Innovation

In January 2020, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs launched the Innovation Cell, an interdisciplinary team dedicated to helping the Department and its field presences to understand and explore, pilot, and scale new technologies, tools, and practices in conflict prevention, mediation and peacebuilding. Responding to the Secretary-General’s call on the UN system to accelerate its uptake of innovative methods, the Innovation Cell catalyses innovation in peace and security, while providing a forum for colleagues at UNHQ and in the field to engage collaboratively in human-centred design and problem-solving.

The Cell is part of the UN’s Innovation Network (UNIN) and works to galvanize an ecosystem of technology, civil society, and academic partners outside the UN system on peace and security use cases, thereby leveraging innovation for the shared goal of peace. 

Key Documents

• UNDPPA Strategic Plan 2020-2022
• UNDPPA Strategic Plan 2023-2026

Innovation:

• UN 2.0 Quintet of Change, September 2021
• Secretary-General's Guidance on Behavioural Science, June 2021
• DPPA Innovation Cell Summary Document, 2020
• Data Strategy of the Secretary-General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere (2020-2022)
• DPPA Innovation Cell Vision Document, April 2020
• Innovation in the DPPA Multi-Year Appeal, p.40 (2020-2022)
• UN Secretary-General’s strategy on new technologies, September 2018

Resources

Guides

• Innovation Research Guide (DPPA Innovation Cell and Dag Hammarskjöld Library)
• E-Analytics Guide (DPPA, UN Global Pulse and UNU Institute on Computing and Society)
• Social Media Analysis (DPPA)

Digital Applications 

• Peace and Security Data Hub – Repository for UN peace and security data (DPPA and DPPA-DPO)
• Diplomatic Pulse – Web search of diplomatic press releases (DPPA and Qatar Computing Institute of Technology)
• Sweet Victory - A Game about Behavioural Science for Peace (DPPA, Bad News and the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab)
• Lisan - Iraqi, Yemeni, Sudanese and Libyan dialect corpus (DPPA, American University of Beirut and Birzeit University)
• Geoguard – A geospatial data dashboard visualizing relationships between conflict and water scarcity

Documentaries

• Traveling virtually to the Pacific – The UN uses Virtual Reality for advocacy on climate security (2022)
• Virtually Experiencing Peace in Colombia (2022)
• Ijun’s Future: Foresight for Peace (2022)
• Sea of Island – Virtual Reality Experience on Climate Change in the Asia Pacific (2022)
• Monitoring Water Security from Space (2022)
• Elena’s Innovation Journey (2022)
• Lynn's Digital Dialogue (2022)
• Liita's Conversa (2022)
• Making People's Voices Matter (2022)
• Marwa's Election (2022)
• Foresighting Guinea (2022)
• How to Spark Innovation for Change – Innovating for Peace Series (2022)
• Sweet Victory – A Game about Behavioural Science for Peace (2022)

Articles

News Articles

• Making peace more inclusive: new research helps AI-enabled computers understand Arabic dialects (American University of Beirut, March 2023)
• UN, QCRI hosts E-Analytics and Innovation Lab (The Peninsula, Feb 2023)
• UN, QCRI alliance to drive peace with technology (Gulf Times, Feb 2023)
• UN and QCRI Alliance to Drive Peace with Technology (Qatar Computing Research Institute, Feb 2023)
• UN and HBKU’s QCRI Institute Alliance to Drive Peace with Technology (Mena FN, Feb 2023)
• UN and HBKU’s QCRI Institute alliance to drive peace with technology (Zawya, Feb 2023)
• Lisan: Yemeni, Iraqi, Libyan, and Sudanese Arabic Dialect Copora with Morphological Annotations (arXiv, Dec 2022)
• La inteligencia artificial ya es capaz de ganar una negociación diplomática (Newtral, Nov 2022)
• Virtual reality film “Pathways Colombia" highlights peace agreement's reintegration and reconciliation work (UN Verification Mission in Colombia, Nov 2022)
• “Why International Diplomacy Is Looking to the Metaverse to Help Build Peace” (LLB Online, July 2022)
• Using Artificial Intelligence for Peacebuilding (SAGE Journals, May 2022)
• "VR to invoke a deep sense of urgency and passion for confronting global challenges" - Daanish Masood Alavi, Igal Nassina (The state of global peace) (XRMust, Feb 2022)
• #1052: Translating UN Reports into Immersive Stories to Brief World Leaders with “State of Global Peace” (Voices of VR, Feb 2022)
• 「国際平和」はもうイケてないのか？(Foresight, Jan 2022)
• The Youth of Today are the Architects of Tomorrow (Marketing Communication News, Jan 2022)
• AIを国際平和に生かす　国連で専門チーム立ち上げ (Nikkei, April 2021)
• The United Nations is Turning to Artificial Intelligence in Search for Peace in War Zones (The Washington Post, April 2021)
• AI Helps People in War Zones Get Their Voices Heard by Leaders (Freethink, April 2021)
• Diplomacy Has Changed More Than Most Professions During the Pandemic (The Economist, April 2021)
• 2021 Impact 20: Remesh (Fortune, 2021)
• Cutting-Edge Tech in the Service of Inclusive Peace in Yemen (ReliefWeb, Aug 2020)
• UN Tries Mass Polling to Build Peace Deals (Financial Times, Feb 2020)
• Arabic and AI: Why voice-activated tech struggles in the Middle East (Middle East Eye, Sep 2019)
• AI & Global Governance: Robots Will Not Only Wage Future Wars but also Future Peace (United Nations University - Centre for Policy Research, April 2019)
• UN and QCRI alliance to drive peace with technology (Gulf Times, The Peninsula, Al Arab)
• Making peace more inclusive: new research helps AI-enabled computers understand Arabic dialects (American University of Beirut)

Medium Channel "Futuring Peace"

• How to navigate dust storms with satellite data (May 2024) 
• How emerging technologies are reshaping peace and security (Dec 2023) 
• How to leverage design to inspire change (Dec 2023) 
• What questions we should be asking about Generative AI (Nov 2023) 
• How to decode modern conflicts with cutting-edge technologies (May 2023) 
• What AI and new technologies can do for diplomacy (Jul 2022)

• What role technology can play in ceasefire monitoring and verification (July 2022)

• What if Uncertainty is the Path to Peace? (Oct 2021)

• Why Our Brains Are at War — And What We Can Do About It (Sep 2021)

• What We Can Learn from Behavioural Science for Peace (July 2021)

• How to Change the World from Space (Jul 2021)

• How Dashboards Could Destroy World Peace — And How to Prevent It (March 2021)

• What the “Lords of the Artic” Teach Us About Inclusive Peace (Feb 2021)

• What Machines Can Teach Us About How to Write Constitutions (Jan 2021)

• How to Spark Unlikely Conversations About Peace (Oct 2020)

• How to Draw the Future (and Re-Imagine Peace) (Sep 2020)

• How to Hack Dystopia in Our Current Global Mess (Jul 2020)

• How to decode modern conflicts with cutting-edge technologies

• What questions we should be asking about Generative AI

• How emerging technologies are reshaping peace and security

• How to leverage design to inspire change

DPPA "Politically Speaking"

• Youth Explore the Future of Peacebuilding in Northeast Asia (Feb 2023)
• Eyes in the Sky for Peace: Geospatial Data in Conflict Prevention (Jun 2022)
• Peace is Priceless, Peace Is Possible: DPPA Launches Multi-Year Appeal 2022 Mid-Year Report (Sep 2022)
• Creating a Collective Language: Youth from Northeast Asia Imagine the Future of the Region (Dec 2021)
• From Online Hate Speech to Deep Fakes: Shared Challenges and Solutions Around Elections (Oct 2021)
• “We Use Technology, Not the Other Way Around” — Social Media and Political Analysis (Sep 2021)
• The Role of Business in Peace Processes: Missed Opportunities? (Sep 2021)
• Cutting-Edge Tech in the Service of Inclusive Peace in Yemen (Jul 2020)
• The Politics of Oil and Peacemaking (Jan 2020)
• Getting to Grips with New Tech in Prevention and Peacemaking (Nov 2019)
• More than Pretty Pictures: Harnessing the Full Potential of Data Visualization (May 2019)

Oil Working Group Bulletins

• Issue 6 (July 2020): Can mining companies prevent "conflict"?
• Issue 5 (Feb 2020): Drastic drop in global oil prices
• Issue 4 (July 2019): Global gas competition
• Issue 3 (June 2019): Expanding methodologies and approaches
• Issue 2 (Feb 2019): US sanction regimes and their impact on politics
• Issue 1 (Dec 2018): Upstream, midstream, or downstream

Virtual Reality Experiences

• Solidarity for Chad (2023) 

• Dreaming of Lebanon (2023) 

• Sea of Islands (2022) 

• Musalem Yemen (2022) 

• Pathways Colombia (2021) 

• The State of Global Peace (2022) 

• Sudan Now (2020) 

• Iraq 360 (2019)

Contact

Reach out to us at DPPA-Innovation@un.org for questions, comments and ideas.

Visit us at https://www.behance.net/dppainnovation to learn more about the Innovation-related think pieces and approaches. 

Follow us at https://medium.com/futuring-peace and https://dppa.medium.com/ for innovation-related think pieces and approaches. 

Follow @UN_Innovation to learn what UN entities are doing in the space of innovation.