Shifting the power balance: Effective Options for Financing Local Peacebuilding

For peacebuilding to be more effective and sustainable, local communities need to be in control of their own peacebuilding efforts. This means that donors and intermediary funders should invest in processes that support their leadership. However, because of inaccessible funding mechanisms, local partners often have to rely on intermediary organizations to access donor funding. To ensure effective and sustainable peacebuilding, the power balance between local partners, donors, and intermediaries needs to shift: putting local partners in the lead of program design and implementation.

This options paper offers donors and intermediaries 3 basic principles to adopt: 

1. Partnerships reflect collective priority-setting, co-design of programming and encourage continuous reflection and adaptation 
2. Partnerships base peacebuilding success on a locally-generated understanding of impact, and 
3. Partnerships support the long-term sustainability of local partners.