This week, a peer-reviewed study published in Science confirmed something we lived through.
Researchers found that when USAID collapsed in early 2025, conflict surged — immediately — in the regions that had depended on it most. Battles. Riots. Protests. The more aid a community had received, the sharper the spike.
We watched it happen.
In Nigeria’s Benue State, Search for Common Ground had spent four years building an early warning system that was working. Farmer-herder violence was down. The local government was weeks away from taking it over permanently. Then the funding stopped. The platform went dark. Community members saw warning signs before the attack on Yelwata. No one could act on them.
Roughly 200 people were killed.
This is what the absence of peacebuilding looks like.
Here’s what its presence looks like.
In Kajuru — weeks later, same country — a rumor spread that grazing land had been poisoned. Retaliation was coming. Aliyu Abubakar stepped in. He brought the community together, engaged the authorities, and stopped it before it started.
“Without that training,” he said, “things could have gotten out of hand very fast.”
Aliyu was trained through the support of donors like you.
The Science study points to a key mechanism: when aid disappears abruptly, the economic cost of fighting drops faster than the reasons to fight. People lose livelihoods, lose safety nets, lose hope — but the grievances and competition over resources remain. That gap is where violence enters.
What the study can’t fully measure is what fills that gap when peacebuilding is present: a trained mediator who recognizes warning signs. A dialogue process that existed before the crisis. A community that has practiced restraint and knows it works.
That’s what sustained investment builds. Not just programs — infrastructure. The kind that doesn’t go dark when a funding source disappears.
Across 34 countries in 2025, even as foreign aid collapsed and programs closed:
- 929 conflicts de-escalated or resolved
- 64 million people reached with trusted information
- 78% of participants choosing alternatives to violence
The science confirms what peacebuilding practitioners have long known: this work is not charity. It is prevention infrastructure. And like all infrastructure, it only works when it’s sustained.
The question now is whether it will be.
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Search for Common Ground works in 34 countries to transform the way the world deals with conflict — away from adversarial approaches, toward collaborative solutions. Read our 2025 Impact Report: Holding Hope — and Proving It Works.
