Key documents

The action will contribute to strengthening local, national and international peace mediation actors to prepare, mediate, monitor and implement inclusive ceasefires. It will also focus on strengthening local, national and international actors to design and implement peace mediation interventions in crime affected contexts.

The Action focuses on three distinct priority areas. It includes a contribution to the success of the Paris Peace Forum and an increase of the EU visibility for its work on peace and security. The Action also intends to build the resilience of societies in conflict prone environments to potentially harmful content through social media, while protecting freedom of expression and enhancing the promotion of peace. A third priority is to improve the conditions for intercultural dialogue and conflict prevention in Central Asia by enhancing the capacity of key stakeholders to safeguard and protect tangible (movable and immovable) and intangible cultural heritage, as well as promote creative industry and respect for cultural diversity.

 The principal objective of this Action is to strengthen the sustainable, fair and equitable management of natural resources in line with international, regional and national standards, regulations and best practices, in order to contribute to peace building and stabilisation in fragile contexts. This will be achieved via support to legal frameworks and a better understanding of the political economy associated with the management of natural resources. Enhanced meaningful participation of relevant stakeholders will also improve the management of natural and extractive resources in conflict-affected settings. The Action will focus on three main priority areas: 1. Maintenance of the EU’s Kimberley Process Certification Scheme data sharing platform (ADAMAS) 2. Responsible Mineral Supply chains: due diligence for gold and other minerals mining 3. Natural resources, conflict and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The proposed action will help build capacities of relevant actors in improving trust between local populations and security forces. It will improve capacities of security sector actors to deal with security and corruption challenges and hold them accountable through better oversight and inspection to prevent impunity and contribute to the good governance of the defence and security sectors, restoring and strengthening access to security and justice. The action will support and sustain inclusive national Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Security Sector Governance (SSG) processes including dialogue on security sector governance and reform in conflict, post-conflict and fragile countries. It will improve service provision of security forces and law enforcement agencies towards the civilian population, and greater civilian understanding of the respective roles. Particular attention will also be placed on support to the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of former combatants (DDR) in line with the dedicated EU policy, where relevant and appropriate, while maintaining the differences and specificities of SSR and DDR. As a second objective, the Action also intends to contribute to improving national and regional resilience to security risks posed by corruption and poor governance in the security sector.

This Action aims to enhance the EU’s ability to preserve peace, prevent conflict and strengthen international security through an enhanced capacity to detect early signs of conflict and to be better equipped to develop options for prevention and response to conflicts. It will further develop the EU crisis preparedness and response, notably through the production of the Global Conflict Risk Index and crisis mapping. Improving access to data, especially from local sources, for situational awareness and early warning and to gain knowledge, more skills and tools to detect, analyse and monitor risks of conflict will also be prioritised.

The proposed action will thus continue to strengthen the role of civil society as an actor and beneficiary. Through actions implemented by civil society (local civil society organisations, international non-governmental organisations) in conflict-affected contexts, their institutional, operational and networking capacity will be strengthened in three areas relating to conflict prevention and peace-building: i) Trauma healing as a support to transitional justice; ii) Children and armed conflict, including a focus on disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration, and iii) Youth in peace and security. The Action will also provide support to the Civil Society Dialogue Network on Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding for a fifth phase. Support to peacebuilding capacities through strengthening networks of local organisations will be a third priority of the Action.

The seventeenth edition of the Expert Support Facility (ESF) will continue to support the identification, formulation, evaluation and implementation of actions under the Global Threats part of the Peace, Stability and Conflict Prevention Thematic Programme 2021 – 2027. In addition, to ensure a closer monitoring of all components of the Global Threats Programme and strengthen coordination, coherence and complementarity among the various components at regional and trans-regional level, both within the programme itself (internal coherence) and with respect to any other relevant initiative (external coherence). All components will be implemented in full complementarity with bilateral and regional programmes and in coordination with EU Delegations and relevant units in the Directorates-General for International Partnerships (INTPA) and Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR).

This action aims to decrease the evasion of UN Security Council sanctions at sea and related transnational organized crime at sea, at the global level. To this end, the action will support a number of flag registries to reinforce their criminal justice and administrative response to sanctions evasion at sea, including their capacity to monitor their fleet and communicate with foreign law enforcement agencies (navies, coast guards etc.) with the view to interdict suspicious vessels. This action will also support the establishment and operationalisation of the Global Centre countering Sanctions Evasion (GCSE), a process being led by Malta. This action will closely cooperate with CRIMARIO II2 in establishing an information-exchange framework for countering sanctions evasion based on the IORIS maritime coordination, communications and surveillance platform and the SHARE.IT interoperability software developed under CRIMARIO. It will also be implemented in full complementarity with bilateral and regional programmes and in coordination with EU Delegations and relevant units in the Directorates-Generals for International Partnerships (INTPA), Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR) and other Commission services as relevant.

The overall objective of the action is the increased effectiveness of efforts to combat organised crime, illicit trafficking in all its forms, smuggling and disrupting criminal networks along main trafficking routes. This objective will be pursued mainly through the Global Illicit Flows Programme, an umbrella programme under which the support to combating environmental crime, trafficking by sea, and SALW proliferation will be delivered.