Burundi Women’s Grassroots Preventive Mediation

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has recently acknowledged that “backdoor mediation” and grassroots initiatives by non-state, informal actors play an important role in conflict prevention. In Burundi, women’s organizations have set up numerous grassroots initiatives to foster conflict transformation and prevent the reemergence of conflict. An examination of Burundian women’s organizations and Finnish NGOs working in the field of peacemaking and conflict prevention demonstrates that both local and international NGOs can take a variety of actions, jointly or separately, to contribute to conflict prevention in fragile, conflict-torn countries. These actions, however, are not always conceptualized by peacebuilding actors and scholars working in the area as conflict prevention. The novel concept of “preventive mediation” may better capture the wide variety of such activities.