‘Trust-building In SRoL Partnerships: Core Concerns’ with Berghof Foundation & Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH)

(This session took place in-person under Chatham House Rule, and was thus not recorded).

Trust and trust-building is a recurring theme in SROL programming and present in many project designs. However, how trust actually comes about often remains implicit and respective Theories of Change remain opaque. The power to define which trust relations are important in an intervention context and how this trust is supposed to come about and to what end primarily remains with donor organisations. At the same time, little is known about how trust-building works and when it is prone to failure.

During the session, participants reflected on core concerns regarding trust-building in the context of asymmetric power and inequalities between the different groups that are part of the process, as well as different types of trust. Central to the session was an extensive group work which followed up on two distinguished speakers, Gen. (ret.) Saleh Bala and Shadia Marhaban, who voiced their experiences.

The session comprised around 35 researchers, policy makers and practitioners that met in the plenary to listen to the speakers, who joined the group via Zoom. The participants of the session had the chance to discuss their thoughts on trust-building with one of the speakers in the working groups. This was followed by concluding remarks and an exchange of ideas in the plenary.

This session involved panelists Viktoria Budde (Peace and Conflict Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH)), Dr. Karoline Eickhoff (Associate Researcher in the Conflict Transformation Research (CTR) department at the Berghof Foundation), Brig. Gen. Saleh Bala (President and Founder of the Whiteink Institute for Strategy Education and Research (WISER), and the CEO of White Ink Consult) and Shadia Marhaban (Mediator, a Regional Peace Leader and Former Free Ache Movement (GAM) Negotiator).