The Adapt Peacebuilding Podcast
Interviews and commentary from leading practioners and theorists in peacebuilding, development, politics, and social justice globally. Listen on your favorite podcast app:
People Power in Peace Processes: Harnessing the Influence of Social Movements
In this conversation, Veronique discusses the important role of social movements in promoting sustainable and inclusive peace processes during national political transitions. She shares her experience in non-violent movements and highlights the limitations and power imbalances of top-down approaches. The conversation explores various types of social movements and their potential to support conflict transformation through strategies such as civil disobedience and issue-based coalitions. Using examples from around the world, they discuss the ethics of violence and non-violence for achieving peace and designing more inclusive transition processes. Check out Veronique’s additional publications “Powering to Peace” with the International Center on Non-violent Conflict, “From the Street to the PeaceTable” with the United States Institute of Peace, “Nonviolent Action and Transitions to Democracy,” also with USIP, and the practical action “SNAP guide“ with strategies for non-violent movements to advance peacebuilding.
Transforming the global peacebuilding system for local leadership
Decades of experience building peace in societies affected by violent conflict shows that these efforts are more effective and sustainable when they are led by local people. Despite this experience, the global system of peacebuilding organisations and institutions that fund and administer peacebuilding programs still largely reflects the interests of international outsiders. In this episode, we talk with Mie Roesdahl of the Conducive Space for Peace and how to achieve transformation of the global peacebuilding system so that it better prioritises the leadership of local people and reflects the contexts in which they seek change. Further detail is available in the System in Flux report.
Peace in the Age of Chaos: a Systems Approach, with Steve Killelea
“Peace in the age of chaos” is the new book from the founder of the Institute for Economics and Peace and the Global Peace Index, Steve Killelea. In this podcast we explore a range of compelling themes emerging from Steve’s book, including the contribution that systems thinking and positive peace can make towards better peacebuilding strategies and why peace is a prerequisite for tackling other complex challenges of our times, such as climate change and building back from the pandemic. Steve populates the conversation with rich evidence drawn from the work of his organisations, as well as personal anecdotes that paint the picture of a life fully lived and committed to the pursuit of a more peaceful world.
Please follow these links for more information on the Global Peace Index, for access to the Peace in the Age of Chaos book, for free training courses available at the Positive Peace Academy, and more from the Institute for Economics and Peace.
Bottom-up Peacebuilding Methodologies in Myanmar
Myanmar is in crisis. Six years on from the election of Myanmar’s first civilian government in more than half a decade, the military has initiated a bold power grab.
Hundreds have been detained, but the military may have underestimated how strongly their people would have reacted to having their rights trampled. Amidst a popular uprising that may well become the largest in the country’s history, and with the military now with their back to the wall, there’s much concern that popular protests will be met with a violent crackdown.
This podcast episode was recorded before the military coup, and speaks to the topic of people power for change in Myanmar. The conversation is with Professor Danny Burns, from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and Stephen Gray, Co-Founder and Director of Adapt, and reflects on methods for popular participation in the country’s peace process. Take a listen, and check out their paper in the Journal of Peacebuilding for more detail about this work.
COVID-19 and Social Cohesion
The global pandemic brought on by the novel coronavirus has fundamentally transformed peacebuilding efforts, development initiatives and humanitarian response. This podcast episode, featuring Stephen Gray, Co-Founder and Director of Adapt, and Francis Zau Tu, Adapt’s Programme Manager in Myanmar, discusses COVID-19’s implications for peacebuilding writ large and looks at Adapt’s work in Myanmar to understand how the pandemic has affected conflict dynamics and impacted peacebuilding. We explore new opportunities to advance peace and highlight some of the enabling factors that can allow organisations to build a culture of adaptation and learning in order to better serve communities in dynamic contexts.
Adaptive Programming: working with Government to Implement Colombia’s Peace Agreement
This podcast episode describes a recent initiative of Adapt Peacebuilding with a government unit established under the Colombian Peace Accords of 2016. We share reflections related to the design of adaptive programming approach methodologies for this organisation, but due to political sensitivities, the organisation itself is not named.
Desirée Nilsson & Barbara Magalhães Teixeira on: Inclusivity in peacebuilding: does it work?
Desirée Nilsson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. Barbara Magalhães Teixeira is a research assistant at Uppsala University. Desirée’s research focuses on conflict resolution and durable peace in civil wars, with a particular emphasis on multiparty dynamics. Marthe Hiev sets the tone for the interview by asking questions about Desirée’s groundbreaking quantitative study ‘Anchoring the Peace: Civil Society Actors in Peace Accords and Durable Peace’, wherein she found that the inclusion of CSO’s has a positive effect on the durability of peace. Desirée’s research provides a solid perspective on the difficult context wherein peace processes take place, and also provides possible explanations for the positive effect that civil society inclusion has on peace agreements in a post-conflict context. The podcast covers the idea of inclusion in peace building, why inclusion is important, how inclusion influences the durability of peace, cases of civil society inclusion in peace processes, and how the Colombian peace process integrats an inclusive approach. Read the show notes.
Adaptive Peacebuilding with Cedric De Coning
Cedric de Coning is a Senior Research Fellow in the Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and he is also a Senior Advisor for ACCORD (African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes).
He has 30 years of experience in research, policy advice, training and education in the areas of conflict resolution, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peace and conflict studies. Cedric has a Ph.D. in Applied Ethics from the Department of Philosophy of the University of Stellenbosch, and a M.A. (cum laude) in Conflict Management and Peace Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
The interview covers the realities of being an “outsider” in complex contexts, the key elements of a strong adaptive approach, what to do when your process isn’t working, how to encourage adaptive programming in your organisation, thhe role of “insiders” and “outsiders” in complex, violent contexts, when to use (and not use) an adaptive approach, how “outsiders” can support the building of resilience, and what it would mean for the United Nations to take up adaptive programming. Read the show notes.
Emma Proud: Mainstreaming Adaptive Management into Mercy Crops
“In complexity every program struggles… In the programs where decision-making is sat near the information (sources), that’s where they were most successful”
Mercy Corps is a leading global humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding organisation. They work in country contexts that have undergone, or have been undergoing, various forms of economic, environmental, social, and political instabilities. Like Adapt Peacebuilding, Mercy Corps is putting adaptive management at the heart of their work, with a focus on their people management function. Adaptive management – defined as “an intentional approach to making decisions and adjustments in response to new information and changes in context” – helps Mercy Corps to be more effective in complex, unpredictable environments.
This week we speak with the leader of this work – Emma Proud – Mercy Corps’ Director of Organizational Agility. She is working on ways to increase organisational agility so all 400 Mercy Corps programmes are enabled and encouraged to be adaptive.
Duncan Green on Adaptive Management and how it applies to Development and Peacebuilding
Adaptive Management (AM) is a form of organizing work in which the focus is on learning from the context and adapting your approach to the given context as you learn about it and as the context changes. This is different from the typical approach that establishes a plan at the beginning.
This is important because many practitioners are interested in “complexity.” When working in a given conflict, often practitioners don’t have a lot of information about the needs of the community, the variables, the changes that will occur, etc. A predetermined plan won’t usually work. Practitioners should be “responsibly experimental” and learn as they try new solutions to conflict.
The Peacebuilding Podcast: Dr. Catherine Barnes on Overcoming our Addiction to Coercion
Catherine’s work is deeply grounded in decades of field work across thirty countries, while her research and writing covering topics of facilitation, dialog, activism, and social justice. She is faculty member of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University and freelance peace researcher and practitioner. In the podcast she describes our “addiction to coercion”, whereby we – internationally and domestically – try to compel others to accept our goals and points of view rather than expending our efforts and resources on collaborative activity for the greater good. She relates this to the increasing polarisation that we are experiencing domestically and internationally, and how we have in the past, and can in the future, find ways back through dialog and collaborative action. Catherine also demystifies peace processes that are designed and implemented to end civil wars, drawing on examples from Tajikistan, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and elsewhere, and tracing the path from elite lead peace agreements to more the more inclusive peace processes of modern times.
The Peacebuilding Podcast: Graeme Simpson on What Peacebuilding can Learn from the Creative Energy of Young People
“Youth are forging peacebuilding alternatives that we need to harness, embrace, give space to, and recognize. (There are) a creative set of alternatives that are being driven from below that young people are shaping and defining”.
Join us in conversation with Graeme Simpson, US Director of the non-profit Interpeace, and lead author of the United Nation’s flagship Progress Report on Youth, Peace, and Security. The highly participatory process of producing this work has been as important as some of its findings. Hundreds of youth across dozens of countries were involved in developing recommendations that underscore, among many other things, how young people are creative sources of peace, confronting their stereotype as primary perpetrators of violence. You can review a detailed version of the show notes with full links and a copy of his biography here.
