IPS Attends Panel on International Cooperation to Address Violations of IHL

On 10 May, ELAC Deputy Director Federica D’Alessandra, IPS Visiting Fellow of Practice Kirsty Sutherland, and ELAC Visiting Scholar Antonio Coco attended ‘From Polarisation to Peacebuilding: The Power of Digital Tools’, organised by the Swiss Embassy in London in partnership with Conciliation Resources. The panel examined how digital tools are polarising societies and fuelling violence, and how they can instead be used to build peace. The panel also discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a role, and how conflict parties themselves are manipulating opinions and content. Finally, the panel touched on the power of open source intelligence in the dynamics of conflict, the challenge of staying up-to-date as technology develops at break-neck speed, and the dilemma of whether online participation in peace mediation supports or comes at cost to effective conflict resolution. Speakers included Helena Puig Larrauri, Co-Founder & Strategy Lead at Build Up; Swiss Ambassador Markus Leitner; Dr Christine Cheng, Senior Lecturer at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and Trustee at Conciliation Resources; Enrico Formica, Senior Mediation Officer at the Mediation Support of the UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, and Dr Andreas Hirblinger, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Geneva Graduate Institute, among others. Video highlights from the event can be watched here.