Diaspora Engagement in Peace-Building and Development in Home and Host Countries
In 2006, the Foundation provided a grant to the United Nations Affiliated University for Peace to work with five diaspora groups through community-based participatory action research and to share their findings at their “high level expert forum on “Capacity Building for Peace and Development: Roles of Diaspora”.
More than 100 delegates from 30 countries participated in the forum for two full days of deliberations. As highlighted in the conference proceedings, participants acknowledged potential roles for diaspora in peacebuilding focusing in three areas: Social: human resource transfers and sources of ideas and best practices, political: pressure and advocacy groups, economic: sources of funding. Recognizing that diasporas are often an under-utilized resource, participants offered recommendations to civil society, government and others as to some of the concrete ways in which diasporas can be engaged: 1) community development: youth initiatives, establishment of community data banks, and creative reconciliation techniques; 2) policy innovation: diasporic circulation as citizenship, funding for peacebuilding, remittances and foreign policy; 3) new research areas: invest in new related areas of research and research methodologies
View the full reports:
- The Final Report from the Expert Forum organized by the United Nations affiliated University for Peace: “Capacity Building for Peace and Development: Roles of Diaspora”, October 2006
- The Role of the Eritrean Diaspora in Peacebuilding and Development:Challenges and Opportunities
- Youth Perspectives: Challenges to Peace Building and Development in the Ethiopian Community
- Capacity Building for Peace and Development: The Afghan Diaspora in Toronto
- Impacting Peace-Building and Development in Jamaica: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities Encountered by the Jamaican Diaspora
- Capacity building for peace and development: a potential role for Colombian Diaspora
Bathseba Belai was contracted in 2007 to develop a toolkit drawing from interviews, learning and feedback from researchers involved in the above-mentioned research projects as well as other community-based research practitioners and existing literature on the subject matter.
You can download the tool kit here: