Definitions of peace vary widely across traditions, making it difficult to compare results, coordinate efforts, or make the case for investment. IGP’s research programme addresses this directly.
Our published work identifies three elements that recur across how peace is understood in research and practice. They are not intended to supersede existing traditions, but to identify where different approaches connect.
Measuring peace: if something can be shown to strengthen all three elements simultaneously, it can be said to build peace. If it weakens any of them, it moves away from peace. This gives the field a shared diagnostic lens, though translating it into specific indicators is ongoing work.
Peace involves living beings that are conscious, that can feel, suffer, and experience the world from the inside.
Peace points toward people being able to live well; it supports, enables, or creates the conditions for well-being through agency.
Peace is always about how people (or groups, or nations) relate to each other. It lives in the relationship between actors, not inside any single one.
The same three elements appear from interpersonal relationships to international institutions. How they manifest varies, but the structure holds.
How peace forms and breaks down between individuals.
How organisations align, collaborate, and where friction grows.
How violence, cooperation, and institutional design reinforce or undermine one another.
IGP's framework is grounded in a peer-reviewed foundation paper, supported by working papers in development.
The framework is designed to be useful across stakeholder contexts — researchers, organisations, funders, and policymakers. See where it lands closest to your work, or open a conversation directly.