Article originally shared by Edinburgh Law School, 25th August 2025.

Edinburgh Law School and Beyond Borders Scotland have hosted an inception workshop for a new Scottish Peace Platform. 

The new Scottish Peace Platform (SPP) is a groundbreaking initiative funded by the Scottish Government to coordinate, connect, and amplify Scotland’s diverse peacebuilding stakeholders and initiatives.

The SPP builds on Scotland’s vibrant peacebuilding sector and commitment to feminist international relations. It aims to increase the collective impact of its members’ work and to create opportunities for its members to engage strategically in peacebuilding activities, both within and outside Scotland. Read more about the context and aims of the SPP in the Scottish Government’s 2024 request for proposals on a peace programme for Scotland.

The SPP will be jointly facilitated by Beyond Borders Scotland (BBS), a non-partisan organisation for global dialogue and peacebuilding, in partnership with peace and conflict resolution experts from Edinburgh Law School (ELS). The project comprises two strands: the new SPP, and the continuation of the Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship Programme.

BBS and ELS have a long history of collaboration on the 1325 Fellowship. Named after UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which marks its 25th anniversary this year, the Fellowship has already trained more than 360 women peacebuilders from 40 conflict-affected countries since 2017.

At the SPP inception workshop on 19 August, over 40 participants from a diverse set of Scotland-based organisations came together to discuss the principles, activities, and governance of the new SPP. The workshop was the first in a series of open events and pre-launch activities for the SPP, following a survey and a range of discussions with Scottish peacebuilding stakeholders, organised by the SPP team. The SPP will launch and start registering Scotland-based organisations and individuals working in peacebuilding in autumn 2025.

 

During his opening remarks, Tim Epple, Managing Director of PeaceRep at Edinburgh Law School, provided an overview of the context in which the SPP is emerging, and what the platform can learn from similar initiatives in Switzerland and beyond. Epple highlighted the diversity of the Scottish peacebuilding sector, illustrating the various ways in which Scottish peacebuilders contribute to conflict resolution using Professor Christine Bell’s ‘ripples of peace’ visual from her open-access book, PeaceTech: Digital Transformation to End Wars. Epple thanked workshop participants for sharing their views on the SPP through the survey and meetings over the last few months, and invited the audience to collectively brainstorm how the SPP will best serve its members.

Noor Al-Naser, Peace Platform Manager at Beyond Borders Scotland, reflected on the day: “The inception workshop showed the incredible breadth of Scotland’s peacebuilding community. The Scottish Peace Platform will give us the chance to bring these voices together, amplify their impact, and connect local experience to global conversations on peace through connections with the Women in Conflict 1325 Alumnae network.”