Related commentary:

While grassroots participation in peace processes is increasingly recognized as a way of achieving more inclusive and sustainable peace, moving beyond the realm of traditional diplomacy among high-level actors remains a challenge. Community and grassroots organizations often remain at the periphery of peace processes. This can be due to contending priorities among civil society groups, geographical distance from the negotiation table, the language used during negotiations and implicit issues of hierarchy and privilege.

Amid the rapidly increasing tensions between the US and Iran, there is a real danger that the demands of the Iraqi protest movement could be side-lined. The current protests, which sprung up in October 2019, risk having their demands ignored as the Iraqi government shifts it’s focus to dealing with the current crisis.

SIPRI’s latest Policy Paper ‘Building everyday peace in Kirkuk, Iraq: The potential of locally focused interventions’ provides an understanding of how, when and by whom acts of peace and conflict are carried out at the everyday level, and gives policy recommendations for interventions that would address the local side of peacebuilding. This essay highlights some core areas where there is an opportunity for peacebuilding interventions to affect real change in the everyday lives of Kirkukis.

As the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) launched an operation to target the Islamic State in the Hamrin mountain range in Iraq on the 11 April 2019, it is pertinent to examine the importance of the Iraqi state’s involvement in governance and sustainable security in such isolated spaces.

In early February 2019, landmark peace talks took place in Moscow between the US government and the Taliban that have advanced the possibility of a negotiated peace further than any previous attempt in the 17-year-long conflict.

This backgrounder looks at lessons and illustrative cases of 'what works' in preventing conflict and sustaining peace from sessions at the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development.