24 Policy Brief No. 93 Toda Peace Institute Mahallae is a combination of the words for a neighborhood in Greek and Turkish. Mahallae is a “digital neighborhood” for civic engagement, tech innovations, and dialogue across the lines of conflict.101 The “Hack for Peace in the Middle East” sponsored by “Code for a Cause” brought together diverse groups to explore new apps or technologies that could address local needs.102 The Municipality of The Hague organises a “Hackathon for Peace, Justice and Security” that brings together diverse groups such as NGOs, NATO, the International Criminal Court, and the Red Cross to brainstorm tech solutions to real-world problems.103 International Alert has a team of “#peacehacks” who participate in a variety of hackathons. Build Up offers courses to peacebuilding organisations in the skills necessary to build new technologies, including understanding the product manager role needed to innovate new technologies and work with other groups to form partnerships. The Washington DC-based PeaceTech Lab hosts “peacetech exchanges” that are workshops to empower peacebuilders in conflict zones with low-cost, easy to use technology. Peace tech hackathons around the world bring together technology, peacebuilding, and business stakeholders to brainstorm and build prototypes of new forms of technology to address human needs. 22. Peace Engineering Universities around the world have begun work on the ethics and humane design of technology in a new field called “peace engineering.” Peace engineering is an exploratory new interdisciplinary approach that uses “the application of science and engineering principles to promote and support peace”, as defined by the International Federation of Educational Engineering Societies (IFEES). Peace engineering designs technology with people and their relationships in mind. Peace engineering courses train engineers creating new technologies to anticipate and calculate the impact of that new product on human relationships. What would a social media platform look like if it sought to not only make a profit, but also contribute to social cohesion, to reduce violent conflict, or to improve democratic decision making? Peace engineering also presses peacebuilders to consider engineering and technology as a key component of their work. For example, during COVID 19, many regions short of water built new handwashing stations to reduce transmission of the virus. Such new technologies hold the potential to also strengthen community relations if planned in consultation with community representatives.104 For more information on Mahallae see their website: https://mahallae.wordpress.com For more information on Code for a Cause see their website at https://codeforacause.co 103 For more information on “Hackathon for Peace, Justice and Security” see their website: https://www.hackathonforgood.org/hackathon-for-good-2018 104 Lisa Schirch and Alpasaln Ozerdam. “Peace Engineering in a Complex Pandemic World.” In Post-Corona Conflicts: New Sources of Struggle, New Prospects for Peace. Edited by Richard E. Rubenstein and Solon Simmons. Routledge, 2020. 101 102