The Peace We Fund: Our Rallying Call for the EU

At the launch of our Peace Conversations Initiative, we posed urgent questions to policymakers: Are we funding peace or just talking about it? Are we listening to those building peace daily or assuming we know better? Through our MEP breakfast in Strasbourg and our new publication “The Missing Piece in Peace,” we’ve documented answers from communities across Cambodia, South Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia, and Somalia. The endgame is clear: the Global Europe instrument under the Multi-Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034 must fund peace not as rhetoric, but as reality. 

What Communities Have Taught Us 

In Bor, South Sudan, Peace Committees and Promoters play a crucial role in resolving disputes over boreholes, family matters, and youth conflicts, thereby fostering community harmony. Meanwhile, in Cambodia, the SPIRIT program is making strides in helping indigenous groups address land disputes and advance gender equity through innovative conflict-sensitive tools. Ethiopian women trained through PMU’s YBCEDO program have successfully ended a seven-year village conflict that had taken over 200 lives. In Somalia’s Middle Shabelle, MEAL’s Climate-Smart Agriculture initiative is tackling resource scarcity and boosting productivity to reduce conflict. Tearfund’s JISRA program showcases the power of community-driven, faith-based peacebuilding in seven countries. 

The MFF Opportunity 

The 2028-2034 MFF proposal obscures peace within a €12.68 billion “global pillar” alongside human rights, democracy, civil society, and other “global challenges,” and lacks transparency on actual peacebuilding allocations.  The examples shared above have common threads: local ownership, conflict sensitivity, long-term commitment, trust-building as infrastructure, and genuine community participation. The Global Europe Instrument presents an opportunity to fund conflict prevention and peacebuilding holistically—not as a sector alongside health or education, but as a cross-cutting imperative shaping how all investments are designed. Therefore, we advocate for: 

• Conflict sensitivity in spending. Every euro influences peace: agricultural investments must account for land conflicts, education projects should promote social cohesion, and digital infrastructure must enhance public discourse. General programming must incorporate conflict and gender sensitivity in all actions under Global Europe, including Global Gateway projects. It should involve long-term investment that aligns with reality. Building inclusive institutions and transforming systems requires decades of commitment. Sustainable initiatives, like Bor’s Peace Committees, demonstrate the success of community-driven efforts.  The Global Europe Pillar must provide predictable, multi-year funding to support such peacebuilding processes.   

• Accessible funding for local peacebuilders. Emerging funding systems favour EU-based contractors over local organisations. Mechanisms should be more accessible to community groups, with affected populations setting funding priorities to deliver relevant, locally owned, and gender-transformative initiatives. Prevention over reaction. 

•  As a 2025   IMF report shows, investing in prevention is more cost-effective than crisis response. Peace Committees and conflict-sensitive land management help avoid disputes, while women’s economic empowerment decreases gender-based violence. It’s essential to invest upstream to reduce downstream costs.   

• Recognition of interconnectedness. In our interconnected world, peace is collective. Conflicts in one region can cause migration issues elsewhere, and climate impacts transcend borders. The future Global Europe Instrument should integrate conflict prevention and peacebuilding as an effective tool for other geographic objectives, while encouraging cross-regional learning rather than reinforcing funding silos.   

A Clear Call to the EU 

We call on EU decision-makers to: 

1. Establish transparent, dedicated peace-building allocations within Global Europe with binding targets that cannot disappear into “global challenges.” 

2. Embed conflict sensitivity across all Global Europe spending through mandatory conflict analysis and Do No Harm assessments, not just crisis response. 

3. Create accessible funding for local peacebuilders in EU external action, including simplified procedures, multi-year commitments, and support for community-driven monitoring. 

4. Integrate peacebuilding into Global Gateway, making conflict sensitivity, local ownership, and social cohesion metrics as important as technical delivery targets.  

5. Invest adequately in prevention by shifting from crisis-reactive funding toward proven interventions like Peace Committees and conflict-sensitive programming. 

6. Support faith-based and women-led peacebuilding, recognising their demonstrated effectiveness and unique community authority. 

7. Prioritise women and youth participation, ensuring funding mechanisms actively support their leadership rather than treating inclusion as an afterthought. 

Without clear peacebuilding allocations in Global Europe, prevention remains rhetoric. The evidence is overwhelming. The budget is being negotiated now. The question is whether the EU will fund peace or just talk about it.