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Listen "Challenging structural racism in the peacebuilding and humanitarian sector. Dylan Mathews interviewed."
Episode Synopsis
In this week’s episode, Dylan Mathews talks us through Peace Direct’s journey as a Global North-based peacebuilding organisation. He reflects on the pivotal moment in which Peace Direct spoke to local partners and began to actively question how structural racism is embedded into the sector.Dylan contends that there is a need for both organisations and individuals in the Global North to acknowledge that they may have benefitted from the development sector and that they have “done harm in the process of trying to help”.We discuss the fact that the majority of humanitarian funding (97%) goes to organisations in the Global North, and how this has consistently eroded the growth and capability of civil society organisations in the Global South. Dylan Mathews is CEO of Peace Direct having joined the organisation in 2015. His commitment to supporting local organisations in the global south spans almost twenty years, during which time he has worked for a range of peacebuilding, international development and humanitarian organisations.While working for the peacebuilding think tank Oxford Research Group, he authored ‘War Prevention Works’ which profiled the role of non-state actors in conflict prevention and resolution – a publication that helped launch Peace Direct in 2004. He is the editor of ‘Working with Conflict 2’ a practical toolkit for local peacebuilders, published in 2020. Dylan is the Vice Chair of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a global peacebuilding network based in Washington DC.If you’re interested to find out more about Dylan’s work, take a look here:LinkedInTwitterRecent work:Mathews, Dylan (2023) Three years on from George Floyd’s murder. What have we learned? BondMathews, Dylan (2022) The tragedy of Ukraine and the urgency of peacebuilding, Bond.Relevant resources and references:Time to Decolonise AidRace, Power, PeacebuildingNine roles that intermediaries can play in international cooperationA blog reflecting on Peace Direct's journey since publishing Race, Power and Peacebuilding Robert Chambers
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