9 June 2023

In 2018, the United Nations and World Bank jointly published the report “Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict” which urged a pivot to prevention, strengthened the business case for prevention initiatives, and highlighted new research on the importance of addressing patterns of exclusion and inequality in efforts to prevent conflict and build peace. Five years later, the UN and World Bank are revisiting this report in a changing global conflict landscape. Does the framework laid out in Pathways still provide a valid shared framework to inform prevention and peacebuilding efforts?   

The joint UN-World Bank Pathways for Peace initiative was launched in February this year with the participation of DPPA, DPO, UNDP and the World Bank.  Over the past four months, a series of discussions have taken place, hosted by the Permanent Missions of Colombia, Ghana and Switzerland, the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (IDPS), the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (CCCPA), and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). The discussions have helped to gather the reflections of academics, policymakers, and practitioners in different regions.  Furthermore, three discussion papers, commissioned under this initiative, have examined critical developments since the publication of the original report, in the regional landscape, and the degree to which the themes of exclusion and inequalities, highlighted in the Pathways report, may have maintained more or less relevance across different countries and regions today.

The various engagements have demonstrated yet again the unique opportunity that the Pathways for Peace report represented to change the narrative on prevention; the urgency to move away from reacting to violence, to leverage the entire system’s policy, expertise, and resources to develop targeted, sustainable, and inclusive responses to risks of violence; and, last but not least, the importance of diplomacy and peacebuilding financing as vital tools to support the prevention agenda. 

The culmination of the ongoing joint UN-World Bank initiative will be an open meeting with diverse stakeholders, including, civil society, experts, youth, and Member States that will summarise previous regional consultations and commissioned papers and look ahead to opportunities, in the future, for practical action around prevention planned for late June in New York.  Reflections from this event are expected to contribute to several ongoing UN and World Bank initiatives.  

We invite you to peruse the background papers for this initiative posted here and follow the hashtag #PathwaysforPeace on social media platforms for more news and updates.