Maastricht School of Management, Utrecht University, Clingendael Institute, University of Amsterdam and The Graduate Institute, Geneva

Introduction 

A group of six researchers, each specialized in either urban studies, security provision, or local governance, teamed up to conduct a study trip looking at local security provision in Beirut, from 16 to 20 March 2015. The team represented various members of the Platform, and were affiliated with The Clingendael Institute, Utrecht University’s Centre for Conflict Studies, the Centre for Urban Studies of the University of Amsterdam, the Graduate Institute, Geneva and the Maastricht School of Management. - Partnering with Beirut-based peace organizations and research programmes, the team engaged a broad array of Beirut residents and security actors with varying relations to formal state institutions. Through interviews and first hand observation, the team explored how such actors negotiate and assert their various roles in maintaining community level security. This study trip was directly supported by the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law.

Overview

In the neighborhoods of Beirut, Lebanon, various actors take on the role of maintaining security and providing their communities with a predictable system of order. This is especially the case in neighborhoods where government security actors, such as the Lebanese Armed Forces or the Internal Security Forces, are either not reliably present and/or have not gained sufficient trust from local residents and communities.

In some instances, such actors act as unarmed watch brigades, monitoring security incidents or potential disturbances in their neighborhoods and report irregularities to those with the local authority to intervene. In other cases, they exert coercive force that is not regulated by official Lebanese state authority. These actors are often viewed as primary providers of security in their neighborhood and thus maintain strong popular legitimacy.

Meanwhile, the state retains its role as the sole actor mandated for advancing security as a public good, and ensuring security is equally guaranteed to all its citizens. This is particularly true of local-level government, such as mayors, district administrators and local councils. These actors may be inclined toward engaging local security providers, and are able to initiate local-level collective action and resource mobilization. With these points in mind, there is room for more pragmatism in searching for ways in which local governments can productively engage informal security actors and service providers in their communities.

Aim of the study

The aim of the study trip was to directly observe: 1) how security and order is enforced by a variety of actors; 2) how these different actors interact, if they do; and 3) how they are able to assert their priorities and concerns through that engagement. Interviews were held with over 35 residents of five neighborhoods within the greater metropolitan Beirut (Na'baa; Hamra; Burj al Barajneh; Sinn el Fil; and Zokak el Blat). The team engaged experts and actors, including: Policy experts & academics; NGOs & practitioners; Representatives of Beirut Municipality; Syrian refugees; representatives of major political parties (representing Shia, Sunni, Druze, and Christian communities); community mobilizers and activists; local analysts and journalists; Lebanese artists; youth leaders; and neighborhood 'mokhtars' in order to learn from their respective experiences. The Beirut mission represents the first joint effort of the Plural Security in the City research network. Findings from the trip will be applied to inform and refine future research in other cities around the globe. The larger aim of this initiative is to contribute to a growing stock of empirical evidence on local governments’ engagement with non-state security provision in urban contexts, and how it may provide opportunities to work toward positive citizen security outcomes.

Youth unemployment is a risk factor for a country like Mali, a fragile state where the security situation is steadily worsening. The international community is aware of this challenge and is conducting targeted programming to provide a range of opportunities to young Malians and help promote youth employment. However, there seem to be barriers that hinder its engagement with local and national researchers to inform their programming, an interaction that has the potential to provide a much-needed local level perspective.

On 16 March 2015, Spring Factor and Integrity Research and Consultancy held a workshop in Bamako, Mali to address the issue of how local research can inform youth employment programming. A diverse group of participants attended, including international donors (Netherlands, World Bank, International Labour Organisation), NGOs (Spark, Oxfam, SNV), consultancy firms (Fair&Sustainable), Malian researchers (Universities of Bamako and Ségou), youth groups (Jeune Chambre Internationale Mali and Collective Plus Jamais Ca), government and other Malian stakeholders. The workshop is supported by the Netherlands-based Knowledge Platform on Security & Rule of Law as part of a larger series on exploring local research capacity.

The workshop identified important barriers to the collaboration between local researchers and international interlocutors working on youth employment in Mali. Whereas lack of capacity, resources and language skills are challenges when working with local and national researchers, participants also stressed the challenges in working with international actors, who are not always aware of political-cultural sensitivities, have predetermined priorities and face rushed timelines. The group also formulated a number of recommendations, which will be presented at a meeting in The Hague at the end of May for the wider network of the Knowledge Platform on Security & Rule of Law. This will discuss the findings of the other workshops in this series on South Sudan and the Middle East as well. If you are interested in receiving more information, please contact marije.balt@springfactor.org oralex.martins@integrityresearch.com.

 “Playing with fire' ^[1]   or “building peace, one tribe at a time”? ^[2]

Engaging with local non-state actors provides opportunities for peacebuilding, especially in places where the state is absent and solutions should be sought within communities. Most conflicts revolve around local disputes such as land or water allocation, legal affairs, poverty and unemployment. Finding local solutions to these local issues has been the foundation for recent peacebuilding interventions. In the third online debate of the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law, 30 international experts determined key factors for successful peacebuilding policies.They concluded that the best drafted development programmes will be meaningless if they fail to consider local actors and existing solutions before designing peacebuilding strategies.

Can non-state actors be accountable and legitimate partners in peace building?

Advocates of local power-sharing arrangements believe that local NGOs with established connections to communities are the most capable actors in providing social security. Cooperating with them supposedly increases international organizations’ accountability and legitimacy in peacebuilding interventions.The debate’s participants however heatedly deconstructed this simplified notion. Local actors who gained legitimacy through immediate relief efforts might fail to establish a basis for including the marginalized later in the development process. A solution to this could be standardized approaches to downward accountability for local organizations. David Connolly of The Hague Institute for Global Justice mentioned Integrity Action and Humanitarian Accountability Partnership as organizations providing practical guidelines to development projects on how to ensure integrity and accountability. 

Communities can mediate between top and grassroots level, thus increasing the accountability of both spheres, Luc Ansobi of ACCORD argued. Romain Malejacq of CICAM added empowering communities economically and supporting local conflict resolution bodies, media and watchdog organizations as additional options. Local NGOs can thus be sources of accountability, but their impact on local communities needs to be closely monitored throughout the peace process.

 Why are local non-state actors often excluded and how can they be included?

International governments are often hesitant to work with non-state actors, fearing that supporting these actors might compromise their own legal foundations. This poses a serious challenge, since non-state actors act outside the frameworks of international law, but might also provide essential services to local populations. Aaro Rytkönen of the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers argued that only supporting national governments can significantly limit the effectiveness of peacebuilding, where tribal and local identities are often more important.

Involving local stakeholders does not guarantee true grassroots engagement or project success. International actors usually opt to work with larger local organizations that speak the ‘donor language’. Nepal Centre for Contemporary Research Director Bishnu Upreti held that these organizations, however, are often not connected to grassroots initiatives. Furthermore, international organizations struggle to identify effective, more community-based projects by smaller organizations. This language barrier and disconnect explains why many relevant local institutions do not even get a place at the negotiating table. Susanne Schmeidl of the University of New South Wales advocated for including councils of elders to supplement state structures, while Brenda Bartelink of Oikos suggested utilizing existing networks of traditional and religious peacemakers.

Partnership does not necessarily mean handing over full responsibility to local entities. Sukanya Podder of Cranfield University advised pragmatic cooperation with non-state actors. An example are the clan structures in Somalia where some non-state actors may provide welfare and justice, while also contributing to instability and violence.This triggered a vibrant discussion on how to avoid transferring governing power into the ‘wrong’ local hands. Civil societies are often polarized along the same lines as their societies, Thania Paffenholz of the Geneva Graduate Institute cautioned.Working with the most powerful local actors risks elite capture of the peace process and might reinforce unequal social hierarchies. The legitimacy of local actors within one social group might be viewed very differently by another group. Empowering certain local actors may thus further destabilize already fragmented post-conflict societies. Martine van Bijlert of Afghanistan Analyst Network confirmed that local stakeholders can be just as entangled in patronage and corrupt networks. In addition,many powerful local actors have vested interests in upholding the status quo of protracted conflict to maintain their authority.

 What partnership models with local non-actors are effective?

The experts agreed that international peacebuilding actors should adopt a more modest attitude. As a result of current development practices, local organizations prioritize accountability to donors over accountability to communities. Participants acknowledged that international influence thus runs a real risk of being a destabilizing rather than a constructive force.

An option requiring less international engagement is detailed mapping of actors and incentives analyses, combined with flexible funding arrangements and capacity development support. ECDPM’s Volker Hauck suggested this helps identify local stakeholders who truly support the peace process. Gemma van der Haar contended that international actors should shift the analytical effort from ‘mapping actors’ to ‘following problems’. Determining local needs and finding out who people turn to with problems and why should be a priority. Romain Malejacq suggested fostering virtuous processes rather than building entire institutions as a first step towards democratic governance. Frauke de Weijer of ECDPM argued that managing local society’s expectations is essential to this facilitating role for international actors.

Changing approaches for international actors

Efforts should focus on how to increase capacities of weak governments rather than excluding them, according to LSE lecturer Kate Meagher. Keeping local government arrangements flexible to enable new legitimate actors to join is a key lesson from post-conflict peacebuilding in Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern Congo.

As the responses of participants showed, local actors are an indispensable partner in peacebuilding efforts. Reconciliation within communities, as well as building resilient societies equipped with conflict resolution mechanisms will provide a strong foundation for peace, reconstruction and development. Traditional fora for discussion, local media and social networks are relevant tools to engage local stakeholders in peace dialogues. Investing in umbrella bodies to host these dialogues and in peace education are other innovative means for development actors. Supporting local efforts in conflict-affected areas is a must, not a maybe, for international actors striving to contribute to sustainable peace.

The Platform would like to thank the experts who made this debate a very insightful event. We would like to invite you to contribute to our upcoming debates to improve policies in fragile contexts.

On Friday 30^th of January 2015, the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law hosted an interactive brainstorm event. Co-hosts were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and WO=MEN, both coordinators of the Dutch National Action Plan on 1325 (NAP1325). The purpose of the brainstorm event was to discuss the state of affairs on three specific topics and provide input for the international expert conference on Women, Peace and Security on 16 – 17 February 2015.

Click on the link below to read more about this event.

For an overview of the participants and contact details, please click here.

On 20-21 November 2014 the first Indonesia Netherlands Legal Update took place in The Hague.

The conference hosted more than 100 participants and was opened with speeches by Minister of State Herman Tjeenk Willink, the Indonesian Chargé d’Affaires ad interim Widtaksono Adji and Nicola Colbran, Human Rights and Development Lawyer.

The INLU brought together Indonesian and Dutch researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in legal cooperation between Indonesia and the Netherlands. The guests participated in two plenary debates and were able to choose from 8 different panels.The Update offered a platform for discussion of important legal developments in both Indonesia and the Netherlands. This helped to strengthen the current and future bilateral cooperation between Indonesia and the Netherlands in the fields of security and rule of law and also assisted in identifying priorities for future legal cooperation and/or applied research. It gave special attention to, but was not limited to, developments related to ‘Access to Justice’, ‘Legal Education’ and ‘Institutional Reform’.

The INLU was organized by the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Development, Leiden Law School, on behalf of the Working Group Indonesia and supported by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta and the Secretariat of the Knowledge Platform on Security and Rule of Law.

Please consult link below for full summary report of the conference. 

On 16 October, 2014, Spark, the Conflict Research Unit (CRU) of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, and the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law hosted a workshop on ‘Effective cross-sector partnerships for business and development in complex and high-risk environments’ at the Africa Works! Conference in Leiden.

The workshop, moderated by Mr. Rens Twijnstra (African Diaspora Policy Centre), brought together speakers from different backgrounds – donor government (The Netherlands), host government (Sierra Leone), local business (Farmers & Co, Burundi), local NGO (Mobinc, Burundi) – with a view to raise the prospects that the increasing interest in partnering up will be translated into significant and sustained changes in the practices of actors on the ground.

Abubakarr Bangura, chairman of Sierra Leone Central Union, well established in government circles but most of all an entrepreneur himself, provided introductory remarks. Apart from addressing common challenges such as the absence of adequate data, he also highlighted some key factors which he believes are essential to build effective cross-sector partnerships: mutual trust and understanding, expectation management, clear rules of engagement, realism and flexibility. In his view, cross-sector partnerships should focus on maximizing the gains and minimizing the pains.

Sjoerd Smit, Department for Sustainable Economic Development, The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as Mr. Ibrahim Sorie Kamara,Ambassador of the Republic of Sierra Leone to the Kingdom of Belgium and Head of Mission to the European Union, emphasized the importance of the ‘New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States’. Both indicated how New Deal principles are currently being incorporated in their development policies and strategies. Mr. Smit explained how cross-sector partnerships play a major role in Dutch development cooperation based on a model that is known as the Dutch Diamond Approach. He used the examples of the Dutch role in the IFC’s Conflict Affected States Initiative (CASA) and the Dutch Facility for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Food Security (FDOV) to underline his point. The Netherlands portray their own role in cross-sector partnerships particularly as a broker of initiatives that converge peacebuilding and economic development.

The Ambassador indicated that Sierra Leone, as one of the seven countries that pilot the New Deal, is currently focusing on incorporation of the New Deal principles, for example in the country’s Agenda for Prosperity. By implementing legislation that enhances transparency, promotes the rule of law, and combats corruption and that facilitates partnerships between actors from different sectors, it invests in establishing reliable partnerships between the government and businesses. Successful partnerships have been built in the energy sector, in port development, in the shipping industry and more recently in the fight against Ebola.

NGO perspective
By using the case study of the Sorgum value chain in Burundi, Mr Seleus Nezerwe discussed the achievements and challenges of a cross-sector partnership that involved many different stakeholders, ranging from the Netherlands Embassy to the local farmers, from international NGOs like SPARK to local investors like BARUDI. Despite the successes of this partnership, there are still significant challenges ahead to make it even more effective. A very basic but telling example is the fact that the Burundese national government, as one of the partners involved, has adopted a national policy on agricultural investment which was in and of itself very helpful for the partnership, but it is written in French in a country where a very large majority of the people only speak Kirundi.

Private sector perspective
Adidjah Makangira, founder and owner of Farmers & Co, a Marketing and Sales organization involved in the export of coffee, presented a clear entry point where business and development outcomes could be mutually reinforcing. She gave us insight into the very specific challenges of the coffee sector in Burundi to all actors involved: the high degree of seasonality in the coffee industry and the much-needed rejuvenation of coffee trees, bring short term livelihood risks to a large group of local smallholders, for which coffee is their main source of income and on which her business is dependent. She made a plea for partnerships with other actors that help her business and the local community to address these challenges, as the private sector in Burundi, including her own company, is not able to facilitate income buffers to these local farmers on its own.

Despite the useful insights gained into how effective cross-sector partnerships can be built and supported to address the challenges and exploit the opportunities in these kinds settings through much needed mutually reinforcing business and development outcomes, this workshop is only a building block. There is still a great need to further build (mutual) understanding of how partnerships can be built and supported that are truly effective and sustainable, which are essential to improve engagement in complex and high-risk environments, like in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Africa Works!                                                                                                

Organized by the Netherlands African Business Council (NABC) and the African Studies Centre (ASC) this year’s edition of Africa Works! focused on building new partnerships between actors from different sectors (private sector, civil society and governments) as a means to come to new and more effective engagements on the African continent. The Conference brought together over 700 different stakeholders, from Africa, The Netherlands, and elsewhere.  

Research note and case study

A direct output of the workshop is a research note by Paul Lange (Clingendael) with the aim to contribute to the topic of cross-sector partnerships in fragile settings. In addition, the research note draws on the example of a partnership in Burundi that was also presented during the workshop. It involves a multinational company, a donor government and international and national NGOs that together work on the “White Sorghum value chain development” a project on youth employment in remote areas in Burundi (‘Burundi partnership’). This case study is available here. 

Please consult the following link for the research note

External interventions by themselves do not create long-lasting peace. They are useful in providing short-term solutions to conflict. But to break the vicious cycle of fragility and conflict, international actors should work with regional partners and local peacebuilding initiatives, and make use of the structures in which local actors operate.

This was central to the online debate on ‘Local’ Conflicts in Transnational Entanglements held on the Platform over the past two-and-a-half months. Twenty international experts  provided insights into the limits and possibilities for improving external interventions when dealing with transnational influences in local conflict. Two arguments for improvement could be distilled from the debate, both building on the idea that interventions should be tailored to specific situations rather than promoting top-down peacebuilding solutions. First, it is crucial to involve regional partners. This can be achieved by involving neighbouring states who have an interest in stability, or by generating a common interest in stability – for example in regional economic integration – among these regional partners. Second, peacebuilding efforts can be made more sustainable by making them demand-driven, i.e. by focusing on local actors’ perceptions, wishes and initiatives. This can be achieved, for example, by working with established informal structures of authority or by supporting local peacebuilding organizations.

Fields of tension and lines of consensus

An interesting point that many contributors to the debate emphasized was that international interventions are also a form of transnational influence on conflict, thereby questioning the framing of the debate itself. This was most clearly explained by Marina Caparini, who argued that the statements guiding the discussion implicitly conceptualized ‘transnational influences’ as cross-border rebels, or transnational insurgent groups, while influences like global capitalism and Western discourses on state-building were overlooked.  As Michael Pugh explains, Western ideas of neoliberal deregulation and privatization are among the transnational influences that shape international interventions in peacebuilding. International actors should thus make sure that these global processes are not adversely affecting the course of local conflicts.

External interventions were generally seen as having only limited influence on the emergence of sustainable peace. Some authors advocated a more local focus, and others a more regional approach. According to Damien Helly for example, internal rather than transnational influences matter most, while Matthew Levinger listed a number of local initiatives in peacebuilding and said that external interventions should support local processes. Richard Ponzio argued that understanding local structures of authority and developing local capacity, such as with the Jirga councils in Afghanistan, can improve the effectiveness of international interventions. However, according to Romain Malejacq, “strategies that strictly focus on the local level are bound to fail”. Thomas Barfield seconded this view by stating that a solution should be found in creating incentives for stability among regional partners, for example the integration of economy and infrastructure. Peter Bartu highlighted the importance of regional approaches by noting that, if Middle Eastern states are not able to agree on governance models, they “might coalesce around regional approaches to water scarcity and food insecurity”.

Hybridity became a central theme in the discussion, both implicitly and explicitly. Most contributors agreed that, in any effort to build sustainable peace, the local should be put first. However, they had different ideas of what ‘local’ entails. Jeroen Adam for example noted that, by placing the central focus on local initiatives, many authors overlook the role of the state in providing equal access to security and justice to its citizens. And, as Kersti Larsdotter explained, “local level strategies alone cannot influence state-to-state relations, while top-down strategies risk overseeing the power relations in the local communities’. These are  complex situations which lead us to question the effectiveness of state-centric peacebuilding. Particularly in trans-border conflicts, the need for states to reach compromises could have serious consequences for their national sovereignty. 

In short, the contributors debated mainly on how to deal with the dynamics between actors, interests and efforts at the international, regional and local levels in peacebuilding. This was an interesting shift in focus away from imposing peacebuilding on a passive context of conflict. This is a theme on which we hope to expand in the future.

The contributions to this debate will be integrated in a short report presenting concrete suggestions for policy-makers, to be released shortly on this website. The Platform would like to thank all those who have contributed to make this debate a very insightful event. So please join us again for the next debate, which will start in the autumn.

Photo credits: United Nations Photo: Demobilization of Burundian Military

On 27 February 2014, the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law convened its Second Annual Conference on security and rule of law in the 21^st century. With a focus on identifying and unpacking our assumptions alongside the issues ‘Violence on the Periphery’, ‘Globalization and Social Justice’, and ‘New Approaches to Security’, the conference comprised an exciting and inspiring menu of topics.

The conference succeeded in welcoming several innovative thinkers – among others - Juma Assiago (UNHABITAT, Kenya), Joshua Simmons (Global Financial Integrity, USA), Isabel Aguilar Umaña (Interpeace, Guatemala), Jeroen de Lange (moderator), and Jok Madut Jok (The Sudd Institute).

The approximately 150 participants of the conference actively engaged in choosing the topics for the afternoon breakout sessions by voting for the issue they found most relevant to pursue. The menu of potential topics was derived from the presentations of the key note speakers, previous discussions on theories of change and context analysis responding to the evaluation of the Dutch Foreign Policy in Fragile States from 2005 – 2011, and the main outcomes of the recent online debate on Foreign Engagement in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Contexts.

In the afternoon, the Platform’s vibrant network of national and international policy makers, practitioners and researchers split up into interactive breakout groups on the following voted topics:

Violence on the Periphery

• Urban surge: multi-layered violence | Facilitated by Jok Madut Jok
• Organized crime in ungoverned areas | Facilitated by Summer Brown

Globalization and Social Justice

• The global trade in natural resources| Facilitated by Mariken Gaanderse

 New Approaches to Security

• The partner’s dilemma: who is ‘legitimate’? |Facilitated by Berlinda Nolles
• Expanding the toolbox: do our instruments live up to our ideals? | Facilitated by Pascal Richard
• Comprehensive, successive approach? Can different end-goals be sequenced? |Facilitated by David Connolly

During the breakouts, new ideas within the realm of security and rule of law in the 21^st century were explored with the goal of informing the thematic foci for the Platform in 2014. These foci will be announced by the Steering Group.

Rob Swartbol, Director General for International Cooperation from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, closed the day with a speech in which he reaffirmed the commitment of Minister Ploumen to support the Platform’s work.

The day ended with the highly-anticipated announcement of the first calls for proposal developed by the Platform based on the research agenda as developed in 2013 by the Working Group Employment for Stability and the Working Group Justice, Power & Politics. The first calls for proposals were launched on 17 March. 

The full presentations of the key note speakers are available:

> Isabel Aguilar Umana 

> Joshua Simmons

> Juma Assiago

Please find below the Program Booklet of the Conference in pdf.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the appointment of Anna Gouwenberg as Head of Office of the Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law. Anna was appointed by The Hague Institute for Global Justice on behalf of the consortium partners. She previously held the position of Policy Advisor with The Hague Institute.

The Steering Group and consortium partners have great confidence in this appointment and look forward to working with Anna in building and developing the platform further towards becoming an international knowledge hub in the field of security and rule of law.

Anna has greatly contributed to the initial stages of the work of The Hague Institute for Global Justice. She has been involved in the development of the substantive program, the projects and organizational structure of the institute from its inception onwards. She was member of the management team and supported the Board and Advisory Council.

Before joining The Hague Institute, Anna worked as Research Assistant and Project Officer at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. There, she was responsible for carrying out several research consultancies and research assistance in areas of public international law, human rights, development cooperation, international criminal law and international humanitarian law. She taught Public International Law courses in the Leiden Law Bachelor and was responsible for the coordination and organization of numerous expert meetings and conferences.

Anna studied Public International Law at Leiden University.