Rethinking Civilian Investment and Local Leadership
While global political violence has almost doubled since 2020, President Trump’s destruction of USAID, the United States’ aid agency, accelerates and drastically worsens a sharp downward trend in non-military peace and security assistance among many donors. In 2025, as this study shows, we may see 34 percent less global investment in peace and security compared to the 2021-2023 average. This analysis shows how donors allocate money and power, and how not only investment in peace and security in general but also the commitment to locally-led peacebuilding in particular are deeply in crisis, and offers a way out.
The study was undertaken by Melissa Li, Maximilian Biller and Philipp Rotmann of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) with financial support from the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
