Founded as a research project, Interpeace has always had thought leadership in peacebuilding embedded in its DNA. For 30 years, Interpeace has driven conceptual innovation to strengthen its fieldwork and advance peacebuilding. As part of its 2021–2025 strategy, Interpeace continued Rethinking Peace by providing innovative approaches to assessing, building, and funding peace.

In 2024, this translated into investing in more robust measurement methods and better integrating comprehensive, innovative tools within a built-for-purpose design. Of Interpeace’s 12 country programmes, five conducted large-scale, mixed-methods data collection efforts. These ranged from assessing the impact of the security crisis on mental health, social cohesion, and livelihoods in Burkina Faso to analysing the perceptions of the National Youth Policy framework and its implementation. Other initiatives included large-scale conflict mapping in Guinea-Bissau to study intergenerational legacies, the transmission processes, and their effects among post‑genocide youth in Rwanda.

In Kigali, two major reports on mental health were presented during a high-level National Policy Dialogue on Mental Health and a stakeholder engagement workshop brought together government institutions (including the Ministry of Health and its affiliated institutions, the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, the National Police, and the Rwanda Investigation Bureau), development partners (including the embassies of France, Sweden, the Netherlands, the European Union, and USAID), as well as representatives of international and local NGOs, academia, and mental health professionals. Attendees highlighted the urgent need to enhance Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) integration into the national public health system to address the persistent trauma stemming from the genocide and its aftermath, as well as to promote intergenerational dialogue to foster reconciliation and resilience. The National Dialogue on Mental Health resulted in the Ministry of Health’s firm commitment to officially adopt group-based trauma healing approaches, such as resilience-oriented therapy developed by Interpeace and its partners, and scale them up in health centres and hospitals across the country.

In Guinea-Bissau, a large scale perception study, designed with the National Youth Institute, focused on relevance and effectiveness of the National Youth Policy. Results were used to produce an analysis discussed with members of the country’s leading youth associations and networks in a workshop, which resulted in a series of recommendations. The recommendations include aligning national youth policy priorities with those of youth organisations, reinforcing the inclusion of youth entrepreneurs and the empowerment of girls, and fostering engagement between policymakers and young people through policy dialogues, training, and awareness-raising campaigns. Further dissemination of the report and these recommendations are being discussed with the National Youth Institute.

At the international level, Interpeace continues to advance its Youth, Peace and Security work. Since the publication of the Missing Peace report in 2018, Interpeace has remained engaged in co-creating peace with young people across the globe. Interpeace is an active member of the Global Coalition on YPS, works closely with youth-led peacebuilding networks such as the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOY), and is a supportive partner to the Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs. 2024 saw the publication of several reports, such as the UNDP report for the 2024 Pact for the Future, to which Interpeace contributed, as well as three policy briefs written by youth and published on Interpeace’s Outside the Box youth platform—one on Sudan, one on Chile, and one evaluating youth representation to the UN.

This work culminated in December 2024 at the CSO-UN Dialogue, where Interpeace organised an annual meeting that brought together more than 120 CSOs, numerous UN entities—including the UN Youth Office—and several Member States, including YPS champion countries such as Finland and Jordan. The results of the CSO-UN Dialogue will feed into the UN Peacebuilding Architecture Review (2025), which is expected to focus on YPS, reinforcing the role that local civil society and young people play in UN policymaking.

Interpeace also heavily focused on Finance for Peace, its trailblazing initiative collaborating with the finance industry and private sector to align investment incentives with peace dividends, fostering sustainable investments that support social cohesion, public goods, and return on investment.

Published in June, the Cadre d'impact du financement de la paix serves as a guide for investors to achieve peace impact and additionality. It has quickly seen uptake, with the African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), and private impact investing companies all adopting the peace finance standards to issue investments that align with both the peace bond standard and peace equity standard—key constitutive parts of the Peace Finance Impact Framework.

Throughout the year, the Peace Finance Standards continued to be widely disseminated to key actors, such as AfDB, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors, and the World Bank, at events including COP28 and COP29, the World Bank Fragility Forum, the UN General Assembly. By the year’s end, four large-scale investments were aligned with the Framework across themes such as climate-sensitive resource management investing, infrastructure development, and the humanitarian-development-peacebuilding nexus.

Interpeace and its partners have also conducted joint research to continue building the evidence base for peace finance in different contexts. This has included a report on Fostering Peace-Positive Private Sector Development and Investment in Mozambique together with AfDB and on Entry-Points for Peace-Positive Investments in Northern Kenya’s Frontier Markets.

Finally, on 27 November 2024, Finance for Peace was officially launched as an independent, standard-setting organisation based in London, UK. The launch event in the City of London, the UK’s financial hub, brought together a full house of impact investing and finance experts alongside peacebuilding and development counterparts to mark this new chapter for Peace Finance. With its independent structure and new brand identity, Finance for Peace is establishing itself as a pioneering institution in London, at the heart of one of the world’s financial capitals. As development assistance declines and multilateral support wanes, private sector financing is becoming increasingly vital to addressing the massive gaps in development and peacebuilding needs in conflict-affected and fragile settings.