ARC Closing Event Report

For the past decade, adressing the root causes of conflict and irregular migration through ’’bottom up’’ civil society engagement and fragile states has been a priority for Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). The Addressing Root Causes fund(ARC fund-2016-2021) has been the latest centrally managed tender program that the MFA’s department for Stabilization and Humanitarian Aid(DSH) has launched and managed to this effect.

Beyond implementation, the ARC program had the ambition to build a community of practice in which members take collective responsibility for learning, reflect on common challenges, encourage innovation and develop a repertoire of collective resources (experiences, stories, tools etc.). Building from lessons learned as part of ARC implementation, regional learning symposiums have been organized by ARC partners (May 2022) in order to capitalize on experience from peace, security and justice programs through collaborative learning and knowledge sharing, establish shared understanding on lessons learned and best practice, and analyze challenges and opportunities on dealing with addressing root causes of conflict and insecurity in the Great Lakes Region, Horn of Africa and Sahel Region.

Building from the said regional events, a global closing event was organized in The Hague on December 7th and 8th, 2022 by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs(BZ), the Knowledge Platform Security and Rule of Law(KPSRL) and ARC partners. The global event offered space to discuss common lessons learned across the programs and how they could be fed into portfolio reflection for future programming and policy.