Barcelona will host the 2025 edition of the Build Peace Conference, a global conference series and community of practice that brings together practitioners, activists, academics, policymakers, artists and technologists worldwide. The conference is an initiative of Build Up, a global non-profit that implements programs, conducts research, develops technical solutions to engage with conflict and build societies where everyone can thrive.
ICIP will co-organize the 2025 edition, marking its role as the leading partner. The conference will be held from November 21 to 23, 2025, at La CIBA, a vibrant resource space in Santa Coloma de Gramenet dedicated to women, innovation, and the feminist economy.
The goal is to share experiences and advance knowledge on emergent challenges to peace in the digital age and peacebuilding innovations that address these challenges. Under this umbrella, Build Peace focuses on one central theme linked to the conference’s location each year.
ICIP’s involvement in the Build Peace series is well-established. It actively participated in the last three editions, held in Germany (2022), Kenya (2023), and the Philippines (2024). The successful bid to bring the conference to Catalonia in 2025 was announced at the closing session of Build Peace 2024, held on the outskirts of Manila. This underlines Catalonia’s growing role as a peace-oriented dialogue and innovation hub.
Announcement of the celebration of Build Peace 2025 in Barcelona:
ICIP participation in Build Peace 2024
Build Peace 2024 was held from 14-16 November with the theme “Pushing Frontiers, From the Ground Up.” On this occasion, Build Up was co-organized by the Council for Climate and Conflict Action, and the conference focused on experiences of dialogue and meditation, as well as on conflicts arising from climate change and local and international initiatives to address them.
ICIP actively participated in the conference with two proposals: a presentation on the experiences of mediation in the conflict in the autonomous region of Mindanao, Philippines, by ICIP director Kristian Herbolzheimer, and a working session on the experience of dialogue through the Agora Project, by Pablo Aguiar, head of ICIP’s “Social and Political Dialogue” area.
Over three days, the conference provided an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between technology and conflict, focusing, for example, on the development of artificial intelligence and the challenges it poses or on the impact of digital media, specifically social networks, on traditional peace processes and spaces for dialogue and mediation. The various working sessions highlighted that peace is built with and from local communities and that digital tools (online) complement networking and interpersonal work (offline).
