糖心网页版

In a recent episode of the caustic sitcom 鈥�,鈥� the hard-luck start-up protagonists attend a big technology convention. They stumble across an app called PeaceFare, a game that lets players 鈥渂uild peace鈥� on their phones by giving virtual money to virtual homeless people or virtual corn to virtual starving villagers. Launched by a rich entrepreneur to 鈥渉elp humanity thrive,鈥� the lone skeptic Richard snidely asks whether such an app should instead be trying to help actual people.

This gag skewers two truisms 鈥� that tech innovations for peace and conflict resolution don鈥檛 need to have true social impact to succeed, and most people will only help change the world if it comes without real sacrifice. Thus, it speaks to ongoing controversies. Technology-based approaches to conflict resolution and humanitarian development are admired by policymakers for their promise of bottom-up, quick-fix solutions. Traditional peacebuilding policy 鈥� involving careful analysis over years or decades 鈥� is being upended as these 鈥渄isruptive鈥� solutions gain traction. Peace and development researchers who want to influence policy debates can鈥檛 just release findings but have to establish mechanisms for implementation.

Indicators can help shape policy debate

One way to do this is more traditional and doesn鈥檛 necessarily involve new technologies: building and promoting statistical indicators. For example, the United Nations鈥� ambitious 鈥�2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,鈥� made up of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), sets out targets and benchmarks, but doesn鈥檛 say how to measure them. Formulating the indicators that will measure progress was delegated to a specially appointed (IAEG), consisting mainly of representatives from National Statistical Offices (NSOs).

Generating this data is hard for governments, since it often involves politically controversial questions. SDG 16 calls for achieving peaceful, just, and inclusive societies 鈥� measuring this involves answering complicated and controversial questions about governance. seeks to measure conflict-related deaths in countries by sex, age and cause of death 鈥� but the United Nations has no formal criteria for defining war, nor resources for collecting such data.

These measurements are tricky because there are profound political disagreements over, for instance, how to classify which kinds of organized violence constitute wars and which do not. There are two reasons for this. If you can鈥檛 classify it, you can鈥檛 measure and track it. NSOs are, in any event, more used to estimating administrative statistics such as demographics or economic data than information on conflicts.

In principle, outside institutions such as the (UCDP) and the have the right kind of data, but when 糖心网页版 and the UNDP hosted a large expert meeting that brought together IAEG members and experts to discuss how to measure conflict, the IAEG resisted the very idea that conflict could be measured. In one way, this doesn鈥檛 make much sense, because most of our statistical measures of GDP and other economic facts are imperfect estimates of underlying phenomena, too. Yet there are also fundamental differences in how conflict researchers, NSOs and nongovernmental organizations collect data, and tricky questions. Should we trust the Bashar al-Assad regime鈥檚 data on the number of people killed in Syria鈥檚 conflict? Or that conflict-affected areas such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo or South Sudan can reliably report conflict data?

After pleading their case for several days, scholars finally convinced the IAEG that it was indeed possible to measure war and conflict. The meeting established a shared understanding between academics and NSOs about best practices in measuring armed conflict, and the IAEG probably will accept the UCDP framework moving forward. Although it is still unclear what role the data will play, most conflict scholars consider the fact that it got on the agenda at all to be a major success.

Another example of indicator building is the coalition of 20 NGO and academic organizations to create the . This initiative, which just launched its first during the July U.N. High-Level Political Forum, tracks SDG 16鈥檚 12 targets to measure not just conflict but a host of governance and liberties issues in a transparent, rigorous and systematic manner, in turn building better peace policy.

Technology can help build peace

Another way is through engaging more directly with technology. Silicon Valley-type questions such as 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the 鈥楿ber for peace?鈥欌�� or 鈥淗ow can we 鈥榙isrupt conflict鈥� with an app?鈥� make most peace scholars and practitioners cringe. However, technology start-ups and socially minded firms are leaping into peacebuilding, with the backing of governments and deep-pocketed philanthropic foundations.

There is a lot to be excited about. Compared with traditional ways of shaping peacebuilding policy, tech approaches are more bottom-up, designed to engage with citizens directly as opposed to working through cumbersome bureaucracies or recalcitrant politicians. Solutions such as electronic tracing apps for conflict minerals or crowdsourcing victims鈥� experiences to build a knowledge base for truth and reconciliation committees can better help those who need it most.

Yet tech start-ups often launch peacebuilding initiatives without deeply engaging with existing peacebuilding knowledge 鈥� or worse, don鈥檛 think that such knowledge is needed. This can mean that they are useless to local communities, or even worse can be repurposed by governments to target the very people that their technology was supposed to help, as when Mexico鈥檚 government allegedly to instead target human rights investigators.

Better collaboration between academics and innovators is possible 鈥� outlines five thematic areas where joint efforts between academics and innovators can generate significant value:

1. forecasting political economies of conflict;
2. business and virtual peacebuilding;
3. climate and environmentalism;
4. migration and identity; and
5. urbanization.

IGOs and multilateral donors have all expressed interest in platforms that look to 鈥渟cale up鈥� cooperation beyond the local level. The merging of data, innovation, peace scholarship and conflict resolution policy could add solidity to 鈥渟ocial innovation,鈥� help understand its upstream and downstream consequences, and incorporate insights from scholars, entrepreneurs and policymakers in the Global South. This would change the boundaries of peace research, reframe research priorities by merging scholarly, commercial and social value, and show that innovation actors and scholars can act together as peacebuilders.

Peace science鈥檚 goal is to understand how we can better contribute to peacebuilding. This implies that we as scholars must recognize how these new forms of communication and knowledge dissemination are influencing the policy world, and be prepared to react 鈥� and act 鈥� accordingly.

Elements of this post are adapted from the recent article 鈥�.鈥�

• This text was first published at the .