Paper: ICT for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding

SRI LANK -- Information Communications Technology (ICT) in South Asia, as well as in the rest of the world, is an experiment in progress. Reading the wealth of literature on ICT, it is easy to forget that it is not a panacea for problems facing developing nations.

However, peacebuilding processes in particular can be greatly strengthened if organisations, peoples and regions are connected in effective multi-sectoral and peace building networks and provided with active and open knowledge banks - with instant access to effective peace building approaches and case studies. ICT, in the context of peacebuilding, is the use of enabling technologies to augment existing stakeholder interventions, enable marginalised actors to participate more fully in peacebuilding processes.

By building local, regional and national peacebuilding networks between and within government, local authorities, political stakeholders, civil society and international support and resource institutions, ICT has the potential to shape powerful conflict transformation partnerships.

This study argues that the defining characteristic of ICT in peacebuilding is that it enables information flows that not only radically subvert existing patterns of knowledge flows and power centres, but in empowering organisations, groups and individuals to produce and share information between others (and within sectors), helps bring a greater degree of cohesion, transparency and accountability to processes of conflict transformation that were hitherto unthinkable.

Untying the Gordian Knot: ICT for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding, is a paper from Sanjana Hattotuwa, Strategic Manager, Info Share (Sri Lanka).