War and militarism are on the rise across the globe, and the space for local peacebuilders – the people trying to stop violence against and within their communities – is shrinking fast.
Still, hundreds of local peacebuilders gathered in Kenya last week for one of the largest ever events of its kind, and you wouldn’t have guessed it from the grim daily headlines: Most aren’t ready to pack it in just yet.
From Gaza to Ukraine, India to Myanmar, speakers described how their communities are increasingly at the mercy of leaders, armies, and armed groups that have little regard for international law or the multilateral institutions meant to preserve peace.
At the same time, peacemaking efforts that concern them have drifted even further away from the ground, with grassroots actors sidelined in favour of an increasingly transactional – even extortionist – peace diplomacy where might makes right.
And yet, local groups and people are pushing back – surviving genocides in Gaza and Sudan, junta rule in the Sahel and Myanmar, and drawing energy from Gen Z uprisings that have toppled leaders from Madagascar to Bangladesh.
Nor are they giving up as Global North funding for peacebuilding shrinks after US cuts and European pullbacks. Instead, they are looking for new ways to sustain their work – in many cases hoping their communities can back what donors no longer will.
Some see the shift as a blessing in disguise: fewer strings, fewer hierarchies, and more room to do their own thing. Many argued that it is time to end ties altogether with governments like the US, who fuel wars while claiming to champion peace.
“Peace actors that claim to be decolonial must withstand this litmus test,” said a Palestinian delegate in one session. “This peace conference – the largest in the world – needs to take a clear position and not just for Palestine.”
The New Humanitarian was a media partner at the gathering, which was organised by the international NGO Peace Direct. What follows are reflections from the sessions we managed to catch – a modest slice of an event that was too big to take in entirely.
Given the sensitivity of the discussions and the security risks facing many attendees, we are only naming people who we spoke with one on one on the sidelines and who agreed to be quoted.
A bleak backdrop…
One of the first gatherings of its kind, the event landed at a moment of profound global turmoil and reckoning for local peacebuilding groups whose funding base is rapidly shifting.
It wasn’t your usual peacebuilding or humanitarian conference in a Western capital stacked with Global North “experts”. This was almost entirely Global South – with around 600 delegates from some 90 countries – and it was alive with art and music.
Still, there was no sugarcoating where things stand. With more than 60 active conflicts counted last year – the most since World War II – many peacebuilders said they are facing the toughest moment in decades.
Panelists highlighted that civil wars are shaped as much by outside powers as by local actors, making the work of peacebuilders far more difficult. Geopolitics, they said, is influencing everything, right down to the local and communal level.
“We are happy that the system of the US at the top is collapsing – every country should control itself.”
Much of the world’s population, meanwhile, lives under authoritarian rule, and even those in supposed democracies are embracing ethno-nationalism. The result, many said, is a shrinking space for peacebuilders and human rights defenders more broadly.
“We have been under the thumb of regimes for many decades, but since 2021 it has been more brutal than ever,” said a civil society activist from Myanmar, in reference to the military coup four years ago in the country.
Many were blunt: The laws of war and core tenets of international security are being trashed, notably by Israel and its Western backers, but also by Russia in Ukraine, India’s Modi, and militaries and rebels from Sudan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Some warned that the order of Western-dominated so-called liberal interventionism is collapsing, with multilateralism on the ropes and the UN no longer the centre of gravity for international diplomacy – a perspective tinged with regret and nostalgia.
Others pointed out that the post-World War II system was never really about justice and peace, but about colonial powers protecting their political and financial interests – and maybe its collapse isn’t something to mourn.
“We are happy that the system of the US at the top is collapsing – every country should control itself,” said Wissam Sabaaneh, a Palestinian refugee from the Jafra Foundation, which supports Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon.
…but hope at the margins
Despite bleak messages, the gathering was packed with examples – on panels, in breakout sessions, and everywhere in between – of local groups and movements making a concrete difference.
A South Sudanese attendee spoke about efforts to disrupt cycles of inter-communal violence often whipped up by elites, while a peacebuilder from the Central African Republic highlighted a Muslim-Christian group achieving much the same.
Recognition went to the Sudanese emergency response rooms – nationwide mutual aid groups keeping humanitarian aid running in the middle of a civil war – and to civil society groups running cross-border aid from Thailand into conflict areas of Myanmar.
Stories were shared of lawyers marching in Zimbabwe against kangaroo-court trials; Southeast Asians supporting protesting Indonesian delivery riders by sending food through apps; and civilians and ex-FARC guerrillas exchanging letters in Colombia.
There were plenty of nods to the Gen Z protests shaking countries in Africa and Asia, and it was noted that even military coups in the Sahel have also been driven by popular frustration and demands for change.
Though there was a strong emphasis on non-violent resistance, some attendees argued that peacebuilding shouldn’t be reduced to preaching non-violence – as that would erase countless revolutions and anti-colonial struggles from the story of peace.
One gave the example of India’s Gulabi Gang, a women’s vigilante group founded in Uttar Pradesh that takes on sexual abusers and perpetrators of domestic violence with bamboo sticks – proof, as the attendee said, that peace isn’t always polite.
In other sessions, attendees cited Ukraine’s armed struggle against Russia’s invasion, women and peasant resistance in South America, the citizen militias formed in Myanmar to fight the military junta, and the Palestinian struggle against Israel.
“Terms like peace and security are used by donors and Western powers to pacify the population and remove their tools of resistance and resilience,” said Sabaaneh of the Jafra Foundation.
Transactional peace vs people’s peace
Though many peace talks and processes are underway around the world, there was criticism of the way they are increasingly focused on narrow ceasefires rather than finding actual solutions to conflict.
Some also criticised the transactional and exploitative nature of recent negotiations (see Ukraine or Rwanda-DRC) that seem to be more about mineral deals and the egos of mediators than long-term peace.
It wasn’t lost on some that the gathering opened on the same day as the Gaza peace summit in Sharm El-Sheikh – where global leaders rubberstamped what critics see as a plan for Palestinian subjugation recast as an “everlasting” peace.
Mahmoud Hamada, of the Palestinian NGOs Network, described the plan as akin to “a new colonisation”. Stopping the genocide was the most urgent priority, he said, but the future of Gaza “should have been a choice of the people on the ground”.
“They gave the message that if you want to get power or a decision-making position then you have to have a gun.”
Other sessions discussed how Western governments and institutions have long treated peace as something to be imposed – with the Global South cast as a testing ground for Northern expertise – and sought to co-design a bottom-up people’s peace.
Zahra Hayder, the founder of Waey Organisation, a Sudanese civil society group, said past, externally-imposed peace agreements between the Sudanese governments and armed groups planted the seeds for future conflicts in her country.
“They gave the message that if you want to get power or a decision-making position then you have to have a gun,” she said, adding that agreements never touched the issues of “what truly started the war”.
The activist from Myanmar said Western peacebuilding paradigms have failed their country too, treating ethnic communities as conflict parties to be managed through dialogue, rather than “people struggling for rights and self-autonomy”.
Alternative visions of peace were presented throughout the gathering – often rooted in ideas of local solidarity, justice, and accountability for crimes, but sometimes pushing even further.
At a session for Indigenous peacebuilders, one activist said peace isn’t just about ending conflict and also needs to focus on restoring dignity and community ties. “One finger cannot pick up a stone,” they said, arguing that peace works when everyone shares responsibility for it.
Another described rising global conflict as a product of “ego-driven economics”, contrasting it with an Indigenous worldview where there is no ego, and all living beings – human and non-human – are treated with equal respect.
Funding crises force a rethink
Hanging over discussions was the US government’s sweeping cuts to foreign aid, which have disrupted global peacebuilding efforts, from UN blue helmet operations to the work of many of the local groups represented at the gathering.
Some panelists warned that development assistance from Global North countries will soon disappear entirely as radical-right parties gain more power, leaving only humanitarian aid for the most urgent emergencies.
“We have seen community philanthropy come into effect, and that is not just about hard cash but about experiences and sharing knowledge and time.”
Yet amid stories of struggling organisations and communities cut off from aid when they need it most, there was a clear sense that this moment should be an opportunity – to rethink how local peacebuilders work, and who they depend on.
Several discussions turned to alternative resourcing – and the reminder that communities have always had their own means of support, with mutual aid woven into local life long before donors showed up.
“We have seen community philanthropy come into effect, and that is not just about hard cash but about experiences and sharing knowledge and time,” said Sweta Velpillay of Conducive Space for Peace, an organisation rethinking approaches to peacebuilding.
Velpillay said her organisation has been having two conversations in recent months – one around bridging the damaging funding cuts, but another around building “a new model that is not based on donors and is emancipatory in its essence”.
Martine Kessy Ekomo-Soignet, the head of Peace and Development Watch, a think tank in the Central African Republic, said communities in her country are already reclaiming their capacity to help one another as international organisations disappear.
She cited examples of women's groups in the towns of Mbaiki and Bouar sharing local produce with the poor and young people in Birao building schools under trees. “They are getting more and more active because there is no money any more,” Ekomo-Soignet said.
She said she felt that local organisations are now more free to question the effectiveness of the international peacebuilding system given that it is breaking down so clearly. “People are letting it all out,” she said.
A clean break?
Some attendees called for peacebuilding organisations to break fully with Global North donors, especially the US, citing its arming and funding of Israel and its broader role in undermining international institutions.
Some discussions were had around the complicity of professionalised peacebuilding organisations in Israeli crimes in Gaza. Did they vocally oppose the genocide? Should they be taking money from those who supported it?
Especially strong feelings were raised during a debate on whether civil society groups should engage with and accept money from the US government. Roughly half of an albeit small audience said no to the latter in a post-debate poll.
Assad Shoaib, a development researcher from Pakistan who attended the session, criticised the idea that USAID has resolved conflicts and saved lives, pointing to decades of US global destabilisation, and to the “dependencies” its aid has created.
“The biggest problem of aid was dismantling the local way of fixing things,” Shoaib said in an interview after the US engagement session, offering examples of how his town in Pakistan was negatively impacted.
Still, the activist from Myanmar, said they have continued advocating for international aid, especially given that people in Myanmar’s conflict areas often cannot farm or make an income, or have sold their valuables to support resistance efforts.
“We are trying to advocate as much as possible [for international assistance] while also exploring how we can support each other, through crowd funding and other ways,” they said.
Connecting struggles
At a time when funding cuts are forcing organisations to compete with one another – and where skewed media attention of crises can lead to struggles for airtime – many said they are looking for ways to develop solidarity between contexts.
Part of that, they said, means learning from one another – how to do peacebuilding work in restricted civic spaces, how to document human rights abuses, or how to organise non-violent resistance.
Others said building solidarity requires understanding that the same structures and problems are found in many conflicts. And that requires politicising a peacebuilding industry that is often narrowly focused on reconciling elites or communities in conflict.
“If you look at all these contexts you will see the commonalities," said Velpillay of Conducive Space for Peace. She cited capitalism, state capture, the arms trade, settler colonialism, big tech surveillance, geopolitics, and extractivism, as examples.
Hayder, the founder of Waey Organisation in Sudan, said solidarity movements are already underway, citing the example of global protests and aid flotillas in support of Gaza.
“We sometimes feel that we are ignored as Sudanese, but we still find ourselves in solidarity with Gaza,” Hayder told The New Humanitarian. “We should organise to connect our struggles.”
Transport and accommodation in Nairobi were paid for by Peace Direct.
Edited by Andrew Gully.
