Follow the Money: Local Peacebuilding and Stabilization

How do international donors spend their resources for peace and security – and how can they make their contributions more effective? To what extent do they live up to commitments of greater local leadership? Shrinking budgets, most starkly in the case of the United States, leaves the field at a crossroads while global political violence has nearly doubled since 2020. 

Our most recent study, Peace & Security Aid in Crisis: Rethinking Civilian Investment and Local Leadership (July 2025), takes stock, models likely trajectories of donor concentration and financial decline, and makes the case for radical prioritization of impact. An additional working paper, Sicherheit fördern in Krisen und Konflikten: Stabilisierung und Friedensförderung neu aufstellen (December 2025, in German), builds on this study. In it, we develop a logic model that makes the key policy trade-offs involved in prioritizing scarce resources transparent. 

Both publications draw on earlier research conducted as part of the study Follow the Money: Investing in Crisis Prevention (GPPi 2021, with Sofie Lilli Stoffel). The studies ​“Peace and Security Aid in Crisis” and ​“Sicherheit fördern in Krisen und Konflikten” were made possible with funding from the Robert Bosch Stiftung; ​“Follow the Money” was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.