The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), together with ACCORD and the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) organized a Civil Society Organisation Roundtable (CSO) with the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank (WB) on 7 September 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Roundtable aimed to facilitate interactions with the multilaterals and the African Union (AU) on sustaining peace and preventing conflict.
The Roundtable brought together representatives of CSO’s from throughout Africa to reflect on the recent global policy frameworks on sustaining peace, peace building and conflict prevention, and particularly on the latest UN WB report on ‘Pathways for Peace’. The Roundtable also provided a platform for civil society interaction with global multilaterals and regional intergovernmental organizations to increase the bandwidth of engagement between all these actors for strengthening local, national and regional frameworks for peace building and conflict prevention.
The interactive day first saw a meeting amongst CSO’s in which representatives engaged in fruitful discussions on the role of CSO’s in conflict prevention. They emphasised the contributions and efforts undertaken towards conflict prevention, and in particular the support provided by WANEP to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the management and prevention of conflict. Representatives also tackled some of the challenges they faced within the peacebuilding environment.
The Roundtable thereafter extended to interactive engagement with representatives of the UN and WB to reflect on their ‘Pathways for Peace’ report. The report provides an in-depth analysis on the cost of war and confirms that the key element to sustaining peace is to prevent conflict. Thus CSO’s were given the opportunity to reflect on this report while also indicating the functions that CSOs can provide to the UN, WB and African Union as they work towards conflict prevention methods. One of the points that came out of the discussions was the lack of information that is required by the multilaterals and which CSO’s can provide given the close interactions they have within communities affected by conflict.
This exchange of engagement brings the multilateral and CSO communities closer together to harmonise their efforts as they work towards peacebuilding efforts. ACCORD will continue to work with its partners in support of these initiatives towards sustaining peace.
ACCORD was represented by Marisha Ramdeen Senior Programme Officer Peacemaking Unit at ACCORD. For more information, please contact Ms Sibusisiwe Nkosi, Programme Officer Peacekeeping Unit at ACCORD: sibusisiwe@accord.org.za
