Background

What is the Swiss PeaceTech Alliance?

The Geneva Peacebuilding Platform (GPP) is partnering with the Geneva Graduate Institute and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), to establish the Swiss PeaceTech Alliance, which will pool complementary knowledge for international capacity building in PeaceTech.  Following this agreement signed in May 2022, the official launch was announced in April 2023 with an additional partner, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

PeaceTech is an emerging field of peacebuilding that uses technology to prevent and resolve conflict and create better conditions for peace, using online tools such as artificial intelligence, Big Data, and blockchain methods aimed at monitoring, verifying, and actively countering misinformation on the internet. The alliance's work is particularly important in today's world, where technological innovations have led to new forms of violence and conflict. It will bring together experts from diverse fields such as technology, international relations, and peacebuilding to collaborate on innovative approaches to peacemaking.

By harnessing the power of technology and interdisciplinary expertise, the PeaceTech Alliance aims to develop sustainable solutions that can help build peace and prevent violent conflicts. To this end, the Geneva Graduate Institute and EPFL intend to use their recognized academic excellence in the social and computer sciences.

Together, the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform and the PeaceTech Alliance can leverage their respective strengths to develop innovative and effective solutions to the complex challenges of peacebuilding in the 21st century.

A word from the partners

"At the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, we recognize the importance of harnessing technological innovation and interdisciplinary expertise to address the complex challenges of peacebuilding. Our involvement in the PeaceTech Alliance allows us to collaborate with experts from diverse fields to develop innovative and effective solutions to prevent and resolve conflicts, which is central to our mission," says Dr. Annyssa Bellal, Executive Director of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform.

“There is an increasing conviction within the international community that peace, sustainability, and equity are in tight interdependence,” argued Marie-Laure Salles, Director of the Graduate Institute.

“Expertise and leadership in the hard sciences and technology are of course needed to create technological innovations for PeaceTech. But for PeaceTech to be applied effectively, strong knowledge in the social sciences is also indispensable”, added Martin Vetterli, President of EPFL.

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