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Abstract

The term “resilience” has experienced a drastic increase in its usage over the past few years. Commonly associated with the fields of child psychology, ecology and engineering, it has now appeared in the vocabulary of practitioners and scholars working on global issues of sustainable development, peacebuilding, disaster relief, urban planning, and humanitarian action. The term features prominently in recent documents by a number of United Nations agencies, bilateral donors, and non-governmental organizations, and has received application on a variety of analytical levels, from the resilience of individuals, communities and affected populations, to institutional, urban and systems resilience. This Brief was written in preparation for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform. The theme of the conference is “Operationalizing Resilience in Peacebuilding Contexts: Approaches, Lessons, Action Points”. In order to set the scene for the event, this Brief offers an overview of the ways in which the concept of resilience has been used in a variety of settings. It will critically assess the merits of applying the term to issues of peacebuilding, before posing a series of exploratory questions that may contribute to further discussion.

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