A virtual tool for effective peace process support
Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19, a digital tool developed to track ceasefires during the Covid-19 pandemic, has been featured in a Swiss Peace review of cutting-edge digital technologies for peacemaking. KOFF Peacebuilding Magazine by Swiss Peace profiled the tool in the November 2020 special issue entitled Digital Technologies: A Game Changer for Peace?
The Covid-19 Ceasefire Tracker is a publicly available digital tracking tool to examine the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on peace processes and armed conflict across the world. In March 2020, the UN Secretary General called for a global ceasefire in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. The tool monitors ceasefires alongside live data on infection rates in country, using an interactive timeline and map including live data on infection rates in country.
Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19 is a collaborative project between the Political Settlements Research Programme (PSRP), the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich, Conciliation Resources, Mediateur (European Forum for International Mediation and Dialogue) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), with thanks to contributions from the Mediation Support Unit in the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.
The KOFF Peacebuilding Magazine praises the ceasefires tracker for supporting peacebuilding during the pandemic:
The virtual tracking tool thus functions as a reliable and rich public resource of information on ceasefires that enables experts working on peace process support and beyond to track the cessation of hostilities in real-time, accurately identify where their support can be best-placed and maintain a critical bird’s-eye view of the interplay between ceasefire developments and the evolution of the pandemic.
Read the feature in full at the KOFF Peacebuilding Magazine website.
The special issue also features a range of cuting-edge PeaceTech innovations, including an app for peaceful local development, a project ensuring good governance in a digitalized security sector, and a project linking global education and digital peacebuilding to create opportunities for large-scale online dialogue and collaboration.
David Lanz, Co-Head Mediation Program at Swiss Peace also featured the ceasefires tracker alongside the PA-X Peace Agreement Database and the PeaceFem app in a Twitter thread on the best interactive online tools for peace mediation. Read the thread here.
The Ceasefires Tracker was also recently featured by ReliefWeb.
Explore Ceasefires in a Time of Covid-19.