Conflict Prevention Associate

Thirteen years after the end of the armed conflict, Sri Lanka has not returned to active conflict and has remained a largely peaceful country. However, stresses on peace and social cohesion remain, including new fault lines, exacerbated by the Easter Bombings of 2019, the current economic crisis and the legacy of the armed conflict which are not yet fully addressed. While a return to armed conflict is not viewed as a near-term risk, Sustaining Peace requires continuous engagement in addressing existing challenges, improving governance and social cohesion, as well as the robust monitoring of emerging risks. There has been a growing recognition of the need to systematically mainstream conflict sensitive approaches into all programme activities in the country.
In this context, the UN in Sri Lanka has in recent years continued to invest in a wide portfolio of peacebuilding priorities, including those supported by the UN Peace Building Fund. Among the peacebuilding priorities has been developing a deep contextual analysis of emerging risks such as climate security and land use, organized crime, and the impact of online hate speech that would support the Secretary General’s global agenda on Prevention.
Looking ahead, the main instruments to advance these priorities will be the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2023-2027 and the UN SDG Multi Partner Trust Fund. Through increased coordination around these two mechanisms, the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) is expected to significantly increase integrated approaches and joint programming in support of Sustaining Peace and more broadly, SDG 16

The Resident Coordinator’s Office sits at the centre of the UNCT in Sri Lanka’s coordinated efforts to support the country in areas of conflict prevention and peacebuilding, including countering hate speech which took on a renewed significance in the country after the Easter Sunday bombings of 2019. The work is supported by the Peace and Development Advisors (PDA Team) from the Joint UNDP-DPPA Programme on Building National Capacities for Conflict Prevention. The PDA Team focuses on building existing and emerging national and local capacities to ad-dress, and fundamentally transform the underlying causes of conflict. Furthermore, the PDAs work at strengthening existing mechanisms and capacities for inclusive dialogue and national peace architectures while supporting the UN system to effectively adapt and respond to com-plex political situations and identify areas for preventive action.

The UN Early Warning System has identified hate speech and disinformation to be a driving force of conflict and violence in Sri Lanka. Various racial and ethnic minorities are targeted online and offline leading to loss of lives and property damage. With two highly contested national elections in 2024/25, it is likely the existing tensions will be exacerbated and lead to violence. The RCO and UNCT supported by the PDA team are working with national and international partners to address hate speech, disinformation, and electoral violence to facilitate free, fair and com-petitive elections and prevention of conflict.

As the UNV supporting the PDA team, the candidate will contribute to regular development of knowledge products and data analysis on a range of electoral violence, hate speech and conflict prevention issues as the core function. The selected candidate will also assist in strategizing, developing, and rolling out of several initiatives to counter hate-speech and electoral disinfor-mation. The UNV will benefit from closely liaising with the Early Warning System of the UNCT to understand conflict drivers and designing prevention strategies.

The selected candidate will be afforded several advantages including the opportunity to work directly with the UN Resident Coordinator and other senior staff including the Peace and Development Advisor and Head of Office.

Under the direct supervision of Peace and Development Advisor, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

· Support PDA and UNCT in compiling the analysis of country situation to identify oppor-tunities and entry points to support preventing electoral violence, disinformation, hate speech and conflict prevention through primary and secondary research.

· Assist the PDA team to strategize, design and roll out initiatives to counter hate-speech and electoral disinformation.

· Support the PDA team during engagements with national and international partners to address hate speech, disinformation, and electoral violence to facilitate free, fair and competitive elections and prevention of conflict.

· Assist the Early Warning Team in identifying conflict drivers and designing prevention strategies.

· Support to monitoring and evaluation of relevant ongoing UN programmes.

· Provide substantive support to the RC on the planning, coordination and management of tasks pertaining to conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

· Support in drafting and compilation of reports, briefs, and other knowledge products.

· Other administrative support/tasks assigned by the office.