The essence of the Peace Taxonomy
The Peace Taxonomy is a vital tool guiding investors and businesses to identify specific changes they aim to achieve in peace and stability. It distinguishes three dimensions of peace impacts, providing clarity and direction for peace-focused investments.
Three dimensions of peace impact
- Safety and security: This dimension focuses on reducing violence and conflict, or the fear thereof, known as negative peace. It encompasses various forms of direct physical violence and includes strategies like policing, law enforcement, peacekeeping and community enforcement. Private-sector investments often contribute indirectly to mitigating these forms of violence, with direct impact in areas like gender-based violence through specific employment policies and community engagement.
- Social peace: Broader and more systemic than safety and security, social peace impacts are crucial for investors due to their operational and reputational relevance. This dimension covers a range of factors, from community inequalities to intercommunal violence, emphasising the need for intentional strategies that go beyond minimum safeguards to create meaningful social peace.
- Political peace: This dimension involves high-level interventions in political relationships and dispute resolution mechanisms. Political peace is often visible in formal peace agreements or legal changes and requires careful consideration by investors to ensure their activities do not exacerbate conflict dynamics in fragile settings.