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?

On 19 October 2026, together with the PeaceTech Alliance, the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) hosted 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 was for anyone working at the intersection of technology and peace who wanted a grounded, practitioner-led conversation rather than another AI hype panel: peacebuilders, technologists, researchers and policymakers looking to shape this field responsibly, together.

The full summit documentation will be published soon.

Opening Keynote

Is AI For or Against Peace? Designing Technology for Coexistence

Is AI making us better or worse at living together in peace? Drawing on peacebuilding practice, this keynote explores tools for deliberation, constructive disagreement and conflict foresight, the risks of frictionless AI, and why the people affected by technology must help shape it

Speaker:

Lena Slachmuijlder – Senior Advisor of Digital Peacebuilding at Search for Common Ground and Co-Chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion

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.

Speakers in alphabetical order:

	Benjamin Cerigo – Peace Tech Architect at Build Up
	Lena Slachmuijlder – Senior Advisor of Digital Peacebuilding at Search for Common Ground and Co-Chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion
	Naomi Kilungu – Founder & Executive Director at AI for Peace Africa
	Nathan Coyle (moderator) – Senior PeaceTech Advisor at Austrian Institute for Technology

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.

The demoed projects will be announced shortly.

Voice Matters
Equips communities with the skills, confidence and capacity to engage more fully in democracy and use dialogue as a first response to difficult or divisive issues.

By Ireland Twiggs – Programme Manager at Co-operation Ireland

AI-supported WhatsApp Consultation
Allows peacemakers to consult people at scale through an app they already use.

By Michele Giovanardi – Advisor, Digital Peacemaking, CMI – Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation

PeaceEye Project
Helps nomadic herders and farmers access safe, geo-fenced farmlands with available grazing areas for livestock.

By Andreas Papp – Humanitarian practitioner, lecturer, and consultant

Voices From the Field
An AI tool that turns peacebuilders’ perspectives into accessible knowledge to support more inclusive and effective PeaceTech solutions.

By Astrid Holzinger – Senior Project Manager and PeaceTech Lead at the Austrian Centre for Peace

Phoenix Project
Phoenix is an open-source, non-commercial platform that lets peacebuilders and mediators run ethical, participatory social media listening to inform their conflict transformation work.

By Benjamin Cerigo – Peace Tech Architect at Build Up

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.

Speakers in alphabetical order:

	Miloš Strugar – Executive Director of Conflux Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Mediation, UN Senior Mediation Adviser.
	Miriam Coronel-Ferrer – Peace Negotiator, Co-Founder of Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators
	Renata Ávila (moderator) – CEO at Open Knowledge Foundation

Closing Keynote

Digital Ceasefire: What Will It Take to Build Digital Peace?

As warfare becomes increasingly digital, what would 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.

The keynote will turn the question towards the future: What steps can we take to shift from the digitalisation of warfare towards the realisation of Digital 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.

Speaker:

Brett Solomon – Human rights advocate, technology policy expert, and author of 'Digital Ceasefire' (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

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.

Council on Technology and Social Cohesion

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.