The UN was initially established to be a place where member states could meet and air their issues - in principle a safe place to resolve conflicts, without the use of violence. Since the intervening years, the UN’s mission has not moved far from this original mission, but the sheer number of UN agencies has made it more difficult to find this original mission thread. Not because it is not there, but because it is not evident to the layman [or non-UN actors]. Wading through the UN speak to find what and how to ensure that conflicts are resolved, and who is responsible for the conflict resolution, can be daunting and seemingly impossible.
Distributed ledger technology [DLT] is built to create credibility, accountability and transparency.
Distributed ledger technology [DLT] is built to create credibility, accountability and transparency. If someone or an organisation is on file, and verified as an immutable file, as ‘the’ responsible agent for resolution of a conflict, then strategies might change and proactive activities followed and verified.
Peace Week
The UN Peace Week commenced on the 5th of November 2018, and will run until the end of the week. A meeting of the bold and brash in Geneva at the Geneva Peace week, starting Wednesday the 7th, whose main theme is, “Building Peace in a Turbulent World." Indeed, from the accompanying website, “Geneva Peace Week underlines that each and every person, actor and institution has a role to play in building peace and resolving conflict. It also highlights that peace promotion occurs in many different contexts and cuts across disciplines and sectors. In this sense, Geneva Peace Week is an attempt to break down the silos which all-too-often characterize the international community and can limit more creative responses.”
What an ideal time to discuss, during this high-profile week, the necessary actors involved in pursuing peace and how transparency aids in conflict resolution. The answer to the first is; all of us. The response to the second is, look toward technology to be the interlocutor of transparency, a key factor in establishing sustainable resolution to long entrenched conflicts.
Technology can enhance the chorus of voices singing peace.The Peace Tech Lab has capitalised on the principle of using technology, media and data to successfully reduce violent conflict and scale peace-building activities. Clearly, technology innovation has dictated how conflicts are established, how resolutions are met and how tech savvy peace builders prevent and reduce chronic violence.
How can DLT help to upscale peace building and how can this technology innovation be used to establish sustainable peace and bring lasting resolutions? Let explore the very basics of DLT. At the very, very basic; it is digital information distributed across a decentralised ledger, it is not copied, essentially it creates a new type of internet; a dynamic, organic internet. According to Investopedia, “A distributed ledger is a database that is consensually shared and synchronised across network spread across multiple sites, institutions or geographies. It allows transactions to have public "witnesses," thereby making a cyberattack more difficult. The participant at each node of the network can access the recordings shared across that network and can own an identical copy of it. Further, any changes or additions made to the ledger are reflected and copied to all participants in a matter of seconds or minutes.”
How can DLT underpin and support peace keeping, conflict resolution and peace building activities? Well, it can aid in moving beyond how a country aids in securing the environment where peace can flourish. A distributed ledger holds any transactions or contracts in different locations and people, clearly a disruption to those central authorities who see themselves as the purveyor of security and a check against manipulation. The actual actor who is responsible for the various steps in ensuring peace building, keeping or resolutions is kept securely, or “witnessed,” on an immutable ledger, accessed by anyone with the key and cryptographic signature, governed by the rules of the network, un-hackable and resistant to malicious changes by a single actor. What could be more transparent and accountable than that?
The current peace environment have a number of super engaged actors who work hard to make peace, make peace work and make peace sustainable. The latest peace treaty always gets the column inches, but those on the ground who make it happen are the ones who verify and validate that progress has been made. Monitoring of peace agreements dictate how sustainable those peace agreements can be. A DLT can clearly show if progress has been made toward peace building or keeping and who is accountable for the forward movement - the ledger captures this information, in a transparent way that cannot be changed.
World Wide Generation (WWG) has developed a DLT platform, G17Eco, that maps, monitors, manages, measures and markets issues that can cause conflict, in real time, giving peace keepers a valuable tool to identify warm spots before they become hot. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), or Agenda 2030, are 17 goal that have been agreed by 193 member states of the UN as the critical challenges facing humanity. As one can imagine, these Goals not only highlight challenges but pinpoint and identify areas of conflict that can quickly escalate to breach peace. Tracking how the SDGs are being addressed on the local, regional and national levels can give those involved with keeping and building peace, a heads up on how changes can break the peace and identify areas of conflict.
The WWG platform, G17Eco, uses Universal Trackers (UTRs), which are a permission-based automated system, which tracks those actors who implement high-profile agreements; these trackers verify the peace keepers actions. The goal is to take the high-level framework of the SDGs and gather immutable data from those actors who are accountable in addressing issues as part of a complex net of solution providers, and keep the peace keepers informed thus avoid falling back into situations that will encourage conflicts. In principle, keeping “warm “spots from evolving to “hot” spots.
History has taught that peace keeping, peace building and conflict resolution is a complex dance. Each requires a different set of skills but in the majority of cases are led by a high-profile announcement. Who is responsible and accountable should not add to the turbulence, DLT is one innovative technical solution which can be a tool in the toolbox of any peace builder, keeper or conflict resolution expert. Looking forward, WWG, via the G17Eco platform, is one way that those dedicated peace actors can identify in real-time where the potential hotspots are and track the activities of implementers of high-profile peace agreements.
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