The fourth Build Peace conference took place in Bogotá, Colombia on December 4, 5 & 6, 2017. The conference theme was “Making paper count: new forms of citizen participation in peace agreements”.
Build Peace 2017 took place in Bogotá (Colombia), at Universidad de los Andes. The conference hosted over 350 peacebuilders from more than 40 different countries who came together to discuss new forms of citizen participation in peace agreements.
Peace agreements have often been criticised for not being representative of the population beyond the elites, and calls have been made to widen citizen participation before, during and after an agreement. Build Peace 2017 explored innovative approaches to amplifying participation in all phases of a peace agreement, and bridging the gap between top down and bottom up peacebuilding initiatives.
The conference aimed to inspire through reflection on challenges and impacts across three sub-themes: inclusion and exclusion in peace negotiations; implementing peace agreements; healing, coexistence and reconciliation.
All conference presentations can be watched on our YouTube channel. A full conference report, including short descriptions of all talks and workshops, is available here. The conference mixtape can be accessed here.
Dialogues & Panels
Diana Weymar & Catalina Cock Duque
A conversation between Diana Weymar and Catalina Cock Duque about creativity and public imagination for peaceful futures. Diana Weymar is a textile artist based in the United States and Canada. Catalina is the Executive Director of Fundación Mi Sangre (My Blood Foundation), an organization created in 2006 by Juanes, the musician, and composer, so that the children and young people who have been affected by violence in Colombia may become agents of change, and contribute to the building of a culture of peace.
Nikki de la Rosa & Juan Fernando Lucio
A conversation between Nikki de la Rosa and Juan Fernando Lucio about how information and communication technologies can help citizens to monitor peace agreements. Nikki directs the International Alert thematic program in the Philippines on inclusive political economy, multi-stakeholder dialogue processes, and accompanying local governments, community leaders, and business corporations. Juan is the Director of PASO Colombia, Sustainable Peace for Colombia, at One Earth Future Foundation.
Sanjana Hattotuwa & Juanita León
A conversation between Sanjana Hattotuwa and Juanita León on social media, viral news, and the future of confidentiality in peace negotiations. Juanita is the Director of La Silla Vacía, which she set up with seed capital from the Open Society Institute. Sanjana is a Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation, where he works to promote the use of ICTs in crisis information management and United Nations peacebuilding initiatives.
Panel: peacetech in the Colombian context
This panel featured concrete examples and lessons from the ground and discussed the use of technology for peacebuilding in Colombia.
Panelists:
Alfonso Reyes, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de los Andes
Omar Rincón, Director, Center for Journalism Studies, Universidad de los Andes
Javier Guillot, Coordinator, Public Innovation Team (DNP)
Juan Diego Restrepo, Director of VerdadAbierta.com
Panel: theory and practice in peacetech
This panel discussed the collaborations between theory and practice in the use of technology for peacebuilding, discussing the opportunities, challenges, and main insights of research for peacetech.
Panelists:
Angelika Rettberg, Associate Professor, Universidad de los Andes
Ana María Ibáñez, Full Professor, Universidad de los Andes
Jean Marie Ndihokubwayo, Senior Researcher, CENAP
Workshops
Disinformation overload: trust in the age of fake news
Organizer: Factr.com
Prototyping Peace: Toolkits for Team and Community Accords
Organizer: Build Up / Dropbox
Innovation in Participation – the cases of Colombia and Canada
Organizer: Reconciliation Canada
Do engineers have a role in the implementation of a peace agreement?
Organizer: PeaceTech Lab / Drexel University / Build Up
Whole-of-Society Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding
Organizer: London School of Economics
Taller de Memoria y Reconciliación a través de la práctica del Kintsugi
Organizer: Fundación Prolongar
Maperos sociales y comunitarios con OpenStreetMap
Organizer: Fundación OpenStreetMap
La importancia del taller en la construcción de memoria histórica
Organizer: Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación
SOLE (Self-Organised Learning Environments)
Organizer: SOLE Colombia
Mapeo y análisis de datos de desplazamiento forzado
Organizer: Center for Spatial Research
Yoga for Resilience
Organizer: Feet on the Ground
Co-innovating a social design brand with artisans/designers in Colombia & Belgium
Organizer: !DROPS / Value4Chain
Automatic for the peaceful: social media analysis and bots for peace
Organizer: Creative Associates / Build Up
Creative Dialogue: music & film as a tool for youth communication and social cohesion
Organizer: Turning Tables
PEACEapp
Organizer: UNAOC / OmniumLab / Ideas por la Paz
Líderes de paz, multiplicadores de la reconciliación
Organizer: Asomuca
Innovation in Conflict Prevention: Brainstorming a Platform for Mediators and Peacebuilders
Organizer: Igarapé Institute
The Frame Design Process: Participatory Peacebuilding and Transformative Leadership
Organizer: Activate Labs
The Private Sector’s Role in Creating and Supporting Peace
Organizer: One Earth Future Foundation
Community-Level Data Collection to Support the Peace Process: Adapting the Everyday Peace Indicators approach
Organizer: Everyday Peace Indicators
Herramientas técnicas y forenses para la investigación de violaciones a los derechos humanos en el Sistema Integral de Verdad, Justicia, Reparación y No Repetición
Organizer: EQUITAS
Build Peace Lab: supporting local innovative peacebuilding projects
Organizer: Build Up / Movilizatorio
Dealing with the past in post-conflict societies: ICT supporting the inclusion of pluralistic perspectives
Organizer: GIZ-ProPaz / Heinrich Böll Foundation
Minecraft used as bottom-up participatory solution for urban planning co-creation
Organizer: Liliana Carrillo
JINSO (Juego de emprendimiento e innovación)
Organizer: Appiario
Blending Capitals for Peace
Organizer: TheBC.lab
Emprendimientos de Paz para el Departamento de Nariño
Organizer: PeaceStartUp
Educación para la paz y la reconciliación trabajando con la relación mente-cuerpo
Organizer: Universidad de los Andes
Be the Change
Organizer: Twitter / Centre for Democracy and Peace Building
Participatory photography for peacebuilding
Organizer: Fotosynthesis / Tahafuz
Transformando un espacio de terror en un lugar de memoria, educación y reparación
Organizer: Museo Sitio de Memoria ESMA
GIS for Peace: the convening power of Geographic Information Systems
Organizer: GICHD
Short Talks
Storytelling, Journalism, and Counter-Narratives for Peace
Ala Oueslati, Peace Activist, YaLa Young Leaders (Tunisia)
Internal Displacement Mapping
Bruno Siqueira, System Engineer, Igarapé Institute (Brazil)
Emergent – Building Peace Territories from School Narratives
Claudia Aparicio Yañez, Directora Ejecutiva, Fundación Dividendo (Colombia)
Reconciliation strategies as seen by millennials
Daniel Buriticá, Fundador, Red Colombiana de Jóvenes – RECOJO (Colombia)
Opportunities for peacebuilding in the hot phase of military conflict
Daria Kuznetsova, Project Coordinator, Donbass Dialogue Platform (Ukraine)
Innovating new forms of public participation in peace processes in the midst of war
Stephen Gray, Adapt Research and Consulting (Myanmar)
Radio as a tool to generate trust and strengthen governance
Willington Gutiérrez, FTZ Studio SAS (Colombia)
“Campesino” Mappers — Social and Community Cartographers
Fernando Castro Toro, Tallerista, Fundación OpenStreetMap (Colombia)
Digital storytelling on Gender Based Violence
Harriet Adong, Executive Director, Foundation Integrated Rural Development (Uganda)
Road Infrastructure, Soil Mechanics and Peace Building
Jaime Wills Sanín, Civil Engineering Instructor, Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)
Organizational Network Analysis for measuring Rapid Response Activities
Jesús Eduardo Coronado Escobar, Program Officer, Colombia Transforma (Colombia)
Collective writing as a tool to weave peace
Joan Serrat Montagut, Reading and writing promoter, SOM Editorial Colectiva (México)
CivicTech: Technology for social change
Juan Pablo Ruiz, Responsable Wingu Colombia, Winguweb (Colombia)
A Window to Dream
Laura Bernardelli, Agencia para la Reincorporación y la Normalización (Colombia)
Arts Program
Interwoven Stories
Interwoven Stories was created in 2016 by Diana Weymar, and has since been or is being facilitated at several locations in the USA and at Build Peace 2016 & 2017. It is a community-based, socially engaged textile project which uses visual narratives and text to explore themes of community, identity, transformation, loss, memory, and material culture. All pages are donated back to the community organization and the Interwoven Stories pages are exhibited through North America and in other countries with Build Peace.
Build Peace mixtape 2017
The theme of Build Peace 2017 is “Making paper count: new forms of citizen participation in peace agreements”. And for paper to count, people have to feel it with their whole body, they have to dance it. With this reflection in mind, Luis Puig brings us another mixtape this year, along with a rap that summarises what the songs contribute to our conversation at Build Peace 2017. Read the rap and listen to the mixtape here.
#peacehack
#peacehack is an initiative of International Alert that brings peace practitioners, designers and developers together to develop new ideas and prototype solutions used to help build peace.
In 2017, Build Up, Policéntrico, and International Alert invited participants from the conference to come and present their problems on the theme so hackers would be able to dive into creating real tech solutions straight away.
A range of problem statements were presented, from the strategic use of blockchain, to participatory mapping tools, to a tool to foster collaboration in hackathons, to video letters.
The hackathon was a useful process for projects to kickstart and test possible solutions. We know that four of the projects have continued to develop their solution after the hack.
Sponsors
Build Peace 2017 was brought to you by Build Up in partnership with Policéntrico.
Build Peace 2017 was made possible thanks to the generous support of the people of the United States through their Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the PeaceNexus Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, New Markets Advisors, the Greater Bogotá Convention Bureau, the Universidad de los Andes, the Alcaldía de Bogotá and the United Nations in Colombia.
We are also very grateful for the support of our local allies.
