Peace and conflict transformation

Sustainable development can succeed only where there is peace. GIZ actively promotes conflict resolution and reconciliation.
  

Two thirds of German development cooperation partner countries are subject to conflict or war, and their governments are not fulfilling their responsibilities.

Conflicts are the result of economic, social and political factors. The causes are often interlinked. Crises and violent conflicts can rapidly destroy the fruit of years of development. They damage people physically and psychologically, rob them of their livelihood, and weaken the state and society.

GIZ’s objective is to tackle the causes of conflict and to facilitate peaceful coexistence. Working with partner governments and institutions, it develops strategies for preventing crises and violence. It is committed to the principle of multipartiality and follows the conflict sensitive ‘do no harm’ approach. Human rights and equal opportunities underpin its work.

GIZ works in the following areas:

Overcoming the causes of conflict

GIZ helps individuals and institutions in its partner countries to understand how the causes of conflict can be overcome and conflict resolved in a non-violent way. All GIZ advisory services are tailored to the specific local conditions. The objective is to establish the conditions that make peaceful, inclusive and sustainable development possible. GIZ works to build both state and civil society capacities to support non-violent conflict resolution. Through peace education, GIZ promotes a non-violent future: young people in schools, universities and youth institutions learn how to resolve conflicts peacefully.

Building trust

War and violence shatter trust in the state and can destroy societies. Recreating viable relations between civil society and the state following the end of violence and recreating social cohesion is a major challenge.

GIZ promotes constructive dialogue between the state and civil society and between the parties involved in conflict. It supports local organisations that, for example, use mediation to overcome conflict. These organisations should be strengthened at local levels of political and social cohesion. Reconciliation and justice can only survive in the long term if efforts are made to examine and reappraise the past. GIZ supports initiatives and projects that tackle previous experiences of violence and draw lessons for the future.