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The Geneva Peacebuilding Platform

Geneva Peacebuilding Platform

QUNO in Geneva currently undertakes the bulk of its peacebuilding work as a founding member of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. QUNO Geneva's work on the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform links with QUNO New York's Peacebuilding programme.

Founded in 2008, as a joint initiative between QUNO, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), and Interpeace, the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform is an action-oriented forum where stakeholders can build upon the contributions of Geneva to peacebuilding worldwide. The Platform facilitates cooperation and dialogue among peacebuilding organisations and policy makers through a number of structured activities as well as informal discussions and debates.

• The Annual Forum

  The Annual Forum is the Platform’s flagship event. It is designed to bring together practitioners from the Geneva peacebuilding community, from New York peacebuilding architecture and from field-based organisations and missions, as well as representatives from civil society and academia, to discuss pressing issues of specific relevance to peacebuilding practitioners. The format of the event promotes genuine dialogue, gathering a focused audience around a panel of varied and experienced actors to discuss openly and constructively a specific challenge to the peacebuilding community. The 2010 Annual Forum entitled «Innovating to Build a Lasting Peace: Is Interim Stabilisation a Promising Approach to Effective Peacebuilding?» attracted a range of actors including academics, policy-makers and practitioners and prompted interesting discussion.

• Consultative Workshops

  The Geneva Peacebuilding Platform organizes consultative workshops to allow policy-makers to benefit from the expertise of Geneva-based stakeholders in order to validate, refine and add value to emerging practices and tools.

• Public Events

  In order to encourage exchange of experiences and promotion of best practices within the peacebuilding community, the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform convenes regular informal public events to showcase relevant peacebuilding-related work and promote informal dialogue between interested stakeholders around specific topics. These events are partly based on opportunities such as the presence in Geneva of field-based peacebuilding actors or relevant experts working abroad. They provide an environment where peacebuilding stakeholders can be informed, challenged and updated on topics of interest to their own activities while networking with their peacebuilding peers. In recent months, the platform held a number of public events on topics such as «Peacekeeping Capacity Development: Why Now in Africa?», «Unarmed Civillian peacekeeping in South Sudan, Philippines and Sri Lanka» and, «Africa’s Changing Security Challenges».

  The Peacebuilding Guide, a database for peacebuilding capacities and expertise of Geneva-based organisations and further information on the Platform’s activities can be found at http://www.gpplatform.ch/ .