Private Sector as Peacebuilding Actor - Preliminary Findings

Over the past decade, a marked transformation has taken place in the expectations of companies operating in environments of conflict and fragility, and in the hopes for the roles that they may be able to play. But growing enthusiasm for companies to seek deliberately to “support peace” has been accompanied by surprisingly little concrete, direct evidence of effective practices and approaches for doing so. Instead, contemporary discussions of business and peace have been characterized by unduly broad understandings of what impacts peace, questionable claims about how impacts on peace occur, and a lack of specificity about how companies can act constructively. Appeals to “the private sector” to engage typically present options for corporate peace interventions without any discussion of how those interventions have been, or can be, operationalized at asset-level.

CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA), in partnership with the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), and the Africa Center for Dispute Settlement of the University of Stellenbosch (ACDS), has undertaken a two-year, case-based learning project designed to provide a response to the question: “what can companies do to contribute to peace in fragile and conflict-affected states?” The presentation will be followed by an open discussion, where we will welcome your thoughts, inputs, feedback, and perspectives during a half-day discussion of these issues on Thursday, November 16, 2017 in The Hague.