What is Resilience? Bringing coherence to concepts of resilience in conflict prevention and peacebuilding

From Eastern Europe to Eastern Africa, from the Middle East to the Sahel, conflict and destabilising dynamics are on the rise. In an era defined by discord and uncertainty, Geneva Peace Week is asking “What is Peace?”. With this workshop, we would like to ask “What is Resilience?” and how is it relevant to Peace? Resilience has become a popular concept for policy makers, peace and development practitioners and scholars alike, as understanding it appears to be an inherent factor in improving our assessment of conflicts’ root causes and risks. 

Thinking about resilience is innovative in that it allows us to break out of the securitised lenses that often dominate policy and programming and approach conflict prevention from more positive and human-centred perspectives. Despite the increasing popularity of the resilience concept however, there is little consensus and coherence on what resilience is, how it is measured or monitored, and how we can operationalise it. 

Dissecting the concept, we will tackle this challenge by asking conceptual, methodological, empirical and operational questions, enriched by the first-hand experiences and reflections of the workshop facilitators. The deliberations, lessons and recommendations from this workshop will be used to produce a joint white paper published by Interpeace and SeeD that aims to bring coherence to how concepts of resilience can be integrated into conflict prevention, risk mitigation and peacebuilding strategies in holistic and impactful ways. The white paper will acknowledge the contributions of the workshop participants in helping shape this collective work.

Speakers

• Renée Lariviere - Senior Director of Programmes, Interpeace
• Abiosseh Davis - Head of Global Design, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, Interpeace
• Dr. Ilke Dagli Hustings - Director General, The Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development, SeeD
• Alexander Guest - Director of Research, The Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development, SeeD
• Abdon Dominique Koko - West Africa Specialist, The Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development, SeeD

Interpretation

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Live streaming

All events during Geneva Peace Week will be available on-site and online.

Main organiser

• Interpeace

Co-Organizers

• The Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development
• SeeD