Ask most Europeans about peace, and until recently, they pointed to faraway conflicts. The war in Ukraine shattered that comfortable distance, bringing conflict to Europe’s doorstep and revealing what communities across the globe have long known: peace is never guaranteed, nowhere is immune, and the systems connecting us mean instability anywhere, threatening stability everywhere. Yet even as this reality settles in, rising inequality, social fractures, and democratic backsliding present peace challenges that connect Brussels to Bamako, Athens to Addis Ababa through shared global systems.
Our new Peace Conversations Initiative rejects false distinctions between “conflict zones” and “peaceful societies,” instead spotlighting how communities everywhere actively build, sustain, or repair peace. Their insights matter urgently, especially as Europe shapes its next Multi-Financial Framework and initiatives like the Global Gateway reshape global partnerships.
The Incomplete Peace Conversation
“In 2025, defence expenditure amongst EU member states increased by 11% compared to the previous year and accounted for 2.1% of EU member states’ GDP. The contrast is stark: billions for military readiness, fractions for the patient work of building peaceful societies. This imbalance reflects a deeper problem in how we conceptualise peace itself.
For decades, peace had been framed as something “done” in post-conflict settings—a technical intervention with clear beginnings and endpoints. Donor funding flows toward ceasefire monitoring and disarmament programs. Success gets measured in signed agreements and violence statistics. Meanwhile, the slow erosion of social cohesion in stable democracies, the exclusion that festers into extremism, the institutional weaknesses that make communities vulnerable—these rarely register as peace concerns until a crisis erupts. This incomplete framing has consequences. It separates “conflict prevention” from “development,” as if strong institutions, economic opportunity, and social inclusion weren’t themselves peace infrastructure. It treats peace as the natural state requiring explanation only when absent, rather than as something actively constructed through daily choices about justice, participation, and equity. Most critically, it positions certain communities as recipients of peace rather than as peace builders—recipients of external expertise rather than agents of change in knowing what sustains or fractures the social fabric in their communities.
Ukraine’s wake-up call revealed the cost of these assumptions. European citizens suddenly grappled with questions that communities in the Sahel, the Great Lakes, or the Middle East navigate constantly: How do we maintain solidarity under pressure? How do we counter divisive narratives? How do we protect the vulnerable while preserving social bonds? The realisation dawned that peace isn’t something you have or don’t have—it’s something you cultivate, defend, and reimagine continuously, regardless of whether bombs are falling.
Global Gateway at the Crossroads
Enter the EU’s Global Gateway, launched with ambitions to offer partnership-based infrastructure investment across the globe. On paper, it promises connectivity—roads, energy grids, digital networks—built through values-based cooperation. The question peace practitioners immediately ask: connectivity toward what end?
Infrastructure is never neutral. A highway can link isolated communities to markets and services, creating shared prosperity, or it can accelerate resource extraction that fuels local resentment and elite capture. Energy projects can power hospitals and schools, strengthening institutions, or they can deepen dependencies and inequalities. Digital connectivity can amplify diverse voices and enable civic participation, or it can spread disinformation and facilitate surveillance. The difference lies not in the infrastructure itself but in how it’s conceived, who shapes it, and whether it strengthens or undermines the social fabric.
This is where Global Gateway’s peace potential—and peace risk—crystallises. Done well, with genuine local ownership and conflict sensitivity, infrastructure investment becomes peacebuilding: creating economic alternatives to illicit economies, connecting divided communities, strengthening state-society relations through service delivery, and building trust through transparent processes. Done poorly, it can exacerbate the very fragilities it aims to address: displacing communities, enriching connected elites, creating new grievances, or literally paving paths for conflict actors.
Yet the potential remains real. If Global Gateway projects genuinely embody participatory principles—if they engage communities as co-designers rather than beneficiaries, if they account for conflict dynamics and power imbalances, if they prioritise equity alongside efficiency—they could model how interconnected global development strengthens rather than threatens peace. The question is whether this commitment permeates actual implementation or remains rhetorical.
The Multi-Financial Framework Moment
This question isn’t academic—it is about to become budgetary. As the EU negotiates its next Multi-Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028-2034, decisions made now will shape prospects for peace in the coming decade and beyond.
The current funding structure reveals a flawed approach to peacebuilding. Peace funding is often part of crisis response budgets, while development, democracy support, and human rights each have separate streams. This fragmentation shows a misunderstanding of peace as it separates it from the necessary factors. One cannot effectively resolve conflicts without addressing the underlying inequalities or supporting democratic institutions without fostering the social cohesion they need.
Voices from Communities
Social cohesion is contingent on communities, and this is where our Peace Conversation initiative enters. Over the coming weeks, you’ll encounter peace through the eyes of those building it daily: the pastor working tirelessly for national reconciliation and peacebuilding in Ethiopia, the women using conflict-sensitivity tools in Cambodia to negotiate land returns, reduced violence, and improved gender equity and the leaders crafting community-led solutions and strengthening pathways to sustainable peace in Somalia.
These aren’t feel-good human-interest stories—they’re strategic knowledge from the frontlines of peacebuilding. Yet you will also hear reflections from those who consider what peace means to them and what they would risk losing if peace were absent. For positive peace is more than the absence of conflict; it is about creating the conditions for lasting harmony, fairness, and well-being. It’s about strong communities, fair institutions, dialogue, education, and preventing violence before it happens.”
Our multimedia approach—quotes, images, articles, social media posts—reflects peace’s multifaceted nature. A photograph captures dignity in complex dialogue. A quote distils wisdom from lived experience. An article contextualises local action within global patterns. Together, they build a chorus of insight that challenges simplistic narratives about where peace happens and who creates it.
An Invitation to Listen
This Peace conversation is global, not a lecture. We’re not positioning any community as having “solved” peace, nor claiming expertise transfers neatly across contexts. That is why to continue this conversation, the culmination of this peace series will be a private Breakfast event in Strasbourg with Members of the European Parliament asking:
Can the Global Gateway successfully translate the Sustainable Development Goals into mutually beneficial partnerships that support EU industries and aid partner countries, even in regions experiencing high levels of conflict-related mortality?
This question and the answers derived from a shared space of reflection and learning will drive us to consider what our partners need, what we need to be lobbying for in the MFF, and ultimately, how we can further contribute to those on the frontline of peace efforts.
While you won’t be present in Strasbourg, we are inviting you to journey with us. Over the coming weeks, will you sit with these stories? Will you notice patterns: how trust gets built through consistent presence, how dialogue requires patient space-making, how sustainable peace demands addressing root inequalities, how communities draw on cultural resources in creative ways, how hope persists even under challenging circumstances?
Ask yourself: What does peace require in my context? Who builds it in my community? What can I learn from others’ experiences? How do my choices—from how I engage political disagreement to which narratives I amplify online—contribute to or undermine peace conditions?
And as the EU shapes its next budget and operationalises Global Gateway, ask decision-makers: Are we funding peace or just talking about it? Are we listening to those building peace daily or assuming we know better? Are we investing in prevention or remaining reactive? Are we recognising our interdependence or perpetuating false separations?
Peace isn’t inherited—it’s cultivated, protected, and reimagined continuously. These voices from around the globe aren’t asking for saviours. They’re sharing hard-won wisdom about what that cultivation requires. The question is whether we’re ready to listen.
This article launches our Peace Conversation Initiative featuring our members, their partners and global voices sharing their experiences of building, sustaining, and defending peace. Through their stories, we explore what positive peace requires—and what it costs when we take it for granted.
Photo Credit: Tearfund Germany
