The PeaceTech We Want – Open Knowledge Foundation

How can we build a movement to advance our efforts around technology to pave the way for peace?

According to the Red Cross’s most recent data, forty countries worldwide are facing armed conflict. Technology is shaping them in one way or another. Even those designed with good intentions can expose people to new risks, reinforce inequalities or be used in ways their creators never intended.

But what if a different way of designing and delivering technology could shift the balance for peace? What if high-quality data, culturally appropriate communication tools, human creativity, and today's advancing technologies could foster dialogue and lead to peace? How are the technologies our open movement creates through volunteering and collaboration beyond borders helping and shaping those in need? How do we root peacebuilders in the design of AI and peacetech tools, rather than building for the outside, and what concrete steps does that actually take, in practice, to get right?

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), together with the PeaceTech Alliance, is hosting The PeaceTech We Want Summit to bring the open movement closer to those working on peace tech.

Grounded in the peacebuilder-first, Do No Harm approach, the summit is for anyone working at the intersection of technology and peace who wants a grounded, practitioner-led conversation rather than another AI hype panel: peacebuilders, technologists, researchers and policymakers looking to shape this field responsibly, together.

Join us:

🗓️ Monday, 19 October 2026
🕐 14:00 — 18:00 CEST
📍 Online, free of charge

Register now

Details of the speakers and times for each session will be announced shortly.

Opening Keynote	First, Do No Harm: Technology For and From Peace Drawing on peacebuilding practice, this keynote explores what Do No Harm can teach us about the technologies we create: how we understand context, anticipate unintended consequences, protect human relationships and ensure that the people affected by technology have a role in shaping it.
Panel	Do No Harm: Who Decides What Technology Peace Needs? Following the opening keynote, this panel asks what Do No Harm means in practice when technology enters conflict-affected settings. Technology can open possibilities for dialogue, understanding and participation, but it can also expose people to risk, reinforce existing inequalities or simply solve the wrong problem.
Demos	PeaceTech in Practice: What Are We Learning? A series of short demonstrations uncovering the knowledge, data, methods and communities behind the tools—what can be shared and reused, what must remain rooted in context, and what these experiments can teach us about building better, together.
	Quick Break
Roundtable	AI at the Negotiating Table: What Does a Peace Negotiator Need to Know? This conversation brings together peace negotiators and experts in mediation and digital diplomacy to explore the limitations and potential benefits of AI for diplomatic and political stability work, including cross-cultural communication, negotiation simulations and the politics embedded in different LLMs.
Closing Keynote	Digital Ceasefire: Can Technology Help Us Build Peace? As warfare becomes increasingly digital, what would a digital peace look like? This keynote explores how the digitalisation of conflict—from cyber operations and information warfare to AI—is reshaping the battlefield, drawing civilians and the technologies we use every day into new forms of conflict. Can we move from technologies that enable and amplify conflict towards technologies deliberately shaped for peace? An invitation to imagine what digital peace could look like—and what role technologists, peacebuilders, civil society and the open movement can play in building it.

This is an open online event free of charge. We welcome registrations from everyone who is interested in taking a critical look at current technologies.

Register now

For questions and queries regarding the programme or any aspect of registration process, please contact info@okfn.org.

The PeaceTech We Want is organised by:

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) believes knowledge should be accessible to everyone. That is why we advance open content, data and technology for over 20 years. We build and maintain digital infrastructure and digital public goods that anyone can use, and we encourage truly open collaboration and purposeful innovation, including for AI and other frontier technologies. OKFN is the organisation behind the AI Learning Labs, Open Definition, Open Data Commons, School of Data, and tools like CKAN, Frictionless Data and the Open Data Editor. Our work supports a fair, safe, and sustainable internet for all.

The PeaceTech Alliance is an Austria-based, not-for-profit collective, launched at the International Digital Security Forum (IDSF) in Vienna following two years of consultation and collaboration across the country. It was created in response to a growing concern: that conversations about technology, conflict, AI and security are increasingly shaped by commercial interests and technology-first thinking, often without meaningful input from the peacebuilders and communities most affected. The alliance's current supporters include: Austrian Institute of Technology, Gaia-X Hub Austria, Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), Austrian Centre for Peace, University of Innsbruck, International Institute for Peace (IIP), University of Graz, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, and Donau Universität Krems.

The Tech We Want is a collective conversation about new practical ways to build software that is useful, simple, long-lasting and focused on solving people's real problems.

Since 2023, OKFN has been advocating together with the community of developers working on public-interest technologies for climate-friendly, accessible and sustainable approaches to technology. Understanding the potential ecological and societal impacts of various development decisions is the first step towards another stack with different metrics, community practices and guidelines.