Disagreements over land have led to violent conflicts within and between communities throughout Uganda for years. To address this, Saferworld and partners brought people together to ease long-standing tensions over land through community discussions and action.
After decades of fighting, two clans in Madi Opei subcounty – close to the border with South Sudan – worked together to resolve their disagreements over land and to build peace.
The Pobira and Pobura clans live on approximately 3,000 hectares of land, which is prized by farmers for its fertility. There’s also a stream that draws wild animals from the wilderness into hunters’ sights.
Conflict over the land between the two clans began in the mid-1960s. The Pobura invited the Pobira clan to settle on their land following the marriage of the daughter of a Pobura family to a young Pobira man. In 1964, this Pobira man set a controlled fire to protect his farm from wildfires. His Pobura father-in-law (who disagreed with the practice) reported this to the authorities, who ruled in his favour. Decades of legal disputes – and intensifying animosity – followed the incident, marked by cycles of short-lived peace, physical attacks, and unhelpful interventions from community and government bodies.
During the Lord’s Resistance Army’s insurgency, clan members left the area to settle in camps for internally displaced people. At the time, many elders – who knew how the land should be used – passed away. When the process of resettlement began in 2006, there was confusion over how to manage the land, and, with ongoing intense competition, land conflicts have endured to this day.
Collectively building peace
In September 2021, through a project funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to address drivers of conflict in Uganda, parishes from across Madi Opei sub-county selected representatives to join a community action group. The group works to find solutions to challenges including GBV, cross-border conflicts, cattle raids and psychosocial issues, as well as conflicts over land. Group members include traditional chiefs, clan leaders, community leaders (rwodi kweri/okoro), religious leaders, elders, opinion leaders and community members.
Two months later, in December 2021, a member of the group asked the project partners – including Saferworld, Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation (TPO) and Gulu Women Economic Development and Globalization (GWED-G) – for help to end the Pobura-Pobira land conflict, after tensions erupted into the worst violence in decades. People had accused the Pobira clan of attacking the neighbouring Pobura and destroying buildings and crops. Members of the Pobura clan then fled, taking refuge in the nearby Kwon Cok primary school.
To try to address this problem, the community action group held a five-day training programme on conflict sensitivity, conflict resolution and mental health; Saferworld supported the training through a microgrant. Together, group members helped build consensus among Pobura and Pobira clan members. This created a platform for people to start discussions on how to live and work together.
TPO Uganda used their mental health expertise to respond to people’s mental health needs and heal past traumas of the war, which can escalate conflict. “Peace is being restored as community members from both Pobira and Pobura are working together in therapeutic groups and they support one another, which was not the case for decades,” said Grant Opiyo, a TPO social worker.
Two of the group members were Irene, from the Pobura clan, and Christine, from the Pobira. Before the conflict sensitivity training, Christine and Irene would not sit together or talk to one another. But tensions have disappeared since they became members of the community action group. Seeing the difference in Christine and Irene’s behaviour, other people in the two clans have also started to change their attitudes.
“I thought I would never share the same group with any Pobura clan member after witnessing what happened between us last year. This project has helped in telling us the benefit of handling conflict in a non-violent way. The peace messages were later taken to the community and people are now not living in fear of being attacked at night or their crops getting destroyed,” said Christine.
“Upon resolution of our dispute, Saferworld, TPO Uganda and GWED-G also took us through advice and counselling which has restored social relationships between the two clans,” said Irene.
Pobura clan members who had taken refuge in Kwon Cok primary school have now resettled in their homes and are once again able to make a living. Today, both communities enjoy relative peace and productive farming of the land they share.
“We now plan to promote peace messages by organising football games for peace initiatives, organising music, dance and drama, and continuing with mediation and reconciliation,” explained Christine and Irene.
“The [Pobira–Pobura] conflict that resulted in serious human rights abuses – with people killed and internally displaced – has been partially resolved, with community action group members from the two clans creating opportunities for peace between and among households and the two communities. It is important that the root causes of the conflict are addressed through dialogue with key players,” said Barnabas Otim, Peacebuilding Officer at GWED-G.
Saferworld has a track record of challenging policymakers through advocacy and amplifying the voices of those affected by conflict. We work in collaboration with local and national organisations to effect change at regional and global levels.
The Saferworld Arms Unit played a high-profile role engaging with and mobilising state representatives, multilateral secretariat staff, international NGOs and civil society on issues related to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), in particular with respect to the Conferences of States Parties (CSPs) to the ATT. We continued to coordinate the ATT Expert Group, including meetings on the role of the ATT in conflicts and crises, delivering sustainable outcomes from CSP7 and preparing for CSP8. An important aspect of these meetings is that they are designed to support the needs of states that have significant capacity constraints and limited experience of a criteria-based system of export controls. They also serve to bring those working to implement the treaty at the global level closer to civil society and to others working at national and local levels. During the week of CSP7, Saferworld joined the Global Legal Action Network and the International Commission of Jurists in hosting an online side event, ‘See you in court! Yemen-linked arms export litigation and its implications for the ATT’, which focused on the growing number of legal challenges to particular arms transfers in countries around the world.
We continued our active participation in the EU’s ATT outreach programme throughout the year, concluding with the final conference in December 2021. With respect to country-specific engagement on the ATT, in November and December 2021 we began work with officials in The Gambia on a proposal for developing a national action plan for ATT implementation to submit to the ATT Voluntary Trust Fund, with Saferworld as an implementing partner. Saferworld was also a leading participant in the Control Arms Coalition’s ad hoc China Working Group, in which opportunities and strategies for engaging with China – a new State Party to the ATT – were extensively discussed. We organised several virtual and hybrid Expert Working Group meetings under the Africa-China-Europe project, implemented by Saferworld’s China programme, on tackling the illicit trade and diversion of small arms and light weapons and their ammunition.
Significant in our new organisational strategy is a move from gender-sensitive practice to gender-transformative programming, research and advocacy. This recognises the links between conflict, violence and gender inequality, and commits us to challenge and transform the root causes of gender inequality and GBV and ensure women’s meaningful participation at all decision-making levels. We trained or supported 113 community-based mechanisms, 77 CSOs, networks and coalitions, 20 authorities, and 30 external institutions to move from gender-sensitive to gender-transformative peacebuilding practice. This led to gender-related issues or the concerns of women and girls being addressed in 100 per cent of the community action plans that we supported community-based mechanisms to design and implement. International institutions are also integrating Saferworld’s gender-transformative approach to peacebuilding, such as the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) which included Saferworld’s gender resources in its new Gender Inclusive Peacebuilding course. On its website, USIP also referenced our facilitation guide to conducting a gendersensitive conflict analysis, as well as our 2021 report on gender dynamics in host and Rohingya communities in Cox’s Bazar as an example of what a gender-sensitive conflict analysis should look like.
Donors have recognised our approach, and our programming portfolio on gender and peacebuilding has grown. In Somalia, in partnership with two national women’s organisations, we established Violence Observatories to better understand the targeted gendered violence that women activists, peacebuilders and journalists face because of their work, and to enable them to use this data for their advocacy and to strengthen their own security and protection practices. This will be crucial following the recent escalation of violence between the government and al-Shabaab.
We also won a multi-year commercial contract, funded by the Conflict, Security and Stability Fund, to set up a women, peace and security (WPS) helpdesk, which is the first of its kind for the UK Government. The Helpdesk supports policy and programme teams across the UK Government at a global level on gender and conflict and a range of WPS issues. It will produce high-quality gender and conflict analyses, evidence syntheses and summaries, and support the UK Government’s capacity to deliver on its WPS commitments in conflict contexts. Saferworld is partnering with Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS) UK, Conciliation Resources, Durham University and Women’s International Peace Centre to deliver the contract.
Saferworld’s Conflict Advisory Unit (CAU) works with long-standing consortium partners to deliver over 50 analysis assignments a year via helpdesks with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the European Investment Bank and the Austrian Development Agency. Saferworld is also leading a consortium for the German KfW Development Bank’s firstever Framework for Advice on Fragile and Conflict-Affected States. In addition, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) awarded Saferworld and our consortium partners a multi-year contract to run a demand-led Afghanistan Conflict Sensitivity Mechanism (ACSM) with two Afghan CSOs. Despite the challenges of the Taliban takeover, the ACSM has been well-positioned to provide swift and responsive analysis on decisions taken by the FCDO’s Afghanistan teams, drawing on historical experiences of aid and Taliban governance.
The Conflict Sensitivity Facility (CSF) in Sudan completed its pilot year and has continued as a multi-donorfunded project, with renewed funding from the FCDO, new funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and additional funding from the EU and others in the pipeline. The longer-established Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) in South Sudan has seen increased funding from the Netherlands and the EU and more engagement with UN agencies. This wider interest has created opportunities to work more holistically on conflict sensitivity challenges across the aid sector.
This type of support – pioneered by Saferworld and bringing together targeted research and analysis, capacity support and convening for learning – is now widely recognised for improving the conflict sensitivity of aid. Following consultation with Saferworld last year, conflict sensitivity is now referenced in USAID’s guidelines on humanitarian, development and peacebuilding integration and the US is piloting a facility in Central America.
The CAU has also provided rapid conflict sensitivity advice relevant to climate change and the environment. In March 2022, the CSF published ‘Climate and conflict sensitivity: Improving aid’s interaction with climate, environment and conflict in Sudan’, on how climate change and environmental degradation interact with conflict and the implications of these dynamics for conflict-sensitive aid, with recommendations for policy and practice. The unit also produced an analysis of environment, climate, peace and security overlaps for Sida, and supported the European Investment Bank in presenting a case for investment responses to climate, fragility and gender inequality.
Saferworld has been instrumental in focusing people’s attention on the EU’s new Sahel strategy, which was launched in April 2021. The strategy places greater emphasis on civil society and ‘mutual accountability’, but neglects the crucial questions of EU migration policies regarding the Sahel. In September 2021 we published the report ‘European security assistance: the search for stability in the Sahel’, co-authored with a partner from Chad, which mapped European security assistance in the ‘Group of five’ Sahel countries and identified important lessons and recommendations. In February 2022 we published a report, ‘How not to lose the Sahel’, in which we highlighted the views of people, communities and civil society leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger on what needs to happen to reduce violence and insecurity in the central Sahel. Throughout this work we supported the People’s Coalition for the Sahel, and encouraged the EU to support and engage with Sahelian civil society. Our thinking, research and recommendations were picked up by European decision-makers and by a wide variety of international media outlets, other NGOs and think tanks. The reports were also quoted and referenced by the German Working Group on Peace and Development (FriEnt) – which was critical given Germany’s recently increased profile in global security affairs.
In Germany, Saferworld Europe and Security Policy Alternatives Network partners significantly shaped the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) crisis prevention and peacebuilding thematic paper, with our language subsequently incorporated directly into the SPD’s foreign policy manifesto before the German elections in September 2021. The SPD is now the largest party in the new German Government, so this impact amounts to a direct substantive contribution to the shape of German foreign policy.
Following the election of a new administration, Saferworld USA engaged with policymakers, officials and civil society allies to inform policy reviews and new strategies for conflict prevention and peacebuilding. We held discussions with the new administration on ideas for better integrating conflict-sensitive approaches into aid programmes; these helped inform USAID’s launch of a ‘conflict sensitivity hub’ in Central America, modelled partly on Saferworld’s Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility in South Sudan.
Working with allies, we briefed the National Security Council as it undertook its counter-terrorism policy review, encouraging policymakers to focus on the root causes of conflict and the promotion of human rights over continued reliance on airstrikes and military assistance. After President Biden hosted a global Summit of Democracy, we published an op-ed in the influential Foreign Policy magazine on the risks to fragile democracies of the continued prosecution of counter-terrorism wars. These concerns were echoed in Saferworld’s WarPod podcast series and on a panel featuring our Security Policy Alternatives Network, which we organised at the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s annual PeaceCon conference in Washington DC.
We also expanded our contacts within the US Congress, establishing Saferworld as a grounded and evidencedriven resource on conflict and peacebuilding in South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia and Myanmar. We co-led a Congressional briefing on South Sudan ahead of the country’s tenth independence anniversary and held several briefings with administration officials on the 2021 coup in Sudan and its aftermath.
This year the role of Saferworld USA expanded, as it became the new home of Saferworld’s UN portfolio and took on an expanded role in supporting US fundraising and partnerships.
In the UK, we focused on responding to the UK’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, challenging the impact of cuts to UK aid on peacebuilding efforts and influencing the UK’s Strategic Conflict Framework (currently being developed). Several committees of the UK Parliament asked us to provide oral evidence and briefings on the Review; foreign policy specialist media organisations like Devex routinely ask us for commentary on these policy developments; and we contributed to parliamentary scrutiny of conflict policy. The UK’s Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation (OCSM) has shifted its position to recognise gender inequality as a driver of conflict and has acknowledged that localisation needs to be better addressed in its Strategic Conflict Framework. We also brokered introductions and accompanied civil society from Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to engage the OCSM as it developed this framework, ensuring it wasn’t speaking to only UK-based peacebuilders. We convened a coalition of civil society and academics to push for greater parliamentary oversight of UK Special Forces, which received support from the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.
In 2021–22 we continued to support China in making positive contributions to conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustainable investment. Since 2019, we have been promoting three-way dialogue and cooperation between people, CSOs, and institutions in Africa, China and the EU to address the illegal flows of arms and ammunition into and within Africa, which are fuelling civil wars and the activities of violent groups on the continent.
In 2021, a focus for our EU-funded Africa-China-EU project was the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), with its latest Ministerial Conference taking place in Senegal in November. As a result of targeted advocacy efforts by the project’s Expert Working Group, a joint commitment by Africa and China to fight the illicit transfer and misuse of small arms and light weapons and their ammunition was adopted in Section 6.1.10 of the Dakar Action Plan (2021–2023) on 30 November 2021. This is a substantial commitment that paves the way for further practical actions that are necessary to tackle the problem of small arms and ammunition in Africa. It will also have direct implications for the continuation of our research and dialogue work in China.
We also continue to work with policy communities and the business sector in China to promote our conflictsensitive approach to the delivery of projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Our ongoing research work on the BRI in conflict-affected contexts has enabled us to actively engage a number of civil society experts whose work covers topics including climate and the environment. Most recently, we started working with partners in China and Germany to research how the environmental impacts of Chinese investments abroad interact with, and impact, conflict dynamics attributed to the BRI.
In 2021 we secured funding from the UK Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) for an eight-month, multi-country project, led by Saferworld in a consortium with Women for Women International and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The goal of the project was to increase women’s rights organisations’ (WROs) independent role in leading programming and advocacy on peacebuilding, gender equality, women’s empowerment and participation, GBV prevention and response, and COVID-19 response and preparedness. In addition to capacity strengthening and support for movement-building, the project provided core, flexible and accessible funds to WROs. In total, 21 WROs – ten in Nigeria, five in South Sudan and six in Yemen – received flexible core grants, of £35,000 on average.
We sought to understand whether these ways of working allowed WROs to operate more independently and to better pursue their own priorities. We found that having access to core and flexible funds as well as accompaniment had a strong multiplier effect for womenled CSOs. WROs in all contexts reported they were able to make the decisions on how, when and where to implement projects, with interventions they considered best for the context. This flexibility enabled them to fill gaps and meet needs expressed by communities which other donors were not willing to meet, which in turn increased trust between WROs and the conflict-affected communities. WROs and consortium partners agreed that core funds contribute to a dynamic, mobilised and independent civil society space that is resourced and equipped to progress women’s and girls’ rights and WPS.
We saw how flexible funds increase financial security and sustainability – crucial in the often-volatile contexts in which the WROs work. For example, in Yemen our partner Hodaidah Girls was able to use these funds to build a new office, allowing them to partially escape the grip of the Houthis in Hodaidah. Ansar Allah had continuously threatened Hodaidah Girls’ staff and operations, so securing this second office in a territory that is not controlled by the group has enabled them to continue working on peace and women’s issues (which they are no longer able to do in the North). All WROs also reported strengthened programme reach and impact despite a relatively short implementation period. Examples of results they have seen are: increased women’s economic independence and access to economic spaces through the entrepreneurship and start-up capital provided in South Sudan; increased openness to the political participation of women and feminist movements in Yemen; and increased GBV reporting as a result of sensitisation initiatives in Nigeria.
Our new organisational strategy, policies and procedures have helped promote a safe, harmonious and healthy working environment, including in our partnerships with organisations globally. Read how we are strengthening Saferworld in practice below:
Saferworld has a zero-tolerance policy for any type of abuse, exploitation or harassment of staff members, associates (interns, trustees, consultants and subcontractors), partners and programme participants. Our duty of care translates into preventing all sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment, other forms of harassment and bullying, with special preventative measures for harm against children and vulnerable adults.
We are also committed to responding to all cases of abuse in a confidential, sensitive, survivor-centred and effective manner. In line with this, we developed a set of tools to support project-level and organisational safeguarding systems.
These include:
- A project risk assessment to conduct with partners at the beginning of all projects, to prevent and mitigate safeguarding cases.
- An organisational risk assessment to undertake with partners to understand their needs for support in safeguarding and to assess possible learning from each other’s practices.
- A tool to update and strengthen our reporting mechanisms and ensure they are suitable for the specific contexts where projects take place and for the groups of people who might use them, as well as for project coordinators and partners in charge of communicating these reporting options to all project participants.
- A tool to undertake a GBV services mapping, to list all GBV services and referral pathways in each region where we work, suitable for different groups.
- Training tracker to ensure that all teams and partners are up to date with safeguarding training.
All teams at Saferworld use these tools systematically with our partners to enhance safeguarding in our work. We also continue to provide regular training and awareness raising to teams and partners. All staff members take part in a safeguarding induction and a similar session takes place during a project’s inception phase with partners. Teams are asked to be part of an in-depth safeguarding training every two years and partners are also invited. These trainings cover prevention, reporting and response, and contribute to building an organisational culture that mitigates any harm driven by structural power relations, in line with our IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equality, Anti-Racism, Solidarity) strategy.
In 2021, we reflected on our internal practices and the power imbalances that exist between us and our civil society partners. As a result, many teams across Saferworld have started to pilot different ways of working in order to support a wider spectrum of groups, networks and organisations, as well as conducting research and advocacy on the importance of supporting locally led approaches in conflict contexts. For example, we directly supported 21 women’s rights organisations in Nigeria, Sudan and Yemen with capacity strengthening, support for movement-building, and core, flexible and accessible funds to increase their financial security and stability. In Yemen, we set up a Yemen Civil Society Solidarity Fund to support Yemeni CSOs in ways that allow them to implement their own mission and vision. The core values that underpin our approach to supporting civil society partners are transparency, flexibility, local or national ownership, and solidarity. We believe that our approach will help us distribute our resources equally to partners and increase partners’ decision-making power in all stages of programming. Our aim is to provide genuine accompaniment and two-way capacity exchange, and co-create mutual and respectful accountability between donors and partners.
We also continued to share resources more equitably with our partners. In line with our commitment to implementing a shared overheads policy in all new proposals, we ensure that we make an adequate contribution to our partners’ overhead costs through a transparent process that is in line with our partners’ priorities. We know that it is a challenge for international NGOs to meet cost recovery demands while at the same time ensuring adequate cost share, so we are also working on advocating with donors to understand what real organisational costs are and the importance of covering these costs for both international and national NGOs.
While our commitment to equitable partnerships is not new, we have renewed energy and focus to critically reflect on how we are living up to our stated commitments and where we should be more ambitious. Our organisational strategy also reaffirms our commitment to partnership and to partner in different ways, including:
- Partner and work with more women and youth-led organisations.
- Act in solidarity and support partners’ proposals and projects.
- Advocate with partners, taking a step back where needed.
- Multiply and spread our partners’ ideas and solutions through our communications, linking our partners with the media and other platforms to tell their stories, challenge perceptions and change narratives.
- Share resources more equitably, advocate for core funding for partners and measure our added value.
- Develop accountability processes and mechanisms that allow for mutual challenge and evaluation.
- Explore deeper strategic alliances with other organisations.
Click here for a full list of organisations we worked with in 2021–22.
This is a top-line summary of Saferworld’s income and expenditure in 2021–22, taken from our full audited accounts. You can see our full accounts in our Report and accounts. You can also download them from the Charity Commission website.
