Challenges Forum Webinar “Regional organizations and political missions: cross-regional learning in fostering peacebuilding” at the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development
On 22 May 2020 the Challenges Forum hosted an open webinar on ‘Regional Organizations and Political Missions: Cross-regional Learning in fostering peacebuilding’ at the 2020 Virtual Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development arranged by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This year, as last year, the Challenges Forum was invited to host a panel discussion at the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development arranged by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs each year in Stockholm, Sweden. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 this year’s forum was hosted virtually. Challenges Forum hosted a virtual panel discussion on regional peacebuilding architectures and the effectiveness of political missions.
Borja Paladini Adell 
Dr. Roselyn Akombe 
Gustavo de Carvalho
Participating in the panel were:
- Dr. Roselyn Akombe Chief of Policy, Guidance and Learning, Policy and Mediation Division (PMD), United Nations Department for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA)
- Borja Paladini Adell Residence Fellow at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo leading the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network’s (EPON) evaluation of the UN Special Political Mission in Colombia and lecturer in Peacebuilding Practice at Colombian and Spanish Universities
- Gustavo de Carvalho, Senior Researcher, Challenges Forum Partner, Peace Operations and Peacebuilding Programme, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, South Africa
Benoît Pylyser 
Sharon Wiharta
The chair of the session was Sharon Wiharta, Senior Peace Operation Specialist at Challenges Forum International Secretariat (CFIS) and Benoît Pylyser, Strategic Adviser at CFIS moderated the discussions.
The discussion focused on national ownership and building bottom-up legitimacy in peace building processes and how regional organizations and the UN can bridge top-down and bottom-up approaches. Continued high-level strategic engagement as well as complementarity and comparative advantage between the UN and regional organizations was highlighted as vital moving forward. In addition, a number of forward-looking concrete recommendations were made on AU peacebuilding efforts. Key highlights from the discussion can be downloaded below.
The full webinar has been published on our YouTube-channel and is available to watch below.