European Peacebuilding Liaison Office

Mission statement

The organisation's mission is: 'to influence the European Union to be more active and more effective at promoting peace and preventing violent conflict throughout the world'.

Key people

Sonya Reines-Djivanides has been the executive director since June 2015.

Policy Objectives

Its policy objectives are:

1. To ensure that conflict prevention and peacebuilding are prominent within the policies and structures of EU external affairs.
2. To secure increased resources for conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
3. To integrate peacebuilding into EU development policy, programmes and approaches.
4. To promote the inclusion of a meaningful gender perspective.
5. To promote peacebuilding in EU response to specific conflicts.
6. To ensure conflict sensitivity is included in the EU’s trade policy and in EIB lending.

Activities

EPLO aims to realise its mission by channelling civil society analysis into EU policy-making. Its activities include:

Policy areas

Academic Friends of EPLO

Academic Friends of EPLO is an informal network of academics working on peacebuilding and conflict issues, and/or the role of the EU in peacebuilding worldwide. The purpose of the network is to connect practitioners and advocates seeking to influence the EU to make it more effective at peacebuilding with academics carrying out research on the EU and conflict.

Civil Society Dialogue Network (CSDN)

The Civil Society Dialogue Network (CSDN) is a project funded by the European Union, to facilitate dialogue on peacebuilding issues between civil society and EU policy-makers. It was launched in July 2010. The second phase of the CSDN will last from 2014 to 2016.

The CSDN aims to contribute to strengthening international and regional capacity for conflict prevention and post-conflict co-operation. EPLO organises CSDN meetings which are open to all interested civil society actors and take place in Brussels, member states of the European Union and conflict-affected countries with EU presence.

The CSDN discusses policy, strategy and programming aspects of the Peacebuilding Partnership, transversal thematic issues relating to peacebuilding and crisis-specific situations.

The EU and Peacebuilding: From European Peace Project to Global Actor

The project consisted of a series of public events in EU Member States in the form of dialogues and round-tables which will discuss opportunities and challenges for the EU to increase its peacebuilding potential and analyse the role EU Member States plan either in certain EU policy fields of certain conflict-affected regions where the EU has a presence.

By encouraging a wide range of EU stakeholders to engage in advocacy work on the EU conflict prevention and peacebuilding policy, the project aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the EU's contribution to conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and increase Europe's citizens' awareness of the history of the EU as a peace project.

Outputs from the meetings included meeting reports, summaries of key recommendations to EU policy-makers and civil society as well as background material prepared for the meeting.

This project was terminated in 2014.

Strengthening Early Warning and Mobilising Early Action

The project Strengthening Early Warning and Mobilising Early Action aims to contribute to the establishment, development and reinforcement of early warning mechanisms and increase opportunities for civil society to influence responses to conflict in a timely manner. In particular, through the provision of expert field-based conflict analysis, it aims to identify options for early action to allow the European Union, its Member States and other regional and international actors the EU supports, to anticipate and respond to the risks of outbreak or recurrence of conflict in fragile countries.

This three-year project started in July 2013. It is co-financed by the European Union under the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP) and managed by the International Crisis Group and EPLO.

Member organisations

EPLO has 35 member organisations from 13 European countries (10 EU Member States plus Kosovo, Norway and Switzerland). EPLO's members are individual NGOs, networks of NGOs, and think tanks.