Follow the Money: Local Peacebuilding and Stabilization

How do international donors spend their peacebuilding resources – and how can they make their contributions more effective? Do the practices of large-scale donors reflect the key lessons of what works and what does not? Chief among these lessons is the need to empower local actors to pursue their own strategies on how to reduce violence and achieve peace. But under what conditions does local peacebuilding succeed? 

In the last 20 years, international donors have massively increased their peace spending from 1 billion euros in 2004 to over 3 billion euros in 2022. ​“Following the money,” the project will take stock of decades of peace contributions. 

To this end, the GPPi team will conduct a systematic quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of international donors’ peacebuilding efforts with a special focus on quality criteria such as localization. The aim is to develop recommendations that help decision-makers in donor institutions invest financial resources for peace and security more effectively. 

The project, which builds on GPPi’s earlier research on these same themes, is funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung. 

For more information, please contact Melissa Li.