Rethinking Peacebuilding for a New Geopolitical Era - Roger Mac Ginty, Richard Gowan, Erika Gregory

Today's geopolitical shifts have transformed how peacemaking and peacebuilding are conducted, and who is leading the charge. Navigating that change requires a new outlook. Recorded September 9th 2026. The Effective Peacebuilding Initiative (EPI) and The Less War Initiative convened Roger Mac Ginty, Richard Gowan, and Erika Gregory for a big-picture conversation on new approaches to the complexity of today's conflicts. 0:00 Welcome: EPI and the Global Peace Almanac 1:30 Event overview and format 3:51 Roger Mac Ginty: "Liberal Peace Is Dead. What's Replacing It?" 6:33 Richard Gowan: New peacemakers and old institutions 9:38 Erika Gregory: Entangled security risks (lessons from the Arctic) 13:23 Were the 1990s really a golden age of peacekeeping? 17:20 Middle power mediators: new style or new attitude? 20:26 What is peace now? Ceasefires vs. sustainable peace 22:23 Can ad hoc mediators handle the polycrisis? 26:15 Institutions and mediators in tandem: the Black Sea Grain Initiative 29:18 Should UN peace operations be stripped down? 33:09 Horizontal vs. state-led security 35:03 Audience exercise: home, trust, security 38:44 Advice for today's leaders: foresight scenarios for 2035 42:43 Legal innovation as conflict prevention (Wales Future Generations Act) 46:04 Peace vs. justice: when does pragmatism cost us principles? 48:57 Guterres and peacemaking as the "entry price" 51:08 The leadership vision gap and entanglement as strength 53:22 Bringing in guest perspectives 56:02 Julia Pickhardt: Whose peace are we building? 59:25 Yemen: shifting mediators and the agency of conflict parties 1:02:43 Wail Abdullah Hashem: Humanitarian access in Yemen 1:05:03 Lessons from Hodeidah and the 2022 truce 1:10:14 Panel response: it's the parties, not the mediator 1:12:29 Q&A: Do new mediators redistribute power or just shift it? 1:14:31 Don't underestimate stability 1:17:39 Peacebuilding as a design problem: foresight and philanthropy 1:21:03 Q&A: Are institutions agile enough? The HDP nexus 1:22:41 Political will, AI governance, and the humanitarian burden 1:26:02 The acceleration of everything 1:27:42 Positive deviance: UNDP Accelerator Labs and UN Charter reform 1:29:11 Closing remarks THE PANEL Roger Mac Ginty is Professor at the Durham Global Security Institute and the School of Government and International Affairs, both at Durham University. He is founding editor (with Oliver Richmond) of the journal Peacebuilding, and founder (with Pamina Firchow) of the Everyday Peace Indicators. Richard Gowan is Director of Global Issues and Institutions at the International Crisis Group. From 2019 to 2025 he was Crisis Group's UN Director. He has also worked at New York University's Center on International Cooperation and the European Council on Foreign Relations. Erika Gregory is Founder and President of Horizon 2045, working at the intersection of global security, philanthropy, and governance reform. She is also Co-Lead of Women Transforming Global Security (WTGS), a partnership with Ploughshares and The Elders. READ THE ESSAYS To read each author's contribution to the Global Peace Almanac, please visit our link in bio.