A changing context
Peace processes are becoming digitized. Conflict parties and conflict stakeholders increasingly use digital technologies, and especially social media, to further their agendas and interests. Approaches to peace mediation need to respond to this trend.
While inclusion in peace processes is conventionally understood in analog and “offline” terms, digital technologies can support a mediator’s efforts to integrate a broad variety of perspectives, interests, and needs into a negotiation process. They also enable mediators to reach the digital spaces in which contemporary conflict increasingly takes place.
Technology´s potential
Digital technology, and especially social media, can have positive and negative effects on peace processes. This online resource aims to demonstrate the positive potential of technology and its utility in facilitating inclusive peacemaking.
The use cases for digital inclusion build on the idea that mediators can use inclusion strategically - to increase the legitimacy and public support for peace process, empower marginalized and vulnerable groups, reduce risks and enhance protection, and transform community relations. Each use case explores what technologies should be used, and for what strategic purpose. It also shows which functions these technologies will exercise, and what outputs they will generate, to achieve the desired strategic purpose. An overview of the conceptual framework can be found here.
The website explores these use cases along four illustrative scenarios: Negotiations after a full-fledged civil war, negotiations in the context of electoral violence, a national dialogue process after a popular uprising, and negotiations to end a localized insurgency. These scenarios are intended as learning examples. While they contain many important aspects of actual peace mediation cases, they are not meant to describe any single case accurately or comprehensively. We hope that the use cases can serve as an inspiration to reflect on the use of digital technologies in your efforts to foster inclusion in peace processes.
Participatory research
This online resource is an outcome of the yearlong “Designing Digital Inclusion Project” conducted at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. The project aimed to enable mediators to effectively use digital technologies in their efforts to enhance inclusion in peace processes.
The project began with a comprehensive assessment of the current uses of digital technologies by mediators and mediation support actors. Drawing on the knowledge and experiences in adjacent professional fields, such as development aid, humanitarian responses, and public policymaking, the project then explored how digital technologies could be practically applied to foster digital inclusion in peacemaking.
The use cases presented on this website are the results of a participatory design exercise, conducted through an online course from Juli-October 2019. In collaboration with Build Up, this course brought together 40 mediators and mediation support actors. The participants explored how digital technologies can be applied in the four ideal-type scenarios described above.
The full report on this project will soon be available in the Further Ressources section.
Defining digital inclusion
Digital inclusion in peacemaking means that the voices of conflict stakeholders are integrated into a peace process in the form of digital data. As “voice” we can understand various kinds of information that are expressed by the conflict party or stakeholder, including factual information, preferences, experiences, opinions, or beliefs. The emphasis on voice is important because it limits the kinds of data relevant to inclusion to that which has been intentionally expressed by the conflict party or stakeholder, with the aim of giving an account of oneself in an attempt to change an objectionable state of affairs.
Voice helps to gather information about the needs and experiences of population groups that are affected by war and violence. This is particularly relevant in peace processes because they are characterized by dynamics in which established political institutions may have been abolished or are under critique. In this context, new and inchoate political demands and ideas, which aim at the re-negotiation of the political status quo, need to be given expression.
Get involved
We hope to keep this online resource active by adding new use cases as they become known to use. Please get in touch, if you would like to submit an additional use case to be added to this website.
The interactive project visualisation was designed and implemented by Larissa Wunderlich. This is version 1.0, last updated on 24 January 2020.