[1] In 2010, governments, political parties, civil society and United Nations country representatives from 14 African countries in Kenya agreed upon a working definition of the term infrastructures for peace as a 'dynamic network of interdependent structures, mechanisms, resources, values and skills which, through dialogue and consultation, contribute to conflict prevention and peacebuilding in a society'.
[1] The term was motivated by the effectiveness of locally led, participatory peacebuilding practices in several countries undergoing armed conflicts.
The term is intended to stress conflict transformation and the combination of grassroots peacebuilding together with top-down political agreements.
Such local infrastructures are prone to suffer from political upheavals,[4] they still rely on external funding and cannot do well under strictly autocratic regimes.
[6] Academic conferences, special editions of journals, issue-specific books and websites dedicated to this topic have begun to emerge including the UNE Peace Studies Conference (2015) on questioning 'peace formation' and 'peace infrastructure', Berghof Handbook[7] and a Journal of Peacebuilding and Development Special Edition in Vol.