Civil society in peace processes at a glance

Civil society has become widely regarded as an important actor in peace processes and the international community has devoted substantial effort towards building and strengthening its role.Yet there has been little systematic, evidence-based research undertaken to support this assumption empirically.Consequently, policy-makers and practitioners have often lacked concrete knowledge about how, when, and under what circumstances civil society may or may not fulfil a peace-supporting role, i.e. contributing to reducing violence, ending armed conflict, and building sustainable peace thereafter. Peacebuilding FunctionsThe "Civil Society and Peacebuilding" project identified seven peacebuilding functions civil society can potentially fulfil.These functions are:1 | Protection of citizens against violence from all parties. 2 | Monitoring of human rights violations; implementation of agreements.3 | Advocacy for peace and human rights.4 | Socialization in the values of peace and democracy as well as in-group identity of marginalized groups, often via peace education.5 | Inter-group social cohesion by bringing people together from adversarial groups, often in dialogue projects.6 | Facilitation of dialogue on the local and national levels between all sort of actors.7 | Service delivery to create entry-points for peacebuilding, i.e. for the functions above.