Peace gets built in many different ways, by many different actors. Our research team has been studying the range of roles played by NGOs in different peacebuilding processes, and also in humanitarian contexts (such as natural disasters) where peacebuilding might not be the explicit mission but a key dimension nonetheless.
Visualising Peace student Robert Rayner has focused on NGOs that adopt a stance of ‘neutrality’ or ‘principled impartiality’, such as the International Red Cross and Crescent Movement. Through a series of museum entries and a podcast interview, he has explored the complex ethics of such a stance, its advantages and its limitations. Among other questions, he asks:
- Is there a difference between impartiality and neutrality?
- Should more states and organisations be neutral when it comes to peacekeeping or peacebuilding? When is it better or more productive to ‘take sides’?
- What are the real-world costs and benefits of impartiality, for individuals as well as for fighting factions/states?
- How do organisations and countries begin to be perceived as neutral? How can they begin to be perceived as partisan?
- What factors are essential in ensuring that a peace-keeping/peace-making organisation can be trusted by all parties?
You can explore Robert’s research further through these links:
- The Place of Neutrality in Peace Work
- The Place of Principled Impartiality in Peace Work
- Observation as a Tool for Peace in Palestine and Israel
- Principled Impartiality and Accompaniment in Peacebuilding
- Neutrality and Principled Impartiality in Peacebuilding
Neutrality is one way that NGOs can build and establish trust with local communities; but Visualising Peace student Samuel Huff has been researching other ways, in his museum entry on Building Trust from the Inside Out. The case study he particularly examines relates to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC)’s Building Trust Programme, developed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although focused on building trust in public health responses, this programme (as Samuel explains) has important overlaps with and lessons for trust-building in other humanitarian contexts, especially for grassroots peacebuilding programmes. In The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in Peace, Samuel offers an overview of different approaches that humanitarian organisations can take, from immediate crisis-response to advocacy, poverty reduction, education and environmental work. He has also explored the peacebuilding dimensions of NGO responses to climate catastrophes, such as Hurricane Katrina, from their success in creating ‘pockets of peace’ in the immediate aftermath of disaster to longer-term mitigation, prevention and rebuilding work. In this reflective blog, Samuel offers a case study of Save the Children, which examines their contributions to both negative and positive peace; he also asks why they do not label their work explicitly as peacebuilding, and wonders what positive benefits might flow if they did, in expanding our understanding of and sense of involvement and empowerment in peacebuilding as a holistic endeavour.
Historian Emily Mayhew’s book The Four Horsemen and the Hope of a New Age has got us thinking about humanitarianism and peacebuilding more broadly. You can read a couple of reflective responses to her work in Hope in a Jar and Unlearning War. We have also been inspired by the Green Mosul initiative, among many others.