Innovative entrepreneurship is a cornerstone to the development of a vibrant local private sector. This, in turn, can make a powerful contribution to the ecosystem of peace. Peace is therefore not the sole preserve of the state: entrepreneurs can also be convincing peace brokers.

This issue brief focuses on how entrepreneurship can contribute to preventing conflict and sustaining peace. It identifies points of convergence between entrepreneurship and peace, recognizing that these are likely to be highly context-specific. It concludes that the economic incentives and peace dividends that can be sparked by entrepreneurship warrant greater attention and offers recommendations for harnessing the positive aspects of entrepreneurship while reining in or mitigating potential harm.

This issue brief is part of the International Peace Institute’s (IPI) attempt to reframe prevention for the purpose of sustaining peace through a series of conversations from October 2016 to June 2017. Other conversations have focused on how to approach the UN’s regional political offices, peace operations, and the SDG on gender equality from the perspective of sustaining peace, as well as on what sustaining peace means in practice.

This publication is part of a project funded by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) with resources provided by the German Federal Foreign Office.

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