Nesting Peace: Creating Infrastructures to Sustain Diversity

Nesting Peace is the Sixth Summit of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures for Peace (GAMIP), a worldwide community of individuals in civil society, business and government who work toward a Culture of Peace by promoting the development of infrastructures for peace at various levels.

The traditional or liberal peacebuilding paradigm is in crisis. Infrastruc- tures for peace provide a much-needed alternative and effective framework for peacebuilding.

Infrastructures for peace are social structures that support and facilitate the manifold processes of peace. These include dialogue, reconciliation, mediation, peace education, restorative justice, and many others. They need to be carried out with continuity, supported socially, and engaged by all stakeholders, starting at the local level. This is made possible by infrastructures for peace, which function as the implementing mechanisms or enabling environments of peace. They take the form of restorative circle systems, local peace committees, national Ministries for Peace, peace academies, peace museums, among others.

This Summit grows out of and has a role to play at an important moment in the history of infrastructures for peace. Just in the last 12 years, the world has seen the creation of the first four Ministries for Peace, as well as Offices, Departments and other institutions for the promotion of peace within governments. Outside of government, countless more infrastructures for peace have been developed by civil society around the world, including with the support of the United Nations Devel- opment Program (UNDP) and many other actors. These experiences are the object of several studies that will be published in 2013, marking the coming of age of this concept. This Summit will thus provide the space to share these developments and their impact, focusing on both successes and challenges.

In order to effectively contribute to this momentum, however, we will do more than share. The Summit, largely organized by youth, will be designed to connect participants in innovative ways in order to catalyze engagement. In fact, the Sum- mit aims to be an infrastructure for peace itself as it demonstrates the processes that a social group experiences within these kinds of infrastructures. Restorative circles, peace resource corners, empathy sessions and artistic exhibits are just some examples of what will be available to engage with. Indeed, we believe that experience and co-creation enables the kind of transformative learning necessary for the work of peace.

We also believe that diversity is the best guarantee of the sustain- ability of peace. The Summit will take advantage of Geneva's unique character to gather a heterogeneous group of actors, coming from governments, civil society organizations, the United Nations system, academia, business, youth, artists, the justice system, religious groups, indigenous peoples, the police and others. This year the Summit program will also include a high-level government segment on the topic. In addition, a special effort will be made to ensure that financial factors be not an impediment to the participation of individuals.

The Summit will:

• Increase awareness and understanding about infrastructures for peace and their essential role in sustainable strategies of peace promotion;
• Provide the experience of several kinds of infrastructures for peace throughout the conference and practical tools for their development;
• Give visibility to current infrastructures for peace, as well as peace infrastructure campaigns and projects around the world;
• Strengthen the engagement of the international community working on infra- structures for peace and launch a Multi-Stakeholder Platform on Infrastructures for Peace;
• Serve as a bridge among participants and potential partners to further infrastructures for peace at the local level in various countries;
• Plant the seeds of initiatives to create infrastructures for peace at the local, cantonal and federal level in Switzerland.

The diversity of participants and the conference's creative formats will highlight the transformative nature of infrastruc- tures for peace, helping to launch the next stage of develop- ment of this significant, organized approach to peacebuilding.

We invite you to be part of this.