Ask people how they know whether peace, security or justice are improving where they live, and the answers are usually concrete. They might talk about whether people feel safe walking home after dark, whether the market is open, or whether neighbours who stopped speaking have started greeting each other again. These small, precise signs are what people rely on to judge whether conditions are holding or slipping.

Since 2013, Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI) and its partners have worked with communities to document these signs in their own words, gathering more than 20,000 community-generated indicators across 21 countries. The Voices of Peace Portal brings them together in one public digital platform, where they can be searched and compared.

This year's Geneva Peace Forum will feature the Voices of Peace exhibit, which hangs thousands of these indicators from the ceiling so that visitors can walk through them, touch them and browse them in person. Reading them means turning and lifting the paper by hand, moving between one voice and the next. The exhibit is the Portal's analogue twin, giving a collection built for searching and filtering a physical form.

Voices of Peace is a collaborative project by the CCDP, EPI, and Interactive Things, supported by an SNSF Agora grant. The exhibit will be on display from 12 to 15 October at the CICG, near the main entrance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eliza Urwin is the Head of Research at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She specializes in how contested authority shapes conflict and state-building and has 15 years of experience spanning research and practice on armed groups, governance, security, and peacebuilding. From 2013 to 2017, Eliza managed peacebuilding projects for the United States Institute of Peace while based in Kabul. Her work also focuses on participatory research methods, including Everyday Peace Indicators, and on how locally generated knowledge can inform peacebuilding and aid delivery.

Pamina Firchow is an associate professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Founding Executive Director of Everyday Peace Indicators, a 501(c)(3) research and evaluation oriented nonprofit organization. She has published over 30 high-impact, peer reviewed journal articles mostly on participatory approaches to design, measurement and evaluation of transitional justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding interventions, in addition to her award-winning book, Reclaiming Everyday Peace: Local Voices in Measurement and Evaluation after War (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Firchow received her PhD from the Geneva Graduate Institute and is also a research associate of the Centre for Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP). She was a USIP Senior Jennings Randolph Fellow in 2016 and a Fulbright Fellow in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2020. Firchow has been working in the conflict response sector as a scholar-practitioner for non-governmental organizations and universities since 1999. You can read more about her work and interests at paminafirchow.org

 

Apolline Foedit is a PhD candidate in International History and Politics and a Research Assistant at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the role of associations, participation, and public policy, particularly in relation to migration and peacebuilding. She has been closely involved in the development of the Voices of Peace Portal and its presentation at the Geneva Peace Forum.