Values, Ethics and Trust in Peacebuilding Network

Governance necessary to promote peaceful society and access to justice as proposed in the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 would require trust as it provides a foundation for interpersonal and impersonal relationships, collaboration and institutional stability. However, trust is often broken both at interpersonal and impersonal levels in conflict-affected society and many peacebuilders and peace researchers view the lack of trust as a key challenge for peacebuilding in both research and practice.

Trust is considered to be about taking risk arisen from others' behaviour and inter-reliance. Institutions can provide safety and security in the process of interpersonal interactions to enable trust, such as procedural ethics underpinned by values of fairness, respect, care and honesty. However, such institutional based trust would not suffice, especially in conflict-affected society, and other conditions such as one's belief system developed through life experiences and the history of specific relationships impact on the ability to trust.

Reflecting on our ethics in practice is one step forward in this direction to enhance trust in research and practice of peacebuilding. Furthermore, our ethics are underpinned by our values although values are seldom discussed among peacebuilding researchers or practitioners. This crucial interconnection between values, ethics and trust to improve peacebuilding efforts and research has not received sufficient attention from peace academics and practitioners. To address this overlooked space, we seek to create a new network on values, ethics and trust in peacebuilding by bringing together scholars and practitioners working on peacebuilding research and activity across the world to better understand unspoken values and assumptions that underpin our ethics in practice and how our practised ethics may impact trust in our peacebuilding work. In essence, we want to research the researcher and encourage early career and PhD researchers from our networks.

We will begin by unpacking our values that are often unspoken in an introductory workshop with the use of a film, circle, and 'giving voice to value' presentation. Second, third and fourth workshops will be held in the Philippines, Kenya and the UK (joined by other participants virtually) developed and led by the project investigators from Asia, Africa and Europe and participated by practitioners from their regional networks and other investigators' networks. Using different topics and methods suitable for the regional contexts, including art-based methods, we will uncover various themes and issues around values, ethics and trust. Fifth, and final, workshop will bring together the discovery from the previous workshops to sketch a journal article on values, ethics and trust in peacebuilding and develop a research agenda for the newly developed network to apply for funding opportunities.

The project will produce four types of outputs through collaborative writing for a wide engagement with the crucial interlinkage between values, ethics and trust in peacebuilding as well as for capacity building. Firstly, we will publish a think piece from each workshop on freely available online platforms. Secondly, we will publish Little Book of Values, Morals, Ethics and Trust for Peace-Related Research, which will be part manifesto and part practical guide, featuring case studies from workshops participants and images collected during the workshops, under Creative Commons license allowing for maximum uptake and translation. Thirdly, we will create films capturing the process and reflections of participants during the network activities and distribute them through the CTPSR YouTube channel. Fourthly, we will submit two journal articles, one on uncovering our values and another on values, ethics and trust in peacebuilding, to relevant academic journals.