Participatory Video in Peacebuilding: Lessons Learnt from Occupied Palestinian Territories and Kyrgyzstan

How can we overcome barriers of exclusion, intolerance, and disempowerment in areas of volatile conflict? How can we bridge divides and facilitate spaces for reconciliation? How can we move beyond ignorance, disengagement, and disillusionment?

Participatory video (PV) methodology can answer some of the most challenging questions in peacebuilding. It is powerful in particularly polarised conflict settings, and among particularly marginalised people. As an innovative and engaging tool, PV leverages modern technology to effectively build self-awareness and agency, bridge divides, and amplify messages in ways that can reach policy-makers. PV combines hands-on training, using interactive games, with the production of short videos that bring up issues of major concern to participants. Through the self-awareness and the emergence of agency via these processes, PV promotes connections among individuals and communities, emphasising the inclusion of marginalised groups in decision-making processes. PV can, therefore, be used in a wide variety of contexts.

This publication is an insightful reflection on the transformative process of PV methodology, as experienced by members of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC). Particularly successful in the context of peacebuilding and conflict prevention, GPPAC members in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (MEND) and Kyrgyzstan (FTI) reflect on the PV projects they implemented. In the course of these projects, we have been inspired by the real stories of marked change. If you want to read it in Russian, you can find it here.