• Between Politics and Pragmatism: Parallel governance in Strpce/Stherpce, Kosovo
  • PSDN Final Conference Report
  • Paving the Way for a European Future
  • Dynamics Between Decentralisation and Peace Building
  • Decentralisation and Peace Building in the Western Balkans
  • No upcoming events.


Would you (no longer) want to receive the newsletter and other updates of the PSDNetwork. Please fill in your email address down.

The Peace Security and Development Network

The Peace Security and Development Network (PSDNetwork) is a knowledge platform that brings together a wide variety of Dutch actors involved in fragile states. ministries, NGOs, knowledge institutes and the business sector jointly mobilize knowledge in order to design concrete activities, implementation modalities and associated instruments that guarantee the necessary conflict-sensitive development approach towards fragile states and post-conflict countries.

The innovative character of this initiative, as well as the direct added value of the cooperation between partners from different sectors is: 1) to build trust and new forms of collaboration among the various partners; 2) to exchange and make (more efficient) use of the expertise of the various partners; 3) to develop and disseminate new insights and specific knowledge products; 4) to stimulate the process of reciprocal learning.

Project themes and working groups of the PSDNetwork

Apart from the general aim of improved cooperation and the sharing of knowledge between the partners, as described above, the PSDNetwork also aims to achieve synergy between the projects in order to ensure a comprehensive approach with respect to fragile states. The projects have therefore been identified with respect to various themes, i.e. security, governance and economic reconstruction. Development requires a minimum level of security and governance and vice versa. Without sufficient governance capacity, basic public service delivery is impossible and an enabling environment required for sustainable economic (pro- poor) growth cannot be supported. Based on the above mentioned general goals of the PSD Network, more specific goals have been formulated for five separate working groups.

The Network Secretariat

CRU provides the Secretariat for the PSDNetwork and is therefore responsible for the financial administration and management of the project; acts as a broker and first point of contact for the PSD Network for partner and non-partner organizations and refer interested parties to the relevant working groups; is responsible for the organization of PSDNetwork activities as conferences, discussions, network opportunities; supports the Coordinators Group; delivers input and initiate innovative ideas to develop and strengthen the Network.

  • Community Security and Community based DDR in Fragile States
  • Gender and Conflict Initiative for Fragile States
  • Strengthening Local Governance Capacity for Peace Building and Reconstruction
  • Multi-stakeholder processes, service delivery and state-institutions
  • Public Private Collaboration in Fragile States

The Schoklandakkoorden/ The Millenium Agreements

In 2000, 189 countries committed themselves to a global partnership and formulated eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are targets established at the world summits of the 1990s and function as a blueprint for governments and non-governmental development organizations. Responding to the worlds main development challenges and to the calls of civil society, the MDGs promote poverty reduction, education, maternal health, gender equality and aim at combating child mortality, AIDS and other diseases. The target date for the MDGs is 2015.

Recognizing her responsibility and commitment to contribute to the MDGs, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized a large public meeting at Schokland (The Netherlands) on June 30th 2007. The aim of the conference was to bring together a large number of organizations, civil society representatives, academics, NGOs, companies and individuals and offer them the opportunity to explicitly indicate how they wanted to commit themselves in achieving the MDGs. As a result of this conference, a number of initiatives were formalized into the so called Schokland Agreements.

In March 2009 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs renamed the Schokland agreements into Millennium Accords to open up for new initiatives and accords. For more information and an overview of all Millennium accords see the website: www.millenniumakkoorden.nl.

Fragile States

In relation to more stable developing countries, MDG performance is comparatively lower in fragile states. Varying degrees and dimensions of state failure are held responsible for this state of affairs, requiring different policy and strategy design. At Schokland, an agreement was signed in order to contextualize the realization of the MDGs in terms of state fragility and to arrive at relevant (policy) considerations and recommendations in order to deal with these specific issues. The increasingly complex challenges encountered in fragile states, exceed the capability of any single actor. Relevant sectors dealing with these challenges include donor and recipient governments, international and local non-governmental organisations and civil society, the private sector, universities and other knowledge institutions.