Philanthropy's role in a fragmenting world - Alliance magazine

As the world turns in ever more dramatic fashion, very few of us can say our lives are untouched by conflict. While growing numbers of people – equivalent to a landmass double the size of India – now live in conflict zones, all of us live under the shadow of war.

We are living through a profound shift in the global order. A logic of might is right has reasserted itself, bringing forth state violence as a legitimate means of political control. Fear and intimidation have become routine tools of diplomacy and governance. Beyond the steep decline in international funding lies the more insidious erosion of values essential to peace: harmony, compassion, and solidarity.

Peacebuilding has become more difficult due to the narrowing of civic space: regulatory constraints on international funding, intimidation of activists, and direct threats to philanthropic support for progressive causes. Many people across the philanthropic sector feel an undercurrent of anxiety as resources for building a safe world based on mutual understanding shrink, while military spending continues to swell.

In a world order under question and attack, an urgent question is what role can philanthropy play in creating space for hope and possibility in an increasingly fragmenting world? How can it invest in the human relationships and capacities that make peace possible? Our recently co-published white paper, New Dialogues for Peace, explores these questions and offers a participatory process for finding answers.

What philanthropy is already doing

Many of the answers are found in the work philanthropy is already doing. When we examined the philanthropic landscape, we found compelling evidence that philanthropy already supports locally rooted approaches to conflict transformation. These include:

• Supporting community-led conflict transformation
• Amplifying women’s leadership and participation in peace processes
• Sustaining remembrance and cultural dialogue as sources of learning and solidarity in post-conflict contexts
• Building a story of recovery, reintegration and community healing

Much of this work happens far from formal peace tables and international institutions. Although often unseen, philanthropy at its best offers a powerful counterpoint to the repeated failures of top-down approaches to peacebuilding led by official agencies.

At this point, it is vital to note that philanthropy faces real limitations. The main one is size, scale, and reach. According to two surveys, Philanthropy for a Safe, Healthy and Just World, one conducted in 2019/20 and the other in 2023/24, peacebuilding is a low-priority area of foundations’ grantmaking. Even so, many foundations support relevant work even though they may not classify it as such. The white paper suggests that this offers an opportunity to rethink how we understand conflict, peacebuilding, and the role of philanthropy.

Rethinking conflict

Conflict rarely arrives neatly labelled. It enters our lives through social division, toxic politics, sectarianism, gendered and domestic violence, crime, state repression, casteism, and the slaughter of whole populations as a result of ever-growing war.

Philanthropic responses, accordingly, are plural, relational and tailored to specific contexts.

Much of philanthropy’s most effective work does not align with a military or traditional diplomatic models of peacebuilding in which formal treaties are the key instrument. Instead, philanthropy operates at the level of everyday life – supporting the activist community through which peace is sustained. Peace does not endure because leaders shake hands or sign deals. It endures because people in affected communities continue to repair relationships, hold memory, create dialogue and resist violence in its many forms.

Embracing this broader understanding of peacebuilding and conflict-transformation does not require ever more diagnostic tools or complex frameworks. It requires something humbler and harder: *a deeper attentiveness to where peace is built, by whom, and how philanthropy can stand alongside it. *

Holding the micro and the macro together

Understanding the many facets of conflict- transformation opens up opportunity for philanthropy to connect micro-level action with macro-level change. To take an example at the micro level, consider the Dalia Association. This community foundation in the West Bank, working amid the devastation and grief to embed a vision of giving and resilience in Palestinian society. It gives priority to Palestinian control over resources and the right of local people to shape their own development.

However, in the context of asymmetric warfare, local action, while essential, is not sufficient. Structural issues such as regulation of drone warfare cannot be tackled solely at a local level. Here, philanthropy can support initiatives that are not locally rooted but have outsized positive impacts on communities. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust’s work at the macro level is one such example, particularly its support for – the Bureau of Investigative Journalism – which has worked on accountability for armed drone use, as well as Airwars and Every Casualty Counts who run the Casualty Recorders Network.

Though operating at different levels, Dalia and JRCT are both grappling with systems but in different ways. Together, they illustrate how philanthropy can hold the micro and macro in constant relationship – ensuring that conflict transformation remains responsive to immediate needs while addressing the conditions that drive violence.

In the white paper, we propose two approaches that facilitate these shifts.

Foresight, not firefighting

The first is foresight. Too often, philanthropy engages with conflict only once violence has erupted. Yet our research shows that many of the drivers of war are visible long before shots are fired.

One of the clearest examples is toxic division. Statistical analysis from our surveys indicates that the single strongest predictor of violent conflict is polarisation within societies. These are often the places experiencing the closing of civic space, now affecting around three-quarters of the world. Toxicity, left unchecked, turns into violence.

This is why the white paper integrates Philea’s work on futures thinking: encouraging philanthropy to look ahead, not simply to react. Futures thinking pushes funders out of their comfort zones. It challenges assumptions, surfaces uncomfortable questions, and invites philanthropy to imagine itself not only as responding to crises but also as a participant in preventing them.

An invitation to dialogue

Second, we need to have better conversations. The possibilities for philanthropy to contribute meaningfully to a more just, peaceful and secure world already exist. What is required is a shift in how we see, how we listen and how we relate.

This is why the final approach we offer is an invitation to participate in dialogue: across geographies, traditions, and practices; between different experiences of conflict; and among the many ways peace is imagined and enacted. Dialogue enables nuance and complexity to emerge, laying the groundwork for the paths to achieve them.

New Dialogues for Peace is therefore not a technical report. It is an invitation: to deepen philanthropy’s understanding of its role in a fragmenting world, and to consciously engage with it.

Chandrika Sahai is the Director of Bridging Dialogues, an international initiative dedicated to strengthening the ecosystem of support for community-based peacebuilding.

Barry Knight is secretary to Centris Trustees.