Category: Spotlight: Peacebuilding

Cutting down trees illegally to build a mall in San Salvador Sur reveals a form of government without laws, that privileges cronies, does away with transparency and destroys the environment.

San Blas, a neighborhood in Petare in Caracas, is the densest self-produced environment in Spanish-speaking Latin America, home to around 800,000 residents.

Derly Patiño entered the room barefoot, accompanied by a group of victims of Colombia’s armed conflict, to participate in a symbolic act. In her hands, she carried some planters that had been repaired in a manner similar to the Japanese method Kintsugi.

Two hundred and twenty years ago, Haiti blew the conch call of freedom from slavery.

Génesis Salas is a 12-year-old Afro-Colombian girl who lives in a rural area of Medio Atrato, Chocó, a region known for its rich biocultural heritage but also affected by various forms of violence. Children and adolescents frequently drop out of school there, even before finishing grade school, to work in fishing or artisanal mining.

Four months after the January 10, 2010 earthquake that killed more than 316,000 people and left Haiti’s capital a shambles with 1.3 million displaced, researchers from the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development (INURED) convened a meeting with 25 community leaders, aged 17 to 21, from Cité Soleil, a vast shantytown in Port-au-Prince.

I have worked in Haiti under a military dictatorship, in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake and in other crisis periods. 

Peace was “in the air” in Colombia in 2011.

Throughout 2024, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele incessantly repeated that his tough measures against violent gangs finally brought peace to the country.

I’ve spent three decades as an international conflict resolution specialist and have worked on unofficial diplomatic efforts in Colombia, Cuba, the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Libya, Syria and Northern Ireland, among others.  

My first lesson in peacemaking was really about war. I was at the Havana Film Festival in December 1988. 

Latin American societies desire to live in peace. At present, there is no perceived danger of neighboring wars. The region is recognized as a Zone of Peace, denuclearized and without weapons of mass destruction.