Peace and Civil Society
Jericho Road, Jerusalem
Peace
Various international, regional and local actors strive to build peace by using a range of tools and approaches. However, a successful contribution to sustainable peace does not derive from working only at one level or focusing exclusively on one of these tools or approaches but rather a holistic approach tailored to the specific context. Whether you aim to build the capacity of local civil society to mitigate communal conflicts or you work with comprehensive programmes for transitional justice, rule of law, gender in mediation, disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, small arms and mine action, or security your resources risk being wasted if the relevance and design of the programme were not calculated correctly.
Each programme should be clear about whether the aim is to build peace by removing structural causes or by engaging in the dynamics of conflict. Successful peace building requires solid baseline studies, careful programme design, good timing and implementation. Working with larger international or regional peacebuilding architectures involving UN and delegated regional organisations requires a thorough understanding of international politics and organisations.
Media Progress has top class experts and comprehensive experience in the analysis, design and evaluation of interventions in this field.
Civil Society
In areas of transition from totalitarian to democratic societies civil society organisations play an absolutely crucial role. Multiparty elections are valuable but a strong civil society is essential to construct a robust and sustainable democracy involving human rights, gender, consumers, freedom of speech or professional associations.
Non-governmental civil society organisations are financially vulnerable and have very weak capacities in many transitional countries. Grant programmes or other funding of civil society must take into consideration the need for capacity building as well as the need to reach local community based organisations in distant regions and rural communities far from the capital.
Civil society empowerment is a separate field of expertise for Media Progress. For decades the company and its partners have worked with civil society organisations as important partners in processes of change through outreach in strategic communication or as agents of change in media development. This field has now become one of our areas of expertise in its own right.