The latest edition of the Journal of Peacebuilding is out and freely available online. Produced by the Interpeace Regional Office in Latin America, it features articles on developments from the peacebuilding field, as well as updates from activities being carried out in the region. This edition focuses on the role of the private sector in peacebuilding.

The latest edition of the Journal of Peacebuilding is available here.

Entrepreneurial leadership for peace in Colombia

María Victoria Llorente and Ángela Rivas from the Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP) share their thoughts on the participation of Colombia’s business sector in the area of peacebuilding. They explain that for the past decade, a number of strategies have been put into place involving the private sector: for example to generate income for ex-combatants and victims of conflict, or to set up local management systems that take into account human rights and peacebuilding. These experiences have become important working models which, according to Llorente and Rivas, are now gaining importance given the apparent foreseeable end of 50 years of conflict with the FARC.

Read the full article here.

What options for business? Working around, in or on armed violence

Achim Wennmann, Executive Coordinator of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, sheds light on how companies work around, in or on armed violence, and on some entry points for a more direct role for business in armed violence reduction and prevention (AVRP) programmes. Emphasizing that the private sector focuses on how corporate contributions can strengthen multi-stakeholder efforts on AVRP in specific contexts, Wennmann points to two major entry points for involving businesses in such efforts. On the one hand, they can profit from gaining a better knowledge of the magnitude and distribution of the costly consequences of armed violence on their transactions. On the other, setting up observatories for data-gathering and analysis can inform their policy-making in contexts of armed violence.

The article is available here.

Interview with Hans Peter, representative of the Agrarian Chamber at the Land Fund in Guatemala

Active in the farming business and representative of the Agrarian Chamber at the Land Fund in Guatemala, Hans Peter has also recently participated in Interpeace’s Frameworks for Assessing Resilience project discussions on conflicting socio-environmental situations. In this interview, Peter shares his vision about the challenges to peace in Guatemala from the perspective of the private sector. As such, he explains that there is a real need to bridge the gap between the diverse sectors of society in order to allow for the construction of a decentralized and inclusive country. Regretting that Guatemalans have been unable to resolve the problems that contributed to the war, he deems that the country has yet to build peace. Peter does however point to the important steps taken by the private sector towards adopting greater social responsibility, but notes that these efforts have yet to be integrated on a national level.

Read the full interview of Hans Peter here.