Challenges & Proposals

Participation

Due to the homogeneous structure of the decision-making mechanisms and the lack of a functional knowledge-sharing process, the participation of marginal and diverse local peace groups in the transformation is considerably obstructed.

Creating a common language takes time. The interest of decision-makers in more macro issues slow down the process at the local level as they ignore the positive results and solutions that may come from them.

This current dominant structures do not allow the marginalised and local peace communities to directly implement their solutions. 

Gender equality

Internal conflicts due to gender inequality and violence against women are on the rise.

Thinking innovatively at the intersection of gender and equality, is priceless for peacebuilding because many control mechanisms (such as clothing, social interaction, freedom of movement, education, work and marriage) prevent women from proving their existence.

This can only be made possible if the male-dominated decision-making structures are made to open up new spaces for women –especially for representatives of marginalised and vulnerable groups. 

Social injustices

There is little interest in analysing and resolving the root-causes of social injustices surrounding sustainable and just-policy recommendations.

According to the Ecocity World Summit held between the 22nd and 24th of February 2022, the life expectancy of males living in cities, are different from each other according to their class structure. 

Data indicates that the people living in the natural areas of cities, live eight years longer than those living in the inner-areas of urban spaces. Those in the urban areas, are mostly representatives of vulnerable and marginalised groups. These communities are kept out of the green areas, because of ghettoization and injustice infrastructures. Furthermore, sustainability projects are also carried out politically, financially etc. by the educated, white and upper middle-class local groups. They concentrate mostly on high-tech energy transitions or other utopian ideas. Locally grasroots groups usually don’t get visibility of their ideas or solutions because such educated groups (transformers,social innovators,researchers etc) are directly dominating an idea’s implementation process. By using all facilities of their position, they are acting like they are the founders or donors. The academic world, practitioners and social workers can learn a lot from grassroots initiatives but do not traditionally seek out these original ideas. Therefore, one those not see references to these grassroot initiatives in academic literature.

Collaboration

To find solutions for the root-cause of the problems in the cities, we need help from multiple scientific disciplines (interdisciplinarity), and involve non-academic actors (transdisciplinary) to frame and address these problems.Recognizing record-breaking levels of fragility and violent conflict since 2018, peacebuilding working groups from different disciplines and backgrounds in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia have set out to discover the needs of society and nature for ecological well-being and peace. They have been tackling systemic challenges through transformative thinking. This step continues with the decentralisation of peace science and the involvement of all communities that believe in peace. In the long term, it aims to strengthen the weakness of interdisciplinary dialogues (such as the gap between social sciences and natural sciences) and to eliminate negative resistance.

This may be a chance to co-work together to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies free from fear and violence, which follows the United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Goal No. 11 and climate-action target 13.1 and building peace.

Micro-meso-macro level peacebuilding methods

We propose micro-meso-macro level peacebuilding methods from the point of new peace architecture. In this creation process, peace within and between persons, within society, between societies, to the mega level within the world, can be accomplished.

We may need to propose new micro-changes. For example, like building micro peace among neighbours, and within neighbourhoods and cities. This means a call for a contemporary transformative approach (eg:like open spaces) in the 21st century, while understanding and tackling issues. Another good example, the Peace Workers Collaborative. It is the first meso-level peacebuilding initiative in the North Rheine-Westphalia region.

Inclusiveness

The success of any peace process from science-to-practice, depends on devising a scientific design in which the conflicting interests of all parties can be negotiated and reconciled without violence.

But it also depends on a setting triggers systems-innovation and invites all divergent ideas in which individuals and communities are actively participating rather than a process in which unfit organisational structures still continue to dominate the others. It is important to be inclusive and hear diverse voices and ask questions like. Where do privileged and unprivileged people meet and make decisions during the implementation process? 

Transparency

According to UN’s 2020 economic and social session, a transformative change which aims at reducing barriers to participation for specific groups ( like marginalised segments and the worker class) towards achieving sustainable development goals and building transparent, accountable and inclusive institutions… has the potential to change indifference, to interest.

It is important to share resources and knowledge and invite communities to find solutions about sustainable consumption behaviours and attitudes for human well being for themselves by themselves.