“Diaspora Organizations from the Horn of Africa in Norway: Contributions to Peacebuilding?”

Authors: Cindy Horst, Mohamed Husein Gaas
Date: Winter 2009

In this policy brief, ‘peacebuilding’ refers to activities aimed at the sustainable transformation of structural conflict factors and patterns. It presupposes a long-term commitment, on the part of both local and external actors, to a process that simultaneously addresses the material and the attitudinal level of a conflict. Diaspora organizations’ engagements with peacebuilding can take many forms and can be divided into direct and indirect activities.Direct activities focus on the country of origin directly and include material support, advocacy and lobbying in the country of origin, institutional support, and capacity-building. Indirect activities focus on the country of origin through mediating actors and include disseminating information to decisionmakers and ‘the public at large’ about the situation in
the home country, lobbying with intergovernmental and state institutions to place an issue on the international agenda or to take action unilaterally, and pressuring NGOs to start campaigning against human rights abuses and the like.

PRIO Policy Brief 2-2009