Working with government and customary authorities: considerations for peacebuilding practitioners

Community based peace and security committees should not work in isolation, but look for cooperation with other stakeholders. However cooperation with the local government authorities is not always easy as these authorities can have different interests and might not be trusted by the committees because of a violent past. Customary authorities might have more local legitimacy, but the customary justice system is often discriminating women, youth and minority groups. In the learning paper on this topic we describe how NGOs deal with the challenges and opportunities in this cooperation.

ZOA, together with Saferworld and SUDIA, has organized an international learning event in Uganda, August 2019 which brought together practitioners from different organisations working in Central and East Africa on community based peacebuilding. Details on the learning event that resulted in this learning paper, an additional paper on Increasing women's participation in community based peace and security structures, as well as 2 short videos on these topics can be found on the ZOA website here. The learning event and the production of these deliverables have been made possible thanks to the contribution of the Knowledge Management Fund.