What Milk Can Teach Us About Building Peace Into Everyday Systems
Conflict Disrupts Daily Life; Peace Must Be Designed Into Everything
Last week, I outlined three ways the peacebuilding field can adapt in this era of global disruption. Over the next three posts, I’ll dive deeper into each one—exploring the reasoning and practical implications. In this first installment, I unpack what it truly means to integrate peacebuilding and why this approach is essential.
What does milk have to do with peace?
Turns out, quite a lot. In 2019, I oversaw a USAID-funded research initiative across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—a region known as Liptako-Gourma, where violent extremism, insecurity, and state fragility have collided for nearly a decade.
Our research didn’t ask communities to respond to definitions of violent extremism based on policy jargon or academic concepts designed to land in Tier 1 journals. Instead, we wanted to know how regular people living in this region themselves defined “peace” and “violent extremism.” To discover this, our local research teams asked simple questions:
“What does peace—or violent extremism—mean to you?”
“What signs do you observe each day that tell you whether your community is at peace or under threat?”
Perhaps unsurprisingly in retrospect, the answers weren’t about extremist narratives or negotiated settlements. They were about milk, markets, missing teachers, and neighbors who no longer greeted each other.
In Mali, they spoke of:
No milk in the market, because Fulani herders—who traditionally supplied dairy products—had fled due to insecurity, violence, or fear.
Canceled weddings, because social gatherings were either too dangerous or banned.
Roadblocks and curfews, making trade and travel perilous.
Schools without teachers. Markets closing early. Neighbors avoiding eye contact.
In Burkina Faso, they said:
The flight of local officials, teachers, veterinarians, and health workers due to targeted assassinations—a silent collapse of governance.
Fear replacing daily rituals, from tending fields to attending religious services.
Women noting spikes in maternal mortality due to the lack of access to healthcare.
In Niger, communities described:
The absence of morning greetings—a subtle but powerful indicator that trust and social cohesion were fraying.
Markets thinning out, not from supply chain issues, but from fear.
Silence where there should be sound—like no longer hearing women pounding fufu, signaling that families had fled or daily routines had been abandoned out of fear.
Across all three countries, people defined violent extremism not by ideology, but by disruptions to normal life. And they defined peace not by peace pacts, but by:
Children laughing on their way to school.
Markets bustling late into the afternoon.
The playful teasing between ethnic groups—known as cousinage—returning to village streets.
The simple freedom to hold a wedding or go to a place of worship.
These stories reveal a truth we often miss: Conflict isn’t confined to the security sector—it’s experienced through the breakdown of daily life.
What milk reveals about why peace must be integrated
Seen through the communities’ eyes, conflict isn’t abstract or siloed—it’s evident in the erosion of daily routines, services, relationships, and livelihoods.
If we compare this to traditional peacebuilding and countering violent extremism (CVE) frameworks, we see a huge discrepancy in how “experts” (myself included) view conflict and peace versus how the communities do. This table demonstrates the point:
The communities’ lived experiences are micro-level indicators, but they reveal the macro-level reality: Conflict seeps into every sector of society. And peace is lived and experienced in the everyday systems we too often overlook. This understanding invites us to rethink how we approach peacebuilding.
If conflict reveals itself in empty markets, fleeing civil servants, disrupted agriculture, shuttered schools, and the inability to buy milk, then addressing it cannot remain siloed in security responses or stand-alone dialogue programs. It must be integrated—woven into how we design economic development, governance, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and even cultural preservation.
When the absence of milk signals conflict, rebuilding peace must start with restoring all of the systems that keep it flowing.
From insight to action: The logic of integration
This is why integrating peace isn’t just a policy recommendation or argument for a new approach to peacebuilding—it’s a reflection of reality.
The insights from Liptako-Gourma show that peace is built—or lost—through ordinary systems of daily life.
When we design those systems without a lens for peace, we risk reinforcing the very dynamics that allow conflict to take hold.
If markets are disrupted by conflict, then economic programs must be conflict-sensitive and peace-promoting. If schools close due to insecurity, then education isn’t just about learning—it’s about resilience. If social trust erodes quietly before violence erupts, then governance and community initiatives must foster cohesion long before formal peace talks ever begin.
Seen in this way, integrating peace isn’t about adding peacebuilding to existing agendas. It’s about asking how every system we design either sustains peace or enables conflict to take root.
It’s also a mindset shift from peace being something we do after a conflict to the baseline that makes everything else work.
What it means to integrate peace
Integrating peace is not a program—it’s a design principle.
It recognizes that conflict doesn’t emerge in isolation. It arises when systems—economic, social, political—amplify tensions, promote instability, and disrupt daily life.
An agriculture project isn’t just about increasing yields; it’s about preventing land disputes.
A health clinic isn’t just for treatment; it’s where trust in institutions is either rebuilt or broken.
A road isn’t just infrastructure; it can unite or divide communities depending on how it’s planned.
Every decision—policy, investment, or service—has the potential to fuel conflict or foster peace.
Integrating peace means making that choice deliberate, not accidental.
Peace endures when systems are intentionally designed to uphold dignity, foster inclusion, and prevent the injustices that lead to conflict.
Integrating peace in real life
Integrating peace happens when sectors recognize their role in fostering stability—not as an add-on, but as part of their core function. Here’s how it already is working across different domains:
✅ Agriculture & Livelihoods: In pastoral regions, initiatives such as Northern Kenya’s Marsabit Development Programme show how mediation and locally-led dialogue between ethnic groups can reduce clashes over grazing rights—integrating peacebuilding directly into livestock and resource management efforts.
✅ Public Health: During Ebola outbreaks, response teams learned that ignoring community grievances fueled distrust and violence. Health interventions that included dialogue and local leadership became as much about peacebuilding as disease control.
✅ Urban Planning: In fragile cities, designing public spaces where different groups can safely interact helps rebuild social cohesion—preventing segregation that often hardens divides.
✅ Private Sector: Businesses operating in high-risk environments may establish formal mechanisms—such as dialogue platforms, mediation processes, and multi-stakeholder committees—to engage constructively with local communities and address tensions over resources, environmental impacts, and employment practices before they escalate into conflict.
These aren’t labeled as “peacebuilding projects”—but they are exactly where peace is built or broken.
Why Integrating Peace Matters Now
We’re living in an era of overlapping crises—what many call the polycrisis. Climate shocks, economic instability, food insecurity, public health emergencies, political polarization, and rising violence are feeding off each other.
In this context, siloed approaches won’t work. If we want sustainable solutions—whether in development, business, or governance—peace has to be part of the design, not what comes in to try to help clean up the mess.
Mainstreaming peace isn’t just good practice for conflict zones. It’s smart strategy everywhere instability threatens progress. And today, instability is no longer confined to conflict zones—it’s increasingly a global condition.
The Milk Test
Since working in Liptako Gourma, I often think about what I now call the Milk Test:
If you want to know whether peacebuilding is working, don’t just count ceasefire agreements or the number of workshops you held.
Ask:
Is there milk in the market?
Can people attend their places of worship or go to their friend’s wedding?
Are local officials present and trusted?
Can people move freely without fear?
Because that’s where peace lives. Not in reports, resolutions, or in nice office buildings. But in the ordinary rhythms of daily life.
And that’s why mainstreaming peace is not optional. It’s essential.
Up Next:
In Part 2 of this series, I’ll explore how rethinking finance—moving beyond donor dependency—is critical to sustaining mainstreamed peace efforts. Because good intentions aren’t enough if the funding models keep us stuck in crisis response.
Stay tuned.