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Introduction:
Why should funders invest in conflict resolution initiatives that do not guarantee
clear results? Paul Van Tongeren, executive director of the European Centre for Conflict Prevention,
talks about the need for the conflict resolution community to emphasize the positive
impact of long-term peacebuilding initiatives.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Investment in Peacebuilding
Paul van Tongeren
Executive Director of the European Centre for Conflict Prevention
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A: We invest now a lot in wars, but the investment in peacebuilding is
extremely low. I think we from the conflict resolution and peacebuilding
communities have to make it more clear to a broader audience, to the media, and
to politicians that a lot of our activities work, that they have effect. It is
very complex and we can't guarantee anything. When you give $100,000 to build a
school in a remote area, you can't see that in five years 20% more of the people
are literate. When you build a hospital for another $100,000 you can't say that
thousands of people will not die or the average age will grow. You can't say when
you give me $100,000 for a region with a conflict that there will be peace. It
is more complicated, many factors.
Q: But at the same time, you should say...
A: You should say that many more investments in this should be done. There
are a lot of different factors. Sometimes the conflict will escalate, and you
can prove that sometimes when different instruments at the same moment were
used, the situation became more moderate and calmed down. So that has to happen, and is a pity that it is easier to get money, or to make war, or when a disaster
happens to have money to feed the people, to give the refugees tents and so on, that is easy; but to prevent the escalation, and to invest more in
instruments for de-escalation, that is extremely difficult.
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