We are delighted to share our 2021 Annual Report titled, “A blueprint for peace in an era of disruption and conflict.”

With conflict being the single greatest barrier to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, the traditional blueprints for achieving peace evidently require adaptation, and new approaches must be developed to address today’s challenges. Peacebuilders have an opportunity to act creatively and assertively to strengthen multilateralism, and to reinforce positive linkages between national leaders and the communities whom they represent and serve.

Our report illustrates examples of Interpeace’s focus in our current five-year Strategy on building trust, strengthening social cohesion and resilience, and promoting inclusive and participatory approaches. All are critical to preventing violence, managing conflict, and fostering sustainable peace and development. We highlight key achievements both within communities and at the highest levels of policymaking – from successfully brokering a truce between groups in Kenya’s North Rift region to driving efforts to create the first-ever financial asset class of peace bonds.

In 2021 alone, we worked on 805 locally designed and led initiatives that contributed to the transformation of 162 conflicts. We supported six security reform initiatives and launched two new country programmes – in Yemen and Ethiopia. Through the ‘Principles for Peace’ initiative, which was conceived and continues to be incubated and hosted at Interpeace, we supported the creation and adoption in the year ahead, of principles that will reshape how peace processes are designed, implemented, and monitored. We established seven partnerships for human rights and peacebuilding work; deepened institutional partnerships with WHO, UNFPA, ILO, FAO, and IOM to strengthen the peace outcomes of their own technical interventions; and brought together champions from across seven UN agencies to further operationalise the Sustaining Peace Agenda and the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus.

Despite exceptional challenges in 2021, including the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted the lives of millions and many of Interpeace’s face-to-face activities, we have made tangible progress and will continue to make the adjustments required to operate in a post-Covid-19 world.

We hope you enjoy reading our report. It is a taste of the great work recently undertaken by the Interpeace team with thanks to all those who support us; an insight into the way in which we are committed to changing positively the lives and communities worldwide of those whom we serve as peacebuilders; and a pointer to the challenges and work that we see ahead.