This practice note presents an evaluation of the Peace Reconciliation Activity (PRA) implemented by Catholic Relief Services in Somalia. Data was gathered through 216 household surveys, 24 focus group discussions, and 16 key informant interviews. We used an embedded Developmental Evaluation framework, conducted within a convergent mixed-methods design. This framework enabled us to capture iterative learning, stakeholder feedback, and adopt and document adaptive changes throughout the implementation process. The PRA sought to rebuild trust, inclusion, and social cohesion across four fragile and conflict-affected districts — Barawe, Afgoye, Jowhar, and Warsheikh — where decades of recurring inter-clan violence, displacement, and trauma had fractured civic life, undermined resilience and created intergroup mistrust. We examined whether the PRA had strengthened pathways to peacebuilding, social cohesion, and inclusion. Community members developed practical peacebuilding competencies — learning negotiation, empathy, and respect for diverse clans — while engaging in collective reconciliation efforts. Connector projects such as water preservation were co-created to address shared resource conflicts. Village-level Natural Resource Management and Disaster Risk Reduction committees, along with hybrid peace platforms at the district level, played pivotal roles in preventing disputes, resolving grievances, and promoting equitable access to land and resources. The Social Capital Index increased, although bridging ties remained weaker than bonding ties, particularly among older adults and men. Mutual trust and empathy improved while grievance resolution improved considerably from the previous year. Community-based grievance systems, intergenerational dialogue, and gender inclusion emerged as key enablers of peace outcomes. In conclusion, trauma-informed, inclusive peacebuilding, when rooted in real-time data and local agency, can reinforce cohesion in fragile environments.
Since the 2010s, security assistance to Africa has exploded while global democracy trends – including in Africa – have been in steady decline. How are these two empirical facts connected? This paper analyzes the relationship between US security partnerships and democracy trends in Africa from 2005 to 2020. Overall, our findings are mixed. There is either no significant relationship or a weakly negative relationship between many US security cooperative activities and democratic quality in Africa. We did find, however, that US military assistance can have a negative impact on two specific aspects of democracy: protection of freedoms and civil liberties and accountability and transparency.
As institutional stakeholders in post-conflict security sector reform initiatives, the study of police officers can shed significant light on key questions about the durability and connections between democratic policing and peacebuilding. The article presents Northern Ireland as a case study to explore engagement of police officers in transitional justice and police reform processes after the Troubles (1968-1998). Semi-structured interviews with 19 retired officers who served both as members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) show how they have experienced disillusionment and dissatisfaction with specific outcomes of the political transition. Their reflections on the roles and responsibilities that officers maintain in implementing democratic policing principles reveal a response that extends beyond simple rejection or acceptance of police reform mandates. Their narratives also highlight that a holistic and pragmatic approach to (in)security to guide post-conflict engagement with community stakeholders would help overcome perceived resistance to institutional reforms.
This article re-examines the notion of "intercommunity conflict", commonly used to characterize recent confrontations (from 2015 onwards) between armed men/groups from Fulani and Dogon communities in central Mali, particularly in the Mopti and Bandiagara regions. The violence arising from these tensions easily lends itself to facile oppositions between Dogon victims and Fulani executioners, or vice versa, giving thus the impression that ethnic groups are substantial entities to which common interests can be attributed. Yet there is ample evidence of collaboration between Dogons and "Fulani jihadists", even though they are supposed to be antagonists, calling into question the misleading intercommunity characterization of the conflict. transformation of the conflict tends to show that ethnicity actually matters less than the interests that individuals or groups, even supposed opponents, can obtain from each other. The article is based on sixty individual interviews conducted during multiple field missions in T & eacute;nenkou, Mopti, and Bandiagara during 2023 and 2024.
Recent decades have witnessed a shift in development practice whereby donors increasingly provide aid to support security-related programming in the Global South. Over this same period, there has also been an increase in violence committed against aid workers. This paper explores whether these two phenomena are correlated by analysing aggregate data on securitized foreign aid flows and data on violence against aid workers from the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) for the period 1997 to 2019 using cross-national multivariate analysis. Our findings reveal that, regardless of all other contextual and opportunistic control variables, there is a direct correlation between the increased inflow of securitized forms of aid to recipient countries and a sharp rise in violence against humanitarian workers in those countries. We hypothesise that this is because this form of aid alters the environment for aid work in three key ways: (1) it introduces aid to a changing and more complex political context; (2) it prompts increasingly risky aid worker behaviour; and (3) it provides opportunity to those groups and individuals who might attempt to benefit from violent acts against aid workers and organisations. As securitized aid continues to increase, attacks on aid workers will likely also rise, which should be a policy concern for humanitarian agencies.
What factors enable, constrain or distort the implementation of legal reform governing policing? The legal architecture determines who holds authority to influence security decisions, from broad strategic directions to day-to-day implementation. Yet rules will be interpreted or even ignored by actors entrusted with their implementation, while unauthorised actors can be allowed to exert influence. Can we account for these distortions when reforming security sector governance to make security more inclusive? This case study of institutional change in Nepal analyses the forces that distorted the effect of a change in formal rules on the local governance of security. It shows that, while changes did occur around who was able to influence policing decisions, these were mediated at the local level by habits and different notions of legitimacy. Local governance reforms had a greater impact on local security governance than constitutional provisions endowing provincial governments with formal authority over security governance. This study underlines the importance of considering multi-tiered dynamics when analysing the governance of security. For security sector reform practitioners and policymakers, the study suggests a need to broaden the focus from rules about security to rules with an impact on security governance. One should also explicitly address the fate of existing institutions in reform processes, if they are meant to be replaced by a new architecture.
Despite the central role that domestic militaries regularly play in supporting civilian disease outbreak responses, the dynamics of civil-military coordination during major health emergencies remain largely under-explored in public health, humanitarian, and security literatures. Previous research has found, furthermore, that existing international civil-military guidelines hold limited relevance during pandemics, especially at national and local levels, which is currently evidenced by the observable lack of coherence and high variance in domestic military approaches to COVID-19 worldwide. This article presents a comparative analysis of three of these approaches—in the United Kingdom, China, and the Philippines—and maps these countries’ military contributions to the COVID-19 response across a number of domains. Analysis of these case studies builds knowledge and provides important insights into the ways that humanitarian civil-military engagement exists in unacknowledged contexts and forms; how militaries are often ‘first responders’ rather than a ‘last resort’ in crisis contexts; the confusion surrounding how to understand various non-military armed and security actors; and how pandemics represent a unique domain for humanitarian civil-military engagement that tests both the international system and international norms. This paper concludes with policy, guidance development, and research recommendations for improved practice during localised humanitarian civil-military engagement.
Efforts to thwart the trafficking of conflict commodities to finance wars consti- tute an ongoing endeavour. As specific approaches become effective for certain commodities, belligerent actors pursue new forms of exploitation. The traffick- ing of housing, land and property (HLP) rights in war zones has now reached a pervasiveness, lucrativeness and severity to warrant significant attention on the derivation of countermeasures. This article proposes a set of potential counter- measures to trafficking in HLP rights in war zones by examining five sets of possible mechanisms and how they would work: detection, transnational governance, local-level countermeasures, public messaging, and targeting non-state armed groups.
A significant increase in research on movement in and from Africa, much of which has been commissioned, conducted or promoted by international humanitarian and development agencies, has resulted in a disproportionate focus on the dangers of migration. It has helped to generate a policy narrative dominated by the harms associated with movement that is strongly influenced by a Euro-centric lens. This distorts both the true nature of migration across Africa and the risks involved. Movement is extremely dangerous for some. But this practice note argues that this is by no means the whole story, or even a predominant part of it. Drawing on two empirical research studies on movement within and from Africa, this note seeks to better locate issues of harm and danger in the experience of movement. The analysis provides an alternative story of migration in which many move safely, or at least with relative safety; in which migrants have agency and understand the risks of movement but make complex choices and decisions; and in which not moving is often the least safe option. We use this evidence to call for those commissioning and conducting research on migration intended to influence policies and programmes to be more objective in how their research is framed, more transparent in how it is presented, and more realistic about the recommendations that should follow.
The belief that the favelas of Rio de Janeiro constitute a ‘war zone’ is widely held in Brazilian society. The intensity of the violence and the level of organization of some of the armed actors are comparable to those in officially recognized non-international armed conflicts elsewhere in the world. As conflicts are increasingly fought in situations where it is challenging to distinguish civilians from combatants, the binary divisions of international law are failing to address the contemporary experience of violence in what has been termed the ‘new wars’. There is an emerging agreement in international jurisprudence and state practice that the provisions of international human rights law and international humanitarian law must be concurrently applied in officially recognised ‘war zones’. This article argues that this analysis could also be used in other situations of violence, such as Rio de Janeiro, but the ‘armed conflict’ rhetoric risks conferring legitimacy of the use of lethal force between its parties.
Conflict early warning is supposed to identify and trigger actions to reduce the onset, duration, intensity, and effects of multiple forms of political violence. While the commitment of nations to broader conflict prevention was not universally shared in the twentieth century, the concept of conflict prevention – and by extension, conflict early warning – has acquired salience in international relations over the last 30 years. This growing engagement, coupled with advances in computing, has triggered increased investment in enhanced early warning mechanisms with increasingly sophisticated temporal and spatial dimensions. Yet, the practical operationalization of conflict prevention and conflict early warning lags behind its theoretical development for several reasons. These include, inter alia, limitations in early warning assessments; the limited availability, coverage, quality and verifiability of real-time data; complex modelling challenges emerging from endogeneity inherent in conflict processes; and, not least, an inherent lack of political will among relevant actors to act upon robust and compelling evidence of heightened risks of organized violence. The latter is the core of the so-called ‘warning-response’ gap. Despite these challenges, investments in advanced data collection and analysis techniques including machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence are influencing the practice of early warning and response. This article offers a descriptive review of the form and function of conflict early warning systems over the past four decades. In the process, it provides insight into why many of these systems have yet to live up to expectations.
The ongoing use of landscape-based conflict commodities — diamonds and other minerals, timber, wildlife, etc. — to finance wars continues to evolve. The success with which such commodities can be transacted to support militaries, militias and insurgencies has led belligerents to innovate with additional commodities. Housing, land and property (HLP) rights within war zones have belatedly joined the list of conflict commodities that are subject to transaction, and to such an extent as to warrant significant concern. However, the use of ‘conflict HLP rights’ has not yet been operationally described in the way that other conflict commodities have been. This is a necessary first step towards deriving and designing countermeasures. This article makes a preliminary attempt to delineate the exploitation of conflict HLP rights by examining how they are transacted to support belligerent groups in three conflicts: Darfur, Colombia and Syria.
When violent conflict flares up, forced migration often follows. Ethnographic data shows that forced migrants remain attached to their places of origin and often express a desire to return once conflict has abated, be it after weeks, months, or years. Conversely, peacebuilders in the homeland have not effectively integrated displaced persons within their strategic programming. This is cause for concern considering the literature connecting the collapse of fragile peace to 'refugee spoilers.' There is a critical gap in peacebuilders' commitment to understanding refugees' needs and claims, and the implications these pose on peace stability following repatriation. This article argues that ethnography of refugees still living in exile can generate rich datasets useful to the development of peacebuilding programming. More than this, it proposes a methodology - ethnographic mapping - that can collect both spatial (maps) and narrative (descriptions) information in tandem and across cultural groups living in refugee camps.
Disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) programmes are an essential part of most contemporary post-conflict peacebuilding processes, but they are seldom the subject of academic analysis. In this study, we seek to reduce this gap by examining the Post-Amnesty Programme (PAP) introduced in Nigeria in 2009. Our analysis shows that the programme contributed to the reduction of small arms and light weapons (SALW), fewer attacks on oil infrastructure and kidnapping of expatriates, and improved human capacity development. However, the programme has been ineffective in reintegrating ex-militants into civilian life because of serious shortcomings in its design as well as the extremely difficult implementation environment. In addition, the programme has proved to be hugely expensive. Despite these serious shortcomings, the Federal Government of Nigeria cannot simply terminate the programme because this will increase the risk that ex-militants enrolled in the programme will reignite the violent insurgency against the Nigerian state and international oil companies. The study concludes by reflecting on how this challenging situation can be resolved.
The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has been marred by reports of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) perpetrated against local women/girls. However, there is very limited empirical evidence on the community’s perceptions regarding these sexual interactions. Through a mixed-methods approach, this article examines community experiences and perceptions of SEA, with three prominent themes arising: peacekeepers as tourists, peacekeepers as sexual exploiters and abusers, and peacekeepers as ideal partners. Uruguayan (n = 107, 28.1 per cent) and Brazilian personnel (n = 83, 21.8 per cent) were most commonly named in SEA narratives. We explore how these perceptions of MINUSTAH peacekeepers undermine the purpose and legitimacy of UN peace support operations, and propose strategies to prevent and address peacekeeper-perpetrated SEA.
Do bilateral and multilateral foreign aid donors target poverty? To answer that question, we present a framework for assessing the quality of aid targeting sub-nationally. If donors cluster aid in areas with concentrated poverty, or spread out aid in areas of diffuse poverty, then we conclude that donors are targeting aid well. Furthermore, because co-financing may be a mechanism that improves coordination and information-sharing among donors, we examine whether the frequency of donor co-financing increases the quality of aid targeting. Recently released sub-national georeferenced foreign aid data for all bilateral and multilateral donors are available in five sub-Saharan African countries, making it possible to map the placement of foreign aid along with sub-national poverty levels. Results indicate that foreign donors target poverty in some countries but not others, and higher co-financing is associated with lower quality targeting across all cases.
Despite the rhetoric of the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P), vulnerable groups continue to experience genocide. Some, such as the Yazidis in Iraq, have tried to mitigate genocide through communal self-protection. The dominance of R2P in contemporary normative discussions about responding to genocide, however, means that there has been a lack of research into the lived realities of such experiences. This article explores the phenomenon of communal self-protection during genocide, through a multiple case study analysis. It examines the pre-eminent examples of communal self-protection during three cases of modern genocide — the experiences of the Armenians at Musa Dagh during the 1915 Armenian genocide, the Tutsi at Bisesero during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and the Yazidis in Sinjar during the 2014 Yazidi genocide. It presents a typology of communal self-protection strategies during genocide, developed from the case study analysis. The article finds that communal self-protection is only feasible as a strategy in exceptional circumstances. Even in a best-case scenario, communal self-protection offers a temporary reprieve, rather than sustainable living conditions. Vulnerable groups attempting communal self-protection are ultimately reliant on external rescue for their survival, which may not be forthcoming. Communal self-protection should therefore not be regarded as a viable strategy to mitigate genocide in any circumstance.
In late 2014 and after more than two decades of a 'semi-authoritarian' regime, a popular insurrection in Burkina Faso led to the fall of Blaise Compaore, president and leader of the ruling party. Due to - or parallel to - the political transition, factors of insecurity developed or were amplified, leading to a reconfiguration of the provision of security at two levels. At the central state level began a reflection around the governance model of security and the improvement of the practices of state security forces. At the local level, non-state security initiatives have multiplied. Drawing on insights from the study of local security provision and providers in the town of Tenkodogo, located in the Boulgou province (Centre-East region), and on its wider integration into the national framework and response to insecurity in Burkina Faso, this article raises and investigates three major questions. First, how is the governance of security (co)produced by (state and non-state) actors in a specific local configuration in Burkina Faso? Second, in what ways does this local experience compare with the state's response to insecurity and with the nationwide expansion of the Koglweogo movement? Finally, what new perspectives can such reflection at the local and national levels offer to overcome the limits of current approaches regarding local security?
Does one-sided violence create a negative cascading effect on the success of peace agreement implementation? If violence influences peace accord implementation negatively, how can such violence be contained to safeguard the implementation process? While post-conflict one-sided violence can be viewed as residual, the use of such violence can significantly influence peacebuilding outcomes. Implementing the agreement is a contentious process as both sides expect to maximize their benefits and minimize their losses from intended reforms negotiated in the agreement. Implementation success is achieved by minimizing the difference in policy reforms through mutual trust, reciprocity, and sequential policy moves. In such a contentious implementation setting, the use of one-sided violence by any actor undermines trust and reciprocity between signatories and subsequently forestalls implementation success. Empirical analyses of a global sample of comprehensive peace agreements since 1989 show a significant and negative relationship between the use of one-sided violence and the peace agreement implementation rate. Rebel one-sided violence has a larger negative effect on implementation compared to state and other non-state one-sided violence.
Countries emerging from armed conflict often experience heightened violence and youth gang activity. Following the signing of peace accords with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army (FARC-EP), what are Colombia’s risks in terms of youth gangs? To assess these risks, this article draws from gang research and literature on post-war violence to identify six factors that recur in post-war environments and are likely to fuel a rise in gangs: illicit economies and criminal networks, exposure to violence, marginalization, social disorganization, security gaps and state responses, and former combatants. After analyzing Colombia’s risks with reference to each of these, the article concludes that the strengthening ties between youth gangs and Colombia’s illicit economies, mediated by adult-run criminal networks, increase gang numbers and violence. Moreover, some disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods are vulnerable to gang escalation due to the effects on local youths of protracted violent exposure, marginalization, and social disorganization. Finally, while ex-combatant recidivism and security gaps are prominent concerns in Colombia, they are not expected to contribute significantly to youth gang dynamics in urban areas.
