Building Peace 2010 to 2019

Brian Lander, Deputy Director, World Food Programme (WFP) presents the 'Challenges of Addressing Food Insecurity' at OxPeace 2019.

Professor Sir Charles Godfray (Oxford Martin School) presents 'Options for a Global Food System' at OxPeace 2019.

Professor Henry Shue (Oxford) presents 'How to exacerbate conflict by your response to climate change' at OxPeace 2019.

Professor Franz Baumann (NYU) presents 'Global Heating: too big for politics?' at OxPeace 2019.

Brian Lander opens the annual OxPeace Conference with his remarks at the Conference dinner.

Professor Sir Paul Collier delivers the 2018 OxPeace Conference Keynote lecture, discussing ‘How Business affects the chance of peace: the upside – jobs; the downside – crooks; and what to do about them.’ Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College. From 1998–2003 he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural resources rich societies; urbanization in low-income countries; private investment in African infrastructure and changing organizational cultures.

Marcel Smits, Institute of Economics and Peace, discusses ‘The economics of conflict versus the economics of peacebuilding and sustainable peace’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Marcel Smits is the Director of the Europe Office of the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) in The Hague. Each year, IEP produces an estimate of the global cost of violence, adding up the costs associated with containing, preventing, and dealing with the consequences of violence. The least peaceful countries in the world disproportionately suffer economically from the levels of violence they experience. Violence greatly affect economic development which affects poverty, life expectancy, education, health and other development outcomes. For this reason, violent conflict is increasingly recognized as one of the biggest obstacles to reaching the SDGs by 2030. Although, there is an investment gap in developing countries of about $2.5 trillion to achieve the SDGs which the private sector is asked to help bridge, the calculations do not take into account the economic losses from violent conflict. The potential economic benefits from investing in peacebuilding and in sustaining peace in societies are therefore substantial. The session will show that besides a moral argument there is a good financial case to be made for peacebuilding and risk-informed sustainable development interventions by businesses and others as a way to prevent conflict and reduce the cost of violence.

Andres Ucros presents his talk on ‘Private Sector and Peacebuilding: Lessons from Colombia’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Andres Ucros is currently Director of Peace Building in the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota, Colombia. Colombia has suffered one of the longest internal armed conflicts in the world. This long and tainted war has been active for over five decades and its magnitude was, and still is greater than many major internal conflicts around the world. During the last five years, the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrillas have been engaged in peace talks with the aim of putting an end to armed struggle. Throughout this process, both parties have deployed a number of innovative strategies and techniques that are setting new standards in the field of conflict resolution. These new approaches are now informing developments in peace-making, peace-building, security, human rights, and international law at the regional and global levels. The aim of this presentation is to describe how the private sector has engaged in the negotiation and with the implementation of the agreement itself to draw some lessons from the Colombian experience.

Dr Liz Carmichael discusses the ‘Progressive roles of business in the South African transition’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Dr Liz Carmichael is Emeritus Research Fellow in Theology at St John’s College, University of Oxford, and the convenor of the Oxford Network of Peace Studies (OxPeace), a multidisciplinary initiative to promote the study of peace, peacemaking, peacebuilding and peacekeeping in the University. Dr Carmichael became Chaplain, Fellow and Tutor in Theology at St John's in 1996, and in 2004 published Friendship: Interpreting Christian Love, a history of the interpretation of 'agape' as friendship-love in the western Christian tradition. She is currently researching on the origins and operation of the South African National Peace Accord and the work of its structures in the transition period 1991-94.

Dr Sarah von Billerbeck presents her talk titled the ‘The Role of Commercial Banks in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Anecdotal Evidence from the DRC’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Sarah von Billerbeck is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations and co-Director of the UN and Global Order Programme at the University of Reading. While the role of private sector actors during conflict has been explored in academic research, literature on their role after conflict and during peacebuilding is less developed. In particular, a crucial player has been entirely omitted: commercial banks. Post-conflict countries often see an influx of commercial banks in what is usually a weakly regulated market, but they nonetheless take on a number of important functions, including financial services reform, overseeing public sector salary payments, facilitating disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs, and foreign investment. However, we have no systematic understanding of the actual effects of commercial banks in post-conflict settings. While they can contribute to personal financial stability, combat illegal taxation and corruption, spur economic recovery, and buttress state authority, they can also have negative effects by serving as vehicles for money laundering, contributing to financial crises, deepening public debt, and weakening faith in the government’s ability to manage the economy. This presentation highlights anecdotal evidence from a 'bancarization' programme in the DR Congo to demonstrate the importance of commercial banks in helping or hindering peacebuilding and the re-establishment of stable state-society relations after war.

Eva Grosman gives a talk on ‘Strategy, Innovation and Peacebuilding: lessons from Northern Ireland’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Eva Grosman is the Chief Executive of the Belfast based Centre for Democracy and Peace Building and Director for Public Affairs at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Harris Manchester College. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is an excellent example of social innovation, which radically changed the architecture of the whole eco-system and focused on rebuilding three sets of disturbed historic relationships – between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists in Northern Ireland; between the people of Ireland, North and South; and between Britain and Ireland. However, while the 1998 Agreement created an environment for consensus and stopped the large scale political violence, the sectarian division continues to paralyse Northern Ireland. Segregation in social housing and education is still a major issue. Public services incur an additional annual cost of up to £833 million in which division may be a factor. Northern Ireland economic performance is consistently below the UK average, with long-standing issues in the labour market including low productivity and high rate of economic inactivity. So, how do you innovate in the political environment where systems, people, organisation and culture are fragmented, and general public not quite ready for the open system of innovation?

Josie Lianna Kaye gives a talk titled ‘How to maximize business contributions to peace? Insights from a practitioner-researcher’ at the 2018 OxPeace Conference. Josie Lianna Kaye is the Director and Founder of TrustWorks Global, a London-based company which prevents and manages natural resource-related conflicts in high-risk settings. Drawing upon her experience as a researcher-practitioner, Josie’s intervention will seek to explore insights and lessons associated with three inter-linked key questions: first, how can multi-nationals in high-risks contexts prevent conflict and ‘sustain peace’? Second, what role does the United Nations – and other multi-lateral entities - have to play in enabling and/or supporting businesses to play such a role? Third, how can research in this domain catalyse a relationship between businesses and UN actors that fosters more constructive contributions to conflict prevention and sustaining peace?

Tina McKenzie discusses ‘Equality and Business in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland: Building shared space and community’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Tina McKenzie is an award-winning business leader, having worked across Europe over the last 20 years to connect people with the right skills with the right jobs. Whilst leading three multimillion pound turnover businesses in Ireland, Tina won awards from Women in Business and led Staffline Group to win the Fast Growth Business of the Year Award from UTV/Business Eye in 2015; going on to be named the European Ambassador for Women’s Entrepreneurship in 2016. Tina was then awarded Director of the Year by the Institute of Directors in 2017 and has recently been appointed as Chair of the FSB’s Policy Unit in Northern Ireland. Tina is also a board member for the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building, and a passionate advocate for building a better Northern Ireland.

Tangible steps that can be taken to better organise the world for peace. World peace is out of fashion: not even pacifists believe in it nowadays, wrote Susan Sontag. Yet a series of recent UN reviews came to the conclusion that peace is fundamental to the achievement of other goals. The peace imperative was recognised by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which call for peaceful and inclusive societies. This talk examines the challenges that make world peace so difficult, considers past efforts and ideas, and introduces some tangible steps that can be taken to better organise the world for peace. - See more at: https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/1cbff6e8-44d7-4ee7-895a-dc0d2c06e027/#sthash.c72k6Nor.dpuf

Overview of the 2017 OxPeace Conference