“The issue isn’t cleaning the trash, the issue is keeping the trash out of the river" said Rachel Kleinfeld at a lunch meeting at the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law, to underscore that reform of Rule of Law is a deeply political issue. The complexity and interdependency of rule of law requires new thinking on how to do interventions, and on how to measure outcomes of non-linear processes.

A shift in equilibrium

Rachel discussed her work on programming for complex environments, and her new research on how countries with high levels of violence got better. Rachel emphasized that typical policy reform is not linear, and it takes a long time. When the problem is not a flaw in the system, but rather the system itself, a shift in equilibrium is required to a new system altogether. 

How countries with high levels of violence, get better

Rachel’s new research on how countries with very high levels of violence (including Honduras, Colombia, Georgia) succeeded in reducing violence, shows that this complex change does not primarily have to do with improvements in rule of law. Instead, in many cases, deals were made with the violent elites, leading to temporary improvement and vicious circles of state collusion and loss of legitimacy. In order to sustainably improve, the system had to jump to a new equilibrium, and three crucial things needed to happen simultaneously:

1. The bad actors have to misstep, losing allegiance of citizens
2. Citizens need to get together and be ready to make change happen
3. A politician has to seize the momentum to ride it to power

When this happens, the new power holder will have an overwhelming mandate to draw in power and change the system – with the risk that this may lead to new authoritarianism.

Planning, programming and measurement together, constantly

In order to work on security and rule of law reform in such complex environments, planning, programming and measurement should go together constantly, Rachel explained. Since interventions are often temporary, it is important to identify actors on the ground that will make this their life mission, to build a coalition of local people with deep knowledge, and plan the program together with them: in this way, planning is part of the action. 

A challenging shift in mindset

A lively discussion underlined the importance of short links between donors and local partners, a focus on fewer places of intervention, iterative and flexible programming and assessment, and long-term involvement. The discussion also brought out that it requires time to develop deep knowledge and short links. This means working in complex environments requires delegation of certain authority for making changes, to the people executing the programs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ new approach in developing strategic partnerships is a way to deal with this. Still, changing the way of working requires a challenging shift in mindset, to start using theories of change as living documents, and not as alternative results frameworks, and to focus on measuring outcomes versus outputs. 

High on the policy agenda

The lunch meeting underscored that security and rule of law reform is a challenging process, and that developing new ways to measure the effects of investments in this sector is high on the policy agenda. These new ways should focus on learning, testing assumptions and doing justice to the challenges of working on security and rule of law, to counter inflated ambitions, and enable substantiated choices to focus long-term efforts on a limited number of cases.

Favelas in Brazil, high-risk communities in Trinidad, sectarian neighborhoods in Beirut, war-torn Mogadishu, and Nigeria’s second most populous city, Kano: all of these places host multiple actors making claims on the legitimate use of force. The complexity and geographic spread of this topic provided rich substance for a recent event on Plural Security in the City.

Governance is the key question

“In the African context, plural policing and plural security have always been the norm”: Etannibi Alemika (University of Jos) emphasized that plural security is not a new phenomenon despite the recent uptick. But traditional forms of governance previously active in regulating plural security appear to be waning. Who drives plural security, who controls it, who coordinates it, and what kind of interactions exist between actors? According to Dr. Alemika, these are the questions on which to focus future attention.

 Scope for cooperation, but also competition

In many contexts, policing is a lucrative business. This can lead to situations of cooperation, but also of competition. The power to enforce laws, hand out permits, and collect taxes attracts all kinds of political interests. Alice Hills (Durham University) illustrated how plural security in Mogadishu and Kano involves actors competing for scarce resources, where bargaining is central, and practices and behavior can be erratic. Bruce Baker (Coventry University) demonstrated a case of cooperation with the example of the national taxi drivers association in Uganda, who regulated a bus station in Kampala. In such contexts, it is not necessarily technical expertise that leads to the effective maintenance of order: “much of policing is essentially about social skills”.

Blurred lines between actors

A challenge for outsiders is that the boundaries between police and nonstate actors are very ambiguous , Alice Hills underlined. Similarly, Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam) described a strong involvement of political parties in security provision in Beirut, raising questions as to whether security provision should be described as plural or hybrid. And even within the formal Brazilian police force, as described by Juan Salgado (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas), different entities behave differently according to the time of day or even depending on the side of a street.

So how to engage?

The day explored the consequences of engaging with plural security providers. Working with local arrangements is often championed as a good practice, but participants also raised concerns about moral relativism and a derogation of international standards. The highly political nature of security provision ensures that any reform or engagement will be complex and results will be defined by local dynamics. Some participants pointed to the need for more realistic narratives to set out the risks and challenges of intervention.

Selected takeaways

• Security provision is highly political and therefore engaging with security providers of any stripe requires careful approaches and a deep understanding of local power structures and how they are negotiated
• Boundaries between security providers, politics and the private sector are often blurred, and this powerful combination of actors can skew attention away from the needs and agency of citizens on the receiving end of security arrangements
• Though most security interventions focus on technical prowess and training forces, effective governance is more important for ensuring security arrangements are both effective and equitable

Key statements made during the day have been posted on Twitter, and now the conversation continues online. Participants were invited to write blog posts, which are being published on our website (see the first blog posts here). You’re invited to join the conversation by sharing your comments or writing a new blog post.

NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development grants funding to seven research projects in the ‘Open call for evidence-based policy advice and tools’ within the Applied Research Fund of the research program Security & Rule of Law in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings. This Open Call aims to (develop tools that) provide new evidence-based insights in the underlying assumptions, feasibility and/or impact of policies on, or approaches for, security and rule of law in fragile and conflict-affected settings and unlock the knowledge for practitioner organizations.

The projects granted funding cover a variety of innovative approaches towards challenges of inclusive and hybrid security and justice provision, coordination and measuring in Burundi, Lebanon Afghanistan, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Kenya, Mali, Tunisia, and Uganda. The size of each project is about 100,000 euros, added up with over 160,000 euros in cofunding for the seven projects. All the projects will have a duration of six months.

New applications for the Open call for evidence-based policy advice and tools can be submitted for the last assessment round of 6 November 2015, as well as for the Call for Evidence-Informed Ideas within the Applied Research Fund.

The following projects will receive funding:

• Enhancing Local Peace Committees - facilitating stakeholder debate on the strategic choices involved in transitional justice in Burundi and DR Congo | Dr M. van Leeuwen - Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen  – The Netherlands. Local Peace Committees (LPCs) have become an important strategy to promote transitional justice, but it remains difficult to assure the involvement and leadership of local stakeholders. This project explores what the challenges are, and how local stakeholders can be better engaged in the strategic choices involved in supporting LPCs if decided to do so.
• Informing policy on plural security provision in urban contexts: Comparative insights from Lebanon, Kenya, and Tunisia | M.A. Price - Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen Clingendael – The Netherlands. The project seeks to foster effective security and rule of law assistance by producing empirically-based, policy-relevant insights into how structures of local urban governance might interact with a plurality of local security providers in ways that deliver improved security outcomes for citizens.
• A Study of Monitoring and Evaluation Regimes and Statebuilding Capacity Building: the Case of Afghanistan | Mr K. Bush - University of York  - UK. The project aims to provide evidence-based recommendations and guidelines on how to nurture and harness Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) capacities within and between national and international actors, and to link them explicitly and systematically to the efficiency and effectiveness of statebuilding capacities of fragile states in conflict-affected contexts.
• Promoting coherence, coordination and complementarity in international support to the ICGLR’s response to conflict in Burundi and the Central African Republic | Mr V. Hauck MA  - European Centre for Development Policy Management  – The Netherlands. This project will identify practical ways to improve the way international support reinforces regionally-driven efforts. It will conduct desk and field research using political economy and conflict sensitivity analysis. Key outputs will be a policy brief providing guidance for good practice, a research report, a stakeholders' workshop and related dissemination activities.
• Urban refugee protection in Lebanon's hybrid security system: a research and action agenda | Dr M.N. Abi Yaghi - Lebanon Support  - Lebanon. This project will examine security measures applied in Lebanon in the context of the Syrian crisis and use evidence to inform policies on refugee protection and rule of law programming in hybrid security systems. The research will test the assumption that informal security actors fill a gap left by weak state institutions and include a comparative component with Jordan.
• Trialing tools for participatory gender analysis of conflict in Uganda | Dr C. Harris PhD  - University of London  - UK. There is limited understanding of how gender norms including both masculinities and femininities impact on conflict dynamics, including how they drive conflict, insecurity and exclusion. This project will develop a gender analysis of conflict methodology, building on existing best practices for participatory conflict analysis, academic methodologies and research on gender and conflict. Output will be a toolkit, a video and knowledge sharing events with stakeholders.
• Learning from Design in Mali: A Critical Review and M&E Framework for the CSO-led Human Security Strategy 2014-2015 | Dr D. Connolly  - The Hague Institute for Global Justice  – The Netherlands. Human Security (HS) adopts a people-centered approach to protect individuals by promoting peace and a holistic understanding of security, including legal, economic, personal, environmental and health dimensions. This project will address the main drivers and considerations for the HS strategy, and how the effects of this strategy can be measured on policy and practice? The project will employ a critical review as well as designing a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework for the HS strategy.

A great deal of the space for innovation in managing international conflict lies at the grassroots, as a recent Interactive Brainstorm of the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law shows. With the great challenge to bridge the gap between local, national and international levels, and between state and nonstate, there seems a lot to gain when this connection can be made.

Countries and regions such as Syria or CAR, caught up in high levels of violence and atrocities, expose the limits of the current international response system. With the international community’s inability to reform the United Nations Security Council, and other innovations such as the Responsibility to Protect not having the desired impact, this event sought to explore fresh thinking on international conflict management.

Challenges for the international community

With the failure of international interventions to bring durable peace, the international community is facing a number of challenges. Working group discussions on Syria, Libya, Burundi and CAR revealed the limits of the international community’s influence. What can donor countries for example do when states are not responsive to international pressure? Is it possible to continue financial support, to guarantee a form of stability? Is it better to support ‘soft dictators’, versus a total collapse of central governance? Can donor efforts be better directed to initiatives identified and supported by local populations, to be more effective? An important challenge for the international community is to commit to long-term investments, against the backdrop that it takes two generations to fully recover rule of law. 

Promising local initiatives

At the same time, looking beyond the state, the event highlighted a number of promising local initiatives:

• An online platform to map and connect dialogue in Ukraine found flourishing grassroots dialogue, where according to national authorities, “there is no dialogue in Ukraine”;
• A small Israeli organization uses Facebook and art to connect people on an individual level across “enemy lines” around the Middle East;
• A multinational corporation seeks to keep more benefits locally, with communities directly affected by its activities, while also working to mitigate conflict and stimulate local development through for example electrification;
• In Kenya, local religious leaders and elders are involved to bridge boundaries and decrease tension between Christians and Muslims after attacks by Al Shabaab.

Room for innovation

These local initiatives lead to new ideas: for example, to use social media to change the images coming out of Syria, to humanize the conflict vis-à-vis the world that is watching; and to take time for the dialogue process around the new constitution in Libya, instead of focusing on a quick success. The Interactive Brainstorm underlined that there is room for innovation when it comes to managing international conflict. 

The conversation continues online: participants were invited to write blog posts which will be published on our website (see the blog posts here), and we are working on a publication which will more extensively highlight the main outcomes of the day. You’re invited to join the conversation: share your comments, or write a new blog post.

WOTRO granted five projects in the ‘Open call for evidence-based policy advice and tools’ within the Applied Research Fund of the research program Security & Rule of Law in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings. This Open call aims to (develop tools that) provide new evidence-based insights in the underlying assumptions, feasibility and/or impact of policies on, or approaches for security and rule of law in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS) and unlock the knowledge for practitioners organizations.

The following projects will receive funding:

• The Justice Box - a tool for evidence-based policy and legal empowerment in Mali | The main applicant is Dr S. Muller (The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law, the Netherlands). The co-applicant is Dr I. Koreissi (Association DEME-SO, Mali). This project aims to co-design an evidence-based justice tool (Justice Boxes). This Justice Box is an interactive dashboard which allows users to link various types of justice data. It will enable to monitor justice from people's perspective and hold justice providers accountable. It will also assist donors in targeting their interventions and integrating their strategies.
• When will transitional justice join the transitional decade in Afghanistan? | The main applicant is Dr C.E. Echavez (Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, Afghanistan). The co-applicant is Mrs L. Linke (The Liaison Office, Afghanistan). The aim of this project is to facilitate inclusion of community-level perceptions and expectations of transitional justice into a framework for a successful peace process. This project will provide a longitudinal view on the community perceptions and possible changes that might have happened in past years and will have a strong Afghan led character. Also, the project will directly approach practitioners by providing practical tools to incorporate transitional justice activities in their programming. And the proposed action will include positive deviance research in its research methodology. In the meantime, the project will spread its gained evidence-based knowledge, by conducting a series of training workshops on the usage of conflict sensitive tools, through clear policy recommendations and by making the findings easily accessible.
• Towards inclusive security governance of the Tunisian-Libyan border: Developing evidence-based approaches to enhancing border security in Tunisia | The main applicant is Dr O.L. Lamloum (International Alert, Tunisia). The co-applicants are Dr F. Rekik (Université de Sfax, Tunisia) and Mr A. Talbi (The Tunisian Forum of Social and Economic Rights (TFSER), Tunisia). Despite the transition from authoritarian regime, political violence and unrest is increasing and there is growing concern around insecurity along Tunisian borders. Empirical evidence is required to improve the ability of policy-makers to understand and address the drivers and underlying causes of Tunisia's border governance and security problems. This project will provide new insights and evidence through participatory research and policy advice, and link decision makers with existing evidence from community engagement approaches to border security.
• The 2013 National Dialogue Conference (NDC) in Yemen: Why did it fail to prevent conflict? | The main applicant is Dr M.A.A. Elayah (Radboud University, the Netherlands). The co-applicant is Dr B. AbuOsba (Awam Foundation for Development & Culture (AFDC), Yemen). This project aims at a meta-analysis ('systematic review') of a comprehensive set of NDC evaluations, and an elicitation among local civil society actors (including women's rights organisations) about their perspective on the NDC. The results will be triangulated and synthesized in a quick reference for international donors when pushing for national dialogues in the Arab region (or elsewhere). A policy brief will be written to assist in formulating an adequate strategic response once participatory spaces reopen.
• Codifying water rights in contested basins of Afghanistan | The main applicant is Dr A. Mehari Haile (UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands). The co-applicants are Dr K. Qayoum (Kabul University, Afghanistan) and Dr F.W.M. van Steenbergen (Meta Meta, the Netherlands). This research aims at a mitigation of water related conflicts to contribute to larger general security and future agricultural development in Afghanistan. It will investigate the current systems of water rights, the way that are they settled and codified, while paying special attention to spate irrigation systems that make use of short term floods as the prime source of water in Nimroz, Afghanistan. From this, a guidance document for codifying water rights and distribution rules shall be created to operationalise the Water Law. The following activities will be carried out; a reconnaissance survey, field studies and stakeholder workshops.

Submit a proposal?

New applications for the Open call for evidence-based policy advice and tools can be submitted for the assessment round on 6 November 2015.These are also the deadlines for the Call for Evidence-Informed Ideas within the Applied Research Fund.Deadline for a preliminary proposal for the Stategic Research Fund is 18 August 2015.

 For more information about the research program, please continue to the website of WOTRO.