Opinion: By leveraging their capital and networks, business giants can move beyond traditional philanthropy and play a proactive role in securing peace through incentives.
By Liam Foran
Note: this article was first published on Devex on June 15, 2026. The article can be accessed here: https://www.devex.com/news/it-s-time-for-big-business-to-invest-in-peace-112705
For all the gravity of the challenge to the post-World War II rules-based order, we at least have a world that is still committed to trade.
That much was evident in the tacit agreement reached at the recent U.S.-China summit, when the world’s two superpowers agreed to work together on global stability and to a thaw in their tit-for-tat trade war. This was not some grand bargain, but what many commentators are calling a “cold peace.”
Both sides understood that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been a shock to the global economy that helps no one. Both sides realized how economically interdependent the world has become.
However, achieving and maintaining security in the Middle East and around the world will take something more multifaceted and more enduring than the formalities on show in Beijing — after all, the world has, by some measures, never been more insecure, with the number of countries involved in at least one external conflict in the previous five years rising from 59 in 2008 to 103 in 2025.
We can’t just hope to depend on a handshake between the world’s two most powerful men. This is what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was getting at earlier this year when he called for the world’s middle powers to stand together and preserve peace and economic interdependence.
His words resonated around the world. But even Carney’s clarion call focused on the ability of nation states to act. It missed the fact that there is another type of middle power in the world economy: the giant corporations.
It can be hard to grasp the magnitude of these companies. Nvidia’s market capitalization recently surpassed Germany’s gross domestic product. Apple is richer than all but four countries in the world. These business goliaths have the capital, networks, and convening power to help bring belligerents to the table, and then secure peace through incentives. The problem, as many business leaders have told me, is they would love to help, but “don’t know who to call.”
Business has huge, overlooked potential to keep the world connected and stable, but it is only beginning to appreciate its capacity to play a proactive part in peacemaking, rather than contributing to peace and security indirectly by the simple but important function of generating prosperity.
We need to think ambitiously here. We need new approaches and institutions that blend business and peacemaking in a way that maintains global trade, and targets investment and growth to conflict areas. We need to draw more heavily on quantifying and communicating the costs of conflict and the economic benefits of avoiding it.
To start with, anyone concerned about global peace and progress should absorb the headline numbers of the 2025 Global Peace Index released by the Institute for Economics and Peace. It found that the global economic impact of violence and conflict reached $19.97 trillion in 2024, roughly 11.6% of global gross domestic product.
Big business and their related philanthropies and foundations must step up their own serious efforts in this area because the benefits of containing and preventing conflict are huge. They need to recognize what decades of global trade have achieved: an interconnectedness, based on commerce, between nations and populations over the past 30 to 40 years that is strongly resistant to forces attempting to tear it apart and which has achieved unprecedented economic growth alleviating poverty in China, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere at rates never seen before.
We need a global rapid response peace fund, with at least $10 billion on hand in liquid assets that could move fast to invest in peace-supporting businesses and infrastructure soon after combatants have laid down their weapons.
Through a mixture of grants, loans, and equity investments, this fund would engage with peace negotiators during the talks and be deployed quickly to stabilize situations, delivering rapid and confidence-inspiring peace dividends. This $10 billion sounds like a lot of money but not when compared to the cost of a few weeks of the Iran war (nearly $30 billion and counting as of mid-May).
The fund should be complemented by a dedicated space where business leaders convene alongside peace experts — and donor government representatives — to discuss solutions to conflicts.
This could be a completely new forum or, more likely, a group that regularly convenes on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Davos, the Doha Forum, or the Oslo Forum. Wherever it takes place, it is vital to establish a consistent connection between the key constituencies of peacemakers and the private sector.
One of the fastest ways businesses can help ameliorate conflict in the short term is through the emerging field of peace investing, of which my organization, Peace Dividend Initiative, is one of a handful of practitioners alongside the likes of Interpeace, Somali peace fund Shuraako Capital, and government-led schemes such as Germany’s Investing for Peace Initiative.
This developing sector believes in harnessing market forces for peace. It can mean everything from community-level investments in a chocolate business run by ex-FARC fighters in Colombia to Starbuck’s continued support for coffee growers in Rwanda, and the U.K. government and U.S. big businesses prioritizing macro-level economic recovery in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday agreement.
Peace investing is being boosted by the support of philanthropists, who increasingly want to be involved in supporting businesses rather than dishing out aid. Business is, after all, a world they understand. But to grow the sector needs to move beyond philanthropy and be taken up by the big end of town: banks, fund managers, and major corporations.
Despite the nerve-wracking turbulence and insecurity we are confronted with, we must not despair. Trade is alive and well and connects us all, and we have the tools and knowledge to invest for peace. Significant interest and investment from the business world could make all the difference.