Last year marked not only Saferworld’s 25^th anniversary but also the first year of our new three-year strategic plan, taking us through years four to seven of our overarching long-term plan. From modest beginnings working for nuclear disarmament and security with just three staff in Bristol, we have grown over the past 25 years into an organisation operating in 20 contexts globally, influencing governments, international organisations, and national stakeholders on issues ranging from security, policing, small arms control and conflict sensitivity to gender and peace – highlighting the role they play in realising more just, equitable and peaceful societies. This growth reflects the changing nature of conflict over time, and the need to consider the wider drivers of violence and instability in order to make a difference. 

The link between conflict and development has also become ever more stark – by the end of 2014 more than 50 per cent of the world’s poor were living in fragile and conflict-affected states, up from 20 per cent in 2005. The inclusion of a goal on peace, justice and governance in drafts of the emerging (post-MDG) global development framework for 2016-30 highlights a growing acceptance that peace and justice are fundamental to development – something that has been a core message of Saferworld’s ongoing work.

Reflecting on the impact of the rise of so-called ‘Islamic State’ and ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine – as well as the deteriorating safety and security situation in East Africa and ongoing conflict and violence in South Sudan and Yemen (places Saferworld works) – two things remain constant. Firstly, it is the communities living in conflict that suffer the most; and secondly, it is those same communities that have great potential to make a lasting impact on peace and security.

Indeed, experience with our programmes in Central Asia, South Sudan and the south Caucasus last year reminds us yet again how much positive change can be achieved – even in very testing circumstances – when communities are given a genuine opportunity to engage with their leaders and service providers to address issues critical to their security and peace. Our strategic plan 2014-17, People First, reflects this belief and puts people at the heart of peace and security responses.

We also believe we can make a greater difference to people’s lives by adopting a global perspective to our work. Last year, for example, you will see in our report that we began work to catalyse debate on considering constructive alternatives to militarised approaches to counter-terrorism; launched a programme to integrate justice more deeply into our work; and prioritised the relationship between gender, peace and security. We also committed to invest in new programming contexts, and after initial scoping will start new work with communities in Myanmar in 2015-16. These new developments provided Saferworld with greater breadth and impetus to our conflict prevention work.

To achieve our recently revised and updated strategic objectives, we also need to ensure our internal policies and processes keep pace so we can maintain the standards and values which the organisation is committed to. In 2014-15 we invested in new finance and human resource systems, and continued the roll out of our global intranet system designed to bring greater impact and coherence across the organisation. In an increasingly challenging funding and operational environment, these improvements – and others to come – will strengthen Saferworld’s future ability to operate effectively and safely.

We thank all our donors, supporters, staff, and partner organisations for their collaboration over the past year – and also add a special note of congratulations to all Saferworld colleagues from the past 25 years. Everyone should be proud of their contribution and of the achievements made. Thanks to you all, we remain ready and committed to continue to make a difference in the years ahead. 

Paul Murphy
Executive Director

Owen Greene
Chair of the Board of Trustees

25 years of building safer lives

2014 was a substantial milestone for Saferworld: we marked 25 years working to prevent violent conflict and build safer lives. As an organisation we have grown significantly, adapting our focus to respond to the changing nature of conflict, but our work remains rooted in our belief that people must be at the heart of any response to conflict.

In 1989, in response to the changing nature of conflict in the post-cold war era, Saferworld was created out of an existing organisation, the Nuclear Freeze Campaign. Set up as a research organisation, our name was the embodiment of what we hoped to achieve. Recognising that the international context was shifting the focus of conflict from inter-state towards more intra-state conflict, Saferworld focused on tackling the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons which were fuelling civil wars and destroying people’s lives.

The focus of our formative years, arms control, has remained a central part of our work and expertise ever since. We played a leading role in advocating for an EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports and were involved in the very first discussions about developing a fully global and legally binding arms transfer control instrument. We remain at the heart of the campaign for what became known as the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) – which became international law on 24 December 2014.

But as we pushed for more effective arms transfer controls and action on small arms proliferation during the 1990s, our growing experience also highlighted that these issues were part of a much deeper problem – so Saferworld began looking at the broader root causes of conflict. Our work expanded, with our headquarters moving to London in the late 1990s, and we began programmatic work that focused on addressing these drivers of conflict. Our remit has grown organically to address factors such as justice, security, governance, marginalisation, access to resources, and development that underpin insecurity and conflict globally and within the countries we work.

We also developed an approach to our security and justice work which puts the experiences of local people at its heart. Piloted in the Western Balkans in the mid-1990s, our ‘community security approach’ puts people affected by conflict in the driving seat, bringing them together to analyse the causes of conflict in their community and giving them the skills and opportunity to hold security and justice providers to account. We now run community security programming in 15 countries and are also using the participatory approach to tackle issues like small arms and light weapons in Kenya, and promote conflict sensitivity on land ownership issues in Northern Uganda.

Throughout the past 25 years Saferworld’s focus on working through local partners and within communities has both increased the capacity of communities and partners to respond to insecurity at the local level and enabled us to take the learning and experience from each context into our international policy work. This policy work has evolved from its initial focus on global arms transfers to reflect our comprehensive approach to preventing violent conflict. This has included research on justice as prevention; the role of rising powers – including China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Russia, and Turkey – in conflict-affected states; the post-2015 development agenda; gender, peace, and security (and more recently issues around notions of masculinity); and constructive alternatives to current counter-terrorism approaches.

As we look ahead, tackling the root causes of conflict – whether at the local, national, or international level – remains the key driver of our work. We believe we can make a greater difference to people’s lives by extending a global perspective to our efforts, but keeping local people at the very centre of what we do.

Find out more about our history in our timeline.

Participatory peacebuilding in Pakistan

Saferworld is working with partner Community Appraisal and Motivation Programme (CAMP) to promote and develop participatory peacebuilding initiatives in seven districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province. As a result of support and training, local civil society actors have been successfully engaging with communities and local authorities – finding solutions to conflict and insecurity through peaceful means.

In the north-west areas of Pakistan (KP Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas), local communities are increasingly vulnerable and insecure. A fundamental lack of state-citizen trust has resulted from the state’s failure to equitably and effectively deliver basic services and address the socio-economic and security and justice needs of ordinary people. This has created a broad political space for militants and extremist elements to exploit people’s frustrations. However, civil society can play a direct and positive role in local peacebuilding initiatives, and Saferworld and CAMP have been supporting civil society initiatives including mediation and dialogue, and building on traditional mechanisms such as the jirga system. 

Together with CAMP we have trained over 270 representatives from 70 civil society organisations (CSOs). These representatives have explored participatory conflict analysis, conflict sensitivity, mediation and negotiation, advocacy, conflict transformation, and community-driven initiatives.

In October 2014 small grants were given to a range of community-driven initiatives developed by the local CSOs after their training. These focused on outcomes including advocacy, mediation, and rebuilding infrastructure. These initiatives for peace have been started in 28 sites, already benefiting 14,000 inhabitants – at least 20 per cent of whom have been women.

For example, in Maina village, Malakand, a small grants project not only resolved a longstanding community conflict but also involved women in the peacebuilding process for the first time in the village, demonstrating the importance and ability of real community participation to promote peacebuilding, especially of women in conservative rural areas. In Chitral, the largest district in KP, local CSOs have managed to bring two rival groups together to resolve a conflict over grazing lands and forests using their new mediation skills. And in Shangla district, Malakand, a project resolved a conflict affecting three villages by building better relationships between these communities and by improving an existing infrastructure project that had itself become a key conflict driver.

Projects like these have increased participatory peacebuilding approaches and enabled more members of the community to engage proactively on transforming peace processes in KP. They have also enabled the views of local representatives to be heard by civil society networks and by higher-level provincial, and even national, stakeholders and decisionmakers. This is allowing peacebuilding policies to be developed in a more democratic and inclusive way, with a real emphasis on local needs.

Read more about our work in Pakistan.

Masculinities, conflict, and peace

To date there has been limited research into the relationship between masculinities and conflict and these ideas have not been incorporated into mainstream peacebuilding policy and practice. To start addressing this, in 2014-15 Saferworld conducted research into how socially constructed gender norms which associate masculinity with power, violence, and control can play a role in driving conflict and insecurity, and the implications this has for how we should think about conflict, security, and opportunities for peace.

The need to incorporate a gender perspective in all efforts to prevent conflict and build peace is increasingly being recognised in the international agenda on gender and within programmes addressing conflict and insecurity. Often this assumes a need to highlight the roles, needs and rights of women and girls which are vital in addressing gender inequalities. However, there is also a need to explore why, in most cultures, violence is associated with men and boys in a way that it is not associated with women and girls. Men are the primary perpetrators of violence, making up 95 per cent of people convicted of homicide and are also the majority of combatants in conflicts. Yet this does not mean men are inherently more violent than women; rather, that in every culture people have strongly held views about the kinds of behaviours and values that are most appropriate for men. This is often linked to men proving their masculinity through violence.

Drawing on case studies from Colombia, Kosovo, South Sudan, Somalia, and Sudan our report Masculinities, conflict and peacebuilding: Perspectives on men through a gender lens explored existing INGO programmes that promote non-violent and gender equitable masculinities and questioned how these can be further developed to challenge the gender norms which drive conflict and insecurity.

We launched the report at events in Brussels, Delhi, London, New York, and Washington DC and attended the International Conference on Masculinities and international conferences including the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. In a blog post, gender, peace, and security adviser Hannah Wright explored what the shift towards an international focus on masculinities means for the women, peace, and security movement. While within our programmes in Nepal, we investigated the behaviours of men and boys, and whether and how they link to violence, particularly sexual and gender-based violence.

Partnership in Kosovo

In 2005 a partnership began between Saferworld and the Forum for Civic Initiatives (FIQ) that came to define how we deliver our work and to represent a core organisational principle. In FIQ, a local civil society organisation in Kosovo, it also built an independent, sustainable, competent, and innovative NGO.

The war in Kosovo ended in 1999 leaving a nation divided by ethnic differences and with limited trust in the security services who were widely perceived to have contributed to hostilities. In 2005 former Saferworld Director, Henry Smith, and founder of FIQ, Haki Abazi, initiated collaboration between Saferworld and FIQ, aiming to tackle the fundamental drivers of conflict within Kosovo that they recognised were being marginalised from the high-level policy initiatives within the post-conflict reconstruction and peace processes. This collaboration was to develop into a long-term institutional partnership.

Saferworld’s intention in working with FIQ was to support the capacity building of Kosovo’s civil society. For FIQ, the partnership offered an opportunity to build on its grassroots work with national-level policy and advocacy engagement, while benefitting from additional technical expertise from Saferworld. Over the past ten years, the partnership has shown a range of mutual benefits. By partnering with FIQ, Saferworld has learned from and gained credibility through those with local knowledge of the problems people face, while at the same time building the capacity of FIQ to tackle those problems and become influential agents of change in their communities.

This partnership of equals was always intended to support the long-term sustainability of programming work in the country, with the aim that FIQ take an increasingly lead role. Initially, Saferworld had senior level contact with officials while FIQ implemented programming work on the ground. However, in order to truly enable and build the capacity of organisations within Kosovo, this situation needed to be reversed. Kosovar communities have been empowered – through training and learning from Saferworld – to speak to those in power about the concerns and solutions they have for their country. FIQ needed to be in a position to talk to officials without mediation from a Western NGO. Clearly FIQ already had legitimacy to work, but Saferworld brought technical expertise to the partnership, which was recognised as key. The success of the partnership (its durability and sustainability) has led to significant policy making influence within Kosovo for Saferworld and FIQ, specifically on security sector reform and community safety issues.

The success of the partnership model with FIQ not only rests on mutually beneficial learning and complementary strengths. Saferworld also made a strategic decision to provide core funding to FIQ, enabling them to pursue strategic non-project work that as an organisation they considered important. However, it was also important to ensure that Saferworld’s financial contribution to FIQ through this core funding did not make it the dominant partner. Over time, as part of a deliberate strategy, FIQ diversified its funding while Saferworld gradually reduced its financial support. This growing independence is now also manifest in another outcome of the partnership’s achievements: FIQ now have the expertise to build the capacity of other local NGOs.

And where there were challenges – with competing priorities for both organisations and language difficulties – a combination of formal mechanisms and informal trust based on close relationships ensured that staff worked together to resolve them.

The longevity and success of the Saferworld / FIQ partnership came through heavy investment of time and resources – but the rewards are evident, with FIQ now an independent, sustainable, competent, and innovative NGO able to build the capacity of other NGOs and support grassroots activity throughout southern Kosovo. For Saferworld, it has proved to be a working model that has been adapted across the countries we work in, such as Kenya and Bangladesh. The commitment to working through partnership has also become a central tenet for the organisation.

Find out more about our work in Kosovo.

Community security in South Sudan

An external evaluation of Saferworld’s community security work in Warrap and Western Bahr El Ghazal, South Sudan, highlights the benefits of our work addressing communities’ safety and security concerns – exceeding expectations at the community level and changing people’s behaviour and perceptions of security.

In 2012 Saferworld began a four-year community security programme in Warrap and Western Bahr El Ghazal states to improve local security and to develop models of community security that can be replicated elsewhere. Mid-way through the four-year programme we commissioned an independent evaluation to assess our achievements and areas for improvement. Over 260 stakeholders from communities, police, local authorities, non-state security actors, partner organisations, donors, and civil society were interviewed. The evaluation found that despite the magnitude of challenges in South Sudan, significant outcomes had been achieved at the local level, with our activities positively impacting on how safe people feel within the communities we work in.

Community security working groups (CSWGs), made-up of a cross section of local people, including community leaders, women, traditional chiefs and youth, were supported to identify, prioritise, and address their safety concerns. Those interviewed cited positive outcomes including a reduction in violence, murders, and other crimes, the reduction of gunfire at night, and relations within and between communities. Community members also identified one or more areas of personal development as a result of their involvement in the programme.

The CSWGs have worked with the police through Police Community Relations Committees (PCRCs) to identify local security-related problems and take joint action to address them. The evaluation showed that by coming together at these Saferworld-supported PCRC meetings over the last two years, and by holding police-community dialogue workshops, the police and communities have undergone a significant change and developed a greater understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities.

As well as authorities committing to work with the CSWGs, and regularly attending CSWG meetings, the meetings themselves have led to tangible outcomes. For example, new police personnel have been deployed in Hai Dinka and Agok in Wau; in Mayen Gumel in Kuajok; and in Majak-Tit market in North Tonj. The meetings also influenced the recruitment of 300 women police officers in Kuajok and the creation of a special protection unit to handle cases of sexual and gender-based violence – as well as the recruitment of a woman police officer to handle sensitive cases in Warrap town centre in North Tonj.

Non-state security providers, such as the galweng, have also committed to work with the CSWGs and following a two-day conference for Cattle Camp leaders they are now working more closely with local communities through the CSWGs instead of dealing with offenders on their own – a change which has led to a reduction in cattle raiding. A key part of the programme’s success has also been working in harmony with traditional community structures such as tribal courts.

It is important to acknowledge that the results from the community security programme are at the local level. Respondents and communities did not feel that South Sudan as a country is a safer place – and the conflict that broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 continues to affect daily life. However, the evaluation did suggest that there is a real opportunity for community security to make a difference more broadly in South Sudan and to feed into wider sub-national and national level reform. Indeed, over the last year Saferworld scaled up the programme in South Sudan to reach seven of South Sudan’s ten states, developing models of community security that can be replicated elsewhere.

Saferworld is continuing to expand our community security work with a focus on engaging youth in conflict transformation efforts. We are also feeding this learning into our policy work to try to engage with both formal and informal peace processes.

Read more about our work in South Sudan. View the images taken by award-winning photographer Marcus Perkins.

Read the case study South Sudan’s galweng: filling a security gap or perpetuating conflict?

Security and justice

Recognising the links between injustice and violent conflict, in 2014-15 we started to develop our Justice as Prevention approach. We began researching ways to transform the relationships and structures behind people’s experiences of injustice to help improve their ability to address grievances non-violently; these approaches will be piloted in up to three countries in 2015-16.

Our efforts to improve people’s safety also continued to grow. We used community security approaches in 15 countries to help people collectively identify, articulate, and address their security needs – with over 55 new community action groups formed. Lessons from these programmes were synthesised and published in our Community Security Handbook which, since it launched in Washington, London, Addis Ababa, New York, Brussels, and The Hague, has provided a much-needed reference point for policymakers and practitioners. We also held Community Security exhibitions in the UK, Washington, Brussels, and Dhaka aimed at raising awareness of the approach, and published a series of articles exploring the themes around community security.

At the policy level, we continued to share expert evidence and analysis from our programmes with governments including the British, Dutch and Swedish, and with the UN Development Programme, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and other international actors on technical security and justice issues, such as security sector reform, gender, rule of law, stabilisation, policing, and the difficult question of how to measure changes in security and justice as a result of programming.

Find out more about our work on security and justice.

Gender, peace and security

In line with our new strategic objective on gender, in 2014-15 Saferworld gathered and disseminated evidence on how gendernorms can cause and perpetuate conflict and insecurity. We published a research report, Masculinities, conflict and peacebuilding: Perspectives on men through a gender lens, and an accompanying briefing, bringing together evidence of how violent notions of masculinity can fuel conflict with analysis of practical approaches to challenging those masculine norms. We launched the report at events in Brussels, Delhi, London, New York, and Washington DC.

In June 2014 Saferworld brought women activists from Libya, Nepal, and Yemen to London to participate in the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, and held a fringe event on the important role of women in policing. We also trained Saferworld staff in London, Bangladesh, and South Sudan, as well as more than 150 officials from the UK and US governments and NATO, on topics such as ‘gender and conflict analysis’ and ‘masculinities and peacebuilding’. Internally, we held trainings with Saferworld staff and partners in London, Bangladesh, and South Sudan to increase the gender sensitivity of our work.

Find out more about our work on Gender.

External conflict drivers

‘Terrorism’ is a headline issue, yet current approaches to it by both Western countries and across the world have yielded mixed results. In response to this, in 2014-15 Saferworld began a new area of work aimed at promoting constructive alternatives to militarised counter-terror and stabilisation. Our discussion paper identifies a number of lessons from counter-terror, stabilisation and statebuilding efforts in recent decades and highlighted a number of policy alternatives. In 2015 we will publish three new country case studies analysing current approaches.

We were delighted when after years of hard work the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) entered into force in 2014. Saferworld continued to play a leading role as Steering Board member and co-Chair of the Control Arms Coalition and also promoted compliance with the ATT – for example by developing draft templates for ATT reporting, which are now being considered by participating states. We convened four meetings of the Expert Group on ATT Implementation with participants from governments and civil society across the world. And we pushed the UK Government and EU Member States to demonstrate greater restraint in arms transfers, in particular in relation to the Middle East and North Africa. We scrutinised EU export policies to Russia and the Middle East and North Africa region, and helped review the user’s guide to the EU Common Position on Arms Transfers. In March 2015 we brought together key officials from EU states to discuss arms transfer policies in cases of complex conflict. We continued to play a role coordinating EU NGO activity on arms transfers.

We also explored options to mitigate the negative effects of other external conflict drivers, including evaluating different approaches to tackling transnational organised crime and its links to violence, conflict, and insecurity. We published research on external stress factors that lead to conflict, including flows of finance, arms, drugs, and other ‘conflict commodities’.

Conflict sensitivity

In 2014-15 Saferworld continued to engage actively in discussions on the Sustainable Development Agenda. We provided timely and in-depth policy and technical responses on how to integrate peace issues into the world’s new goals, targets, and indicators framework. We organised influential dialogueswith other key advocates of the peace agenda, such as G7+ countries and the African Union, which made peace and security a key pillar in its Common Position. Our efforts contributed to an agreement by UN Member States to include in the draft framework a new goal to promote peace, justice, and governance. The ongoing negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals are now focusing on how to finance, implement, and monitor the agreed goals and targets. To support this, Saferworld has provided evidence, experience, and policy options on the best indicators to measure progress on peace, governance, and justice issues.  

We raised awareness with rising powers about the implications of changing global dynamics for peace and dialogue; and advocated with them about their engagement in conflict-affected states. We engaged with five influential rising powers – Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and Turkey – on the inclusion of peace within the Sustainable Development Goals. Saferworld’s policy research, advocacy, and dialogue contributed to their acceptance in December 2014 of the draft goals. In addition, we researched the roles of rising powers in specific conflict-affected contexts. This included a groundbreaking study of Turkish aid to Somalia, which calls for a more conflict-sensitive approach, and research on the roles of Russia and China in Central Asia and the implications for peace and stability.

As part of our promotion of conflict-sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian, and commercial activities in conflict-affected contexts, we have worked with a range of international donors to review country strategies, shape priorities, develop guidance materials, and deliver training on integrating conflict sensitivity into programmes and policies across more than 15 countries. We have also increased our capacity to promote conflict sensitivity with corporate actors, including Chinese companies working in conflict-affected contexts. For example, we completed a conflict analysis of a planned Chinese hydro-electric power project in South Sudan, and designed and facilitated a series of workshops for Chinese investors in conflict-affected countries to build their capacity on conflict sensitivity and promote more responsible business behaviours.

Inclusive political processes

In 2014-15 we continued working in a range of countries and at the international level to promote inclusion, responsiveness, and accountability as key foundations for successful peace initiatives. At the international level we worked in coalitions towards the hoped-for commitments within the Sustainable Development Goals to promote fundamental freedoms: participatory decision-making, governance and access to justice, legal identity, and access to information.

At the country level we promoted participation by civil society in key national and international political processes, such as the review of the Mining Act in Uganda, the EU-facilitated dialogues between Kosovo and Serbia, and around devolution processes in Kenya. Our work in Yemen continued to strengthen the voices of those marginalised from political processes, including youth and women. We also supported civil society networks to make their voices heard in processes to develop the Somali New Deal Compact and the Somaliland Special Arrangement – major international initiatives to support peacebuilding in each case. In Sudan we continued to support Sudanese civil society to play an active role in conflict transformation and governance reform, bringing together representatives from across civil society to develop a joint vision and strategies on issues including the ongoing crisis in Darfur and long-term institutional reforms.

 

Great Lakes

In Sudan we continued to support Sudanese civil society to play an active role in conflict transformation and governance reform, bringing together representatives from across civil society to develop both a joint vision and strategies on issues including the ongoing crisis in Darfur and long-term institutional reforms. We supported civil society organisations to produce and distribute documentaries about the conflict; train young internally displaced persons in leadership skills; and develop powerful advocacy products through an art project with refugees. We helped coordinate and strengthen Sudanese and international civil society’s advocacy on the multiple crises in Sudan, particularly around the elections, and gave policymakers in Europe the chance to hear directly from activists living and working in the conflict zones.

2014 saw Saferworld significantly expand our community security work in South Sudan to seven out of ten states. As well as building the capacity of new staff and partners in advocacy strategy development, gender awareness, and conflict analysis – and integrating gender across our programming – we conducted community security assessments across all our existing and new locations. The findings are informing programme design in each location as well as our policy and advocacy work. Images from communities from programme locations in South Sudan were featured in The Guardian.

We undertook peacebuilding and reconciliation scoping studies in the most conflict-affected states, and developed a security providers’ engagement strategy for the changed country context given the current conflict. We carried out research and analysis on the role of non-state actors, violence against women, and civil society participation in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)-led peace process. We continued to raise awareness on the dangers of small arms and light weapons, conducting a community-level campaign in our two programme locations in Warrap State. While in our work on rising powers, our publication, From conflict resolution to conflict prevention: China in South Sudan, examined the evolution of China's relationship with Sudan and South Sudan.

In Uganda we continued to promote and build the capacity of stakeholders including communities, district authorities, and civil society on conflict sensitivity. We ensured local voices were heard in the review of the Mining Act, holding consultative meetings with communities in the Karamoja region and facilitating dialogues between mining communities and Moroto district officials. We supported dialogue and trust-building processes in the three land conflict hotspots of Apaa, Purongo, and Otuke. We advocated for the creation of the Technical Land Verification Committee and an Inter-ministerial Committee focused on resolving the Purongo and Apaa conflicts to which we provided technical and expert advice. As a result of our advocacy and awareness raising on land rights, involving government officials in programme activities, and linking local land governance stakeholders and policymakers, we improved the government’s response to land conflicts in Northern Uganda.

Middle East and North Africa

In 2014-15 we supported Egyptian civil society’s efforts to advocate for police reform in Egypt, providing technical expertise on topics including democratic policing and mechanisms for police accountability and oversight and expert advice and briefings on legal and operational issues in policing. While police reform has stalled under the current government, Egyptian media and campaigners continue to draw attention to the need for both a more accountable and more effective police force.

Since July 2014 Libya has faced an intractable civil war and the fragmentation of authority across two rival governments. While internationally mediated peace talks are ongoing, communities are facing widespread violence and insecurity and civil society activists, including women’s activists, have been frequently targeted in the conflict. We championed women’s security concerns in both Libya and Egypt, publishing a briefing on violence against women in Libya and undertaking research into police responses to violence against women in Egypt. 

In Yemen we continued to focus on the analysis and promotion of gender-sensitive security provision, convening government and CSO representatives to discuss legal aid, detention of women, and policing. We also worked hard to raise public awareness on the issues of women's role in security, with over 200 people attending a series of three public debates in Sana’a, Taiz, and Aden. The debates also provided a space for Saferworld to screen a video on women and security in Yemen. Our work to support youth activists continued, and in October 2014 we produced a short film which featured youth from our ‘Amplifying Youth Voices’ project (see right). They share their experiences of being part of the programme and explain how it is helping them to enhance their advocacy work in their own communities.

At the local level, in Taiz our community security project helped build new relationships and increase trust and understanding between community actors and security providers. A roundtable held in February 2015 brought together civil society and security providers to develop ideas for how to work more collaboratively in the future to address the needs of their communities; while small grants projects by the community action groups led to an increased awareness of the dangers of carrying weapons and drug use. At the time of going to press, high levels of conflict in Yemen are showing little signs of abating, with economic and political collapse and a humanitarian crisis that is threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni civilians. Our programme in Yemen remains active despite the ongoing crisis, but we are also reviewing the focus and strategy of the programme in light of the current situation and changing context, looking to take a more direct peacebuilding approach in affected communities.

South Asia

The 2014 drawdown of international troops in Afghanistan has had implications for the security of the entire region, including South and Central Asia. As part of our EU-funded Capacities for Peace programme with Conciliation Resources, we conducted scoping work to assess how Saferworld can most usefully engage in the country and contribute to wider international advocacy on peacebuilding and statebuilding, and trained 15 civil society organisations from Kabul and other provinces of Afghanistan in ‘Do No Harm’ and conflict sensitivity. We initiated research to extract lessons from Afghanistan on approaches to stabilisation, statebuilding, and counter-terrorism and the impacts these have had on peace and conflict dynamics in the country.

The ongoing political crisis in Bangladesh means the need to create safer communitiesand improve their relationships with security providers has been more pressing than ever. An external evaluation of Saferworld and BRAC’s community security project in 2014 found that 176 community action committee (CAC) members in the target districts have the skills and confidence to analyse their local security problems, while 100 per cent of those involved in CACs, youth groups (see picture), and the participatory photography project identified two or more areas of personal development as a result of participating in the programme. As part of our Capacities for Peace programme, we continued to increase the capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) to analyse conflict and develop joint action to manage risks and promote peace, providing training to 54 civil society representatives (including youth and women).

In Pakistan we organised workshops with representatives from 15 CSOs to build their capacity in conflict analysis, actor mapping, and early warning and response mechanisms. Continuing our work with local partner CAMP, we organised peacebuilding training workshops for 35 CSOs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Through small grants projects, these CSOs then successfully helped communities to tackle their safety concerns by identifying and addressing issues causing conflict like access to water points or fuel sites. Saferworld also provided ongoing technical assistance to a peacebuilding project, led by Coffey International, by drafting and consulting on the ‘gender response’ policing policy, and reviewing the guidelines for women’s police desks and complaint mechanisms for women.

In Nepal we continued to work with local communities to improve their safety and security, which included awareness-raising campaigns on safety concerns such as domestic violence, led by the community and youth groups that we support. We strengthened our gender, peace, and security focus by building on research addressing notions of masculinities. This research informed Saferworld’s global work on masculinities, conflict, and peace, including Nepalese representation at both the Dutch ‘International Conference on Women: Powerful Agents for Peace and Security’ and the UN’s Post-2015 Beijing Platform at New York in March 2015. Saferworld’s Nepal gender experts served as panellists at the MenEngage Alliance’s local and global symposiums. Additionally, we conducted regular conflict assessments and continued to build the capacity of local civil society actors to identify and respond to early warning signs of conflict. Following the earthquakes in Nepal in 2015, Saferworld has begun work to ensure that responses are inclusive, participatory, and conflict sensitive.

Horn of Africa

In Kenya we provided technical support to the police reform process, contributing to the finalisation of draft Service Standing Orders that guide the National Police Servicein their daily operations and feeding into the operationalisation of the Internal Affairs Unit’s complaints management system. Our small arms and light weapons project enabled communities and police in Isiolo and West Pokot counties to improve the arms management standards of the National Police Reserves and reduce potential misuse of their firearms by supporting the development of electronic arms registers and tools for monitoring arms movement among police officers. This has led to a decrease in the communities’ need to arm themselves. We used lessons from this work to feed into international forums on small arms and light weapons including the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) Programme of Action on small arms. (Click on the video to hear more about the project).

We carried out conflict analyses of devolution processes in Kisumu, Marsabit, and Isiolo and supported conflict-sensitive devolution by training county officials. The analyses are being used to ensure planning and development processes take conflict dynamics into consideration. Our research into lessons on early warning and early response mechanisms from the Kenya-Uganda border has been used to inform regional discussions and improve civil society organisations’ engagement with these mechanisms. We also jointly facilitated a stakeholders’ forum on large-scale investments and their county impact, with a particular focus on oil in Turkana County.

In Somalia/Somaliland we supported Somali and international civil society’s engagement on the Somali New Deal Compact and the Somaliland Special Arrangement, advocating for improved information sharing with civil society by actors engaged in the New Deal. We worked to ensure the Compact’s objectives are aligned to the needs expressed by ordinary Somali people and pushed for a greater emphasis on conflict-sensitive approaches in implementation processes, without which the Compact risks limiting the engagement and understanding of those it affects.

We continued to support three non-state actor platforms to play an active role in policy- and decision-making. This included facilitating our partner SONSAF to engage on issues of oil exploration, governance, and accountability by bringing the Minister for Mining and Energy and the Minster of the Interior into an open dialogue forum with civil society for the first time. We worked with our Puntland partner PUNSAA to develop responses to internally displaced persons and human rights issues within the region. With our South Central partner SOSCENSA, we engaged with the federal government’s parliamentary committees on establishing a committee that will develop a national aid policy framework and provide oversight of aid received. SOSCENSA continues to work on ensuring wider public participation in the constitutional review process as well as ensuring public accountability in both public and private institutions. Saferworld began conducting research with SOSCENSA into peacebuilding and statebuilding needs in the Gedo, Lower Juba, and Middle Juba regions of Somalia.

Europe and Central Asia

2014-15 saw the formal transition of our work in Kosovo to a more regional focus on conflict prevention and peaceful political integration within the Western Balkans. To support this, we assessed the core factors which helped establish our successful model of partnership in Kosovo, and developed joint conflict analysis with 14 civil society organisations and partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia. We continued to feed into regional political and security processes, calling upon parties to improve the way the EU-facilitated dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia has been carried out, and calling upon the Serbian government to immediately stop attacks on freedom of expression in Serbia.

In the Caucasus we helped to establish partnerships in Shida Kartli between local partners and community representatives with the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia. As a result of this, problems faced by ethnic Ossetian communities living near the Administrative Boundary Line were addressed at the national level. Our new Youth Engagement Programme in rural South Ossetia gave marginalised young people a chance to speak about issues affecting them and their communities at regional youth conferences attended by local and central authorities.

In Abkhazia, we continued to sensitise the Abkhaz police to international best practices on community engagement and accountability. We were joined by a senior Abkhaz police officer on a police reform study visit to Northern Ireland, and a seminar on community-police engagement held in Abkhazia was attended by a wide range of civil society representatives and authority representatives. A series of public campaigns on road safety brought together ethnic Georgian communities and Abkhaz police, contributing to building of positive trust and confidence between them. In Armenia and Azerbaijan we built the capacity of our community networks through separate study visits to Shida Kartli, and our unique online monitoring databasemapped out incidents involving the targeting of civilians and their property, based on information received from local communities. We continued to use our programmes to feed into our policy analysis through the publication of a research paper and briefingfocusing on the factors undermining the security and livelihoods of Armenian and Azerbaijani communities living on either side of the state border.

In Central Asia we supported local conflict prevention mechanisms – Crime Prevention Centres in Kyrgyzstan and Mahala Committees in Tajikistan – to build constructive relationships and cooperative behaviour between communities (including women and young people) and law enforcement agencies and local authorities, and between ethnic groups in conflict-affected communities in Osh and Jalal-Abad and across the contested areas of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. This helped security providers to better connect with the communities they serve. In Kyrgyzstan we built on this local level work at the national level by facilitating a study visit for key Ministry of Internal Affairs officials to the Metropolitan Police in London and the Police Service of Northern Ireland in Belfast. They shared experiences on police accountability, oversight, community-police relations, public order policing, and how police reform can strengthen communities and support peace and reconciliation.

Policy Centres

United Kingdom

In 2014-15 our UK advocacy platform influenced the development of the UK government’s new funding mechanism: the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. We worked to ensure the new fund will be spent in accordance with the UK’s conflict prevention policy (the Building Stability Overseas Strategy) and promotes its progressive vision of ‘stability’, is supportive of civil society peacebuilding work, and is gender sensitive.

We supported the revision of the UK’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security for 2014-17, which now incorporates commitments to prevent conflict as well as sexual and gender-based violence by addressing the root causes of conflict. We continued to champion within Parliament the importance of including goals and targets on peace in the post-2015 development framework. We also supported our civil society partners from overseas to carry out their own lobbying activities in London as part of their international advocacy objectives.

Find out more about our work in the UK.

European Union

Our advocacy platform in Brussels was contracted by the European Commission to draft operational guidance for conflict-sensitive programme design for the European External Action Service and provided inputs to other internal guidance which will ensure that EU programming for the period 2014-20 can contribute more proactively to building sustainable peace.

We engaged EU institutions through publications, bilateral meetings, and public events to raise awareness about community-based approaches to security and their relevance to peacebuilding and statebuilding processes. The aim was to ensure that EU engagement in these areas is more effective at addressing people’s security and justice needs and concerns. Through this initiative, we have been able to shape the EU approach on capacity building for security and development and its internal guidance on security and justice programming. We also continued to inform the EU’s position in favour of the ‘peaceful and inclusive societies’ goal in the post-2015 framework through ongoing engagement with key decisionmakers and participation in internal EU/Member States meetings.

In addition, we supported our country programmes’ engagement with the EU in Brussels and in-country, organising advocacy tours for Sudanese and South Sudanese civil society actors to bring the voices of conflict-affected communities to decision makers in Brussels. Through our ‘Capacities for Peace’ project Saferworld, together with Conciliation Resources, has also been able to inform EU conflict analysis processes and engagement in 32 contexts across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Saferworld’s Brussels office also contributed to the work of several Brussels-based platforms and networks such as EPLO, Crisis Action, and Beyond 2015 to amplify its outreach and impact on EU institutions.

Find out more about our work with the EU.

Vienna

Through our advocacy centre in Vienna we engaged with key international and multilateral institutions based there, such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Saferworld participated as an observer to the Seventh Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which was held in Vienna. At a conference side event on Improving Development Responses to Organized Crime, which was organised by the Governments of the Netherlands and Norway and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, Saferworld presented the research and key findings from a report on Identifying approaches and measuring impacts of programmes focused on transnational organised crime.

We continued to promote greater Chinese compliance with international standards in international arms transfer controls, in line with the provisions of the Arms Trade Treaty and the Wassenaar Arrangement. In the report Expanding and sustaining dialogue between China and the Wassenaar Arrangement we looked at China’s evolving approach to conventional arms control, with a particular focus on how international actors can engage more effectively to enlist China’s support and adherence to the Wassenaar Arrangement.

USA

Building on our previous year’s work, in 2014-15 our US advocacy platform in Washington continued to focus on community security, upstream conflict prevention and aid and conflict interactions, but with successively higher-level audiences.

The office has become a standout presence within the DC policy and advocacy community and garnered invitations to high-level events such as the US-Africa Leadership summit and the White House Countering Violent Extremism summit in March 2015. We hosted six visits by Saferworld field staff to present analysis and meet with key stakeholders. This included two panel presentations on gender, peace and security, which resulted in an invitation to present the first training to USAID staff on masculinities and gender. At Saferworld’s offices we hosted a series of roundtables and discussions with US Government personnel; and military, NGO, and think tank communities on issues relating to our core focus areas.

We also began to build two new areas of work: connecting with Saferworld’s China office – we are now looking at leveraging a mutual interest in African security to help build more cooperation between the US and China – and building momentum behind Saferworld’s focus on constructive alternatives to counter-terror and stabilisation approaches within the US architecture.

China

In 2014-15 we continued to work with partners in China, the UK, and conflict-affected states to increase understanding and create opportunities for constructive dialogue on preventing violent conflict and building stability in conflict-affected states. This work was facilitated by a Conflict Prevention Working Group (CPWG) composed of Chinese and UK policy experts, who focused on: early warning mechanisms, crisis response, and the root drivers of fragility and conflict. In the publication From conflict resolution to conflict prevention: China in South Sudan, members of the CPWG looked at the evolution of China's relationship with Sudan and South Sudan, focusing on the transition of Chinese engagement from reactive, short-term conflict resolution to longer term conflict prevention.

In addition, we have significantly increased our capacity to promote conflict sensitivity with Chinese companies working in conflict-affected contexts. For example, we completed a conflict analysis of a planned Chinese hydro-electric power project in South Sudan. We designed and facilitated a series of workshops for Chinese investors in conflict-affected countries to build their capacity on conflict sensitivity and promote more responsible business behaviours. Building on such workshops, the report Managing risk in unstable countries: Promoting conflict-sensitive investment in South Sudan explored some of the key challenges faced by Chinese companies operating in South Sudan and offered suggestions on how companies can contribute to a more stable and prosperous future for the people of South Sudan.

Find out more about our work in China.

Civil Society Institute (CSI) – Armenia

The unresolved conflict in Nagorny Karabakh continues to evolve, posing persistent challenges to communities, including insecurity, long-term displacement, and an ingrained mistrust of local authorities and other ethnic groups. While fighting ended in 1994, civilian populations living in frontline areas around Nagorny Karabakh and along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border remain exposed to any escalation of conflict, regular shooting incidents, and landmines. Since 2014 Saferworld has been working with local Armenian NGO partner, the Civil Society Institute (CSI), to improve security along and across the Armenian-Azerbaijani international border and the Line-of-Contact, and to enable the borderline communities to have a voice in their security provision and peacebuilding processes.

Founded in 1998 and based in Yerevan, CSI aims to assist and promote the establishment of a free and democratic society in Armenia. CSI specialises in human rights and conflict management, and works on the development of civil society, penal system reform, monitoring of human rights violations, human rights advocacy and awareness raising, peacebuilding and conflict resolution, and building the capacity of youth to address human rights issues. The organisation also supports the families of the soldiers and civilians killed as a result of violations of the ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Since 2003 CSI’s website Human Rights in Armenia (www.hra.am) has been monitoring cases of human rights violations across Armenia. The database is the first of its kind and also provides professional analysis and publications on human rights issues.

In 2014 Saferworld and CSI began jointly implementing a project to promote the security of civilians in borderline communities of Armenia and Azerbaijan and support trust and confidence building along and across the Armenian-Azerbaijani international border and the Line-of-Contact. The project also aims to increase support among Armenian and Azerbaijani governments for community-based approaches to security provision including, in the longer term, cross-border and cross-community initiatives.

Artak Kirakosyan, Chairman of CSI, comments: “Saferworld has been doing a tremendous job for border villages in this ‘no peace, no war’ situation which has been ongoing for more than 20 years. On the one hand it focuses the attention of the international community to the military attacks on the peaceful population, on the other hand it supports the residents of those villages to come together to find solutions to their security problems. One should not let intentional military attacks on the peaceful residents be ignored; this may lead to a new circle of violence.”

In Armenia Saferworld and CSI have established a community network comprising community leaders, which has made significant progress in mobilising the local population to discuss and address locally important safety and security issues. Over the past year, in close cooperation with the community network, Saferworld and CSI launched an online monitoring database. The database uses Google Earth and Google Maps to record and map out incidents targeting civilians and their property, based on information obtained from local communities on the ground.

As a member of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), CSI’s Director Arman Danielyan is the first Armenian expert to represent the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture.

Visit CSI’s website at www.csi.am

BRAC

In Bangladesh, corruption, extremism, organised crime, political stalemate, and a struggle for scarce resources – alongside local security concerns including violent crime, gender-based violence, political violence, and insecurity from drug abuse and gambling – mean that community insecurity is increasingly being recognised as a major problem, undermining development gains.

Saferworld has been working with partner BRAC to introduce and mainstream a community security approach in their community empowerment programming. Founded in Bangladesh, BRAC is the world’s largest development organisation employing over 100,000 people and reaching 113 million people in Bangladesh and 13 million people elsewhere around the world. Focusing on long-term community development, BRAC currently operates in all districts of Bangladesh on five core programmes: microfinance, health, education, social development, and human rights and legal services.

Saferworld’s partnership with BRAC began in 2008 when, with local partner ChangeMaker, we established pilot community security projects in rural Kishoreganj district and in Kamrangir Char slum in Dhaka. Then in 2012 Saferworld and BRAC began a project aimed at improving the security conditions for reconstruction and development in Bangladesh. The project has replicated the model from the pilot projects and is now reaching more communities across 16 sites in five districts of south-western Bangladesh. Saferworld and BRAC are working both with communities to identify their security needs and with those who are best placed to respond to them, including local authorities and development actors.

The partnership is the first Saferworld has undertaken with a major development organisation and provides a mutually beneficial relationship. BRAC has not historically worked on issues of peace and security, so Saferworld has provided complementary technical expertise on context analysis, conflict sensitivity, gender sensitivity, monitoring and evaluation, and advocacy. Conversely, BRAC’s nationwide networks have provided opportunities to start mainstreaming community security approaches across their community empowerment programming. Rita Roselin Costa, BRAC’s Programme Coordinator for the Community Empowerment Programme, comments: “Since I have been involved with the project I came to know how communities can be involved in safety and security. This is very new not only for BRAC but also for the whole of Bangladesh.”

Through a joint participatory photography project with Saferworld, BRAC field staff have also been given training on photography and loaned cameras to document their lives, their safety and security concerns, and the work of the local action committees set up under the community security programme.

Click on the video to find out more about Saferworld and BRAC's community security project.

Find out more about our work in Bangladesh.

Find out more about Saferworld and BRAC's photoproject.

Thank you

Saferworld would like to thank all the individuals and organisations who have provided the funding and other support which makes our work possible. Our donors for grants in excess of £100,000 include:

Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI)

European Union

Humanity United

International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

Irish Aid

Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT)

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland

Open Society Institute

Oxfam Novib

PACT

Refugee Law Project

Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden

Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)

UK Department for International Development (DFID)

UN Trust Facility Supporting Cooperation on Arms Regulation (UNSCAR)

United States Department of State

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Find out more about our funding.