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.

On 24 June 2015, the Platform held its Third Annual Conference. The conference gathered a great representation of the Platform’s international network and due to the highly interactive and open atmosphere, it provided for a great opportunity to explore the intersections of the Platform’s program. The conference also allowed the network to share insights and experiences with the view to guide the Platform in its future directions. Several artists made live visual interpretations of the day’s discussions, capturing the most important and inspiring messages.

After an energizing opening by moderator Petra Stienen, the day was kick-started by Robert Serry with an insightful conversation on his experiences as Former Diplomat and UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. Drawing from his extensive experience in conflict mediation he highlighted negotiating with Hamas as UN Special Envoy for the Middle East. He emphasized the need for a patient, pragmatic and coherent approach to deal with non-state actors: “Quick fixes come back to haunt you…” and “I would take risks with non-state actors if I believe they could help”. But in doing so, low politics needs to go hand in hand with high politics.

During a conversation with the Platform’s Steering Group members, the network shared best practices, lessons learned, and brilliant failures of the Platform, critically assessing  the functioning of the Platform and developing ideas for its future direction. Some of our principal takeaways of the session: “Search for irritation”, make it light, share knowledge products more interactively and tailored to specific audiences and make sure to connect and engage with local networks.

In the closing plenary morning session Jan de Vries and Marco Lankhorst deconstructed the Reconstruction Tender, critically dissecting the way the tender was set up, and suggesting ways to develop ambitious and realistic programs that strike the balance between accountability and agility. In a video response, Rachel Kleinfeld emphasized this message in explaining her brilliant metaphor of how our interventions should move more like sailboats instead of trains, moving towards the same end goal, with a flexible and adaptive route. The ensuing discussion highlighted the impact of the analysis of the Reconstruction Tender on the development of the Theory of Change of the MFA as well as the need for early engagement of implementing organizations in designing the next tender.

In the afternoon, the approximately 100 participants split up into interactive breakout sessions where they were challenged to draw lessons from the Platform’s past and ongoing activities, with the aim of harnessing new insights to chart innovative future directions. The breakout topics focused on the intersections of past and ongoing activities. For an impression of the breakout discussions, please consult the following links:

• Citizens seeking justice and security in fragile contexts | Facilitated by Rob Sijstermans, Cordaid
• Avoiding political entanglement? Or embedding justice in politics? | Facilitated by Bart Weijs, Platform Secretariat
• Testing assumptions: the private sector's contribution to peace and stability |Facilitated by David Bremner, Cordaid
• The current crisis in Burundi: the effectiveness of international engagement | Facilitated by Suying Lai, Oxfam Novib and Gabrielle Solanet, Search for Common Ground
• Migration: exploring the potential of the comprehensive approach | Facilitated by Anna Knoll, ECDPM

The many constructive comments, inspiring ideas and novel insights that emerged from the conference discussions will be taken up in further developing future directions and activities of the Platform.

Please keep an eye on our website to be informed about the main discussions, outcomes and impression of our Third Annual Conference: 

• Blog posts by the Platform’s network members
• Video response by Rachel Kleinfeld

Please find below the summary report of the conference: