Cord is an international peacebuilding organisation with over four decades of experience working in 26 countries helping people affected by violent conflict.

Not just development/

Everything we do is focused on addressing the root causes of conflict, because building peace helps communities to lead their own development.

Many of our programmes contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, but we believe we should go much further. As well as resources, what countries which have suffered conflict often lack is the ability, or what we call the ‘capacity’, to move forwards and deal with conflict in a non-violent way.

This weakness often results in a return to violence which all too often cancels out any development progress made. That’s why we do things differently.

Our partners hold the keys to peace/

It is important for governments, regional and community structures to take ownership and develop their own processes, knowledge and experience - simply imposing these from outside doesn't work.

We employ some 800 people in Africa, south east Asia and most of our in-country staff teams are citizens of that country – they know the place inside out. They work with local partner organizations on a long term basis to develop their capacity to deal with conflict non-violently.

Why and how/

We are motivated by the Christian faith but it doesn’t matter to us whether people we work with have a different religious faith or none. Our aim is to build 'positive' peace, where there are real signs of constructive progress in societies - rather than 'negative' peace, which is simply an end to violence.

Violent conflict fuels abuse of human rights and in turn the abuse of human rights often fuels violent conflict. All too aware of this, all our work is carried out within a conflict sensitive Human Rights framework.

To find out more about how we tackle the root causes of conflict visit our latest news section or explore the country profiles.