Civilian Crisis Prevention and Peacebuilding in the Geopolitical Era

The visible rival­ries between world powers are exacerbating the already smouldering conflicts over re­sources, zones of influence and the interests of different political systems. How can a value-­based and interest-driven foreign and develop­ment policy maintain its own credibility in these “shrinking spaces”? And how much room is there for civilian crisis pre­vention and peacebuilding in a foreign policy cha­racterized by security policy con­siderations of stability and armament? These questions were discussed by repre­sentatives from politics, academia and practice at the annual conference of the Advisory Board for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Peacebuilding (Berlin Peace Dialogue 2024) on November 5, 2024.

PRIF was repre­sented on two panels by Sarah Brockmeier-Large and Antonia Witt, who is a member of the Ad­visory Board for Civilian Crisis Prevention and Peacebuilding. Sarah Brockmeier-Large dis­cussed the effects of wars, political crises and budget cuts on Ger­man support in conflict areas as well as the credibility of a “values-based” Ger­man foreign policy with Minister of State Tobias Lindner (B90/GREENS) under the motto “What's the Value of Values?”. “There is a real danger that all the efforts, evaluations and recom­mendations for action currently being deve­loped will fall by the wayside, especially after the US election, and that nothing will change. There simply won't be enough capacity, time or money,” the PRIF pa­nelist stated right at the start. With regard to crisis prevention and the German form of strategy develop­ment, she also warned that “in many cases, there is a lack of a political stra­tegy to apply the instruments and analyses we have in certain con­flicts in a meaningful way”.

Antonia Witt mo­derated the “Civil Society and Peace” panel with State Secretary Bärbel Kofler (SPD), among others, which fo­cused in particular on the creative power of civil society actors in (post-)­conflict contexts and the effective­ness of transnational support. The panel participants emphasized the immense impor­tance of gender equality for civil peacebuilding as well as the central role of con­fidence building and trauma manage­ment, as examples from Eastern Ukraine and the Gaza Strip show. With a view to strengthening civil so­ciety initiatives and capacities, Rana Salman from Combatants for Peace, for example, called for ef­forts for a locally-led peace initiative that could be supported by the inter­national community, thus highlighting the potential of transnational civil society peace­building.

A recording of the English-language panels and discussions is available on YouTube.

The Advisory Board Civilian Crisis Pre­vention and Peacebuilding brings together civil society and academic exper­tise and advises the work of the German government. The twenty mem­bers of the Advisory Board, including Antonia Witt, come from the fields of international cooperation, science, foundations and non-­governmental organizations and are appointed for four years. The committee supports the imple­mentation of the guide­lines “Preventing crises, managing conflicts, promo­ting peace” adopted by the Federal Government in 2017.