What is Geneva Peace Week?

Geneva Peace Week (GPW) is a leading annual forum in the international peacebuilding calendar, and the flagship event of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. This year, the thematic focus of the week is "From seeds to systems of peace: Weathering today’s challenges". Geneva Peace Week 2021 (GPW21) aims to galvanise leadership, build trust and contribute to transforming international cooperation.

Geneva Peace Week 2021 will be held totally online from 1-5 November 2021. Institutions and individuals in Geneva and around the world have come together to organise an interactive GPW21 experience. Attendees are welcome to participate in GPW ‘Online Workshops’ and to also engage with the GPW ‘Digital Series’. The forum is free and open to the public, and details on how to participate can be found below.

Geneva Peace Week is a flagship initiative of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), and the Platform’s five partners – the Graduate Institute’s Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP); the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF); the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP); Interpeace; and the Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva (QUNO). Geneva Peace Week is also supported by Switzerland.

Online Workshops

Geneva Peace Week 2021 features a dynamic lineup of Online Workshops for all attendees to join, from 1-5 November. The Online Workshops will be practitioner-led, including inputs from speakers who are working on the relevant topics. The Workshops have also been designed to be interactive, with the aim of offering attendees the opportunity to exchange and share knowledge, good practice, and peacebuilding skills to apply in their daily work. This year, our Workshops will take place on Zoom, and attendees must register in advance to attend. From the 28 September, attendees will be able to add workshops to their own agendas, and to register to attend GPW21.

Please click below, to view the full list of Online Workshops for GPW21.

Digital Series

Conversations from Geneva Peace Week are leaving Geneva this year and coming straight to you, wherever you consume your videos, podcasts, and media. Particularly as COVID-19 introduces the necessity of new modes of work and learning around the globe, people interact with new kinds of media and educational methods. We’ve asked our partner organizers to develop their peacebuilding expertise, research, and stories into digital formats (videos, podcasts, and other media) so that they can contribute to the frontline work of peace long beyond Geneva Peace Week, across geographical, cultural and temporal borders. 

Thematic Tracks

GPW21 will be held under the theme “From seeds to systems of peace: Weathering today’s challenges.” Challenges to peace today have been compounded by the COVID19 pandemic. Geneva Peace Week 2021 nurtures seeds of peace in the new approaches and tools necessary to “weather” the contemporary challenges, while seeking to engage and affect change at the systemic level.

The Online Workshops and Digital Series for Geneva Peace Week 2021 have been organized into four thematic tracks:

• Creating a climate for collaboration: Ways forward for environment, climate change, and peace
• Moving beyond securitization: What risks (and new horizons) for peacebuilding
• Harnessing the digital sphere for peace
• Confronting inequalities and advancing inclusion, peace, and SDG16

To find out more about each GPW21 thematic track, please click on 'Thematic Tracks' below. Within each thematic track, you will be able to view the relevant content from the GPW21 Digital Series, and the Online Workshops which will take place in that track.