The Long Road to Peace – How can Trust and Solidarity be Restored?

“Peace building has been crafted by those who believed in a liberal way of putting a broken society together. That means that the outsider comes to analyze what's wrong with the country and propose short term solutions to build peace. Sustaining peace, on the other hand, posits that peace should be the starting point and the end goal. Every society, however broken it may appear, has still threads and stitches that hold it together. Therefore, if you wish to support pathways to peace, identify what is already strong, not only what is wrong. Peace becomes like a journey, like a tree. It grows from the bottom up and from the inside out. All the other mechanisms are designed to support that approach”, says Dr. Youssef Mahmoud about the approach of “Sustaining Peace”.

Youssef Mahmoud worked with this approach when he served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General and led major peace operations in Central Africa. Over the course of his UN career, he held other senior leadership positions, including UN Resident Coordinator in Guyana and Director in the UN Department of Political Affairs.

In our Radio evolve we speak with Youssef Mahmoud about ways to restore trust and solidarity in a conflicted world.