Community members in dialogue at KCITI in Eastleigh, Kenya during a Life & Peace Institutes workshop, October 18, 2022. Credit: Kloe Tricot O’Farrell

By many accounts, the most prominent international peacebuilding model is increasingly becoming unviable. Developed in the 1990s and 2000s, the “liberal peacebuilding” model (as it’s commonly called) is being questioned, updated, and challenged, though its staying power has persisted, due to the continued contributions of international aid agencies and joint funding initiatives that come through multilateral institutions like the United Nations (UN). In recent years, however, there has been a scaling down of funding from donors who have traditionally supported liberal peacebuilding, as changing geopolitics has shifted their priorities to defense and security sectors. At the same time, large-scale challenges such as migration and forced displacement, demographic changes, urbanization, and digital technologies are raising questions among peacebuilders as to how these can be addressed through social cohesion and community-centered actions.

Against this backdrop, in 2025, the UN will conduct the fourth comprehensive peacebuilding architecture review as mandated by the 2020 General Assembly (A/RES/75/201) and Security Council (S/RES/2558) resolutions. The review allows the UN to evaluate its global standing within the evolving peacebuilding field and consider how much of a leadership role it wants to play in setting the direction of peacebuilding. Yet, this requires the organization to make an honest examination of its role in perpetuating the liberal peacebuilding model, and a frank assessment of what useful engagement looks like. Read more