Geneva Peace Week 2018

5-9 November

This year, Geneva Peace Week emphasizes the urgency of finding peaceful solutions for the growing risks of violent conflict, building on the lessons from history and the needs for future peace-building practice.

Collective security and peace practice represent a rich tapestry of challenges and achievements, as well as devastating failures. Geneva Peace Week reflects on the lessons of a century of liberal internationalism in the service of peace and focuses on the roles that every person, actor and institution can play in building peace and resolving conflict. Awareness of the potentials and pitfalls of these roles is ever more important to build and sustain peace in a turbulent world and to broker the partnerships necessary to address them.

Geneva is home to a large number of international organizations, including more than 40 United Nations entities, a thriving community of non-governmental organizations and renowned academic and research institutions. Together, all these actors work for peace, rights and well-being, touching the lives of individuals across the world. Geneva Peace Week offers an opportunity to connect and highlight the work of these actors and to expand the space for dialogue about building peace and resolving conflict.

Geneva Peace Week is a collective action initiative facilitated by the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform in collaboration with the Swiss Confederation. By synchronizing meetings and events on different topics related to the promotion of peace during one week, Geneva Peace Week maximizes synergies between organizations in Geneva, focused on the cross-cutting nature of peace.

Geneva Peace Week underlines that each and every person, actor and institution has a role to play in building peace and resolving conflict. It also highlights that peace promotion occurs in many different contexts and cuts across disciplines and sectors. In this sense, Geneva Peace Week is an attempt to break down the silos which all-too-often characterize the international community and can limit more creative responses.

Source: Geneva Peace Week