What We're Reading
• The Economist — Conflict Trends: A new study finds that state-based conflicts have more than doubled since 2010, rising from 31 to 65 in 2025, the highest level recorded since World War II. • Institute for Economics & Peace — Global Peace Index 2026: World military expenditure has risen for the 10th consecutive year, while total deaths from conflict have declined from their 2023 peak. • New York Times — Inside Colombia: Ten years after a landmark peace deal, armed groups are wreaking deadly violence, blending jungle combat with new drone warfare.
Pioneering a New Generation of Peacebuilding
International Fund for Peace (IF4Peace) helps countries build a new operational model for sustainable peace, connecting risk intelligence, local knowledge, trusted institutions, responsible technology, and long-term resources to resolve differences before they turn violent.
Why IF4Peace
The Challenge
Our Response
IF4Peace is being built for a new age of global systemic instability, where stronger national prevention capacities are becoming essential to sustaining peace.
Our peace model uses AI-enabled analytics, conflict-risk intelligence, and catalytic resources to reduce latency between local stress signals and policy response. By strengthening prevention systems, it will support country-led efforts to build the trusted, long-term peace infrastructure societies need to manage differences before they become violent.
The machinery of conflict has modernized faster than the architecture of prevention. Cyber threats, disinformation, resource conflicts, economic insecurity, institutional distrust, and geopolitical fragmentation now accelerate instability before traditional systems can respond.
Yet most support still arrives after tensions have hardened into crisis. Countries need stronger national capacities to detect risks early, manage differences peacefully, connect local warning signs to national action, and prevent violence before it spreads.
What is needed is a new paradigm for peace, one that is holistic in scope, nationally grounded, scalable, and oriented toward the long term.
Robert J. Berg and Lord Desmond Browne
Founding Trustees, IF4Peace
Originally published in “A New Paradigm for Building Peace,” European Leadership Network, 8 December 2025
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With the number of conflicts doubling over the last decade and military expenditure increasing by 37% it’s time to rethink our approach. If we do not invest in peace, how do we ever expect to create it. As expenditure on peacekeeping dwindles and peacebuilding support falls to 0.1% of military spending the International Fund for Peace becomes a necessity.
Steve Killelea
Founder and Executive Chairman, Institute for Economics and Peace
Engage With IF4Peace
Help build the next generation of peace infrastructure. IF4Peace welcomes conversations with governments, funders, companies, researchers, journalists, civic leaders, and institutions working to prevent violence and strengthen national resilience.
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