Addressing Root Causes of Conflict Shared Learning in Practice Report

This report covers key findings from the Addressing Root Causes (ARC)1 Regional Learning Symposium for Africa held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 9-11 March 2020. The Learning Symposium was organised and co-facilitated by the ARC Burundi Nyubahiriza (“Respect Me”) Project Team, Oxfam Novib and the Knowledge Platform for Security and Rule of Law (KPSRL). The event brought together 25 NGO partner organisations of ARC projects in seven African countries -Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan-, as well as representatives from the project teams, KPSRL, and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Regional Learning event provided a platform for exchanges between researchers, educators, policy makers and experts on experiences, best practices, and lessons learned in the implementations of programmes and projects aimed at mitigating the various factors that bring about or aggravate situations of conflict. During three impactful days, practitioners and other participants shared their findings and insights, challenges and obstacles, successes and failures, barriers and gaps, as well as opportunities and recommendations. The interactive, participatory design of the Symposium featured dynamic presentations by ARC projects, group discussions in parallel sessions on the three main ARC themes (adaptive management, gender transformation, conflict sensitivity), and plenary debriefing sessions to present main results and recommendations from each session. Suggestions were also made on how they can improve their learning processes, and then promptly channel information, data and messages from field projects back to headquarters and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).