This week, Trump holds off on meeting with Putin after Russia rejects frontline freeze. DRC and Rwanda meet in Washington to revive peace efforts. Trump envoy discusses peace prospects in Libya and Sudan.
Trump Holds Off on Meeting With Putin After Russia Rejects Frontline Freeze
US President Donald Trump is holding off on meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Russia rejected Trump’s call on October 21 to freeze the current frontline in the Russia-Ukraine war. Eleven European leaders signed a joint statement saying they “strongly support” US President Donald Trump’s position that “the fighting should stop immediately, and that the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov communicated that Russia opposed an immediate ceasefire.
Trump said that he would hold off on a meeting with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” The Associated Press reports that Trump’s hesitancy to meet with Putin came as a relief to the European leaders who signed the statement. The leaders have accused Putin of stalling for time while he works to gain more ground in Ukraine.
The leaders, including the British prime minister, French president, and German chancellor, oppose any pressure on Ukraine to give up land that Russia has captured in return for peace, as Trump has recently suggested.
DRC and Rwanda Meet in Washington to Revive Peace Efforts
Representatives from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda met in Washington on October 21 and 22 for the third session of the Joint Security Coordination Mechanism (JCSM), established as part of the peace agreement signed on June 27. The meeting aimed to evaluate how to further advance the agreement’s implementation. The two countries were joined by the United States, Qatar, and the African Union Commission.
Previous meetings had concluded with both sides agreeing to a ‘Concept of Operations’ (CONOPS), which outlines steps toward military and security cooperation. Building on the CONOPS, the parties laid out a framework for neutralizing the Rwandan Hutu rebel group the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
JCSM members made plans to monitor progress and deal with challenges, and confirmed the fourth JSCM would be held on November 19-20.
This news comes after, on October 14, the DRC and M23 armed group agreed to establish an international group to oversee the ceasefire they agreed to in July.
Trump Envoy Discusses Peace in Libya and Sudan
US President Donald Trump’s senior envoy Massad Boulos discussed peace prospects in Libya and Sudan, Business Insider reported on October 21.
When discussing the need to stabalize Libya, which has been unstable since the assassination of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, Boulos said “We think it’s achievable.” Although he acknowledged that peace processes cannot be “implemented overnight,” he also said, “I hope that this process moves fast.”
While discussing the humanitarian crisis in El Fasher, Sudan, which has been under siege since April 2023, Boulos said that lifting the seige and negotiating a ceasefire was a “top priority.”
In a world where peace conferences are often dominated by policymakers and government officials from the Global North, a new kind of gathering took place last week from October 13 to 17 in Nairobi, Kenya, which aimed to put local peacebuilders at the heart of the conversation. Titled Peace Connect and organized by Peace Direct, a leading international peacebuilding NGO, the gathering (“not conference,” as the organizers emphasized) drew over 550 participants from 85 countries, with the majority of attendees from the African content.
Dylan Mathews, Peace Direct’s CEO, explained the motivation behind the gathering. “Most peace conferences are held in places like London, Washington, or Geneva, and the people who attend are rarely those directly affected by conflict,” he said. “We wanted to do things differently—decenter Global North expertise and put the spotlight on local peacebuilders who are living through these conflicts and finding solutions.”
Unlike traditional conferences, the event intentionally limited the number of Global North participants, and avoided the usual plenary sessions featuring high-profile policymakers. Instead, the focus was on creating an environment where local peacebuilders could share experiences, build solidarity, and learn from one another. The event centered on grassroots peacebuilding and its organization, and mainly involved small scale discussions. In some ways, the gathering itself was a prototype for reshaping global conflict resolution – local, bottom up, collaborative and inclusive of marginalized voices.
Building a Global Peacebuilder’s Ecosystem
One of the gathering’s primary objectives was to foster solidarity—not just across borders, but within countries where civil society is often fragmented. “It’s important for activists from the same country to connect and realize they’re part of something bigger,” Mathews noted. “We want people to leave here knowing they have a global network of support.”
Through solidarity spaces, participants shared personal stories and strategies, highlighting both the challenges and the agency of local communities. “It’s not just about doom and gloom,” Mathews emphasized. “It’s about what people are doing to make a difference.” The event also aimed to raise the profile of conflicts that rarely make international headlines—a goal shared by Peace News Network (PNN).
While the gathering covered a range of topics, three themes that were especially prominent focused on decolonizing peacebuilding, indigenous peacebuilding, and entrepreneurial peacebuilding. The three themes tie closely together and form an overall philosophy about current peacebuilding practice and how it could be transformed to be more effective and sustainable, especially in a world of shrinking aid funding for peacebuilding from the Global North.
Central Themes
While the decolonization of peacebuilding may sound like a far-left notion at first, it speaks to the failures of the current global peacebuilding system, which is based on asymmetric concentrations of knowledge and power in the Global North, and their unidirectional flow to the Global South. These relations are often historic and remnants of colonialism from past decades and centuries, which are still sustained even with the end of official colonies.
For peacebuilding, these relations are rooted in assumptions that the West is the source of expertise for solving conflicts globally, and that the Global South lacks the capacity to solve its own conflicts. This also manifests in the flow of funding for peacebuilding, which usually involves Westerners who parachute in to implement their latest programs, with locals playing the role of passive recipients.
The decolonization of peacebuilding aims to turn current practice and its assumptions on their heads, and allow local knowledge and practices to dominate and drive the process.
At Peace Connect, the organizations and individuals participating, and most of the discussions organized, explored how to break this colonial legacy and implement solutions based on a post-colonial future. Many of the participants, in fact, were those pioneering such practice, including many involved in the use of indigenous peacebuilding.
Indigenous peacebuilding involves the use of traditional pre-colonial methods to resolve conflicts. Indeed, much evidence shows that the people native to various countries already had a rich history of solving disputes before colonial powers arrived, and that these approaches, which were often discarded as outdated and unscientific by colonial powers, have a track record of working effectively in their local contexts.
Another key theme of the gathering revolved around shrinking funding sources for peacebuilding, highlighted by the closure of USAID and reallocation of aid funding to defense funding in many Western capitals. While this raised much concern and fears amongst participants about their ability to sustain their work—with many organizations and projects already shut down or shrunk significantly—it also forced discussions about new opportunities to find alternative funding sources, which could ideally be local and sustainable, thus allowing for a financial decolonization.
Many were inspired by examples of organizations who had engaged in peacebuilding entrepreneurship, and found new revenue sources based on meeting local needs. Could such success stories inspire others in different settings? A key goal of this gathering was to learn from each other and not only build networks of support, but also learn lessons about best practices.
A Message of Hope Amidst Uncertainty
As the gathering drew to a close, many participants left with a renewed spirit of purpose and a sense of greater hope for the future. According to Mathews, “amidst all the despair and gloom, we must hold on to hope. The 550 people here show what’s possible…Their work can be scaled and replicated, proving that a more peaceful world is within reach.”
In the face of unrelenting violence and insecurity across Nigeria’s rural regions, particularly in the North-West, communities are beginning to chart a new path to peace not through force or arms, but through dialogue, reconciliation, and community-led solutions.
In places like Batsari in Katsina State, the town of Udawa in Kaduna, and the community of Birnin Gwari, decades of conflict between locals and herders known as bandits are being replaced with fragile but growing cooperation driven not by military might, but by mutual understanding.
In states like Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kaduna. killings and kidnappings for ransom have become rampant especially in remote rural communities. In 2024, around 1,380 violent events and 3,980 fatalities were recorded in the North-West region where the states are located. The conflicts are linked to banditry even though the origin is the herder-farmer crisis.
Despite the use of kinetic approaches, approaches involving physical force, by local authorities against attackers—who are mostly Fulani herders—the situation has persisted for years. But conditions are now changing following the use of local, non-kinetic solutions for a sustainable peace.
Turning Away from Guns: The Batsari Example
Batsari, a farming community in Katsina State, was once plagued by constant clashes between locals and Fulani herders. What military interventions couldn’t solve, the people of Batsari have addressed through a peace process built on dialogue, trust-building, and shared community rules.
“For us, this truce is a blessing,” said Hassan Dogon Faci, a local leader and farmer. “Previously, the use of kinetic approaches did not help us from the loss of lives we suffered until we, the people of Batsari, decided that adopting a non-kinetic approach is the solution for us.”
Nine months since the truce was established, Batsari has not recorded a single violent incident. Fulani herders and Hausa farmers now share marketplaces and farmland once again.
Hassan recalls how divisive the conflict had become. “The herders, the Fulani themselves, could not come into the village market to trade, and we farmers could not go to our farms in the bush. If we went to the farm, they would drive us away or kidnap someone for ransom.”
Now, villages like Nahuta, once dangerous due to its location deep in the forest, are thriving. Fulani and Hausa youth work side by side, even in newly discovered mineral sites. Farmers are returning to lands long abandoned, and herders graze their animals without fear of reprisal.
“We made rules,” Dogon Faci explained, “that everyone should avoid any act that could cause disagreement between themselves and their neighbours.” He added, “Let them tend their animals without harming the farmers, and farmers should go into their farms in the bush peacefully.”
Dogon Faci said the herders are now allowed to bring their animals into town markets without harassment to sell. The success in Batsari is now influencing neighboring communities like Funtua , Malumfashi, Safana and Dan Musa, where similar peace processes are being adopted.
“If all those suffering conflict in Katsina State would use this kind of non-kinetic approach, there would be relief,” he added.
Udawa: From Bloodshed to Dialogue
In Udawa Town, Kaduna State, Imam Hussaini Udawa, a community leader, remembers years of bloodshed that neither security forces nor armed reprisals could stop. “Force was used to resolve the crisis, but the killings continued from both parties until we, the community, on our own, decided to apply the non-kinetic approach, ” he said.
According to him, peace only began to return when both sides sat down to address the underlying causes of conflict, not just the symptoms.
A reconciliation meeting between locals and Fulani herders in Udawa Village of Kaduna State as part of the non kinetic approach to address the conflict in the area. Pictures by Mohammed Ibrahim.
Today, Udawa residents can farm deep in the bush without fear of attack. The once-deadly Kaduna-Birnin Gwari highway, previously notorious for kidnappings and ambushes, is now safe to travel even at night.
He lauded the Peace Model accord applied by the Kaduna State Government with the non-state actors terrorizing local communities through use of non kinetic approaches to address the insecurity in rural areas. “As for using kinetic approaches to conflicts, it usually leads to destruction,” he concluded, “hence the need to also consider using non-kinetic approaches in some instances.”
Birnin Gwari: Solutions Lie in Sustainable Peace Through Reconciliations
Few places illustrate the limitations of military action more clearly than Birnin Gwari, a border community straddling Kaduna and Niger States. Years of kinetic interventions have failed to deliver sustainable peace, leading local leaders to adopt a more holistic, inclusive path.
Ishaq Usman Kasai, Chairman of the Birnin Gwari–Niger Inter-Border Community for Peace and Development, argues that while force may provide temporary relief, it cannot create lasting solutions. “Over the years, if you take Birnin Gwari for example, these conflicts between locals and herders have been addressed several times and every time after action is taken through a kinetic approach, the problem resurfaces.”
But the community now focuses on reconciliation, economic reintegration, and youth engagement at the local and state levels. Kasai emphasizes the importance of restoring livelihoods for both herders and farmers. Many Fulani families have lost livestock during the conflict, while farmers have watched their crops rot in inaccessible fields. This economic strain only fuels criminal recruitment.
“People have suffered problems affecting their livestock activities. We know the Fulani [herders] are involved and there must be a way to help them revive those activities,” he said.
But there have also been setbacks to the non-kinetic approach. “Because of failure to follow the established system and the loss of respect for the agreements that had been made, things began to fall apart,” he said.
For the process to work, Kasai insists, governments must show genuine commitment for a lasting sustainable peace. He recommends establishing formal peace frameworks, cross-boundary cooperation, and investing in youth, women, and traditional leadership to sustain non-kinetic peacebuilding efforts.
Peace Advocates Call for a Paradigm Shift
Samson Auta, a peace advocate with the Interfaith Mediation Centre in Nigeria, views the turn toward non-kinetic solutions as not just beneficial, but essential.
“Kinetic action only deals with the symptoms of violence. Non-kinetic methods, conversely, target the underlying political, economic, and social grievances like marginalization, injustice, and lack of resources that drive people to violence in the first place.”
Military deployments often result in collateral damage, he warns, and create long-term mistrust between security forces and the population. “Non-kinetic interventions like dialogue, mediation and development are generally more cost-effective and yield sustainable results.”
Auta also highlights the growing use of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in rural communities, where elders and leaders form peace committees to mediate disputes and prevent escalation. “These small and simple efforts help to directly reduce the pool of vulnerable youth as easy tools for recruitment by various interest groups.”
Empowering communities through education, health services, and agricultural development, he adds, is key to building resilience against conflict. “An educated and economically viable population is less vulnerable to manipulation and the recruitment tactics of any sort of views that propagate instability in communities.”
He emphasizes that non-kinetic strategies do more than just stop conflict, they rebuild social fabrics and create a long-term foundation for peace.
Doha, Qatar, where a deal was signed between the Congolese government and M23.
This week, the first phase of the Gaza peace deal. After Gaza peace deal, a spark of hope for Ukraine and Russia. Congolese government and M23 agree on body to monitor ceasefire.
However, the path to peace remains long and arduous, and several key issues have not been resolved. One of these issues is whether Hamas will disarm, and another is the extent of Israel’s troop withdrawal. As of October 16, Hamas had returned the remains of nine of 28 known deceased hostages, saying that these were all the deceased hostages the group could reach and that it would need specialist recovery equipment to retrieve the rest from Gaza’s ruins.
Meanwhile, the UN estimates that the damage in the Gaza strip amounts to US$7 billion. Jaco Cilliers, UN Development Programme special representative for the Palestinians, told BBC that Gaza’s destruction level is now “in the region of 84%. In certain parts of Gaza, like in Gaza City, it’s even up to 92%.”
Qatar’s prime minister said in an interview with The New York Timesthat the mediators who helped reach the ceasefire deal decided to delay talks on more difficult issues because the warring parties weren’t ready for a comprehensive agreement.
It remains to be seen what next steps Israelis and Palestinians will take in resolving the conflict and building peace.
After Gaza Peace Deal, a Spark of Hope for Ukraine and Russia
Following US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace deal, Trump has said that his next priority is peace between Ukraine and Russia. During a phone call, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Donald Trump to broker peace in Ukraine like in “the Middle East.”
During a pone call on October 11, Zelenskyy urged Trump to pressure the Kremlin into negotiations, saying, “If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well, including the Russian war,”
On October 14, the Kremlin said it welcomed Trump’s aim to focus on ending the fighting in Ukraine after achieving a ceasefire in Gaza.
Congolese Government and M23 Agree on Body to Monitor Ceasefire
On October 14, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the M23 armed group agreed to establish an international group to oversee the ceasefire they agreed to in July.
The body will include an equal number of representatives from the Congolese government and M23. It will also include representatives from the 12-country International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.
Congolese officials said the deal was signed in Doha after mediation by Qatar, DW reported. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry described the deal as a “pivotal step” toward a comprehensive peace agreement in eastern DRC, saying the body will “investigate and verify reported violations … and communicate with relevant parties to prevent a resumption of hostilities.”
The ceasefire so far has not been upheld, and since June, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has recorded around 1,087 civilians killed during violence in Ituri and North Kivu.
A street in Mali, photo by Faruk Tokluoğlu via Pexels.
For over a decade, Mali has been caught in a complex conflict that began with a separatist rebellion in 2012 in the north and soon expanded into a multifaceted war involving jihadist groups, community militias, and international forces. Despite multiple peace agreements and foreign interventions, violence has persisted and spread across the Sahel, displacing nearly 4 million people as of October 2025, and eroding trust in both domestic and external actors.
Between May and June 2025, when people in Mali were asked which foreign actor they would support most to bring security to their country, many surprised observers by choosing Russia over the United Nations or France. In a place that has seen a decade of foreign military involvement — from UN peacekeepers to regional coalitions and private security companies — one might expect international organizations to inspire more confidence. But recent research found the opposite.
During this time, a team of researchers from the Universities of Florence, Naples, and Bologna (Italy) organized a survey with more than 1,500 respondents in Mali’s Gao and Mopti regions, both deeply affected by conflict and external interventions. We asked respondents how much they would support a military intervention led by different actors: the UN, ECOWAS, France, or Russia. Then we varied two conditions — whether the mission was effective in reducing violence, and whether its troops acted with integrity or were involved in abuses.
The results were striking. Malians generally support foreign interventions to improve security, but their preferences depend on who intervenes and how those actors behave. Contrary to long-held assumptions, individual states received higher support than international organizations, and non-Western powers were seen more favorably than Western ones. But most importantly, support increased sharply when people perceived that the mission was effective — and collapsed when they believed foreign soldiers had engaged in misconduct, such as abuse or corruption.
Beyond the “Supply Side” of Peacebuilding
For decades, peacekeeping research and policy have focused on the “supply side” of what international actors do: the number of troops, the strength of mandates, or the robustness of operations. This perspective assumes that legitimacy flows from institutions — from the UN flag, the Security Council mandate, or the moral authority of multilateralism.
But as Mali shows, legitimacy is not something that interveners can simply claim; it must be earned from below. People living amid violence judge foreign missions not by their mandates, but by their conduct, performance, and respect for local communities. In other words, peacebuilding depends less on external structures and more on relationships of trust.
In Mali, the UN’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA) once enjoyed broad support. Yet over time, frustration grew as civilians continued to suffer from insecurity and abuses by several armed groups. Violence against civilians by Islamist factions, sexual exploitation of women, and forced recruitment of children have now become recurring phenomena that have plagued the country for years. By 2023, only 23 percent of Malians expressed satisfaction with the mission — a dramatic drop from 50 percent in 2014. When the government demanded MINUSMA’s withdrawal, public opinion largely backed the decision.
This erosion of confidence is not unique to Mali. Despite average good performances, across conflict zones, people’s trust in international peace operations has been shaken by unfulfilled promises, slow responses, and, at times, serious misconduct. When missions fail to protect civilians or appear disconnected from local realities, their symbolic legitimacy fades.
Listening as a Peace Strategy
The lesson is simple but often ignored: peace cannot be delivered without listening. Local people are not passive recipients of peacebuilding efforts — they are active judges of their fairness, competence, and sincerity.
Our study shows that local populations support international interventions with varying degrees of persuasion depending on who is involved. In Mali and much of the Sahel, Western interventions are often viewed through a colonial lens. For many communities, the rhetoric of “liberal peace” sounds hollow and false when it comes from powers that have exploited African countries for decades and mostly conceived peacekeeping operations with a top-down approach. Non-Western actors, on the contrary, may gain sympathy not necessarily because they perform better, but because they appear to offer an alternative to what is seen as a failed model of external control. Nonetheless, our findings reveal that the effectiveness of international interventions and their integrity matter as much as the identity of interveners to enjoy the support of local populations. Even actors with low reputational status can earn support if they deliver real security and act ethically. Conversely, misconduct or arrogance can destroy legitimacy, even for organizations that claim universal values.
This insight points to a broader truth: Peacebuilding is not just about stopping violence; it is about building relationships of accountability between local populations and external actors. That means designing interventions with local participation from the start — not as a box to tick, but as a genuine exchange of perspectives and priorities.
From Intervention to Partnership
If peacebuilders want to regain trust, they must move from intervention to partnership. That means shifting the approach: from “helping” to “cooperating,” from “teaching” to “listening.” International organizations and donor states need to see local legitimacy not as a secondary concern, but as the foundation of success.
Practical steps include supporting community-based peace initiatives, strengthening local institutions of justice and mediation, and ensuring that peacekeeping missions are accountable to the populations they claim to protect. Transparency about failures and abuses is equally crucial. As our data show, once integrity is lost, no amount of effectiveness can fully repair the damage.
Moreover, international organizations such as the UN and Western powers need to realize that the undergoing change in the international system has tangible consequences. As global competition intensifies — with new actors like Russia, Turkey, China entering the field — despite current events involving some of these actors, the old assumption that legitimacy amongst populations in conflict zones automatically belongs to Western-led institutions no longer holds. The future of peacebuilding will depend on how well international actors learn to share power, credit, and voice with those on the ground.
In the end, what Mali teaches us is not a rejection of peace efforts, but a demand for relevance. People’s responses remind us that for peacebuilding to really succeed, it must be rooted in local consent and mutual understanding, not external assumptions.
