Co-designing the peace: launch of the C-UP Project

— Peace is not only negotiated by leaders but co-created by communities as a whole. This was a key message at the launch on 16 December of the Updated Cyprus Peace Process Design (“C-UP”), a new project funded by the European Union under the Aid Programme for the Turkish Cypriot community and led by the Cyprus Peace and Dialogue Center (CPDC) in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law, Alternative and Innovative Methods (ICLAIM).

The event drew a full-house audience, bringing together representatives of political parties, community leaders, academics, peace process experts, and international partners at the Cyprus Peace and Dialogue Centre (CPDC) premises in Nicosia on 16 December. C-UP is a bi-communal civil-society initiative designed to strengthen dialogue, democratic participation, and social cohesion in Cyprus through the piloting of citizens’ assemblies and structured deliberative processes that complement confidence-building measures and formal peace efforts.

Delivering the keynote address the Head of Cooperation – Cyprus Settlement Support Unit – DG REGIO, Stefan Simosas, said: “Sustained peace requires both technical rigour and broad societal buy-in. Initiatives like C-UP bridge that gap by translating civic deliberation into actionable policy options.”

Commenting on the difficulties faced by political leaders under the traditional approach to negotiations, Dr. Meltem Onurkan-Samani, Founding President, CPDC, said:“Political leaders are expected to make extraordinarily difficult decisions, often under immense pressure and with very limited domestic space for manoeuvre. Yet in Cyprus, we provide them with almost no structured mechanisms to share that burden with their communities. ... By empowering citizens to engage constructively with peace-related issues, the project reinforces the principle that peace is not only negotiated by leaders, but co-created by communities/society as a whole.” The C-Up initiative responds to this gap by piloting the citizens’ assembly model as a way of updating and redesigning the peace process methodology. It proposes structured deliberative democratic processes, in which a representative cross-section of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot citizens can engage in informed, facilitated dialogue on peace-related issues. These pilots aim to explore how citizens’ assemblies could function as a complementary civic track to formal negotiations, helping to strengthen dialogue, democratic participation, and social cohesion.

Dr. Onurkan-Samani stressed that C-Up is not intended to replace political negotiations, nor to prescribe outcomes. Rather, it seeks to function as a civic backstop—sharing the burden of difficult decision-making, reducing polarisation, and preparing society for a sustainable settlement. “If this time is to be different,” she noted, “then the process itself must be different.”

Noting ICLAIM’s previous experience implementing inclusive peacebuilding projects, Prof. Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou, ICLAIM Founding President, said: “Working alongside CPDC, ICLAIM is committed to applying rigorous participatory methodologies that ensure citizen voices are not only heard but integrated into policy pathways. This collaboration demonstrates how methodological innovation and local legitimacy can combine to produce practical, durable outcomes.”

The launch event was presented and moderated by Elvan Yılmazata, Project Manager of the C-Up initiative. In her closing remarks, Ms. Yılmazata conveyed thanks and appreciation to all those who contributed to the development of the project, including project partners, experts, civil society actors, and international supporters who have engaged in the preparatory and consultative phases of C-Up.

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