News and Insight

The climate crisis, conflict and gender and social inequality form a connected system. Each challenge shapes, and is shaped by, the others. Policy and practice - which addresses each of these challenges - therefore has the potential to reinforce or undermine progress in the other.

2023 marks the mid-way point for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity. There are 17 SDGs in total, but they don’t sit in isolation and without peace, inclusion and equality it simply won’t be possible to achieve these global ambitions.

Our climate and environment is changing at a rate never seen before in human history. The way we respond to these changes has the potential to accelerate conflict or, if done sensitively, offers opportunities for peacebuilding where few might have existed. Explore our infographic to understand more about how climate change, conflict and peace interact and the vital role peacebuilders can play in ensuring responses to climate change don’t cause more harm.

The climate crisis is putting increasing pressure on already complex conflicts and deepening the issues that drive conflict. But how we respond to a changing climate can also present opportunities to bridge divides. In this video, Irtaza Muhammad and Ms. Noraida Abu explain how the climate crisis interacts with conflict in Kashmir and the Philippines, and the opportunities for peacebuilding.

Conciliation Resources has appointed three new members to its Board of Trustees; Megan Fearon, Henry Raine and Nicholas Griffin KC. The new trustees bring to the board vast expertise in politics, community peacebuilding, law and finance. 

Complex conflicts can't be solved through national deals alone - local peace networks need to be supported to address community violence. Despite the existence of local peace mechanisms in communities across the Central African Republic, their input has historically been symbolic and leaves local conflict drivers and causes largely unaddressed.

Young people in Kaga-Bandoro and Sibut, in the Central African Republic, have lived in the shadow of three decades of conflict. All have had their lives in some way shaped by violence. While the physical consequences of conflict are easy to see, the effects on mental health are less obvious but no less damaging. Unresolved distress and trauma is often a driver of ongoing cycles of conflict.

Connecting people and peace efforts is an essential part of building sustainable peace. In May, Conciliation Resources organised a conference in Cotabato, Philippines, bringing together Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) from the Bangsamoro region, including island provinces, and the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA). The conference was part of a wider project to improve accountability and build stronger relationships between government and civil society.

Dr. Shidiki Abubakar Ali is part of the research team working on our XCEPT project, Promoting Peaceful Pastoralism. As part of this project, he has been researching cross-border pastoralism, environmental change, peace and conflict along the borders of Nigeria and Cameroon. Here, he talks about the findings from recent fieldwork for this project, conducted in Cameroon.

Over the past few months, I have been listening to the ideas of Afghans involved in previous rounds of their country’s peace process. These Afghan ‘peacemakers’ include men and women who were members of Afghanistan’s peace and reconciliation commissions, served on the negotiation team supposed to cut a deal with the Taliban, or worked as officials, government advisers or religious scholars.

Conciliation Resources is launching a new gender strategy which sets out the steps we will take over the next five years to become a gender responsive, and ultimately gender transformative, organisation. We spoke to our gender team, Amy Dwyer and Gabriel Nuckhir, about what this means, how this will benefit our peacebuilding work, and their hopes for the new strategy.

Gender responsive and transformative approaches can help us build a more inclusive, sustainable peace and are a key part of our new gender strategy. In northeast Nigeria, we’ve been using these approaches to build more inclusive community peacebuilding processes in a region living under constant insurgencies.