Paris Peace Forum: FPI actions to support peace, fight misinformation, and promote justice and reconciliation

Like in previous years, FPI will participate actively in this edition, and make the case for dialogue and international cooperation to find effective solutions to global challenges.

Our world is facing an increasing number of global challenges, from armed conflicts, to climate change, pandemics, organised crime, migrants’ smuggling, or insecurity in the cyberspace. “This Forum is particularly important because of its global agenda, stresses Peter M. Wagner, Head of the European Commission’s service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), and we are taking an active part to exchange ideas, propose concrete solutions to problems that threaten peace, our democracies and our future, and seek synergies between our actions and those of others”.

Peter M. Wagner will open an FPI-organised high-level panel on the role of women combatants in armed conflicts and peace building efforts. The audience will have the privilege of hearing first-person stories of women combatants from the Philippines, Ukraine, and Somalia. These women will speak about their experiences as fighters and the challenges they faced or are facing. They will also put into perspective the need to give women a greater role in peace process, to ensure that it is fair, inclusive, and lasting. He will also participate in the panel “Africa-Europe relations in the context of instability and geopolitical rivalry”.

FPI is also taking part in the Paris Peace Forum Solutions Space, where governance projects proposing concrete actions and methods to respond to global challenges are presented. This is an opportunity for organisations to explain how they make an impact, to create lasting change and to create new synergies. Three projects from the global FPI-supported portfolio have been invited to Paris this year:

• The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) campaigns against misinformation. “Our main objective, explains Sandra Petrovic from HD, is to minimise the harmful effects of social media on peace processes and armed conflict”. HD has negotiated agreements to increase standards, encourage appropriate online behaviour and a commitment by the parties involved in the conflict in countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Nigeria. This is crucial to make more ethical use of social media.

• The DALIL platform - created by Siren Analytics - which is deployed throughout the Middle East and North Africa, will also be present at the PPF. This platform campaigns for a decentralized access to media monitoring and verification online tools. “To achieve this, explains SIREN partner Theodore Caponis, we collect over 350 sources of information, mainly in Arabic. Then we have a verification area to assess the reliability of the images, videos and texts published". Youth is the target audience of their activities given that this group  actively uses social media as a source of information. “What is needed, insists Mr. Caponis, is compliance with the recommendations of the EU Code of Practice on misinformation. Platforms that do not respect these standards should be held accountable".

• UNITAD is another programme supported by FPI. This team of investigators is inquiring the crimes of the Islamic State in Iraq. They collect and preserve documents abandoned by Daesh and that can be used as evidence in future legal proceedings.

Find out more:

Paris Peace Forum 2023