Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts

Project Information

ResilienceBuilding

Grant agreement ID: 852816

DOI

10.3030/852816

EC signature date 3 February 2020

Start date 1 October 2020

End date 30 June 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 982,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 982,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ResilienceBuilding (Social Resilience, Gendered Dynamics, and Local Peace in Protracted Conflicts)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The ResilienceBuilding project focuses on the causes and consequences of civilian agency for self-protection and violence prevention in contexts characterized by civil war, communal conflict, local peacebuilding, and international peacekeeping actors. We investigate how armed groups, civilian actions, and peacebuilding approaches interact on multiple levels of conflict and study the consequences for the vulnerability and resilience of local populations. One research stream analyses the gender dimensions of social resilience and peacebuilding. A second one engages with the climate change, conflict, and peacebuilding nexus to better understand vulnerability and building resilience. A third stream examines linkages between local and national peace processes and implications for variation in violence against civilians and peacebuilding success.

Given the modest record of international peacebuilding in countries affected by protracted crises, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or South Sudan, these questions are of high societal relevance. Whether social resilience is a durable or a temporal phenomenon and whether it may effectively increase vulnerability is, further, of prime conceptual and methodological concern for peacebuilding and development research. To harvest the promise of community resilience in peacebuilding and civilian protection, this project investigates resilience’s potentially harmful consequences and ways to mitigate them.

The research team conducts field research in Nigeria, Kenya, South Sudan, and the CAR. The team brings together researchers who together implement multi-method approaches, combining in-depth interviewing and ethnographic observation with event data analysis, survey research, statistical modelling, and archival work.

The ResilienceBuilding project pursues five empirical objectives:

1. Analyse the short- and long-term impacts and legacies of social resilience, vulnerability, and peacebuilding in conflict zones.
2. Analyse the linkages between communal conflicts and the national political process and state institutions and identify barriers to the resolution of communal conflicts in the context of protracted conflicts.
3. Analyse the impact of international efforts to support local peacebuilding and resolution of communal conflicts on the levels of armed violence and peacebuilding prospects.
4. Analyse the gender dimensions of social resilience and vulnerability and their implications for local peacebuilding.
5. Identify barriers to women’s sustained local and national political participation with regard to conflict resolution and decision-making.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A few studies pertaining to the unintended negative consequences of civilian agency in conflict zone, which increase civilian vulnerability and victimization, have already been published, including with Oxford University Press and with Global Studies Quarterly. Krause co-edited the book “Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings” and co-authored its conceptual chapter “Civilian Protective Agency – an Introduction”, to be published in September 2023 with Oxford University Press. The book chapter synergizes research findings on the causes and effects of civilian agency in conflict zones and outlines a multidimensional future research agenda that project members build on with their current work.

Research team members have implemented qualitative and quantitative data collection in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Sudan, as outlined in the project proposal.

Nigeria: A first round of field research was completed in northern Nigeria in July and August 2022, which led to the publication of one article in Global Studies Quaterly and the presentation of one working paper.
Kenya: A household-level survey was implemented in Kenya in 2022, based on which a working paper has been completed which has been presented at 3 workshops and conferences. A first round of field research has been completed in Kenya, which led to the establishment of networks with local peacebuilding organizations that will facilitate further qualitative field research.
South Sudan: Two weeks of fieldwork were completed in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, in 2023.

Project members have started on a number of studies pertaining to different aspects of women’s roles in local peacebuilding and violence prevention; the interaction of communal conflicts with civil war and national peacebuilding processes; and the impact of climate change on communal conflicts and implications for local peacebuilding.

Lastly, project members have been strongly engaged in communicating their research and policy implications in the form of conference participation, workshop contributions, briefings to policymakers, and the publication of blogposts.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project is progressing beyond the state of the art both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, research on northern Nigeria has contributed to a better understanding of how civilian self-protection measures, which are commonly expected to reduce local-level violence, can in fact cause an escalation of violence against civilians, as shown in one published article and one working paper.

The project is advancing conceptual understanding and measurement of community vulnerability and social resilience – two concepts widely used in the climate change and development literature – for the context of conflict and peacebuilding research. One working paper based on survey data from Kenya presents a novel theoretical and empirical approach by constructing vulnerability and social resilience indices for conflict and peacebuilding research, and by analysing how peacebuilding can act as a causal mediator that mitigates some of the resilience-eroding effects of violence exposure, thereby increasing the likelihood of future violence prevention.

Empirically, the project contributes novel findings on conflict dynamics in under-researched and difficult to access conflict zones, such as northern Nigeria and South Sudan. The team’s research into banditry and high levels of violence against civilians in northwest Nigeria provides knowledge of a neglected but very deadly armed conflict in Nigeria. The team’s comparative analysis of event data on violent conflict in under-researched conflict zones of northern Nigeria and South Sudan adds novel empirical insights for the profession.

Overall, the project is well on its way to substantially contribute to our understanding of civilian agency, vulnerability, and social resilience in protracted conflicts.

Book Launch for Volume 'Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings'