Engaging Citizens and Communities to Create Peace and Security Research Framework

With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Future Generations is engaged in a multi-year global study of the role of engaged citizens and communities in building peace. With growing threats to human security and nearly an equal likelihood that countries emerging from violent conflict will revert within five years, this project’s ultimate goal is to demonstrate how to enable citizens and their communities to join with governments (local and national) and international change agents to craft a state-societal relationship that creates the local context for peace and social stability.

This project will join the collective experience of scholars and practitioners engaged in bottom-up peacebuilding with Future Generations own insights and experience in promoting partnerships between communities, governments, and external actors. The research phase will seek to answer the question of how citizens and communities have been effectively engaged in building peace. Primary data will come from case studies of “positive deviance”– instances where citizens and communities have worked across divisions and achieved an overall impact on peace. Additional data and insights will be gathered through workshops, literature reviews, and secondary case reviews. The project will explore whether there was a common set of challenges and principles operating across various stages and types of conflict and whether this ultimately points to workable approaches that can be applied with communities in countries facing conflict and instability.