Why Peacebuilding Stays Underfunded: What the UN’s New Overview Gets Right, and Misses

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This policy brief examines the underfunding of peacebuilding and conflict prevention. The United Nations’ first Peacebuilding Overview, Building Peace in a Changing World: Investing in Peace When the World Pays for War (2026), documents a stark imbalance: over the past two decades the world has spent roughly one dollar on peace-related aid for every hundred dollars of military expenditure. The report attributes part of this gap to peacebuilding’s weaker shared data systems and evidence practices. That diagnosis is important but incomplete. Governments underfund prevention less because they lack proof that it works than because military spending responds to visible threats and organised constituencies, while successful prevention is harder to see and attribute. Better evidence can improve choices and accountability, but it will not by itself shift resources. That requires predictable financing, genuinely inclusive national ownership, responsibility for implementation and evaluation systems that do not privilege the organisations best equipped to measure themselves.