The Observatory for Decentralised Cooperation EU-LAC (Barcelona Provincial Council DIBA) has published a study on local peace and decentralised cooperation, commissioned by the Observatory and produced by the Gernika Gogoratuz Peace Research Center in collaboration with the Catalan Peace Institute (ICIP).
The study highlights the potential of local and regional authorities in the European Union and Latin America in designing, implementing, and strengthening local public peace policies. In the current international context, with more open conflicts in the world since the end of World War II, traditional peace policies and legal mechanisms to limit violence have become entirely obsolete. Among other reasons, a limited concept of peace, associated only with war contexts, still predominates, and substate actors must institutionalise public policies in this area.
After systematising numerous initiatives from Europe and Latin America, many of them in Colombia, the study states that decentralised cooperation, despite being a field of work still to be explored, becomes an instrument that, with new proposals, can effectively contribute to the construction of territorial peace.
Although peace and security policies do not fall under the competence of local governments, the guide recommends European and Latin American networks of municipalities and regions promoting a local peace agenda. The publication also demonstrates the importance of direct participation of those concerned or affected by conflicts as considered in decentralised cooperation.