On September 21st, hundreds of thousands of people celebrate the International Day of Peace. A day in which people from all around the world commemorate and strengthen the ideals of peace for all nations. At Interpeace, we celebrate the strength, courage and resilience of people who in the midst of violence and challenging circumstances, work to positively transform conflicts in their communities. We celebrate these women and men, children and elders, who are at the heart of peacebuilding initiatives, ensuring that peace is possible and sustainable.

For more than twenty years and in more than twenty countries, Interpeace has worked with multiple partner organizations, to implement peacebuilding programmes, that guarantee that the work is locally-owned and locally-driven. Our experience has taught us, that peace cannot be built from outside, but must be built from within societies. Through our Track 6 approach, we help connect government leaders, authorities, civil society, the local community and the international community to ensure that high-level policies reflect local realities and benefit from local knowledge. Therefore, our role as peacebuilders is to harness the strength and capacities that already exist in societies to enable people to build lasting peace, transforming adversity into opportunity.

Strengthening the resilience capacities of societies to move towards greater peace is one of the key objectives underpinning the Interpeace 2016-2020 Strategic Plan. This requires collectively building mutual understandings of the issues in a specific area, in order to generate solutions that are tailored to the needs of a specific community. A local commitment to the peacebuilding process is facilitated by the resilience approach, because it gives a central role to local actors and offers a useful convening power. As a result, we have combined peacebuilding and a resilience-based approach to deepen local ownership.

Learn about our resilience based approach in our Assessing Resilience for Peace Guidance Note and read about our initiatives worldwide in our latest Annual Report: Fostering Resilience for Peace.