In Sudan, decades of instability led to a revolution in 2019 that saw Sudanese people and civil society peacefully reclaim their voice. Now the country is at a turning point. As the transitional government builds a path for the future, citizens of all ages and backgrounds across the country are working to improve their lives and create peace in their communities.
In 2020, Saferworld concluded a series of projects supporting Sudanese civil society and communities to promote peace, tolerance and inclusion. Through training and small grants, the initiatives aimed to support small organisations to mobilise communities and increase the participation of women and young people in peacebuilding projects.
Before providing the grants, Saferworld worked with civil society groups to identify major issues of conflict and injustice in their areas. Grants ranged from US$3,000 to $49,000 for projects lasting from three to six months. After the grants were given, Saferworld supported and mentored partners and groups on how to use the grants to implement their own microgrant projects for communities, and organised events to share and exchange learnings. By the end of 2020, over 200 citizen-led projects with different priorities had begun.
We take a look at two examples of how the grants have made a difference to communities:
Opportunities for people with disabilities
“My name is Ahmed, I am 23 years old and I live in a rented house with a family of six; me and my five sisters. Myself, and three of my sisters were born with hearing disabilities, which is considered a genetic issue from my grandmother. My sister has a hearing disability and she is very smart and successful in her academic career. She wanted to be a doctor as she has loved medicine since her childhood and that was her big dream. Unfortunately, she couldn’t achieve it as there was no college that could admit people with disabilities and offer special teaching for them. Young people aren’t getting jobs that match their qualifications.”
Like Ahmed, people with disabilities, including those with hearing impairments, often face exclusion and increased difficulties in day-to-day life in parts of Sudan. To address this, a non-profit project founded by young people in 2018 proposed to use its grant to help young people to use art, media and role play to speak about their experiences, promote peace and co-existence, and to raise awareness of challenges they face in their community.
“I feel very happy with the offer, as I started feeling that my life has changed to the positive, I’ve even made a plan to marry soon. I feel delighted because now I can contribute to the family’s expenses. Because I feel the change, I started inspiring the people who have my same disability to not give up"
Our partner invited youth groups to apply for micro-grants, and over three months received 196 proposals. One successful applicant, a collective of 35 young people with hearing impairments, were keen to produce a short film on the challenges they face in daily life. They highlighted a lack of formal employment for young people with disabilities, despite their graduate status or qualifications, and other social challenges like limited marriage opportunities. After the film was produced, they organised a screening event and invited various community members, including employers and company representatives, government officials and other influencers. After seeing the film and learning about the difficulties people with disabilities face in finding employment, a leading pharmaceutical company provided jobs to four young people with hearing impairments, including Ahmed.
“I feel very happy with the offer, as I started feeling that my life has changed to the positive, I’ve even made a plan to marry soon. I feel delighted because now I can contribute to the family’s expenses. Because I feel the change, I started inspiring the people who have my same disability to not give up,” he explains.
At the same event, popular Sudanese personalities made a pledge to include sign language in all of their work, making their content accessible to audiences with hearing impairments. It is hoped that the use of sign language by influential figures will bring more attention to the needs of people with disabilities.
Resolving cross-border ethnic conflicts
In the Nuba Mountains region in South Kordofan, historic tensions between nomadic pastoralist Arab communities and Nuba farming communities in Habila County have led to violence over ruined farm land and the use of common resources, such as water for cattle. During the most recent round of fighting, four people were killed and a mosque was destroyed by fire.
“We nomadic Arab communities have been indoctrinated by government propaganda to incite violence with the Nuba tribes in the Nuba Mountain region. We have been given more rights to live, when a Nuba person is killed, we are not held accountable,” explains Sara, a representative of various tribes of Arab ethnicity.
Hassan, a Nuba traditional chief notes, “[b]eing a chief for many years in my community, I have a long history with the Arab nomadic tribes. I have attended 13 peacebuilding meetings with 13 agreements [in more than ten years], none were implemented by the Arab nomadic communities. This made us not trust the Arab nomadic communities.”
One development organisation used its grant from the project to provide training and support to a youth association, which led a reconciliation process between the Daarnaalea and Wauncho communities. Between September and October 2020, the youth organisation hosted a series of meetings that brought together the communities to peacefully discuss their grievances and come up with an action plan to resolve the conflict. Despite initial tensions, both parties felt a sense of ownership of the mediation process and felt comfortable cooperating with each other.
As a result of the meetings, the Daarnaalea communities paid compensation to the Wauncho tribe for deaths relating to the conflict and for the destruction of farms. The two parties also agreed on terms and conditions to allow Arab cattle keepers to peacefully pass through Nuba land during cattle migration. The agreement states that cattle keepers cannot carry guns; they must take care of Wauncho farm land and only use the grazing land when passing through; and Wauncho youth must provide protection for the cattle keepers as they pass through.
Thanks to the agreement, the Daarnaalea have peacefully been able to pass through and use Nuba lands for grazing their cattle, under the guard of young Wauncho people in the community – a significant achievement in the county. The two parties officially signed the agreement on peaceful coexistence in October 2020, and there have been no reported incidents of fighting or killing between them since.
Note: names have been changed.
In Yemen, COVID-19 has exacerbated one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Yemen is dealing with its sixth year of unrelenting conflict, which has devastated the country’s healthcare system and economy. Yet women peacebuilders and human rights defenders continue working to better their communities. Noura from the National Organisation of Development (NODS) and Sharooq from Improve Your Society Organisation (IYSO) share their experiences as women in Yemen and discuss how a WhatsApp-based peacebuilding course has helped them during the pandemic.
“The situation in Taiz is not stable,” explains Noura, a field coordinator for NODS. “We have periods of peace but it is a fragile peace. This fragile peace and the constant imminent fights in and around the city is making the security of women unstable as well. Road closures and the siege is preventing women from going to work and school, and doing domestic errands like collecting cooking wood and water. The children are suffering and their education is always compromised. Women and children are killed because of the snipers, so they stay at home most of the time which affects their mental health as well.”
“Violence against women has increased significantly [since the conflict began],” adds Sharooq, a training coordinator for IYSO. “The [inequality] gap between women and men has increased, and the security situation is adding an extra barrier for women – the more insecure the situation is, the more restrictions to movement women and girls face.”
Since the escalation of conflict in 2014, women-led organisations and women activists have been at the forefront of working to improve conditions for communities across the country. But peacebuilding activities have taken a backseat to the growing pandemic as communities pause to better understand new concerns related to COVID-19.
COVID-19 in Yemen
Throughout 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 continued to sweep through Yemen, although the true scale of infection is difficult to gauge due to a lack of testing.
Sharooq notes the gendered differences in how people in Taiz have reacted to the virus. “Women who have their own businesses have followed the health advice and official orders strictly. Generally, men were less concerned and kept their shops opened or didn’t observe the lockdown rules and social distancing advice, regardless of the danger of transmitting the disease to their families, mostly to the women who stayed home. When the schools were closed, only the mothers had to sacrifice their jobs to stay home and look after the children.”
Due to limited support and guidance from government authorities, many civil society groups began COVID-19 prevention projects, distributing supplies including masks and sanitising fluid, and providing information about the virus. However, the response has generally not been tailored to the specific needs of women, who have faced further challenges, including increased levels of domestic violence at home as well as extra unpaid care responsibilities.
Supporting civil society remotely
In May this year, Saferworld began a new round of our WhatsApp-based Participatory Peacebuilding course, first introduced in 2016 as a way to unite peace activists during the conflict.
This year, the month-long course was adapted to the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions that had limited people’s movement and peacebuilding projects in communities. Staff from 13 of our partner organisations in Yemen took part in the training, including Noura and Sharooq.
“It was my first time joining this kind of training ... I was curious, the first thing that I thought about was around the challenges, I thought how can a training be delivered via WhatsApp? Then I thought about the good side, like being with many peacebuilding workers from different areas with different experiences,” Sharooq explains. “The way the modules were designed allowed us to start by understanding the differences between the participants, this was necessary for a fragmented context like Yemen, to then bring us together.”
“The [gender module] exercises helped us to know that our gender expectations and norms in some governorates were different than what we thought. As a woman, I was pleased to see that our brothers in locations that are perceived to be extra-conservative were not what I expected, and women in those locations are having more support than I thought. We learnt a lot about each other,” says Sharooq.
“These kinds of training are convenient in situations where physical distancing is required,” she continues, noting that more women were able to take part who wouldn’t usually be able to attend in person. “Remote training is giving opportunities to women who usually don’t have access to trainings, because of their [rural] location. But with the poor internet, it is still a challenge. Another challenge has to do with women’s daily house chores that prevented some of the female participants from following the course 100 per cent.”
We designed the course for our partners to pass on their learning and to run the course with their own communities – encouraging more women to become activists in their communities and unite more people across conflict lines. When the course ended, Sharooq shared her learning with another organisation working with women, helping them design, plan and budget for COVID-19-related projects, including one to promote women’s economic independence through handicraft skills training. With Sharooq’s guidance, the projects received funding, impacting the lives of more women with lower incomes in Taiz.
For Yemeni women facing restrictions to movement due to the pandemic and ongoing conflict, remote training tools have not only provided learning and skills, but a space for interaction and mutual support to aid their mental health. “[The course] allowed me to share my story,” Noura concludes. As COVID-19 continues to affect communities across the country, such outlets will remain essential in Yemen’s path to recovery and peace.
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. Switching to online advocacy for a large part of the pandemic has opened up space for more inclusive and representative participation in policy and advocacy communications, as the need for expensive flights and accommodation along with the challenge of securing visas for partners from conflict-affected areas were no longer limiting factors. We have taken advantage of this to promote the participation of women, youth and of our partners, in high-level policy debates and other events.
Read more about our work in global policy and advocacy:
Saferworld recognises how the easy availability of arms can fuel, prolong and intensify conflict, with devastating consequences for people’s lives. We work to strengthen national, regional and international controls on the global transfer of arms.
In 2020–2021 Saferworld was one of the leading civil society organisations working on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Through both our ATT Expert Group, which met virtually during the pandemic, and the formal ATT process, we encouraged states to focus on irresponsible arms transfers – for example in the context of terrorism and organised crime, and by interrogating the legal challenges to arms transfers now happening in a growing range of jurisdictions.
We also worked to maintain civil society access despite the challenges posed by the pandemic: we motivated the (successful) effort to open up to civil society the decisionmaking process at the Treaty’s sixth Conference of States Parties, and worked with partners to present views on this and other issues at the Conference. We maintained our role as convenor of the informal Western Europe-wide ‘Brussels Group’ of NGOs working on arms trade issues, with a focus during the year on preventing the supply of material support for the war in Yemen and challenging the plans for the EU to provide arms into a range of fragile context through the development of a European Peace Facility.
Saferworld pressed the UK government on a range of arms transfer control issues, most urgently the sale of arms at risk of being used in the conflict in Yemen. We continue to provide technical support to the Campaign Against Arms Trade in its legal challenge to the UK government’s arms exports to Saudi Arabia. With our partners from the UK Working Group on Arms, we successfully advocated for the reconvening of the Committee on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) in the new parliament, highlighting the need for meaningful parliamentary accountability in light of the government’s appalling record in supplying arms into the Yemen war.
In 2020–21 together with Conciliation Resources we developed the Facilitation Guide to conducting a participatory Gender-sensitive Conflict Analysis (GSCA), which provides step-by step guidance and tools to analyse the root causes of gendered violence in any context. We have shared this approach with a range of international bodies as well as with partner organisations in conflict-affected areas, and have since been approached by a number of donors and partner peacebuilding organisations, including the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), Irish Aid, the EU, UNWomen and Chemonics, requesting that we support them to adopt GSCA. The guidance has been translated and published in Burmese, Russian and Arabic (by Saferworld), and into French and Spanish (by Conciliation Resources). We have also adapted the guidance into an online training pack.
In October 2020, we launched a gender campaign, ‘This is how’, which focused on how to implement gender-sensitive or gender-transformative peacebuilding programmes, and the positive impacts of doing so. Most of our publications and communications on gender since October 2020 have been framed within the campaign, collaborating with women’s rights partner organisations. We also published a COVID-19 series, which highlighted the work that women’s rights and civil society organisations are undertaking to provide a COVID-19 response based on social justice and gender equality. It gives visibility to the important work that civil society organisations do to enhance positive peace.
Based on unofficial bilateral dialogues and exchanges between Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, led by Saferworld, we explored in a report how these ‘Track II’ activities have supported women’s representation and meaningful engagement and influence over foreign policy debates in South Asia. We identified where this has worked well, and where there may be constraints due to local policies and norms. We then outlined how this kind of dialogue work could be adapted to increase women’s meaningful participation, drawing on the insights of women in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Growing instability across the Middle East, Asia and many parts of Africa has presented huge challenges for international communities – most notably record levels of forced displacement and terror attacks. The international responses have often been short-term and counter-productive. We promote action that is initiated by the communities themselves, and that effectively addresses the real causes of conflict-related crises and threats.
During 2020–21, we deepened our collaboration with partners outside our typical network and started to work in larger coalitions. This was behind the formation of the Security Policy Alternatives Network (SPAN) – which facilitates collaboration on shared priorities between partners across the human rights, peacebuilding, women’s rights and humanitarian spaces. This network has committed to amplifying and supporting collective advocacy, building on the concerns and perspectives of partners in those places worst affected by hard security interventions.
Working to influence security policies, SPAN has performed research on the negative impacts of current approaches and worked together on shared advocacy events and engagements. Through SPAN, we held a virtual conference ‘Turning the Authoritarian Tide’, which attracted over 400 attendees and brought our expertise to a global audience. As well as multiple SPAN members, speakers included the UN Special Rapporteur for promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, and the Political Adviser to the EU Special Representative for the Sahel.
Considering the continuing economic and social reverberations of COVID-19, ongoing debates around overly securitised domestic policing, and the acknowledgement from new US administration officials that security approaches need to change, a network like SPAN – which is promoting alternative ways of achieving security with people of affected countries at the forefront – has a lot more potential to unleash.
Over the past year we supported 195 community groups, 181 civil society organisations and 193 authorities to research, discuss, prioritise and advocate for people-centred security and justice, directly reaching 5,464 people. As a result of this work, more community groups across our programmes are working independently to address community security issues without support from us or our partners, which demonstrates their strengthened agency and sustainability – critical at a time when international and internal travel were so disrupted.
Saferworld was also at the forefront of efforts to understand how COVID-19 was affecting the provision of security and justice, drawing on the experiences of our staff and partners in conflict-affected contexts. To highlight these impacts, in August 2020 we published a briefing, The role of the security sector in COVID-19 response: An opportunity to ‘build back better’? It assesses how security forces were involved in measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic, revealing how some authoritarian governments exploited COVID-19 to violate citizens’ rights, clamp down on public demonstrations, and advance their own political agendas. It also shows how community activists and civil society organisations were often ‘first responders’ to the pandemic, playing a critical role in providing information and assistance. The briefing outlines guiding principles for security entities responding to pandemics, as well as longer-term considerations for international partners. The UK Government’s Stabilisation Unit asked Saferworld to present these findings and recommendations to a cross-section of officials, while they also featured in a Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ letter to the Netherlands Parliament on how COVID-19 has affected security and the rule of law, with particular reference to gender impacts and the roles of informal actors.
We also contributed to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) consultation on people-centred security. The resultant UNDP paper incorporated our points about the important role played by non-state actors in providing security, while highlighting the ‘programmatic innovations of NGOs like Saferworld that are paving the way for the realization of more effective people-centered approaches by the UN and other international security stakeholders’.
2020–21 was the final year of our joint ‘peace research partnership’ project in partnership with Conciliation Resources and International Alert.
Over the course of the four-year research partnership, we sought to straddle the gulf between the policy concerns of international donors and the experiences of conflict-affected communities. The PRP partners undertook research and analysis with civil society and community organisations in over 20 conflict-affected contexts. We focused on a range of themes arising from our programming experience, including peace processes, economic development, gender norms, climate and security, and security and justice. Research findings developed in collaboration with partners and programme staff informed guidance and recommendations for policymakers and practitioners through over 60 research reports, briefings, videos and podcasts. The participatory process and lessons learnt underscore the value of conflict research and analysis grounded in programming experience and community perspectives.
Saferworld and Conciliation Resources developed and produced ground-breaking guidance for Gender Sensitive Conflict Analysis (GSCA) as part of the PRP. We also published our research on how federalisation in Somalia is affecting inclusion and local conflict dynamics. The research report “Inclusion is a process, not an event”: federalism and inclusion in Somalia provides a detailed assessment of the process of federalisation in Galmudug province, Somalia and how different groups have experienced it. It sheds new light on how federalism affects different dimensions of inclusion in a context where clan structures shape social and political life. This provides valuable evidence to inform programming and policy in support of Somalia’s transition to a federal state, and for inclusive approaches to decentralisation in fragile and conflict-affected states more generally.
As an important player in international development and security China has major influence in conflict-affected and fragile countries. Our work supports China in making positive contributions to conflict prevention and peacebuilding.
Throughout 2020, we implemented an EU-funded Africa–China–Europe dialogue and cooperation project on preventing the diversion of arms and ammunition into and within Africa. In October 2020, we achieved a crucial milestone in our work to support the effective regulation of the international arms trade, when China officially joined the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). As an ATT state party, China now has legal obligations not to transfer arms where there is a risk of diversion to armed groups or other unintended recipients, and where there is a risk of them being used to commit serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law. China is also committed to reporting publicly on all exports and imports of a broad range of conventional arms, including small arms and light weapons. Saferworld has raised awareness and advocated for the ATT initiative together with Chinese partners over the past 15 years.
The establishment of Saferworld Consulting (Beijing) Co. Ltd. in China marked another important milestone for Saferworld. Throughout 2020–21, the new Beijing-based company enabled direct access to a number of Chinese businesses operating in fragile and/or conflict-affected countries. We laid the foundations to support socially aware businesses on conflict analysis and monitoring and evaluation, and to facilitate a more systematic process of involving communities, civil society and Chinese businesses in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
We also worked with the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) on a research report entitled Road to peace or bone of contention? The report, which was published in March 2021, illustrates the complex relationships between BRI investments and conflict dynamics in four countries (Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Pakistan and Uganda) and recommends ways to ensure that BRI projects are delivered with conflict sensitivity at their core.
The European Union has a vital role to play in conflict prevention and human rights, and so we advocate to EU policymakers for the adoption of conflict-sensitive approaches.
In 2020–21 we successfully advocated to the European External Action Service to incorporate gender analysis, meaningful consultation and intersectionality in the EU’s Women, Peace and Security Strategic Approach and Action Plan.
We also offered input into: the EU’s Horn of Africa Strategy, its Sahel Strategy, a concept on irregular migration for common security and defence policy (CSDP) missions, the Migration and Asylum Pact, the Dutch Ministry of Defence’s guidance on conflict sensitivity, and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s thematic paper on crisis prevention and peacebuilding – the last of which formed the basis of the German SDP’s 2021 federal election manifesto. The European Commission asked us to revise the EU staff handbook on operating in situations of conflict and fragility and to contribute to its publication ‘Evaluations in Hard-to-Reach Areas’. We have contributed to conflict sensitivity being included in EU programming, evaluations and its commitment to increasing conflict analysis.
We co-wrote an open letter to the European Parliament, which subsequently pressed Egypt (successfully) for the release of Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights staff.
Increased focus has been put on the EU’s defence ambitions, and we have been instrumental in ensuring that programmes are based on conflict analysis under the Neighbourhood Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) – analysis which Saferworld has been asked to perform on occasion. And while the European Peace Facility was adopted with the option of including lethal weapons, its budget was cut and safeguards advocated by Saferworld were put in place. On the subject of EU defence policy, we conducted research into EU Security Assistance in the Sahel for publication later in 2021.
2020 saw the merger of the UK Department for International Development (DfID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, along with cuts to the UK aid budget from 0.7 to 0.5 per cent of GDP. Saferworld was disappointed with these developments, having long championed DfID’s conflict expertise.
In March 2021 the UK Government published its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. We shadowed its progress, offering analysis to officials involved, lobbying Parliament and making submissions to the Review.
Our work with the Somali Women Development Centre on women’s rights organisations was instrumental in the UK Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) Women, Peace and Security team’s decision to put out a call for proposals of £1.5 million to fund gender-transformative programmes. Our advocacy also resulted in CSSF adopting our community security model (which identifies and responds to local perceptions of security by working through both formal and informal systems) to increase attention and spending on women’s security needs.
From September 2020, with the support of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, we sustained the Oxford Research Group Remote Warfare Programme under a new name: the Security Policy Change Project. This brought Warpod, a monthly podcast featuring leading voices discussing the risks and challenges of contemporary conflict, to Saferworld. Each episode has an average of 300 listens, and the podcast has a growing audience across Europe, the US and elsewhere, including Japan, Mali, Russia and Somalia.
Through engagement with security officials, Saferworld USA pushed for the US government to play a vital role in conflict prevention, end securitised responses to crises and threats, and listen to the voices of peacebuilders in conflict-affected countries.
In 2020–21 we worked in coalition with likeminded peace and rights organisations to influence a shift in narrative and practice in relation to US government approaches to conflict prevention and peacebuilding, counter-terrorism, conflict and gender sensitivity, and partnership and localisation. This work included the hosting of a well-attended event at US PeaceCon to promote a reckoning with the legacy of 9/11 and the global war on terror, which involved Security Policy Alternatives Network (SPAN) participants from all over the world.
Together with the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) we facilitated Saferworld’s South Sudan programme to deliver evidence at a congressional briefing on the impacts of the re-designation of Protection of Civilian sites as conventional camps for internally displaced persons. This was followed by further collaboration with FCNL to hold a congressional panel focusing on how the US can better support peacebuilding in the region, which highlighted Saferworld’s community policing work and its work to transform gender norms as a way to address gender-based violence.
Through engagement with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), our analysis also was included in the department’s Somalia Gender Assessment, reflecting our expertise in conducting gender analyses and integrating them into programmatic work.
At the UN, we continue to work in coordination with other peacebuilding organisations to influence policy and programming decisions on peacebuilding, peacekeeping, gender, and youth, peace and security. By working closely with a coalition of human rights, humanitarian and civic space organisations that focus on UN counter-terrorism, we achieved significant outcomes in pushing the UN system to reckon with the harmful effects of current approaches. Through this coalition we worked to ensure the voices of civil society representatives were included in policy discussions in New York on counter-terrorism. We worked closely with diplomats in New York to strengthen language in the seventh UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) on human rights oversight, protection of civic space and gender sensitive approaches, and we supported 70 civil society partners to engage in advocacy on counter-terrorism issues through a range of public and private advocacy events. This work built on a series of research and written products that explored the impact of the increasing prominence of counter-terrorism at the UN. The flagship report, A fourth pillar for the United Nations? The rise of counter-terrorism, was widely read at high levels within the UN, raising awareness and influencing a significant number of organisations and officials within the UN system.
We engaged with the UN Department of Peace Operations in relation to their UN Future of Peacekeeping project, and submitted a written input warning about the risks of counterterrorism and regime protection in UN peace operations (see our analysis which was published by the Department of Peace Operations). As part of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture review, the UN Secretary-General’s recommendations to the UN General Assembly included evidence from a regional consultation that took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to bring together stakeholders from four Central Asian countries.
Making sure that aid does not contribute to inequalities and grievances that drive violent conflict, but maximises contributions to sustainable peace, is a vital priority for aid agencies. We provide several kinds of support to help national and international organisations, donors and international financial institutions better understand the contexts they operate in. Firstly, we run conflict sensitivity helpdesks, which are facilities that deliver rapid analysis, technical guidance and strategic inputs to support institutions with their uptake of conflict sensitivity. In 2020–21, Saferworld responded to over 30 requests to the conflict sensitivity helpdesk services we operate, including from Sida – the development arm of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the Austrian Development Agency (ADA).
Recommendations from helpdesk tasks have been influential in integrating conflict sensitivity into the strategies, programmes/investments and practices of these institutions. For example, Sida adjusted its priorities in humanitarian coordination after a helpdesk assignment showed that highlevel needs assessment reports were now mostly compliant with guidance, freeing Sida’s attention for other tasks.
We also worked with Save the Children and SKL International to improve the conflict sensitivity of their programmes. As a result, Save the Children adopted a position on the greater integration of peacebuilding approaches into their ongoing work in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. They improved the conflict sensitivity of their ‘Syrian Adolescents Programme’ and set up a global conflict sensitivity working group, representing a potentially movement-wide change. Based on our recommendations, SKL integrated conflict sensitivity into their programming in Lebanon, improved inclusivity by recruiting Syrian staff, and is implementing activities focused specifically on peacebuilding and social cohesion within the Akkar region in Lebanon.
The Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) in South Sudan was established (with swisspeace) in 2016, and continues to work with donors, policy makers and aid practitioners to integrate conflict sensitivity throughout strategic and policy decisions, programmes and operations in South Sudan. This is done through three focus areas: targeted support (including short courses, guidelines, and a help desk), tailored research and analysis on specific conflict topics, facilitating the sharing of knowledge, skills, and lessons (including hosting the Better Aid Forum).
In October 2020, building on the experiences, achievements and lessons with the CSRF, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) awarded Saferworld a grant to establish a pilot Conflict Sensitivity Facility (CSF) for Sudan. The CSF works with donors and the wider aid community in Sudan to collaboratively conduct analysis and facilitate knowledge sharing, provide targeted capacity support, and provide spaces for problem-solving and discussions.
Between April 2020 and March 2021, we continued to deliver our ambitious programme of action for the final year of our organisational strategic plan 2017–21. We grew our core non-programmatic teams, across human resources, safeguarding, auditing, and safety and security.
Our new and improved policies and procedures have helped promote a safe, harmonious and healthy working environment. Read how we are strengthening Saferworld in practice below:
Saferworld has a zero-tolerance policy for any type of abuse, exploitation or harassment, including sexual exploitation and abuse, gender harassment and bullying at the workplace, and the exploitation of children and vulnerable adults. This is in line with our duty of care to all who come in contact with our work, including Saferworld staff members, volunteers, interns, trustees, consultants, partners and community participants. This year, we continued to improve our safeguarding policy and practice to work towards an environment where our staff, partners and everyone we are working with feel safe and protected from harm and abuse.
In 2020–2021 we updated and finalised our Code of Conduct, which was rolled out to the whole organisation through a series of mandatory online workshops between May and August 2021. We also started developing e-learning materials that can be used for new staff members and as an annual refresher for all staff on the Code of Conduct, which includes information on expected behaviour, responsibilities, available reporting mechanisms and investigation processes. The Code of Conduct has been translated into Burmese, Arabic and Russian.
We have also started conducting in-depth trainings with our teams and partners. These trainings cover all aspects of safeguarding, from prevention (looking at behaviour, gender norms and systems of power leading to abuses) to protection, reporting, investigation and outcomes.
Over the last year we worked with partners to design programmes that uphold our safeguarding commitments, and jointly developed a Safeguarding Assessment Tool to be used by our partners to assess any needs or concerns they might have in relation to safeguarding in their organisation and identify any training or support needed to develop their safeguarding policies. We also developed a safeguarding risk assessment tool that we use to understand what the potential safeguarding risks in a specific project are, what measures we already have in place to mitigate them, and what measures we should be developing if the existing ones are not enough.
Saferworld’s Safeguarding Coordinator, focal points and our Safeguarding Working Group continue to work with our Board of Trustees to decide together on the next steps that should be taken to strengthen our commitments over the coming year.
Although COVID-19 posed difficulties for our outcome harvesting, our partner organisations rose to the challenge of coordinating whole-country sessions during the pandemic. More widely, travel restrictions gave our partners the opportunity to take greater ownership of a range of monitoring, evaluation and learning systems and processes. This a trend that we expect to (and would like to see) continue. Saferworld and partners supported them through training in effective remote facilitation of monitoring, evaluation and learning activities using videoconference and voice calls.
Saferworld has been approached by a number of organisations looking to adopt the outcome harvesting approach, including the UN Population Fund Bishkek and our partners CAFA Development Organization. We also became a learning partner for Humanity United.
2020/21 saw the launch of the Knowledge and Learning Hub @ Saferworld (KL@S), designed to promote greater coherence across Saferworld’s research, policy and advocacy, and programming work. It promotes learning – about what we prioritise, how we do our work and what contribution it makes to change processes – from the knowledge we create, collect and develop as part of that work. For its pilot project, the KL@S Hub will look at the theme of climate, conflict and environmental degradation, draw together complementary approaches, and design a strategy for our new strategic objective in a way that contributes to transformative change.
We organised several learning events, including, in Somalia, a webinar on sustainable, inclusive and gender-sensitive community structures and an in-person seminar aiming to design new approaches to police oversight.
