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Conflict prevention and peacebuilding

The Peacebuilding Service was set up at the end of 2006 following the merger of two previously existing services: the Preventive Diplomacy Service and the Conflict Prevention Service, attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Development Cooperation respectively.

The objective of the Peacebuilding Service is to finance projects concerned with conflict prevention and peacebuilding in accordance with specific thematic and geographical priorities of Belgium’s foreign policy. To attain this goal, the Service has a fixed budget of €31.1 million for 2009.

All proposals for the allocation of funds are tested in advance against set criteria that meet a number of content-related and administrative requirements.
Projects financed out of the Preventive Diplomacy budget must focus on preventing or helping to resolve serious conflicts in the short term (generally 1 year), whereas projects funded out of the Conflict Prevention budget tend to last longer (usually 3 years) and set out to shore up political, socioeconomic, legal and cultural institutions. The overriding aim in so doing is to boost institutional capacity within post-conflict countries and thus enable the government to discharge its core tasks efficiently and in a non-discriminatory manner, thereby even contributing towards peacebuilding.

Where the thematic focus is concerned, the Peacebuilding Service is active in six main areas or ‘clusters’, namely:

  • establishing and strengthening the rule of law (including good governance, the defence of human rights, support for national institutions such as elections or  parliaments, transitional justice, and the fight against impunity);
  • supporting free speech;
  • efficiently and reasonably managing natural resources;
  • backing peace processes (e.g. by supporting a peace mission, mediation, security sector reforms (SSR);
  • promoting disarmament and mine clearance, combating the illegal spread of small arms and the use of anti-personnel mines and cluster bombs;
  • aiding civilian victims of conflicts (including the problems associated with child soldiers, victims of sexual violence, and so on).

Against the backdrop of the key issues listed above and in keeping with the provisions of the coalition agreement dated 18 March 2008, between 2008 and 2011 the Peacebuilding Service will concentrate primarily on the following issues where Central Africa is concerned:

  • problems of sexual violence and child soldiers;
  • problems associated with natural resources;
  • reconstruction of the legal apparatus and transitional forms of justice;
  • reforming the security sector;
  • problems to do with small arms and mine clearance.


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