‘Peace now, more than ever’ was the theme of this year’s Alliance for Peacebuilding annual conference where Dr Gary Milante, Director of Studies for Peace and Development at SIPRI, moderated the session on ‘Innovative Financing for Peace’. In this session, Colombian Minister of Finance and Public Credit Cardenas presented the state’s 15-year costing plan for the recent peace agreement and discussed how it would be financed.
Panellists Karen Volcker (Cure Violence), Luc Lapointe (Blended Capital Lab) and Johannes Schreuder (UNPBSO) along with Director Molena Lopes from the Colombian Ministry of Finance discussed innovations for financing, including pooled/blended capital, social impact bonds, crowd-funding and results-based financing. The conversation focused on the problems that these innovative models solve and what is needed for next steps, including better evaluation frameworks and aggregating solutions for moving small peace projects into larger funds.
In many ways, the session elaborated a conversation started at the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development session ‘Financing for Peace’—a conversation that will no doubt continue at the 2018 Stockholm Forum.
Read the full programme of the conference here (PDF).
About Alliance for Peacebuilding Annual Conference
The Alliance for Peacebuilding Annual Conference is a three-day event convening global peacebuilders for talks, workshops and networking opportunities for knowledge exchange. This year's conference was held on 11–13 October in Washington, DC. More information about the 2017 conference is available at www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org.