Newsletter #13 – Conflict Sensitivity: A Virtuous Challenge
Trust After Betrayal
Innovating development & security in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Understanding interpersonal trust-building.
Dear Reader,
Conflict-sensitive research and practice integrates an understanding of the local context and stakeholders into engagement strategies to minimise negative effects and enhance positive outcomes. Conflict sensitivity?is a concept that has gained significant traction in peacebuilding, development, aid and other sectors, with organisations devising lengthy internal frameworks to identify and evaluate these standards. While it is abundantly evident why we need conflict sensitivity, this edition is dedicated to discussing how we can implement it in applied research in light of very complex, volatile circumstances and stakeholder configurations on the ground. We hope that this month’s Research Brief and selected stories provide you with a though-provoking overview of some of the situational challenges and opportunities relating to conflict-sensitivity as well as possible ways to pragmatically address and seize them. As always, let us know about your own experiences and what you think about our case on the pragmatic dimensions of conflict sensitivity.
We also encourage you to explore the new website of the Corioli Institute (CI). CI is an emergent research and action NGO founded by TAB Principal Investigator Dr Erin McFee that is dedicated to reintegrating formerly armed actors (FAAs) worldwide and fostering recovery and cohesion among violence-affected communities. After the expiry of the project funding in early 2025, TAB’s brand and operations will be integrated into CI, including our Research Brief Series.
We are looking forward to engaging with you in the exciting journey of building the Corioli Institute and are grateful for any your ideas, inputs and donations. Thank you for your continued support and reading time.
Jonathan R?ders Research Associate, Trust after Betrayal
Research Brief - Operationalising Conflict Sensitivity:? The Pragmatics of Applied Research in Violence-Affected Contexts
This edition's?research brief?explores the?pragmatics of implementing conflict-sensitive applied research in violence-affected contexts.?Emphasizing the dynamic interplay of communicative, relational, and bureaucratic factors, the study delves into how these elements can either enable or impede the effectiveness of conflict-sensitive approaches on the ground.?Moreover, the Brief?presents three separate strategies for collaboration across multiple organisations, a major institutional challenge for conflict-sensitive applied research.??trustafterbetrayal.org/researchbriefs
Global Affairs: Obstacles and Resilience of Conflict Sensitivity
South Sudan: The Sway of Community Chiefs on Project Outcomes
Initially introduced by colonial authorities as the lowest representatives of local government, community chiefs are now an integral part of the formal government structure in South Sudan. They undertake various responsibilities, such as revenue collection, community mobilisation, conflict resolution, and presiding over disputes in chief courts. Simultaneously, they serve as the community's liaisons with the government and other stakeholders, which includes communicating community needs, priorities, and challenges like floods, food insecurity, or organised violence.?
While involving chiefs is indispensable for successful conflict-sensitive aid and peacebuilding efforts and securing an intervening organisation’s local legitimacy, it also brings potential challenges for effective policy and program design as well as implementation. One practical difficulty is that aid and peacebuilding interventions, which inevitably incorporate some degree of exogenous decision-making, are often intended to benefit (historically) marginalized and excluded populations, which may clash with the interests of the majority or wealthier and more influential households that chiefs are accountable to. The dilemma faced by chiefs can have a substantial impact on their oversight and coordination of externally funded projects, potentially resulting in less transparent processes and a distortion of outcomes, along with an inadequate allocation of resources.
The highly personalised authority of the chief entails complexities and interests that are often not sufficiently understood by outsiders. The fate of intended peacebuilding or aid outcomes may be contingent on the chief’s sometimes unpredictable willingness or subject to risk factors such as corruption, patronage or even threats against the chief by armed groups. Furthermore, South Sudanese chiefs, often older men, face criticism for not abiding by international standards regarding human rights, particularly those of women and children while also tending to prioritise communal interests over individual rights. In extreme scenarios, they can even mobilise actors within their communities for armed violence. This makes external stakeholders face considerable ethical challenges since interventions can help, through the mediation of a chief, for instance, reinforce traditional power asymmetries in communities, legitimise harmful gender relation or fuel further conflict.
South Sudan is just one of many cases where traditional communal authorities need to be pragmatically incorporated into programming for conflict-sensitive aid and peacebuilding approaches. While these authorities can never be factored out, intervening organisations can mitigate the aforementioned challenges by acquiring a thorough understanding of local situations and stakeholders. This positions them better to comprehend the perspectives of these leaders and negotiate viable solutions and processes underlying the interventions. Additionally, fostering dialogue between these authorities and underrepresented groups during program planning can minimize risks to the inclusivity and integrity of the intended outcomes.
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Conflict-Sensitivity in Settings of Severe Climate Insecurity
In 2022, there was an 41% global increase in internal displacements triggered by disasters compared to the previous decade, 98% of which are attributable to extreme weather phenomena like floods, landslides, cyclones, droughts, and heatwaves. With the growing relevance of peacebuilding and development interventions in the settings of climate (in)security, more attention is being drawn to issues of conflict-sensitive approaches in this context. If interventions aimed at fostering climate resilience, for instance, do not consider conflict sensitivities, they may inadvertently create new vulnerabilities or miss opportunities to build and sustain peace.?
In Ethiopia’s dry corridor, for example, boosting water supplies for livestock in a specific region might escalate conflict risk by drawing herders from other communities facing water shortages not covered by the intervention. The increased access to viable pasture and water resources may also prompt locals to expand their herd sizes unsustainably, depleting resources and potentially leading to violent competition. The impact of climate change on the delicate interdependence of human and natural systems leads to progressively more unpredictable and disorienting project environments, rendering conflict-sensitivity more crucial and more challenging at the same time.
To address this, researchers, practitioners and organisations need to build processes enabling them to identify and flexibly adapt to complexly intertwined risks within the nexus of climate vulnerabilities, development and conflict. To this end, the Fragility, Conflict and Migration (FCM) Initiative has presented the concept of Anticipatory Action (AA) as an important tool to enhance conflict sensitivity under these fragile circumstances. AA includes thoroughly defining local vulnerabilities to trigger early action that preempts the impact of an impending crisis event and better guides?long-term resilience and adaptation investments. Moreover, it prescribes improving coordination among the involved stakeholders, including government agencies, non-governmental organisations, and communities to facilitate vital flows of information and integrated risk management. Additionally, AA entails investing in capacity-building programs of local institutions, shifting disaster governance towards a more ‘locally-led’ approach that incorporates endemic knowledge on conflict sensitivities.
The Anticipatory Action framework holistically adapts conflict-sensitive peacebuilding and development interventions in the face of escalating climate insecurity that intensifies and compounds crises in conflict-affected contexts worldwide.
Past and Future Activities
The Trust After Betrayal team held the panel?“A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Formerly Armed Actor Reintegration and Mobilization and Implications for International Security” at the “States, Societies, and Security in the 21st Century” conference hosted by the United States Military Academy at West Point. Principal Investigator Dr Erin McFee and Research Associate Jonathan R?ders presented methodologies and preliminary findings from last October's TAB conference?"Out of War: Global Insights on Reintegration to Support Strategies for Ukraine's Front-Line Veterans" at the Second International Conference of the "Public Policy and Institutional Change in the Middle of Conflict." project,?Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies. Next week, the final report of the first summit of the VSP Network "(Re)building Trust and Democracy: Violence, Security, and Peace in Latin America" last May in Bogotá will be released on TAB social media.
Meet our Research Team: Mohamed Rashid
"My name is Mohamed Rashid, and I graduated from the prestigious City University of Mogadishu with a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in conflict, peace, and state-building. I have been working as a committed contributing researcher at the Trust After Betrayal project in Somalia, which is an important social initiative aimed at reintegrating former members of the Al Shabab group. This program, which examines appropriate reintegration strategies for the younger generation, which is out of the war after decades of state destruction, is vital to the development of peacebuilding and social hormones in Somalia.
I have also made a substantial contribution as a senior researcher with a focus on state-building and peacebuilding to the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank with headquarters in Mogadishu.
Prior to that, I supported state-building initiatives by holding high roles in a number of federal government ministries. My role in the Ministry of Public Works was advisor for planning. I was a senior advisor in the Ministry of Information, where I was responsible for giving the executive leadership critical policy support. In addition, I have been supporting political divisions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Federal Republic of Somalia.
In addition, I led a legal assistance initiative financed by USAID, proving my steadfast dedication to advocating for justice and guaranteeing that every Somali person has equal access to the legal system."