Guinea Bissau

Context

For the last two decades, Guinea-Bissau has experienced major political turmoil, with successive coups and recurrent confrontations between political authorities and the military and within the political sphere. State dysfunctionality has a strong negative impact on the country’s society at large, as well as on international support to civil society, inhibiting sustainable peacebuilding and development. In 2007, Interpeace set up a peacebuilding programme in collaboration with a local partner, Voz di Paz. Through a national consultation process, Voz di Paz engaged over 6,000 Bissau-Guineans to identify the main obstacles to lasting peace in the country. Bissau-Guineans identified the lack of effective state institutions, political and institutional instability, poor administration of justice, social exclusion and a weak culture of dialogue as some of the root causes of conflict. As a result of this foundational study, the programme currently works in two main axes: conflict prevention and resolution and good governance.

Goal


Interpeace’s programme in Guinea-Bissau, implemented together with local partner Voz di Paz, aims to stimulate citizen engagement for good governance and peacebuilding, with a special focus on the most excluded groups of society.

Initiatives


Conflict prevention and resolution

Interpeace and Voz di Paz have been working to foster conflict prevention and resolution capacity at the local, regional and national level  and to promote more inclusive formal and informal conflict resolution mechanisms . With these objectives, in the past years the programme fostered cross-group dialogue around traditional justice practices, carried out a participatory analysis on traditional ...



Promoting good governance

Interpeace programme has a strong focus on promoting inclusive democratic governance and dialogue between citizens and institutions in key sectors. In the past years the programme focused on  creating  mechanisms and building capacities to empower citizens to monitor, evaluate and advocate for adequate public policies in the justice sector, and to integrate traditional justice into the justice s...


Programme Manager

For more information about the Guinea-Bissau country-programme, please contact the Programme Manager.

Resources

Voz di Paz Brochure

Publication

15 January 2019

Fala di Mindjer – The voices of women

Publication

30 October 2018

Fala di Mindjer

video

22 March 2018

Fala di Mindjer

Publication

3 October 2017

Voz di Paz – A network for peace

Publication

2 December 2015