Impact Investment. Social Entrepreneurship. Corporate Partnerships. We’ve all heard these buzz words, but what do they actually mean? How can they be effectively applied to finance sustainable peace efforts in some of the world’s most difficult conflict areas?

In the first of this two-part article series, CIC Visiting Scholar Riva Kantowitz delves into the innovative methods and models that are being applied to fund global conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts. The article also raises important challenges to these methods, including the impact of the funding and how it is being used on the ground. 

An integrated approach to crisis and conflict prevention requires clarity on what is meant by prevention, and how the concept of prevention fits with the 2030 Agenda, sustaining peace, and other relevant frameworks. This new briefing paper by Sarah Cliffe and David Steven proposes a new paradigm for prevention that has three levels: (i) universal prevention strategies that aim to build healthy societies that manage conflict productively, provide safety and security, increase resilience, and enhance social, political, and economic inclusion; (ii) “at risk” prevention strategies that target groups, communities, and countries that face elevated risk of conflict, or where violence is highest and resilience lowest; and (iii) prevention strategies that are tailored to situations of ongoing conflict or crisis.