February 2015

Research this month

Justice and security dialogue in Yemen: negotiating local sources of conflict amid national transition

A key component of the project design was for the JSD process to enable national to local engagement. Many of the issues required not only local trust building and cooperation but also national decision making.

Justice and security dialogue in Yemen, from USIP, examines a pilot USIP project aimed at empowering local solutions to security problems. The paper presents a detailed account of the implementation of the project and the successes, challenges and lessons learned.

Supporting insider mediation: strengthening resilience to conflict and turbulence

The increase in decentralized and recurring violence, combined with waves of popular protests, election-related conflicts, and tensions around natural resources has meant that there is an increasing demand and scope for the work of insider mediators.

Supporting insider mediation, from UNDP, shares the experiences of UNDP and the EU in their efforts to support local-'insider' mediation. Divided into two parts, the paper first looks at what insider mediation is and why it is important, before discussing how this work can be best supported.

The listen and learn project: improving aid accountability in Haiti 2014

The aid community has still not made much progress towards systematically including the perspective of Haitian people in the design and implementation of their programs. There is a narrow but growing body of evidence that interacting with affected populations makes a difference in the quality and relevance of aid.

The Listen and Learn Project, from DARA/Keystone initiative, examines aid accountability in Haiti following the earthquake in 2010. The report is highly critical of the failure of international NGOs to take account of the views of beneficiaries, or draw on local capacity.

Listening to communities – Karen (Kayin) State

Despite improvements, communities highlighted on-going challenges and want to see more tangible benefits. Many community members were concerned that ceasefire agreements had not achieved real peace and felt a continued lack of security, fear and widespread concern that fighting would resume.

Listening to communities, from the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, looks at citizen perceptions of the peace process in Karen state, Myanmar. Based on around 100 interviews, the research highlights some of the key areas of concern for communities in Karen state.

Eritrean opposition parties and civic organisations

Attempts to bring the various competing parties under one political umbrella have been mostly unsuccessful and no consensus has been reached regarding a roadmap for democratic transition. The Eritrean political opposition is still affected by the historically inherited fault lines causing regional, ethnic and religious differences, which exacerbate the lack of mutual trust among current opposition activists.

Eritrean opposition parties and civic organisations, from NOREF, is a short analysis of civil society in the Eritrean diaspora. The paper explores the different motivations and areas of friction between political and civic organisations.

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Funding opportunity

PeaceNexus Fund - New Organisational Development Call 2015

PeaceNexus is launching its second organisational development call for proposals. Through small grants and process support, PeaceNexus seeks to enable peacebuilding NGOs to better manage their organisational change, growth and learning processes. The call is open to NGOs with an explicit peacebuilding mandate that operate internationally (in at least five countries) and to local organisations operating in West Africa and the Balkans - please check the country list and find the concept note and application procedures.  The deadline for the call is February 11, 2015. [/more_info_box]

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