When conflict happens, what are we investing in? Are we investing sufficiently in the people, communities, institutions and relationships that can prevent the next conflict?
Yesterday, I participated in the 11th National Gender Talk Series organised by WANEP-Nigeria, under the theme “Investing in Peace: Exploring Strategies for Inclusive Peacebuilding.” WANEP-Nigeria’s Gender Talk Series provides a platform for dialogue, advocacy and knowledge-sharing around gender, peace, and security, creating space to reflect on how peacebuilding can become more inclusive and responsive to the realities of communities.
This particular conversation left me reflecting on an important question: What does investing in peace actually look like in practice? Too often, our attention and resources become concentrated on responding to the consequences of conflict after violence has already occurred. While response and recovery are important, sustainable peace requires us to think much earlier and much more broadly about where, how and in whom we invest. Beyond the different perspectives shared by the speakers, several lessons particularly resonated with me:
Inclusion must go beyond participation: It is not enough to have people represented in a room.Meaningful inclusion requires people to have a voice, influence, and genuine opportunities to shape decisions that affect their lives.This means asking: Who is actually part of the conversation, and whose voice is missing? For peacebuilding interventions to be sustainable, communities should not only be consulted after decisions have already been made. They should have opportunities to participate from identifying problems and designing solutions to implementation and assessing outcomes.Otherwise, we risk continuing to design interventions for communities rather than with them.
Local actors matter: One of the strongest reminders from the conversation was the importance of recognising the knowledge, agency and capacity that already exist within communities. Local peace actors often understand the dynamics of their communities in ways that external actors may not. Traditional leaders, religious leaders, community-based organisations, women mediators, youth groups, and other local actors can play important roles in preventing and responding to emerging tensions. Investing in peace therefore also means investing in local peace infrastructure. The question should not always be, “What solution can we bring?” It should also be, “What capacities and solutions already exist here, and how can we strengthen them?”
Localisation needs to be genuine: There is increasing discussion about localisation in peacebuilding, but genuine localisation requires more than simply involving local actors in externally designed programmes. It requires recognising local knowledge, sharing ownership, strengthening local institutions, and ensuring that resources and decision-making are able to reach the people closest to the problem. It also means asking how we can translate broad policy commitments and peacebuilding frameworks into realities that communities can understand, own, and apply.
Peace education should be continuous: Another important reflection for me was the need to take peace education seriously. Peace education should not be treated as a one-off workshop or something we introduce only when conflict is already emerging. It needs to be part of the longer-term development of individuals and communities. This includes building understanding of conflict, dialogue, tolerance, civic responsibility, peaceful dispute resolution, and the responsibilities that come with citizenship. This raises a question that I think deserves greater attention: Do the critical stakeholders we expect to contribute to peacebuilding actually understand what peacebuilding means, and how do we make that understanding meaningful in their everyday lives?
We need to invest in young people: Young people should not be viewed only as beneficiaries of peacebuilding programmes. They are also advocates, organisers, innovators, community actors, and peacebuilders. Investing in young people means creating opportunities for meaningful participation, leadership, economic opportunities, networks, and the ability to influence decisions that affect their communities. When we talk about investing in peace, we should therefore also ask: Are we investing in the agency of young people to build and sustain peace?
Economic inclusion is also part of peacebuilding: The conversation also reinforced for me that peacebuilding cannot be separated from the everyday economic realities of the people. Poverty, unemployment, and limited access to opportunities can increase vulnerability and deepen social tensions. Economic inclusion and access to sustainable opportunities can therefore be an important part of creating resilient and peaceful communities. Investing in peace can mean investing not only in dialogue and mediation, but also in people’s ability to build secure and dignified livelihoods.
Peacebuilding should not begin when violence begins: Perhaps one of the most important lessons is that peacebuilding should not start only when violence has already started. By then, the cost of conflict is often much higher. We need sustained investment in prevention, civic awareness, peace education, dialogue, social cohesion, early warning systems, local institutions, and relationships long before tensions escalate into violence. Peacebuilding is therefore not simply about responding to conflict. It is about creating the conditions that make violence less likely in the first place.
Peacebuilding is not a one-off activity: Peacebuilding requires long-term thinking. Projects may have timelines and funding cycles, but communities, relationships and institutions continue to exist long after a particular project ends. This means that sustainable peace requires continued investment, stronger coordination between government and civil society, trust, accountability, and a willingness to look beyond short-term project outcomes. It also requires us to move beyond tokenism and ask whether the people most affected by conflict have the resources, opportunities, and space to meaningfully contribute to the processes intended to build peace.
I am particularly grateful to the speakers for sharing their experiences and practical examples of what investing in peace looks like in practice. Their reflections demonstrated that investment in peace can take many forms. It can range from simply supporting women’s economic opportunities and young people’s agency to strengthening local institutions, community peace structures, civic awareness, and meaningful participation. I left the conversation thinking that investing in peace is, in the long run, about investing in people and the structures that enable them to live, participate, and work together peacefully. Perhaps the most important question arising from the discussion is not simply how much we invest in peace, but where that investment goes and who benefits from it.
Who gets to participate?
Who gets the resources?
Whose knowledge is considered valuable?
Whose experiences form peacebuilding policies?
And whose voices remain outside the room?
These questions are important because peacebuilding cannot be genuinely inclusive if the people most affected by conflict remain excluded from determining the solutions.
I am grateful to WANEP-Nigeria for creating a space for this important conversation and to the participants for contributing their experiences and perspectives.