Statebuilding and Peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

The 2011 Arab Spring has led to prolonged social conflicts, substantial human suffering, and tensions between countries in the region. It has also exposed shortcomings in existing international approaches for supporting peace and for building stronger states. The Center supports efforts to ensure that international aid accelerates peace, that local mediation efforts progress national political processes, and that peacebuilding initiatives are effectively designed. The program’s geographic focus is Yemen, Syria, and Libya, although it also provides support in other conflict contexts in the region. The program presently works in partnership with GIZ (Yemen), Search for Common Ground (Yemen), the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (Lebanon) and the United Nations Development Program (Libya).

Current Projects

The Yemen Conflict Sensitivity Platform (YCSP) (Search for Common Ground- Yemen) The project aim to develop a platform which will provide situational monitoring in a conflict sensitive approach. Over the course of its development, the platform will serve as a primary hub for external/international actors to receive firsthand information from national network on the humanitarian situation. Upon its completion, the platform will not only facilitate better coordination mechanism among existing entities responding to humanitarian conflicts in Yemen such as UN cluster system and the OCHA Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) but also entrench conflict sensitive design and programming norms in humanitarian interventions. The project will strengthen humanitarian peacebuilding, stabilization, recovery, conflict sensitive programming, capacity building, policies and strategies internalized to support peace and stability in Yemen. Read more.

Support Switzerland’s Engagement for Increased Conflict Sensitivity of Water Management in the Bekaa, Lebanon (Swiss FDFA HDS) 5/15/2020 – 5/14/2021.
Center for Peace and Conflict studies (CPCS) works to negotiate approaches to manage aid ensuring safety of groups involved in the conflict. This project look into developing mechanisms to water management in the Bekaa valley, Lebanon in a conflict sensitive manner. It aims to support and strengthen Swiss engagement in the Bekaa valley through three-way interaction analysis between water sector, community dynamics and overall aid in the valley. Furthermore, number of activities will be designed to support Swiss FDFA on-ground intervention it involves but not limited to the development of the engagement plan, trust-building within community, designing conflict sensitive toolkit, operationalization and internal learning on WoGA and the nexus, and mentoring the team. Read more.

Enhanced coexistence and peace capacity in Yemen through economic action (GIZ Yemen) 1/7/2020 – 1/7/2021
The project builds on center’s learning from previous GIZ studies on war economy and further streamline work on economic peacebuilding in Dhamar, Ibb/Taiz, Hadramout and Hodeida/Hajjah governorates in Yemen. The project aim to enhance coexistence and peace capacity through gauging the interaction of economic and conflict decision making, strengthening local networks in economic peace planning and develop evidence-based approach to improve coexistence, resilience, and peace through socio-economic actions. Key activities to achieve the aforementioned objectives are: number of feasibility assessments, social media surveys, routable discussions and presentations with multiple stakeholders. Read more.

Past Projects:
  • Integrated peace and conflict analysis in Yemen (GIZYem004)
  • PVE and social cohesion in Lebanon (Swiss FDFA): Provide guidance and training for the Lebanese Government’s Inter-ministerial Unit on Preventing Violent Extremism through participation in a training and learning workshop in September 2019 (Lebanon).
        • Activities: MENA: Consulting with Lebanon on Preventing Violent Extremism Read more.
  • Effective peace program (Swiss FDFA)
  • Peace promotion and conflict sensitive programs in Libya (GIZLIB001)
        • MENA: Presentation of Peace and Conflict Assessment Libya Report
  • Sector program peace and security disaster risk management in Libya (GIZLIB002)
  • Yemen War Economy Study(GIZ): Conducted a training workshop for Yemeni partners in how research in conflict environments (August 2019), and presented the research findings in December 2019 (Frankfurt), January 2020 (Amman) and February 2020 (Frankfurt).
  • Promoting peace in Yemen through the economy (GIZ002)
        • MENA: Peacebuilding in Yemen through the Economy Workshop. Read more.
        • MENA: International Dialogue on Community Safety in Yemen (GIZ002) Read more.