To mark the International Day of Peace (21 September), Alex Ballinger MP and Alastair Carr draw on Peace Works – a new report from a coalition of peacebuilding organisations – to argue that a more dangerous world requires the UK to protect the capacity to prevent conflict as well as respond to it.

In July 2011, the UK Government published its Building Stability Overseas Strategy, outlining three guiding principles for conflict prevention: early warning, rapid response and upstream prevention.^[1]

Fifteen years on, these principles endure, but the world they were written for is gone. The institutions and assumptions of the liberal international order have weakened and fragmented, replaced by unilateralism, ad hoc alliances, and the arbitrary exercise of hard power.

More countries are currently involved in conflict than at any point since World War Two. Some 117 million people find themselves displaced by war and persecution, while humanitarian disasters rage in Gaza, Sudan and Afghanistan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought full-scale war to Europe. The US-Iran war, Israel’s campaigns and new Houthi offensives in Yemen risk dragging the Middle East into a messy, widening conflict zone.

Drones, cyber warfare, increasingly powerful AI systems, proxy networks and online disinformation have transformed how violence is waged, how far it can reach and how quickly it can spread, enhancing the lethality of superpower militaries and insurgent militias alike.^[2]

The UK, its NATO allies, and governments across the world have reacted to this more volatile, violent period by increasing defence spending and rebuilding military strength after the relative optimism and stability of the post-Cold War years. Reinvestment in defence reflects serious, credible threats and the need to act more independently of a more unpredictable and unilateral US. But firepower alone will not keep us safe, and deterrence will not, by itself, stop conflicts from emerging.

In today’s volatile world peacebuilding and conflict prevention are needed more than ever, but investment in this vital work has cratered. The UK’s aid budget is due to fall to 0.3% of national income by 2027/28, its lowest share since 1999. These reduced resources are increasingly focused on ongoing humanitarian crises in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, and on accommodating refugees from these and other conflicts in the UK.

Prioritising current crises and people in urgent need is right and necessary. But neglecting conflict prevention, and the careful, local, long-term work of peacebuilding, carries real costs and risks for our security.^[3]

That’s because peacebuilding works. In a world of increasing budgetary pressures, it can be a cost-effective way of ending otherwise intractable conflicts.

Six years of mediation support by the British NGO Conciliation Resources helped the Ethiopian Government and the Ogaden National Liberation Front reach a peace agreement in 2018, ending more than two decades of armed conflict – an effort that cost less than the cost of a Challenger 2 tank. In the southern Philippines, the UK-backed International Contact Group supported talks that produced the 2014 agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which in turn led to a sharp fall in violence and mass displacement.^[4]

These examples are neither exact templates nor guarantees of success for future conflicts. Failures to prevent conflict and mass atrocities are infamous – Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur – while successes are easily forgotten, and inherently hard to quantify: the lives saved by an attack never happening, a militia staying out of a civil war, or a ceasefire that held.

However, the economic evidence for the cost effectiveness of prevention is strong: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that every $1 invested in peacebuilding returns up to $103 in economic damage prevented and peaceful, productive activity enabled.^[5] These costs are not contained within warzones: the UK incurs costs from conflicts around the world, through energy market shocks, global shipping disruption, housing refugees displaced by war, and increased public spending on defence.

Conflict prevention and peacebuilding are not just cost-effective forms of aid. They are an indirect investment in our own economy – and democracy – reducing prices, public spending pressures, and the polarising political effects of migrant crises and foreign conflicts.^[6]

For all these reasons we believe the UK should enhance conflict prevention to a core component of foreign and security policy. That means giving peacebuilding and conflict prevention a demarcated, multi-year settlement, with funding allocations and priorities published in advance, and based on clear criteria. At present, these data are too often opaque and published retrospectively, leaving Parliament and civil society to reconstruct what has been spent, and why, long after decisions are made. Greater transparency would allow MPs, experts, and peacebuilding organisations to contribute to these decisions and provide constructive scrutiny.

Moreover, we should avoid a top-down, template approach to peacebuilding, directed from Westminster and Whitehall. What works better is tailoring UK strategies and programmes to specific communities, engaging with and listening to local stakeholders, and working through local organisations, wherever possible.

In 2023, less than 10% of peacebuilding funding from OECD donor countries went to local organisations and programmes, preferring large, multilateral institutions. Local peacebuilders bring knowledge and understanding of their communities and have the relationships and trust to effectively engage them in peacebuilding programmes. They are often best placed to analyse conflict, anticipate developments, and gauge the risks of escalation.

As such, their organisations would benefit from direct, flexible funding and the freedom to adapt as risks evolve. The Government’s commitment to ‘shift power and strengthen local leadership’ through its Global Partnerships Compact is an encouraging sign, suggesting decision-makers are beginning to recognise and adapt to these realities.^[7]

A more dangerous world requires robust defence, humanitarian relief, and the foresight to invest in peace before crises develop. Conflict prevention is crucial to our security, and doing it well requires political recognition, predictable resources, and putting trust in local peacebuilders and their approaches.

Alex Ballinger is the Labour MP for Halesowen, and has been an MP continually since 4 July 2024.

Alastair Carr is Policy Manager at Conciliation Resources. He joined Conciliation Resources in November 2022, to support the organisation’s work shaping counter-terrorism sanctions and developing policy messages on issues including gender, peace and security, mediation and dialogue and climate change and conflict. In this role, he is the co-chair of the Bond working group on Sanctions and Counterterrorism. Beforehand, Alastair spent five years at Saferworld, another UK-based peacebuilding organisation, where he supported donors, financial institutions and INGOs integrate and promote conflict sensitivity into their work in Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia. Alastair holds a Masters Degree in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual authors and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

[1] UK Government, Building Stability Overseas Strategy, July 2011, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-stability-overseas-strategy

[2] Peace Works: How we can build peace together in our volatile world, September 2026, https://www.c-r.org/news-and-insight/new-coalition-report-shows-uk-government-how-peace-works.

[3] House of Commons Library, UK aid: Reducing spending to 0.3% of GNI by 2027/28, August 2026, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10243/

[4] Conciliation Resources, Conciliation Resources nominated for prestigious international development award, May 2021, https://www.c-r.org/news-and-insight/conciliation-resources-nominated-prestigious-international-development-award; Conciliation Resources, International Contact Group on Mindanao, https://www.c-r.org/our-work-in-action/international-contact-group-mindanao

[5] Hannes Mueller, Christopher Rauh, Benjamin Seimon and Rodrigo Espinoza, The Urgency of Conflict Prevention: A Macroeconomic Perspective, IMF Working Paper, December 2024, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2024/12/20/The-Urgency-of-Conflict-Prevention-A-Macroeconomic-Perspective-559143

[6] Peace Works: How we can build peace together in our volatile world, September 2026,  https://www.c-r.org/news-and-insight/new-coalition-report-shows-uk-government-how-peace-works; UNHCR, Figures at a glance, June 2026, https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-are/figures-glance

[7] Global Public Policy Institute, Peace and Security Aid in Crisis, July 2025, https://gppi.net/assets/GPPi_PeaceSecurityAidinCrisis_FullStudy2025_web.pdf.; Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Global Partnerships Compact, May 2026, https://www.gov.uk/guidance/global-partnerships-conference-2026