of Law at the University of Burundi
Webster Zambara, Senior Project Leader at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in South Africa
Harriette Williams Bright, Advocacy Director of Femmes Africa Solidarité
Munini Mutuku, Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University
Following years of collective peacebuilding experience and hard lessons learned from recent relapses into conflict in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, more work is needed to ensure that peace is locally owned, that international operations build on existing capacities for peace, and that these capacities are leveraged for statebuilding and peacebuilding practice.
This seminar will bring together practitioners from Africa with peacebuilding experts and practitioners in New York. It aims to connect local and international levels of analysis and practice, and to collaboratively generate ideas that strengthen local engagement in peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts.
Five case studies on local peacebuilding and statebuilding initiatives will be presented by the African practitioner-scholars who served as authors. Their case studies include women's statebuilding initiatives in Egypt, youth-centered peace programs in Burundi, the use of online and mobile technologies to counter election violence in Kenya, efforts to build local governance in Mali, and violence transformation training in Zimbabwe.
These cases illustrate an array of innovations and adaptations in locally led peacebuilding and statebuilding, and will provide the context for discussion of the challenges and opportunities in linking local knowledge to international policy and practice.