From Nigeria to a Global Peace Fund

In early 1966, I had just completed a two month tour of USAID projects in Nigeria to learn about the portfolio I was to manage from the Washington side.  I reported to the State Department that I believed Nigeria would have a large civil war.  Our field posts disagreed..until two weeks before the Biafra war broke out, 18 months later.  Between 800,000 and 3 million died, most from starvation.  As I pursued a career of social entrepreneurship in USAID, NGOs, and as senior advisor to four UN agencies, I kept pondering “What could I have done to prevent that war?”  When I chaired the largest association of peacebuilding organizations, The Alliance for Peacebuilding, I saw lots of excellent civil society groups with well-evaluated community projects.  But I realized they and I were not asking the right question: What could countries do to avoid differences becoming violence?

In answering that question three concepts seemed vital:  Systems, Ownership and Scale.  We should be thinking about fostering national systems to promote peace, owned by national governments and other key national stakeholders, and developed at sufficient scale to make a sustained impact on national behavior.  The outlines of an International Fund for Peace took place to augment the UN just as GAVI and the Global Fund augment WHO.  It seems rather audacious to propose a new fund at a time when drastic retrenchment is going on, but it is exactly the time to plan on what to do when this political moment passes.

In October-November 2025 I traveled to several European and Asian countries to meet with peace experts in governments and civil society.  They uniformly agreed on the need for those concepts and every expert I asked quickly agreed to be an adviser to create the envisioned Fund . (Now 17super experts from 13 countries.)  A small, well-connected international founding board was formed. 

The main next steps must be very carefully carried out:

• Top flight experts (based in Geneva) are lined up to do a step-by-step plan to create the Fund.

• Recruitment of a first rate core group to establish the fund, with special emphasis on a world-class CEO, will come next.

• Simultaneously building a board, particularly engaging a top political person to be its chair.

• Early pilot programs to hone expertise will be launched.

Funding for these three steps is being pursued.

A carefully crafted Fund will not only help countries manage the key soft power that enables all other soft powers to function, but it will lift the whole field of peacebuilding, giving stimulus and recognition to the disparate efforts of local and international civil society.  The Fund’s economic and social impacts cannot be guaranteed for an individual nation, but the Fund’s overall economic and social impact will have a very handsome return. 

Eventually, having well managed peace will become a recognized feature of good national governance. 

Children and soldiers during the Biafran War. Image credit: Biafran.org