The Plan

Defining the plan: What has been holding us back from Safe Conflict?

There are two main problems consistent in every war zone

There have been partial successes, lessons learned, and new insights. However, every peacebuilding plan the human race has attempted thus far - proverbial plans "A” through "Y” - have failed to produce a world of safe conflict.

Despite seemingly endless opinions about the causes of war and peace, the failures of all these initiatives distill down to two fundamental problems:

Problem #1: Poor Planning and Coordination

Efforts to solve conflicts are haphazard at best. Governments, NGO’s, local actors and civic society work in isolation - even at odds with each other. Despite positive intentions, different project priorities and politics cause irreconcilable approaches. Legitimacy, accountability and convening power are in short supply. The result: over 40,000 international aid organizations spend about $100 billion per year working toward similar goals in a thousand different ways - with limited and fleeting success.

Mark Gerzon, Harvard Press-published author of Leading Through Conflict and globally recognized peacebuilder, recently wrote in a confidential memo to the United Nations, “The field of conflict prevention tends to be fragmented and disorganized, with different practitioners using individual, idiosyncratic methodologies and conceptual frameworks.”

Problem #2: Lack of Political Will

Although 99% of people want peace and safety for all, this sentiment has not been harnessed into any truly global movement or focused political power. It’s difficult for ordinary people to understand whom to support, or how they can actually contribute to peace. This leads the masses to believe there is simply nothing they can do. However, without organized support and pressure from everyday citizens, leaders cannot and will not muster the motivation to champion the cause of peace."

Whether looking at Palestine, Darfur, Congo or Sri Lanka, a lack of legitimate coordinated planning and focused political will render peacebuilding efforts impotent. Of the few peace plans ever made official by governments, 50% fail within 5 years. Without a new approach, safe conflict will continue to be hijacked by a tiny minority of thuggish extremists whose violent acts derail and reverse any gains. In those instances where peace does succeed, planning and political will are always present in greater amounts.

Creating the solution / PLAN Z: Leveraged action for bringing safety to war zones

What global leaders and global citizens can do to create peace

Solution #1: Safe Conflict Conventions

To downgrade any war into a safe conflict, Plan Z follows a documented and internationally standardized protocol called the Safe Conflict Conventions (SCC). The SCC - modeled after ISO 9000 systems - generate alignment, participation, and measurable progress toward meeting the needs of all parties involved. This systematically results in lowering a war from a Level 7 Conflict (ongoing violent) to a Level 6 (dangerous and volatile) or below.

The SCC also apply deep analysis and military mission-planning techniques to produce a set of detailed documents called a Conflict Action Plan. The Conflict Action Plan defines the precise steps and resources needed to achieve safe conflict in a given area, with built-in legitimacy at the individual, organizational and governmental levels.

The Plan is then immediately implemented as a highly organized on-the-ground operation that is conducted under the veteran leadership of a Safe Conflict Team.

This approach solves the fundamental problem of disjointed planning and impotent peacebuilding in war zones.

Solution #2: The Z-Force

To harness and focus global political will, Plan Z adapts proven technologies to turn any ordinary person into an informed, powerful, global citizen. This agile political and financial force is called the Z-Force.

Using a groundbreaking social media platform, everyday people access a personalized online "dashboard" that makes supporting safe conflict easy and fun. These dashboards make a “game” out of making a difference through instant-feedback “micro-participation” that is addictively entertaining, yet palpably meaningful. For the first time, people can see and affect on-the-ground operations inside of conflict zones in real time, using only their computers and mobile phones.

Plan Z's innovation of involving the masses directly solves the problem of absent political will for peace. The Z-Force is the "people power" behind the Plan.