Why the question matters now
Maintaining international peace and security is the first purpose of the United Nations, and the word peace appears in the Charter, in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in A New Agenda for Peace and in the Pact for the Future. Yet researchers do not agree on what peace is. A 2024 review in International Studies Review identified 61 distinct concepts of peace in the research literature. In 2025, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program recorded more state-based armed conflicts than in any year since 1946, and the 2026 Global Peace Index recorded a twelfth consecutive annual decline in global peacefulness.
Member States commit to peace in their resolutions, and law, mandates and indicators are meant to contribute to it. But without a clear account of what peace is, it is hard to tell whether they do. The Institute exists to work on that question. It studies how the concept of peace is defined and used in research, law, policy and practice. Its aim is to identify the common ground these understandings share and to articulate it as a comprehensive theory of change for global peace. The Institute does not seek to impose a single definition or to add another. It examines how far actors at all levels, from intergovernmental bodies to religious leaders and local communities, already pursue the same ends. It is also to state that common ground clearly enough that others can test it against their own conceptions. Where it holds, they can use it to judge whether laws, policies and programmes genuinely serve peace. Stated in this way, the common ground would allow their efforts to reinforce rather than compete with one another.
We start from a hope that is also a working assumption: that war is not humanity’s fate. The Seville Statement on Violence, drafted by scientists in 1986 and adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1989, concludes that “biology does not condemn humanity to war”. The Constitution of UNESCO holds that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. The Institute works on the premise that peace will become easier to build sustainably as it becomes better understood.
Thanks
The Institute is grateful to the Research Trainees who have volunteered their time to its work since 2025, to the organizers of the workshops at which it presented, and to the panellists of its side event at the Human Rights Council. The Institute is independent and seeks voluntary contributions to carry out its work. Contributions that are flexible and committed for several years would allow us to plan comprehensive research programmes that typically take years to complete.
Anders Reagan
Director, Institute for Global Peacecraft