Trust-Building and Security & Rule of Law partnerships

In countries with violent conflicts, building trust between state and non-state conflict parties is vital. Many project managers from organizations, such as the United Nations, who want to advance peacebuilding and conflict transformation together with actors from the security sector in these countries thus focus on trust-building. After past experiences of violence, society should reconcile and work together to actively prevent violent conflict in the future. However, currently we witness the eroding of trust in institutions and long-established structures around the world.

With our project, we want to take a look at the role of trust and trust-building within such international partnerships. We are aiming to add to the existing knowledge as to how trust can help to resolve conflicts and promote peace. Therefore, we will first identify established approaches to trust-building and then examine their effects in a conflict transformation context. With our findings, we aim to add to the debate on trust-building in conflict contexts. We furthermore explore how these lessons can be valuable for policymakers. In order to do justice to the broad concept and arising questions, we are collaborating with the Berghof Foundation in this project.