Understanding Conflict. Building Peace

Who are we?

We’re International Alert. We don’t build schools, hospitals or roads but we do build something no less vital for life, but often much less understood. We build peace.

What do we want?

Our vision is of a world where differences are resolved without resort to violence; a world where people seek and can get better lives for their families and communities, and conflicts that arise are managed peacefully.

Our mission is to:

1. Work directly with people affected by violent conflict, supporting their efforts to bring peace:

This means forming partnerships locally and regionally to develop mutual understanding between those divided by conflict and to identify new solutions to persistent problems.

2. Improve the substance and implementation of international policy and practice relevant to peacebuilding:

This means working at government, EU and UN levels to help decision-makers understand the impact of their actions and include the perspectives of war-torn communities.

3. Strengthen the expertise, impact and public profile of the peacebuilding sector:

This means raising awareness of the importance of peacebuilding and working within the sector to improve ways of addressing the root causes of violent conflict.

What do we do?

Alert works both at the policy level and on the ground with governments, partner organisations and communities in some of the world’s worst-affected conflict regions.

The way that we work varies from place to place but at the heart of what we do is creating space for people to talk about their differences and the best means of resolving them without the use of violence. What we do is:

• Dialogue – creating safe spaces in which to bring together groups and people who are divided by conflict and who would not otherwise be in dialogue with each other.
• Accompaniment in peace processes – offering, according to need, a variety of modes of assistance for groups involved in peace processes, including those participating in negotiations.
• Capacity building – building organisations’ (especially NGOs’) awareness of peacebuilding issues and their technical and organisational capacities as well as encouraging them to think creatively in order to strengthen the prospects for peace.
• Research and analysis – the first step in every regional engagement and a continuing part of the process. This is a mutual process with local partners that is often itself conducted through dialogue. It is also the basis of Alert’s role in policy development.
• Public education – raising awareness both in conflict-affected regions and in the UK of peacebuilding, how it works, and its importance. This is the first step towards harnessing energy to support peacebuilding both from those in conflict-affected regions and from the international community.