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Peacebuild is a network of Canadian organizations and individuals engaged in activities related to addressing the causes and consequences of violent conflict.
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Latest News on Peacebuild Fora
Peacebuild to Hold
To participate in the AGM please take a few minutes to fill the membership form. Member organizations must also designate a single voting delegate for the AGM. Non-voting organizational representatives are also welcome. Organizations and individual members are also encouraged to consider nominating candidates for the 10-member Board of Directors. There are currently four vacancies. For general information on the Annual General Meeting please contact: David Lord at david@peacebuild.ca or Dominic Leger at communications@peacebuild.ca Telephone: + 613 241 3446
“Life at Zero” Presented by Peacebuild: the Canadian Peacebuild Network and Project Ploughshares Bako Dabi, who moved to Canada in 1997 after spending three years in Ethiopia as a refugee, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo in June 2008 to visit his family, where he was captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army on the border between Sudan and the DRC. Dabi will speak of his six months of captivity – moving between Sudan, the DRC and the Central African Republic – his daring escape to Sudan in January 2009, and his return to Canada in February. Thursday, May 28th, 2009 1 Nicholas, For more information, please contact Joanne Lebert, Deputy Director, Peacebuild: joanne@peacebuild.ca
The Crisis in Sudan Fabienne Hara,
Thursday May 28th, CANADEM Conference Room, 10th Floor, For more information contact Clare Morris at: powg@peacebuild.ca
The Role of Air Transport Actors
Strengthening
 Peacebuild currently has four Working Groups and one Forum that bring together members interested in particular thematic areas of activity. The Sudan InterAgency Reference Group and the Afghanistan Reference Group are also key mechanisms for NGO-governmental interaction promoted by Peacebuild.
Launch of the International Campaign
The Small Arms Working Group and Project Ploughshares are coordinating the Canadian campaign. The Canadian campaign will be launched at the opening of the 1st Annual Canadian Conference on the Prevention of Domestic Homicides at the London Convention Centre, London, Ontario June 14-15 2009. The conference is organized by the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women and Children of the University of Western Ontario, a participant in the Canadian campaign. Other organizations are encouraged to join the campaign. At the international level, the campaign will be promoted at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (March 2010) and will culminate in advocacy at the Biennial Meeting of States on Small Arms (BMS), UN Headquarters, July 2010. For details or to join the campaign, contact: For more information about the SAWG and its activities, please contact Maribel Gonzales at: mgonzales@ploughshares.ca
Meeting with Parliamentarians Following Eve Ensler and Stephen Lewis' presentations to Canadian parliamentarians on the use of sexual violence as a strategy of violent conflict. the Gender and Peacebuilding Working Group provided support to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Prevention of Genocide for a follow-up meeting with parliamentarians on May 5th. At the briefing, representatives from non-governmental organizations, diaspora organizations and police services spoke about how the use of sexual violence in conflict affects everyone working to restore peace and security in conflict-affected settings, including those working on peace operations, humanitarian assistance, policing, and post-conflict reconstruction and development. Speakers included: Robyn Baron of Oxfam Canada, Gisèle Eva Cote of the Coalition for Women's Human Rights in Conflict Situations, Isobel Anderson of the Ottawa Police Service, Julie Filteau of the Service de Police Levis, and Sandy Onyalo of the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre. For more information on the use of sexual violence in conflict see the GPWG's new fact sheets: For more information about the GPWG and its activities, please contact Kate McInturff at:gender@peacebuild.ca
International Day
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers will be marked on 29 May at United Nations Headquarters in New York, as well as its peacekeeping missions and offices around the world, with a special focus on women peacekeepers, as the United Nations tries to move towards gender equity in its ranks. This year's commemorative ceremonies come at a time when the services of United Nations peacekeepers are in greater demand than ever. There are currently more than 113,000 peacekeepers, including 90,000 military and police personnel from 117 countries, serving in 18 operations on four continents. For more information about the POWG and its activities, please contact Clare Morris at: powg@peacebuild.ca
Working Towards
For more information about the CPWG and its activities or about the Afghanistan Reference Group, please contact Silke Reichrath at: prevention@peacebuild.ca
Strengthening Protection of Children This report presents the findings and observations from a project undertaken by Conflict Dynamics funded by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT). It assesses measures that could be taken by the UN Security Council to hold to account persistent violators of children’s rights and protections in situations of armed conflict.
For more information about the Forum and its activities, please contact Guillaume Landry at: g.landry@ibcr.org. |
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Peacebuild's Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be an important opportunity for network members, supporters and organizations interested in Peacebuild's work to:
Peacebuild’s Peace Operations Working Group invites you to a briefing on the Crisis in Sudan with Fabienne Hara, Vice-President (Multilateral Affairs), International Crisis Group. Ms. Hara has over fifteen years of experience in African conflict management and resolution issues. Prior to her current role with ICG, Ms. Hara’s appointments included Acting Chief of the Political Affairs Division in UNMIS and Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University.
Air transportation has played a key role in fuelling the war economies that have devastated much of Africa in recent decades. It is instrumental in the transfer of small arms and light weapons (SALW) as well as in the extraction and transfer of precious minerals, metals and hydrocarbons. Air transportation actors are also important facilitators of illicit flows of illegal narcotics and tobacco destined for European, North American and Middle Eastern markets. At the same time, those air cargo carriers that have been reportedly involved in these commodity flows that have been so destabilizing are also enmeshed in humanitarian aid, peace support, stability operations and defence logistics supply chains of United Nations agencies, European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
This Policy Paper by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is the first study to examine the role of air transport actors in the full spectrum of destabilizing or illicit commodity flows associated with war economies. It offers specific policy options for better monitoring and controlling these actors.
International Alert recently launched a new publication series, part of the project ‘
During the Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence (June 15-21 2009), the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) is launching an international campaign (initially in 10 countries) on “Disarming Domestic Violence.” The campaign aims to reduce gun deaths in the home by taking guns away from actual or potential perpetrators of domestic abuse by calling for legislation that would harmonize gun control laws with domestic violence laws. Canada’s Firearms Act, which has been cited as best practice elsewhere, has strong control measures that screen for and restrict access to firearms for perpetrators of domestic violence. The Canadian campaign will focus on raising awareness about these controls, effectiveness of the legislation, and ensuring that proposals to amend the Firearms Act do not weaken these controls and are consistent with Canada’s commitments to international norms. 
On May 4, 2009, the CPWG hosted a presentation by Gordon Breedyk and Ross McNaughton on the Civilian Peace Service Canada (CPSC)'s initiative for the Accreditation for Peace Professionals. The initiative responds to a stated need for peace professionals at the UN. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and NGOs working in countries in conflict would also benefit from having a roster, or a category in the CANADEM roster, identifying professionals in various fields (engineering, management, governance) who are accredited peace professionals. In addition, the field of peacebuilding and conflict prevention would gain in legitimacy by demonstrating rigorous standards for the profession, which would make it more likely for organizations working for peace to be invited to advise government on issues of peace and conflict. The accreditation process will be based on a candidate's core values and competencies, as demonstrated in their past behavior. It will not provide training but will refer interested candidates to relevant existing programs.
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