Opening Ceremony | In-person and Online

Monday 1 November 2021, 16:00-17:45 CET

The Geneva Peace Week Opening Ceremony will formally open Geneva Peace Week 2021, and this public event will take place in-person (Auditorium Ivan Pictet, Maison de la Paix), followed by a Reception. The Ceremony will also be streamed online, on the GPW homepage: www.genevapeaceweek.ch 

The Geneva Peace Week Opening Ceremony will focus on this year's theme: From seeds to systems of peace: Weathering today’s challenges. GPW21 aims to galvanize leadership, build trust and contribute to transforming international cooperation.

The Opening Ceremony will set the broader context for a week of dynamic Online Workshops and Digital Series contributions, and the Ceremony will include key-note speeches from high-level speakers, discussions, video contributions, and attendee participation and engagement. A Reception will follow the Opening Ceremony for all in-person attendees. 

Closing Ceremony | In-person and Online

Friday 5 November 2021, 13:30-15:30 CET

The Geneva Peace Week Closing Ceremony will take place in-person (Auditorium Ivan Pictet, Maison de la Paix). The Ceremony will also be streamed online, on the GPW homepage: www.genevapeaceweek.ch 

The Geneva Peace Week Closing Ceremony will conclude the week, focusing on this year's theme: From seeds to systems of peace: Weathering today’s challenges. GPW21 aims to galvanize leadership, build trust and contribute to transforming international cooperation.

The Closing Ceremony will conclude GPW21 by drawing out key insights that emerged from the Online Workshops and Digital Series contributions, and will include key-note speeches from high-level speakers, discussions, video contributions, and attendee participation and engagement. The Ceremony will place a focus on what lies ahead, and how these insights can impact the work of peacebuilders beyond Geneva Peace Week.

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. 

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

Steps for joining Online Workshops and Hybrid Sessions

Please follow the steps below to make sure you're set up correctly to join online workshops.

Download the Zoom Software (one time process)

• Follow the link to dowload Zoom and install it on your PC/ Mac
• Signing into the app on your computer will make joining sessions easier!
• Watch this video tutorial to ensure that you have set up Zoom correctly.

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. 

Please click below, to view the full content list of Digital Series for GPW21.

Special & Public Events

A Serious Game: an educational Escape Game on  migration | In-person

From 1-5 November, the Eduki Foundation will offer participants the chance to participate in an Escape Game (in Geneva), in an effort to raise awareness on issues relating to migration. Sign-up below to participate alone, or with 4-6 colleagues. Participants must be in Geneva, and the location details will provided on the Eduki Foundation's registration platform. Spaces are limited and registration is on a first-come-first-served basis.

This experience is part of a project led by a team of students and teachers from a high school in Geneva that worked on the Sustainable development goal n°16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions). The objective of the Escape Game is to put the participants, during one hour, in the shoes of people who have been forced to flee their country (at war or due to other circumstances) and seek to come to Switzerland. Understanding a migratory trajectory implies a shift, an immersion, an active confrontation to real life situations, and in this sense an educational Escape Game is an exceptional tool to bring the participants to experience forced displacement with its share of constraints and possible outcomes. The game reveals certain specificities of this type of migration and brings participants to communicate and collaborate to complete the challenges and use interpersonal skills to pacify social bonds. At the end of the Escape Game, participants are asked to debrief with the organizers to come back to various issues (30 minutes): the absence of peace as a factor of migration; the various legal statuses; the importance of institutions as actors facilitating (or slowing down) human mobility.

Please see the schedule below:

• Tuesday 2 November 2021: 8:00-9:45 
• Wednesday 3 November 2021: 8:00-09:45, 12:00-13:45, 14:15-16:00
• Friday 5 November 2021: 8:00-09:45, 11:45-13:30

The session will take place in-person, in Geneva. Participation is limited to 6 people per session. Learn more about the session and register by clicking on the "Registration" button below.

Digital Marketplace | Online

Tuesday 2 November, 12:30 - 13:20 CET

This is a digital space for “Other Conversations”. A zoom meeting will be organized with various breakout sessions that people can choose to pop into and stay for as long as they like. This is free-flowing and will allow people to check out various organizations and conversations. We will take 6-8 organizations/ discussions and create another 4 open break-out rooms that people can just pop into to have 1-1 conversations should they want to. The organizations/discussions will wait in their break out rooms, similar to having a physical stand, but should imagine how they can present their work in 5-10 minute segments. This is not for in depth discussions but more about presenting one’s work and getting people interested to follow up for more. This will be done mostly by invitation. This session will take place online.

View Agenda to select the session and add it to you agenda.

Peace Fair | In-person

Friday 5 November, 15:30 - 16:30 CET

The Peace Fair is an opportunity for organizations to have a stand outside the auditorium where the Closing Ceremony will take place. This will be a networking space for attendees to mingle after Geneva Peace Week, and an opportunity for Geneva-based participants to exchange and interact. GPW21 organisers, as well as other Geneva-based organisations and initiatives at the Graduate Institute are welcome to have a stand, present their work and handout their publications. The Peace Fair will be open for an hour after the Closing Ceremony. Approximately 20 slots can be made available across 10 tables, and this will be organised by invitation and on a first come first served basis. If your organization is based here in Geneva and wants to be present, please email Maёlys maelys.gluck@graduateinstitute.ch by 1 November at 14:00 CET.

If you would like to participate in Peace Fair as an attendee, add the session to you agenda.

View the full list of Special & Public sessions on the Special Events page