Breakout session on ‘Grassroots Peacebuilding – and linking it to national and international levels’, first talk: Fr Elias Omondi Opongo, Ph.D. candidate, Dept of Peace Studies, Bradford University.
The end of the Cold War marked a new beginning for Non Governmental Organizations' (NGOs) engagement in peacebuilding and conflict transformation at the grassroots and middle level interventions. However, while the last two decades have seen a decrease in inter-state wars, intra-state conflicts escalated, subsequently provoking a gradual paradigm shift in responding to humanitarian crisis in conflict settings: from a relief only approach, to relief-development, and recently to a conflict intervention and peace-building approach. But what are the interactive conflict dynamics that render NGOs as leading age actors in complex emergencies to sustainable peacebuilding processes?
