Social Entrepreneurship Toward a Sustainable Peacebuilding

For as long as humanity existed, peace has been threatened across geographies and Nations, and the effort toward conflict resolutions has been immense. Given the widespread occurrence of violent conflicts mainly in Africa, Latin America, Middle East, and South Asia, and the rising concern about fragile economies and their repercussions for global development, initiatives toward prevention and resolutions became crucial and leaded the development Agenda of the World (e.g. United Nations Global Compact, 2020; Sustainable Development Goals, 2030). In fact, recently, research on violent conflicts resolutions has grown significantly with several publications in leading scientific journals (e.g. Journal of Conflict Resolution) and mainstream conferences (e.g. Young Academic Conference 2020 ‘Planning as a Conflict Resolution’). In this vein, authors pinpoint the weaknesses in the numerous peacekeeping missions of recent decades and highlight the need to have a more comprehensive actions directed to eradication of roots of war, accommodating the economic and social purposes of war-countries (Gerson and Colletta, 2001). The chapter which follows intends to deeply present, comment, and understand a category of social enterprise, labelled Peace Social Enterprise, which has the social mission of providing solutions to raise peace in violent conflict areas, thereby transforming and developing such contexts. Thus, this chapter provides an analysis of extant literature to explain the characteristics and the role played by social entrepreneurship to address peace and development-related issues such as reconciliation among opposite parties and economic growth in conflicts countries. In doing this, the chapter also highlights the contribution of Peace Social Enterprise to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by the United Nation. In fact, Peace Social Enterprise performs an inclusive economic development contributing to achieving the SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), while enabling vulnerable groups to address their basic unmet needs, addressing the SDG 1 (No Poverty). Taking together such two goals, Peace Social Enterprise addresses its principal social mission that is the promotion of a peaceful society in war-conflict contexts, thereby contributing to the SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions).