Peace negotiations are traditionally dealt with using a top-down approach, whereby state actors and leaders often enter into peace discussions without consulting or involving the many other stakeholders involved, including civil society groups. But what impact can these groups really have in the peace negotiation phase?

The British Council’s Our Shared Future project and the UN Alliance of Civilizations have just released a new video series, Journeys of Belonging, that brings to light the common threads that bind people of diverse ages, genders, cultures, religions, ethnicities and beyond.

To think out-of-the-box is what we owe to the Palestinians and the Israelis more than ever, and the only real contribution we can make from outside to start transforming this conflict.

TransConflict is pleased to present a report, published as part of the project ‘Mediation through Monasteries in Kosovo’, which calls for the establishment of a Community Relations Council to strengthen relations between Peć/Pejë municipality and the Patriarchate.

With the role of religion having remained largely ignored in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is a need to promote a process of secularization by upholding the separation of church and state.

A conference on peace-building amongst youth from Serbia and Kosovo highlighted the need for the official negotiations to be supplemented with other activities in order to ensure that true conflict transformation and the re-building of inter-ethnic trust can occur.