Professor Heather Bouman (Oxford) presents 'Climate change, ice, and the oceans' invisible forest' at the OxPeace 2019 conference.

Building Peace

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Climate change, ice, and the oceans' invisible forest

Oluwasolape Onafowora presents 'Human fatalities and the question of sustainability in Nigeria's ranching schemes' at the 2019 OxPeace conference.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Human fatalities and the question of sustainability in Nigeria's ranching schemes

Dr Coline Covington presents 'Taking back control - 'existential threat' and large group anxiety' at the OxPeace 2019 conference.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Taking back control - 'existential threat' and large group anxiety

Professor Romola Davenport (Cambridge) presents 'Population, urbanisation and health' at the OxPeace 2019 conference.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Population, urbanisation and health

Professor Mark Maslin (UCL) presents 'New politics for surviving the Anthropocene' at OxPeace 2019.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: New politics for surviving the Anthropocene

Brian Lander, Deputy Director, World Food Programme (WFP) presents the 'Challenges of Addressing Food Insecurity' at OxPeace 2019.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Challenges of Addressing Food Insecurity

Professor Sir Charles Godfray (Oxford Martin School) presents 'Options for a Global Food System' at OxPeace 2019.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Options for a Global Food System

Professor Henry Shue (Oxford) presents 'How to exacerbate conflict by your response to climate change' at OxPeace 2019.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: How to exacerbate conflict by your response to climate change

Professor Franz Baumann (NYU) presents 'Global Heating: too big for politics?' at OxPeace 2019.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Global Heating: too big for politics?

Brian Lander opens the annual OxPeace Conference with his remarks at the Conference dinner.

OxPeace 2019: Peace in the Anthropocene: Conference Dinner remarks: Brian Lander, Deputy Director at the World Food Programme (WFP) in Geneva

Professor Sir Paul Collier delivers the 2018 OxPeace Conference Keynote lecture, discussing ‘How Business affects the chance of peace: the upside – jobs; the downside – crooks; and what to do about them.’ Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College. From 1998–2003 he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war; the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural resources rich societies; urbanization in low-income countries; private investment in African infrastructure and changing organizational cultures.

OxPeace 2018: How Business affects the chance of peace: the upside – jobs; the downside – crooks; and what to do about them

Marcel Smits, Institute of Economics and Peace, discusses ‘The economics of conflict versus the economics of peacebuilding and sustainable peace’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Marcel Smits is the Director of the Europe Office of the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) in The Hague. Each year, IEP produces an estimate of the global cost of violence, adding up the costs associated with containing, preventing, and dealing with the consequences of violence. The least peaceful countries in the world disproportionately suffer economically from the levels of violence they experience. Violence greatly affect economic development which affects poverty, life expectancy, education, health and other development outcomes. For this reason, violent conflict is increasingly recognized as one of the biggest obstacles to reaching the SDGs by 2030. Although, there is an investment gap in developing countries of about $2.5 trillion to achieve the SDGs which the private sector is asked to help bridge, the calculations do not take into account the economic losses from violent conflict. The potential economic benefits from investing in peacebuilding and in sustaining peace in societies are therefore substantial. The session will show that besides a moral argument there is a good financial case to be made for peacebuilding and risk-informed sustainable development interventions by businesses and others as a way to prevent conflict and reduce the cost of violence.

OxPeace 2018: The economics of conflict versus the economics of peacebuilding and sustainable peace

Andres Ucros presents his talk on ‘Private Sector and Peacebuilding: Lessons from Colombia’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Andres Ucros is currently Director of Peace Building in the Chamber of Commerce of Bogota, Colombia. Colombia has suffered one of the longest internal armed conflicts in the world. This long and tainted war has been active for over five decades and its magnitude was, and still is greater than many major internal conflicts around the world. During the last five years, the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrillas have been engaged in peace talks with the aim of putting an end to armed struggle. Throughout this process, both parties have deployed a number of innovative strategies and techniques that are setting new standards in the field of conflict resolution. These new approaches are now informing developments in peace-making, peace-building, security, human rights, and international law at the regional and global levels. The aim of this presentation is to describe how the private sector has engaged in the negotiation and with the implementation of the agreement itself to draw some lessons from the Colombian experience.

OxPeace 2018: Private Sector and Peacebuilding: Lessons from Colombia

Dr Liz Carmichael discusses the ‘Progressive roles of business in the South African transition’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Dr Liz Carmichael is Emeritus Research Fellow in Theology at St John’s College, University of Oxford, and the convenor of the Oxford Network of Peace Studies (OxPeace), a multidisciplinary initiative to promote the study of peace, peacemaking, peacebuilding and peacekeeping in the University. Dr Carmichael became Chaplain, Fellow and Tutor in Theology at St John's in 1996, and in 2004 published Friendship: Interpreting Christian Love, a history of the interpretation of 'agape' as friendship-love in the western Christian tradition. She is currently researching on the origins and operation of the South African National Peace Accord and the work of its structures in the transition period 1991-94.

OxPeace 2018: Progressive roles of business in the South African transition

Dr Sarah von Billerbeck presents her talk titled the ‘The Role of Commercial Banks in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Anecdotal Evidence from the DRC’ at the 2018 Oxpeace Conference. Sarah von Billerbeck is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations and co-Director of the UN and Global Order Programme at the University of Reading. While the role of private sector actors during conflict has been explored in academic research, literature on their role after conflict and during peacebuilding is less developed. In particular, a crucial player has been entirely omitted: commercial banks. Post-conflict countries often see an influx of commercial banks in what is usually a weakly regulated market, but they nonetheless take on a number of important functions, including financial services reform, overseeing public sector salary payments, facilitating disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs, and foreign investment. However, we have no systematic understanding of the actual effects of commercial banks in post-conflict settings. While they can contribute to personal financial stability, combat illegal taxation and corruption, spur economic recovery, and buttress state authority, they can also have negative effects by serving as vehicles for money laundering, contributing to financial crises, deepening public debt, and weakening faith in the government’s ability to manage the economy. This presentation highlights anecdotal evidence from a 'bancarization' programme in the DR Congo to demonstrate the importance of commercial banks in helping or hindering peacebuilding and the re-establishment of stable state-society relations after war.

OxPeace 2018: The Role of Commercial Banks in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Anecdotal Evidence from the DRC

An annual conference to explore 'Building Peace' from multidisciplinary perspectives held in Oxford. The 2012 conference was entitled, ‘Disciplines of Peace’. The 2012 conference themes included exploring different aspects of the field of peace studies: the relationship between academic research and the practice of peacemaking, peacebuilding and peacekeeping; the skills needed for these practices; the way in which established academic disciplines feed into our understanding of peace and peacebuilding; and the emerging discipline of peace studies itself. How can this area of study be further developed at Oxford?

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Building Peace

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