Networks and Coordination in Peacebuilding

This brief is an introduction to the use of network structures for organizing peacebuilding groups.

• Networks are a way of setting up collaborative structures.  They don’t have a hierarchy or formal strategy, but instead are based on information sharing and helping individual participating groups or people make the best decisions they can.
• This approach may address some common problems in peacebuilding.  Peacebuilding coordination efforts have been hampered in the past by problems of coordination arising from attempts to have a formal coordinated strategy.  Network structures might get around this.
• When designing networks, organizers should consider questions of how to support self-interested reasons for participants to join and contribute, how to promote information-sharing within the network, and how to establish “backbone support” roles to keep the network moving.

Sustainable peace requires coordinating work across multiple different areas including economic development, political institutions, and security. This coordination is a challenge, and peacebuilding needs good approaches for setting up and promoting better coordination. Our new policy brief delves into structures of peacebuilding and shows examples of how networks can be best established.