16 October 2026
09:00 - 10:30 Europe/Oslo
Event
Breakfast seminar: The Role of UN Peacebuilding in a World Characterised by Greater Geopolitical Tensions
For every dollar invested in peace, nearly 100 are invested in preparing for war. At this seminar, we will discuss how the peacebuilding community can better mobilize the political and financial support it needs.
Language: English
NUPI, Rosenkrantz' gate 22, OSLO
Seminar
Over the last two decades, the world has invested just one dollar in peace for every $100 of military spending. And today, the percentage of aid devoted to peacebuilding has dropped to only 7% of total aid in fragile contexts.
At the same time that the investment in peacebuilding is declining, the need is increasing. One in four persons globally now live in fragile and conflict-affected settings – contexts that already host over 70% of the world’s poorest and generate 80% of global forced displacement. With conflicts rising and international aid and cooperation backsliding, crises could become more severe and contagious.
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As conflicts and military expenditure rise, so does the need to invest in peace. In a new Global Overview Report, Investing in Peace When the World Pays for War, the UN Peacebuilding and Peace Support Office (PBPSO) has explored these trends. The report argues that peacebuilding is a strategic solution and explores how the peacebuilding community can better mobilize the political and financial support it needs.
To discuss these issues, Assistant Secretary-General for UN Peacebuilding and Peace Support, Ms Elizabeth Mary Spehar will visit NUPI on 16 October for a breakfast seminar (0900-1000, with breakfast served from 08:30).
With more than 35 years of experience in international and political affairs, Ms. Spehar has worked in United Nations Headquarters and in the field, leading political, development, peacebuilding and conflict prevention initiatives. Since 2016, she was the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), also serving as Deputy to the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus.
In the panel is also NUPI Research Professor Cedric de Coning. His research focuses on how the United Nations and other multilateral institutions can more effectively sustain peace and security, with particular attention to mediation, peace operations and peacebuilding.
Drawing on complexity theory, he developed Adaptive Peace, a framework for sustaining peace and security amid the uncertainty of an increasingly turbulent global order. The Adaptive Peacebuilding approach is also featured in the PBPSO Global Overview Report.
The seminar is held at NUPI on 16 October, 09:00-10:00. A light breakfast is served from 08:30. The event will also be live streamed to NUPI’s YouTube channel. No registration needed for digital participation.
More information on further panelists and the full programme will be published soon.
Panelists
Elizabeth Spehar
Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding and Peace Support, in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO)
Cedric H. de Coning
Research Professor
Related publications
Publications
Publications
Book
The Adaptive Peacebuilding Guidebook
When we hear the word “peace”, we often think of the end of a war, a peace agreement, or large-scale reconstruction efforts that follow a conflict. In reality, however, peace does not emerge the day after a conflict ends. Rather, it is nurtured gradually through everyday interactions, relationships, and collective efforts. Peace is not something that can be delivered from the outside; it is something that emerges from within societies and communities themselves. The “Adaptive Peacebuilding Guidebook” seeks to translate this understanding into a practical framework through the approach known as Adaptive Peacebuilding. The academic foundations, theories, and concepts underpinning Adaptive Peacebuilding have already been articulated in the book Adaptive Peacebuilding: A New Approach to Sustaining Peace in the 21st Century . Adaptive Peacebuilding views peacebuilding not as a process of implementing predetermined plans or applying universal solutions, but as a process through which people learn, reflect, and adapt collectively in response to changing circumstances. Based on the academic insights presented in that book, the newly published guidebook to Adaptive Peacebuilding clearly summarizes the concept of Adaptive Peacebuilding for practitioners and presents eight case studies from United Nations agencies, bilateral development agencies such as JICA, and NGOs.
Publications
Publications
Scientific article
Adaptive Peace Operations: Navigating the Complexity of Influencing Societal Change Without Causing Harm
Peace operations are deployed to contain violence and to facilitate this process, but if they interfere too much, they will cause harm by inadvertently disrupting the very feedback loops critical for self-organization to emerge and to be sustained. To navigate this dilemma, this paper by Research Professor Cedric de Coning proposes employing an adaptive approach, where peace operations, together with the communities and people affected by the conflict, actively engage in an iterative process of inductive learning and adaptation. Adaptive Peace Operations is a normative and functional approach to peace operations that is aimed at navigating the complexity inherent in trying to nudge societal change processes towards sustaining peace, without causing harm.
Publications
Publications
Adaptive Peacebuilding: A New Approach to Sustaining Peace in the 21st Century
This open access book responds to the urgent need to improve how we prevent and resolve conflict. It introduces Adaptive Peacebuilding through evidence-based research from eight case studies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It also considers how China and Japan view and practice peacebuilding. The book focuses on how peacebuilders design, implement and evaluate programs to sustain peace, how interactions between external and local actors have facilitated or hindered peacemaking, and how adaptation to complexity and uncertainty occurred in each case study.
16 October 2026
09:00 - 10:30 Europe/Oslo
Language: English
NUPI, Rosenkrantz' gate 22, OSLO
Seminar