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Policy Brief No. 93
Toda Peace Institute
Some peacebuilding organisations have been ramping up their explicit work using
technology and understanding how technology impacts democracy and conflict dynamics.
Peacebuilding organisations like Build Up, PeaceTech Lab, ICT4Peace, and Search for
Common Ground have focused on ‘peacetech’ and ‘digital peacebuilding’ since the early
2010s. In 2018, the Toda Peace Institute launched a Social Media, Technology, and
Peacebuilding research track. In 2019, the Washington DC-based Alliance for Peacebuilding
convened a regular working group on technology and peacebuilding including dozens of the
network’s member organisations. Mercy Corps and Peace Direct also began convening
meetings on the topic. Peacebuilding organisations are employing technology to achieve a
wide range of peacebuilding goals, and they have been harnessing peacebuilding skills and
processes to address challenges amplified by new technologies. In 2020, Eastern Mennonite
University’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute offered the first graduate course in “Digital
Peacebuilding and Peacetech” and Conducive Space for Peace, Humanity United, and
PeaceDirect launched an online “Digital Peacebuilding 101” training platform.
This report emerges out of a literature review and involvement in ongoing consultations
within the peacebuilding community in meetings convened by Build Up, the Toda Peace
Institute, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, PeaceTech Lab, Search for Common Ground, Mercy
Corps, and Peace Direct.
PeaceTech and Digital Peacebuilding Defined
Peacetech is technology that contributes to peacebuilding. Digital peacebuilding is the
broader nexus between the field of peacebuilding and digital technologies.
This nexus includes three interfaces. First, most peacebuilding efforts use “normal”
technologies such as email, websites, word processing, databases, and Skype or Zoom for
communication and basic computation. Second, specific types of technology can be
developed with the explicit goal of analysing conflict, protecting civilians, facilitating
dialogue, or other goals related to peacebuilding. Third, the field of peacebuilding can
respond to new threats brought by technology, including cyber warfare tactics such as
disinformation aimed at undermining democracy or hate speech on social media leading to
greater polarisation.
Peacebuilding includes a wide range of efforts by diverse actors in government and civil
society at the community, national, and international levels. Peacebuilding can work
proactively to design societies that are both just and peaceful, and reactively to address both
the immediate impacts and root causes of conflict before, during, and after violent conflict
occurs. Peacebuilding ultimately supports human security—where people have freedom
from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from humiliation.
Peacebuilding skills and processes centre on multi-stakeholder, intergroup dialogue,
negotiation, and mediation. Peacebuilding processes build social cohesion by improving
intergroup understanding, protecting human rights norms, and improving governance and
collective problem solving to address inequalities. The field of peacebuilding began as an
interdisciplinary subfield of political science, communication, psychology, economics, and
sociology devoted to understanding polarisation and designing processes to build social