20 October 2022

Innovative Financing for Peace:

Towards a framework for peace-positive investments

A high-level event with investors, practitioners, policy makers, researchers and civil society, organized by the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO) in collaboration with the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)

About the Conference

The event provides a unique platform to discuss practices and approaches, including diverging ones, that would need to be addressed by a peace-positive investment framework and to advance standards for their implementation in conflict-affected settings.

It will deliberate on issues such as

How can we conceptualize private sector investments that are profitable and contribute to peace? How can investors and private sector actors ensure that their ventures support national peacebuilding strategies and meet local priorities?
What are private sector practices that make a positive contribution to local peace processes instead of exacerbating negative effects? Which steps could we take towards developing common principles, standards, and tools to ensure that investments in fragile and conflict affected settings are peace-positive?

To advance these questions, the conference will…

discuss why there may be a need for a new framework for peace positive investment.
explore what issues would have to be addressed for such a framework to be effective, globally accepted, and locally relevant.
identify ways to harmonize tools and standards to ensure that investments are peace positive.
build a network across sectors to drive peace-positive investments forward.

In order to facilitate open constructive conversations, the event will be held under Chatham House Rules and attendants are requested to refrain from attributing any comments, including on social media.

Livestream

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Participation

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Agenda

1.00pm – 2.00pm Walking Lunch at Humboldt Carré

Behrenstraße 42, 10117 Berlin

2.00pm - 2.20pm Opening

Welcome remarks by
Susanne Baumann, State Secretary of the German Federal Foreign Office
Elizabeth Spehar, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support
Keynote address: A vision for peace-positive investments in fragile and conflict-affected settings
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

2.20pm - 3.40pm Panel 1 Followed by Q&A Session

Why a new framework for peace-positive investments in fragile and conflict-affected settings?
Guiding questions:
What can we learn from successful examples of conflict-sensitive approaches to investment?
Which factors have proven most relevant in practice to ensuring that investments have a positive impact on peace, and that potentially negative consequences are mitigated?
How can local partnerships be strengthened for strategy development, impact assessment and local business development? And how can these strategies be better aligned with national peace and private sector development strategies?

Thematic impulse: Are investments in fragile states peace positive? Review of available evidence,
Tommaso Sonno, University of Bologna
Introductory presentation: The challenges of peace-positive private sector development and investment
Brian Ganson, Stellenbosch University
Panelists:
Frederik Teufel, African Development Bank AfDB
Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou, ODI
Jeroen Harteveld, Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO)
Moderator:
Pierre van Hoeylandt, Natural Heritage Capital

3.40pm - 3.55pm Coffee Break

3.55pm - 5.15pm Panel 2 Followed by Q&A Session

How do we develop a harmonized framework, in practice, for peace-positive investments?
Guiding questions:
What might a framework for peace-positive investments look like, as in what is needed to ensure that investments move beyond do-no-harm towards peace impact?
What are ways of harmonizing tools and setting standards to ensure that investments build on a peace-positive investment strategy?
How can peace actors share their experiences related to peace indicators to contribute to the development of international standards around ESG?
How do we measure investment impact in terms of peace, and how do we identify opportunities and risks relevant to all company stakeholders, including local populations?
What, if any, role could the United Nations, civil society, and independent observers play in the process?
How do we avoid a future scenario where “peace washing” (in the style of “green washing”) could take place?

Introductory Remarks: Measuring private sector contribution to peacebuilding
Mathu Joyini, Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations
Presentation: Introduction of a “Peace Impact Framework” for peace-positive investment
Christopher Egerton-Warburton, Lion’s Head Global Partners (LHGP)
Panelists:
Vivianne Infante, Director, Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator (ARIA)
David Mozersky, Energy Peace Partners
Daniel Hyslop, Interpeace
Moderator:
Aanchal Bhatia, United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)

5.15pm - 5.30pm Next steps and closing

Summary and next steps
Marcus Lenzen, Deputy Chief Peacebuilding Fund, United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)
Frederik Teufel, Lead Coordinator – Partnerships, Innovation, Private Sector Development, African Development Bank (AfDB)
Closing
Deike Potzel, Director General of the German Federal Foreign Office for Crisis Prevention, Stabilisation, Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Assistance

5.30pm - 7.00pm Reception at Humboldt Carré

Behrenstraße 42, 10117 Berlin

Speaker bios

Welcome Remark

Susanne Baumann

State Secretary of the German Federal Foreign Office

After training for the higher intermediate Foreign Service and studying law at the University of Bonn, Susanne Baumann entered the higher Foreign Service in 1993. Following various posts in Cambodia, Kosovo and Malaysia, she worked as a political adviser at the Federal Ministry of Defence and as a head of division at the Federal Chancellery. Before being appointed State Secretary in December 2021, she was the Federal Government Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control and Head of the Directorate-General for International Order, the United Nations and Arms Control at the Federal Foreign Office.

Elizabeth Spehar

UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support

Elizabeth Spehar of Canada is the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support, in the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. With more than 35 years of experience in international and political affairs, Ms. Spehar has worked in United Nations Headquarters and in the field, leading political, development, peacebuilding and conflict prevention initiatives. Most recently, since 2016, she was the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), also serving as Deputy to the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus. Previously, Ms. Spehar was Director of the Policy and Mediation Division in the former Department of Political Affairs, now DPPA, where she worked on policy and operational matters related to conflict prevention, mediation, peacebuilding and gender mainstreaming. Before joining the United Nations, Ms. Spehar was a senior official with the Organization of American States (OAS) for more than 12 years, working to promote democracy and develop the organization’s dialogue and conflict resolution instruments.

Panel I

Tommaso Sonno

Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Bologna Speaker

Tommaso Sonno is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Bologna. He is also Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, and Adjunct Professor at Bocconi University, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and the Italian Institute for International Political Studies. His research focuses on international economics, political economy, and development economics. He has studied the relationship between trade and conflicts, and global value networks. He is currently analysing the impact of multinational enterprises on violence, the environment, and labour force participation in developing countries. His research focuses also on the organizational dynamics of business groups. He has been giving time and attention to managing an NGO active in Burkina Faso for more than ten years, by designing and coordinating charity projects on education, health, social inclusion, microcredit, and traditional medicine.

Frederik Teufel

Lead Coordinator, African Development Bank (AfDB) Speaker

Frederik Teufel is the Lead Coordinator in the Transition States Coordination Office at the African Development Bank (AfDB). In this role, he is promoting the role of the private sector to build a resilient and peaceful continent, leveraging public and private finance instruments and advancing business environment reforms. In response to elevated and accelerating conflict risk in Africa, Frederik is currently coordinating the development of Security-Indexed Investment Bonds to raise finance at scale through the capital markets for investments that contribute to peace and security. Frederik has more than 15 years of experience in development finance with a focus on Africa and Latin America where he managed and evaluated projects, facilitated investments in frontier markets, and carried out political economy assessments. Prior to his current position, he was the Advisor to AfDB’s Vice-President for Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery, supporting the implementation of the Bank’s lending program. Frederik is the author of AfDB’s 2014-2021 Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa and holds a Master’s Degree in International Business and Cultural Studies from the University of Passau, Germany.

Jeroen Harteveld

Portfolio Manager for MASSIF, Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank (FMO)
Speaker

Jeroen Harteveld is the Portfolio Manager for MASSIF, the financial inclusion fund that FMO manages on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The fund has a strong focus to support financial intermediates in Fragile States and conflict affected regions. MASSIF has over 130 active investments spread over 40 countries of which a significant part is in FSCs. Jeroen has been working at FMO for 18 years. In this timeframe he worked as an Investment Officer in FMO’s Financial Institutions department. Prior, he worked at various other departments, including, Infrastructure, Manufacturing & Services and the Emerging Markets Fund. Jeroen is a Chartered Controller and has a master as well as an executive master in Finance & Control from Nyenrode Business University, The Netherlands.

Brian Ganson

Professor and Head of the Centre on Conflict & Collaboration (CCC), Stellenbosch Business School
Speaker

Brian Ganson is Professor and Head of the Centre on Conflict & Collaboration (CCC) at the Stellenbosch Business School. CCC is a platform for research and dialogue at the nexus of business, conflict and development. It works with business, government, labour and communities to reduce the costs of conflict and increase collaborative opportunities. Prof. Ganson concurrently holds appointments as Professor in the Stellenbosch University School for Data Science and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He co-leads the Business & Conflict Research Initiative, an international consortium expanding the frontiers of understanding of business, conflict, and peaceful development through the tools of data science. He has co-authored numerous books and articles, including most recently in the Academy of Management Review, Global Strategy Journal, and Harvard Business Review. His work helps emerging economies and post-conflict societies to find more peace- and development-positive pathways for private sector development.

Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou

Director, Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
Speaker

Dr Kathryn Nwajiaku-Dahou is the Director of ODI’s Politics and Governance programme and a widely acknowledged as an expert on business and peace / conflict for over 25 years. She recently co-authored the ODI’s forthcoming report on MSME-led private sector development support in context of conflict, fragility and displacement (for KfW). Kathryn previously worked for the OECD for five years, as Head of the Secretariat of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding, where she oversaw research and institutional investor engagement on how to increase responsible investment in fragile states (2017) and DAC engagement on OECD’s Responsible Business portfolio. She also co-authored the OECD’s State of Fragility Report (2015). Kathryn is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of RAID (Rights and Accountability in Development/ https://www.raid-uk.org/), which holds businesses accountable for human rights. Kathryn holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Oxford (Nuffield College).

Pierre van Hoeylandt

Chief Executive, Natural Heritage Capital
Moderator

Pierre is a Senior Adviser to the German Federal Foreign Office and to GFFO's Stabelisation Platform. He is also the Chief Executive of Natural Heritage Capital, a specialist investment management business focused on pioneering investment strategies that support climate and biodiversity in Africa. He has over 25 years’ experience in development finance, investment banking and consulting, including with CDC Group plc, McKinsey & Company and Goldman Sachs. As former Head of Frontier Investments and later Director for special projects at British International Investment (BII, formerly CDC) from 2013 to 2020 he was responsible for BII’s investments in fragile states and for exploring innovative blended finance instruments in a variety of sectors. In the early 2000s, he was the founder and CEO of the first private equity fund in Afghanistan and CEO of a logistics business in Nigeria. Early in his career he worked as a journalist during the civil wars in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda in the 1990s and, in 1995, spent time in the UN Department of Peacekeeping operations under Kofi Annan. Pierre holds a D.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is fluent in German, French, and English. He lives with his wife and son in Cape Town, South Africa.

Panel II

Mathu Joyini

South Africa’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Speaker

Ambassador Mathu Joyini is South Africa’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Prior to this position, she served as the Head of the Diplomatic Academy in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa. She has also served as South Africa’s High Commissioner to six CARICOM countries and a Permanent Representative to the International Seabed Authority. Ambassador Joyini holds a Masters Degree in Social Work as well as a Masters Degree in Business Administration.

Vivianne Infante

Director, ARIA (Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator)
Speaker

Vivianne is a member of British International Investment’s (BII) Africa Coverage Team. She is currently Director for ARIA (Africa Resilience Investment Accelerator), a G7 DFI initiative led by BII. Since 2015, she has also been BII’s Country Director for Ethiopia (covering Horn of Africa) and DRC, countries where she lived from 2015 until 2021. Her investment coverage responsibilities include deal origination, portfolio management support and all the representative responsibilities typical of such role. Some of her latest achievements include the launch and development of ARIA as an international DFI initiative platform pertaining to frontier and fragility issues, as well as being country lead for two of largest ever closed BII equity investments. Vivianne qualified as corporate Solicitor in England and Wales in 2004 and worked at the City law firm White & Case as a Project Finance and International Arbitration lawyer. She is passionate about private sector development issues in the African continent and, in addition to DRC and Ethiopia, she has worked and lived in Nigeria (as counsel at the Nigerian sovereign wealth fund (NSIA) for the largest PPP infrastructure project in the country at the time), and as corporate lawyer in Ghana (as corporate international counsel having worked on the first oil exploration transaction at the time).

Daniel Hyslop

Head of Research and Senior
Peacebuilding Advisor, Interpeace
Speaker

Daniel Hyslop is the Head of Research and Senior Peacebuilding Advisor at Interpeace, an International Organisation for Peacebuilding headquartered in Geneva. He leads Interpeace’s Finance for Peace initiative that seeks to catalyse more peace promotional private sector investment in fragile countries through new financial structures, standards, frameworks and partnerships. He has developed and supported a variety of Interpeace’s policy initiatives such as the peace responsiveness facility that works with various UN agencies on developing more peace responsive development and humanitarian approaches. He has helped establish various multistakeholder and policy efforts such as the Principles for Peace and Rethinking Stabilisation initiatives that seek to create new approaches to improving the effectiveness of international peacebuilding approaches. Previously, he authored widely cited research on the economic costs of violence and measurement of peace and positive peace. For several years he led development of the Global Peace Index and has contributed to several flagship studies on international peacebuilding policy such as the OECD States of Fragility Report and UN-World Bank Pathways for Peace report. He has consulted to the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and Commonwealth Secretariat and worked with various UN agencies on their peacebuilding approaches.

Christopher Egerton-Warburton

Founding Partner and Chair, Lion's Head Global Partners
Speaker

Christopher Egerton-Warburton is a Founding Partner and Chair of Lion’s Head Global Partners, a frontier market focused investment banking platform that is authorised and regulated by the FCA. Christopher has led Lion’s Head Global Partners’ work in the field of post-conflict investment in the Middle East since 2016 and has led the diligence of transactions in Afghanistan. At a multilateral level Christopher helped to establish a number of innovative financing vehicles including the International Financing Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm), the Global Health Investment Fund (GHIF), and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Prior to establishing Lion’s Head Global Partners in 2008, Christopher spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs within the Debt Capital Markets group. In his last role he was Head of the Sovereign, Supranational and Agency team. Christopher holds an MA in Biochemistry from Christ Church College at Oxford University.

David Mozersky

President and co-founder of Energy Peace Partner (EPP)
Speaker

David Mozersky is the President and co-founder of Energy Peace Partner (EPP), an organization built around the idea of leveraging climate and finance solutions to promote peace in fragile regions. He has a background in conflict prevention and peacebuilding, with a focus on the Horn of Africa, and has worked with the International Crisis Group, the African Union High-Implementation Panel on Sudan/South Sudan (AUHIP), and Humanity United, among others. EPP has developed the Peace Renewable Energy Credit (P-REC) as a financing mechanism to support renewable energy projects in countries affected by conflict, climate change and energy poverty. P-RECs link corporate sustainability procurement with high-impact, pro-peace projects in fragile states. To date, corporate P-REC purchases have supported new solar projects in the DRC and South Sudan. EPP is launching the P-REC Aggregation Fund to further scale this mechanism, and developing an M&E framework to measure the peace impacts of renewable energy.

Aanchal Bhatia

Innovative Finance Specialist, UN Peace Building Support Office (PBSO)
Moderator

Aanchal Bhatia is the Innovative Finance Specialist at the UN’s Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), in the Secretariat’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs at UNHQ. Her main role includes supporting the development of innovative finance options for peacebuilding in conflict-affected settings as well as identify new policy frameworks and partnerships with a new set of actors, that will help the Secretary-General to implement his reform agenda. In the past, she has worked at the UN Capital Development Fund on their flagship women’s economic empowerment programme aimed at unlocking private capital for gender-responsive investments in East Africa and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining PBSO, Bhatia worked at UNICEF on public–private partnerships and innovation for children’s rights initiatives, including education, nutrition and social protection. She also worked in an investor outreach role during the design and launch phase at Convergence, a blended finance online platform bringing together public and private investors – including international financial institutions, foundations and private investors – for development deals in emerging and frontier markets. Prior to her experiences in development finance, Bhatia worked for over four years in private sector, in commercial lending risk management. Bhatia graduated from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University in 2015, with an MPA focused on International Finance and Economic Policy.

Next steps and closing

Marcus Lenzen

Deputy Chief of the Peacebuilding Fund, UN Peace Building Support Office (PBSO)
Speaker

Marcus Lenzen is the Deputy Chief of the Peacebuilding Fund with the UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) in the Department for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs in New York, where he focuses on the Fund’s strategy and partnerships. Prior roles included Senior Conflict Adviser with the UK’s Department for International Development, where he led policy work on the Department’s ‘Building Stability Framework’ and peacebuilding programming in Nigeria. He also held positions with the UN Development Programme’s Crisis Bureau, advising country offices on conflict analysis, conflict prevention and peacebuilding programming; and served with the GIZ in Guatemala and Peru supporting national human rights actors and truth and reconciliation processes. Marcus has over 20 years of experience working at the interface of peacebuilding and development and a keen interest in transitional justice. He holds a Master’s degree in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Master’s degree in Political Science, Modern History and Applied Cultural Studies from the University of Muenster, Germany.

Deike Potzel

Director General of the German Federal Foreign Office for Crisis Prevention, Stabilisation, Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Assistance
Speaker

Ambassador Deike Potzel is Director General for Crisis Prevention, Stabilisation, Peace Building and Humanitarian Assistance at the Federal Foreign Office.
Previously, she served as Inspector General at the Federal Foreign Office. She was Germany’s Ambassador to Ireland, Deputy Director-General for Central Services at the Foreign Ministry and Head of the Personal Office of Federal President Joachim Gauck. She also served as Deputy Head of Division for Personell, Staff Development and Planning, Desk Officer for Iran and the Gulf Countries as well as the EU-Enlargement desk at the Foreign Ministry. She was posted to Iran and Singapore. Ambassador Potzel studied English and French Language and Literature. She is married with two grown-up children.