From 22 to 26 June 2026, ACCORD participated in the first United Nations Peacebuilding Week in New York, marking twenty years since the establishment of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture in 2006. This year’s theme, UN Peacebuilding @20 – Partnerships for Innovation, Inclusion and Impact, brought together member states, civil society organisations, UN agencies, and peacebuilding practitioners from around the world to take stock of two decades of progress and the way forward.
ACCORD, represented by the Founder and Executive Director, Dr Vasu Gounden, participated in a side event titled Making Artificial Intelligence Work for Trustworthy and Inclusive Peacebuilding, organised by the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI) and other permanent missions, including South Africa, on 24 June 2026. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for peacebuilding, ACCORD highlighted its commitment to ensuring that African peacebuilding experience and African conflict contexts are central, not incidental, to how these AI tools are built and governed.
Other sessions that ACCORD joined include the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the European Union Delegate to the United Nations, the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research, and the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund side event on Building Peace from the Ground Up: Local Action, Lasting Peace on 24 June 2026. The session brought together municipal leaders, indigenous mediators, and field practitioners from Lebanon, Malawi, Guatemala, and Sudan to examine how community-level mediation contributes to sustainable peace and what the international system must do to support local peacebuilders. A consistent theme across the discussion was that peace agreed upon at the top does not automatically translate into peace on the ground and that local peacebuilders hold something external actors might not have: proximity, relationships, and trust built over time.
ACCORD will continue to build on the partnerships and commitments forged during Peacebuilding Week, translating regional and global-level commitments into concrete action on the ground.
