Peace-Building Beyond the Conference Room
The formal architecture of international peacebuilding is well documented: ceasefire agreements, truth and reconciliation commissions, transitional justice frameworks, institutional capacity-building programs. These are essential. They provide the structures within which post-conflict societies can begin to rebuild.
But they are not sufficient on their own. Structures without relationships are fragile. And relationships, as every experienced peacebuilder knows, are built in the informal margins of formal processes, at dinners after long negotiating sessions, in the hallways between plenary meetings, over the shared experience of simply being human together.
FPCD has built its work around this understanding. The Peace Cookbook, written by cultural envoy Wheeler del Torro in collaboration with FPCD, is an expression of it. By documenting the food traditions of eight post-conflict countries and making them accessible to a global readership, the cookbook extends the work of peace-building into everyday life in a way that no conference room can.
Each chapter illuminates a different dimension of what peace-building looks like on the ground, in the communities where it actually has to happen.
Afghanistan: Generosity as Foundation
In Afghan culture, the obligation to feed a guest is among the most fundamental social values. It persists across ethnic, linguistic, and political divisions. It is, in a meaningful sense, a pre-political commitment to human connection. The plant-based recipes in this chapter carry that spirit, offering readers an experience of Afghan hospitality that the news cycle rarely conveys.
Burundi: The Patience of Recovery
Burundi’s recovery from conflict has been slow, non-linear, and deeply dependent on community-level relationship-building. The food traditions documented in this chapter reflect this patient, ground-up process. These are dishes that require time, attention, and care, qualities that the work of peace also requires.
Cote d’Ivoire: Culture as Continuity
Cote d’Ivoire’s post-conflict recovery has drawn significantly on the continuity of cultural practices that survived the country’s period of civil conflict. The plant-based food traditions in this chapter reflect a community’s insistence on maintaining the practices that define it, even under pressure. That insistence is itself a peace-building act.
Cyprus: Reconciliation at the Table
Cyprus offers a case study in what reconciliation looks like when it is partial, ongoing, and contested. The food traditions in this chapter do not resolve the island’s political divisions, but they complicate the narrative of absolute separation. They suggest that something remains shared, and that shared things can be the foundation for more.
Haiti: Rebuilding Through Community
Haiti’s experience of repeated crisis has produced a community-level resilience that formal institutions have not always been able to provide. The food traditions in this chapter reflect the role that communal gathering and shared meals have played in maintaining social cohesion through circumstances that would test any society.
Sierra Leone: Community as Infrastructure
Sierra Leone’s post-conflict recovery has been shaped significantly by community-level resilience. The food traditions in this chapter reflect a culture in which communal eating is infrastructure, a way of maintaining the social bonds that formal institutions alone cannot provide.
Syria: Preserving Identity Across Displacement
For displaced Syrian communities around the world, maintaining food traditions has been an act of identity preservation as much as sustenance. The plant-based recipes in this chapter reflect a culture that has insisted on its own continuity across borders and circumstances, demonstrating that the work of peace includes the work of keeping culture alive.
Timor-Leste: Building from the Ground Up
Timor-Leste’s peace-building story is, in important ways, a story of construction rather than reconstruction. As one of the world’s newest nations, it has had to build institutions, identity, and community practices largely from scratch. The food traditions in this chapter reflect that creative, generative process, and the particular kind of resilience it requires.
The Peace Cookbook is not yet available for purchase. Register on its official website to be notified of its launch, and to express interest in securing a limited signed edition or attending the exclusive New York City launch event. All proceeds benefit FPCD.