Building Peace through an Urban Lens

We were truly honoured to have such distinguished speakers at our Peace Panel “Building Peace through an Urban Lens”, held on October 17th in the framework of the Geneva Peace Week.

Most sincere thanks to Mayor Issa Kassis, AlHakam Shaar, Antonio Sampaio for your compelling presentations. It was fascinating to hear what peace means at the local level in three distinct contexts: Ramallah-Palestine, a city under occupation; Aleppo-Syria, a city destroyed by the war; and cities facing rapid urbanization and urban predation by criminal organizations.

Building peace at city level is not made through formal peace processes with people sitting around a table and signing peace agreements. In cities, where a lot of people congregate to take advantage of socio-economic opportunities and to get access to water, energy, education, health, etc., peace needs to be built day after day, through small steps that constitute the lives of urban dwellers. At a city level, peace is a matter of urban development and urban governance.

In the context of occupation, the Mayor of Ramallah talked about all the challenges that his local government is facing, including the need to wait for 12 years to get Israel’s approval for the land necessary to have a cemetery in Ramallah or the difficulty for municipal trucks transporting solid waste to get access to the landfill, although it is only 50 km away from Ramallah. Peace requires mobility of people and of trade. In spite of the challenging context, the Mayor of Ramallah strives to give hope to his highly educated people, to foster peace by making Ramallah – the economic and administrative capital of Palestine – a “model city”, with free internet in the streets and municipal facilities, with numerous public parks and festivals, with the first innovation hub in the Middle East ran by a municipality. Eventually, people should live for Palestine, not die for it.

UN Habitat underlined that how cities are planned, governed, and managed directly impacts the levels of violence and security. The regulation of resources, public spaces, and overall engagement with local communities plays a significant role in the production or prevention of violence. UN habitat considers urban security as part of the larger development challenge and that’s why it is working with local governments on issues of land, housing, infrastructure, and basic services.

Although there is no fighting in Aleppo today, “there is only an illusion of peace”, according to AlHakam. The city suffered significant destruction during the war, in particular its Eastern part held by the rebels. AlHakam introduced the notion of “urbicide” as the act of “killing a city”. As such, it’s not only about killing people, but also targeted destruction of the built environment, as well as the deprivation of services and assistance to certain categories of people (in particular those residing in Eastern Aleppo). The situation remains complicated in the whole of Syria today, but prospects for peace still exist. For that, people need to move freely to go back, rebuild their homes and restore urban life. What we need is to enable people to do so and international organizations engaging in Syria’s reconstruction should condition their support in that regard. Urban development will help foster peace.

Talking about the urbanization of conflicts, Antonio Sampaio referred to the very concrete physical implications for urban dwellers: it creates new boundaries and divisions within cities, where people used to mingle together. Further, while urbanization results in more conflicts in cities, peacebuilders should also take it into account that a lot of new cities emerge in areas affected by conflict (mainly due to people’s displacement triggered by conflict in the region). Then, in cities with rapid and massive urbanization, local governments are not always able to provide public services on the whole territory, thereby leaving some areas to predatory practices by criminal gangs. These pose severe threats to urban security (physical violence) but also in a longer-term, criminal gangs may infiltrate institutions and take control of municipal services in certain areas. While the response has usually been focused on policing and repression, Antonio emphasized that these issues should be looked at through the lens of urban governance, providing the necessary services and infrastructure to ensure urban peace.