Sustaining Peace in the time of COVID-19
“Sustaining Peace in the Time of COVID-19” is the topic of this year’s Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, convened online from 11–22 May 2020 by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network (EPON) are partners of the Stockholm Forum and will host the following events.
As a partner of the Forum, NUPI will host a webinar in collaboration with EPON on 14 May, and a webinar in cooperation with the Graduate Institute, Geneva on 18 May. You can watch these and all other public webinars live on SIPRI’s YouTube channel. More information about the seminars and links to the live streams are found below.
UN peacekeeping missions and COVID-19
All the UN’s peacekeeping operations and special political missions – involving approximately 100,000 people in more than 30 countries – have been forced to take exceptional steps to adapt and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. At this stage, most of the countries where peace operations are deployed are on the periphery of the pandemic. However, this is likely to change and when the virus spreads to these countries, peace operations will most likely have to make further changes to the way they work, both to protect their staff and to be able to continue to carry out critical functions.
On 14 May 15:00-16:00 CET, NUPI and the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network (EPON) will host an open webinar to discuss how COVID-19 is affecting UN peacekeeping missions. Find the concept note for the event here.
Who are the New Peacebuilding Actors?
Today, we see the emergence of a number of new peacebuilding actors, including China, Japan, Russia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa, among others. These new peacebuilders each have their own interpretations of and approaches to peacebuilding, but one thing they have in common is that they see their approaches as different from the conventional Western liberal peace paradigm. How do they understand peacebuilding? What do they want to achieve through peacebuilding? What may the likely impact of the COVID-19 pandemic be on these new peacebuilding actors?
On 18 May 15:00-16:00 CET, NUPI and the Graduate Institute, Geneva will host the webinar “Who are the New Peacebuilding Actors and What Do They Want?” to discuss the emergence of new peacebuilding actors. Find the concept note for the event here.
On 22 May, 16.15–17.15 CET, NUPI and the Quaker United Nations Office will also convene a partner webinar on “INCLUSION: What Have We Learnt?”. Information on this event will be added at a later stage.
The Stockholm Forum incorporates a range of interesting subjects of discussion, and will combine public and closed sessions discussing the opportunities and challenges facing efforts to sustain peace in the time of coronavirus disease (COVID-19).The Stockholm Forum is convened online from 11–22 May 2020, and you can find the agenda for all webinars here.
The Stockholm Forum has been jointly organized by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute since 2014 and is a dialogue-driven event that provides a platform for interdisciplinary discussion between partners in international communities in the development, humanitarian, peacebuilding and security spheres.