Program Day 4 – Friday, 7 May

As concern about environmental degradation grows, so do the risks for those trying to preserve the environment. The number of murdered environmental defenders in one single year reached an all-time high in 2020. Despite this, environmental movements continue to challenge policy action (and inaction), governance structures and economic systems.

This event lets participants of the Forum tap into the diverse and nuanced experience of environmental activists, to understand how policymakers can approach these interdependent challenges and enhance both environmental preservation and peaceful societies.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the greatest public health crisis in generations and has devastating impacts on lives and livelihoods. The emergence of a suite of vaccines represents a beacon of hope that we may soon stem the tide of the pandemic. Multilateral initiatives, such as the COVAX facility, play a crucial role in ensuring an equitable distribution of vaccines to developing countries. This does not, however, guarantee success on the home straight in getting vaccines into arms. 

The pandemic, and accompanying infodemic, have exacerbated existing inequalities and mistrust between groups and towards authorities. This is particularly acute in countries affected by violence and conflict. To succeed, the international community and health practitioners need to anticipate and address resistance to and tensions surrounding vaccine campaigns and health systems, as well as the challenges of gaining access in dangerous contexts.

This session will explore the necessity to focus on trust and community engagement to the fight against the pandemic and the opportunity this represents to build greater confidence in community cooperation and in governance systems.

Moderator:  Scott Weber, President, Interpeace

Speakers:

Per Olsson Fridh, Minister for International Development Cooperation, Sweden

Wahid Majrooh, Minister for Public Health, Afghanistan

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (TBC), Director-General, World Health Organization

Svitlana Shatalova, Deputy Minister of Health of Ukraine

Karin Landgren, Executive Director, Security Council Report

Tarja Halonen, Former President of Finland and Lancet-SIGHT Commission Chair

This diverse panel will explore how different actors understand and approach the ‘peace’ element in the humanitarian–development–peace (HPD) nexus. Join the panel as it seeks to understand what peace means and looks like on the ground—drawing on the example of Somalia—and for a discussion on the opportunities and challenges for potential cooperation and engagement between different actors. Participants who wish to deepen their understanding of how different actors across the HPD nexus understand and practice peace are encouraged to attend and participate in this panel discussion.

This session will explore the conditions under which community-initiated responses to social and economic hardship (worsened further by the Covid-19 pandemic) may create a platform for better state–citizen engagement and the development of more responsive local policies. Asking questions such as how these community-led initiatives emerge and how governments respond, the session will compile some of the lessons learned from the participants’ work on community-led initiatives.

In the light of the forthcoming Food Systems Summit, this session seeks to to explain the pathways linking hunger to conflict, and food security to peace and stability; and thus, highlight the cooperation and partnerships required to leverage the potential of sustainable food systems to foster peace and stability.

New techniques could change the way we think about participatory approaches to the measurement and evaluation of peace. This session will provide an overview of state-of-the-art peace evaluation techniques. Leave the discussion with a better understanding of how to overcome the main challenges to monitoring and evaluating peace. 

This session is an open roundtable discussion for researchers and practitioners that seeks to advance knowledge on the (online and offline) drivers of local community resilience in the face of transnational patterns of radicalization and reciprocal extremism, with a particular focus on the Western Balkans and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Terror attacks, like the October 2020 attacks in France, as well as the policy responses to them, can cause ripples on the international stage, feeding into the echo chambers of extremists on the far right and among Islamist groups. With a spotlight on building community resilience, it will discuss the roles of local religious leaders, women and young people in confronting this challenge.

This session will provide a space for learning and discussion across the peacebuilding, development and humanitarian communities on how to develop and implement integrated multilateral crisis response measures, while grounding conversation in practical experience. This conversation is particularly geared to colleagues working in these sectors from the policy and programme sides to foster cross-sharing and innovative thinking on how policy translates into practice, and what opportunities need to be seized and challenges overcome to make multidimensional responses more people-centred, sustainable and transformative.

This hands-on workshop uses active audience engagement and interaction to explore the emerging paradigm for collaborative transformation in fragile settings. We will introduce the concept of using behavioural science as practitioners; use experiments to identify identity and knowledge struggles; and demonstrate how these create or hinder an enabling environment for collaboration in the context of fragility and overlapping risks.