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.
We believe that transparent and effective regulation of the international arms trade is essential to prevent human suffering associated with the illicit trade in arms, and our Arms Unit works to strengthen national, regional and international arms controls. Our small grants programme supports partner organisations in places affected by conflict that are working on issues related to small arms and light weapons. In July 2022 we allocated our first grant to the Centre for Conflict Resolution, which works in the Karamoja region of Uganda to promote peaceful disarmament. The project raises awareness of the dangers of illegal possession and use of small arms and light weapons through community dialogues and media engagement. Since the project began, the community dialogue sessions have been fully subscribed and several of the radio talk shows were extended. Our second small grant was awarded in November 2022 to The Organization for Children’s Harmony (TOCH) in South Sudan. This project focused on increasing community awareness of the negative impact of firearms on the safety of communities – including their impact on livelihoods, culture and mental health. By providing a platform for communities to engage in dialogue, TOCH also worked to address conflict drivers by promoting a culture of non-violent dispute resolution.
The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) continued to be a major focus. Over the past year we hosted three virtual meetings of the ATT Expert Group: the first focused on the situation in Ukraine (and the implications for arms transfer controls); the second looked at the potential reassessment of an arms export authorisation when new information emerges or there are changes in circumstances (and provided a basis for a briefing that was presented at the Eighth Conference of States Parties); and the third focused on the review of the ATT programme of work undertaken by the ATT Management Committee in the lead-up to the Ninth Conference of States Parties. In partnership with the Government of The Gambia, we also secured funds from the ATT Voluntary Trust Fund for a national assessment of The Gambia’s capacity to implement the ATT. During an in-country visit in February 2023, we supported the government to secure buy-in from national stakeholders and increase understanding of the key steps necessary to implement the ATT.
With partners the International Commission of Jurists and the Emergent Justice Collective, in 2023 we developed and launched the Arms Trade Litigation Monitor, a standalone interactive website that tracks and documents litigation and other legal interventions relating to arms exports. At the time of writing, the monitor has information on 19 different legal challenges across ten jurisdictions (in Europe, North America and South Africa), primarily in the context of the war in Yemen.
This year we launched our first organisational gender equality strategy, moving us from gender-sensitive to gender-responsive and gender-transformative approaches. This resource aims to increase our staff and partners’ understanding of how to integrate gender in our work, as well as committing us to work in partnership with women’s rights organisations and to learn from what others are doing to advance gender equality through peacebuilding. We continued to work with others to challenge the gender norms that drive violent conflict, inequalities and gender-based violence, and to support the leadership of women and girls in peacebuilding. This included strengthening the capacity of communities, civil society and authorities to undertake gender analysis, incorporate gender transformation within their work and programming, and design and implement gender-focused initiatives.
We provided core, flexible and easily accessible funds to women-led organisations and women’s rights organisations in South Sudan and Yemen, enabling them to continue responding to self-identified community needs and priorities to promote and advance the women, peace and security agenda. In Sudan, we provided microgrants to fund community peacebuilding and security-building initiatives. As a result of these grants, local authorities demonstrated an increased recognition of the role of women in governance and peacebuilding. For example, local authorities appointed a woman chief for the first time, and they also agreed for head chiefs to be assisted by women in the areas of Boma, Missira Payam, Tolodi County, Nuba Mountains and South Kordofan. This is significant, as having women in decision-making positions encourages other women to participate in all aspects of the community, and helps shift longstanding mindsets. We also worked with partners in Somalia on initiatives to improve the safety and participation of women activists and women journalists.
Our women, peace and security advocacy in the UK, EU and US, and on-demand assignments delivered via the Women, Peace and Security Helpdesk – though which Saferworld provides analysis, evidence and support to the UK Government – contributed to shaping efforts to support gender transformation and equality. For example, Northern Ireland was included within the new UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security for the first time, partly in response to research conducted through our helpdesk.
Saferworld Europe built upon last year’s efforts to engage EU and Member State policymakers on the Sahel, by working with partners from the Security Policy Alternatives Network (SPAN) to highlight the shortcomings of securitised policies in the Sahel and to support the inclusion of civil society voices in relevant processes. The People’s Coalition for the Sahel – a group of Sahelian and West African civil society organisations supported by international partners – integrated our recommendation on accountability for international security missions into its progress report, which was presented at the UN Security Council in July 2022 and which received worldwide media coverage. Our April 2022 briefing, Insecurity in the Sahel: Rethinking Europe’s response, was also cited in the media and in various studies and debates, and referenced in German parliamentary discussions. This work also opened doors for further cooperation on the Sahel with the German Agency for International Cooperation, and led to invitations from three major German foundations to input on this topic: the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
In October 2022, on the sidelines of the annual SPAN conference in Berlin, we organised an advocacy event on the German National Security Strategy. The strategy will have implications on contexts around the world and it is essential that its drafters listen to people from conflictaffected countries. This event brought together SPAN members and the deputy head of the drafting team at the German Federal Foreign Office to discuss issues including feminist foreign policy, increased securitisation, and how Germany will monitor the impact of the strategy on other countries.
Our technical expertise and advocacy also helped shape global policy development. We provided input to the European External Action Service on the development of the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability guidelines on civil society engagement for Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions. Many of our inputs were integrated into the guidelines, including on strengthening language on conflict sensitivity and on consulting a diverse range of civil society in a conflict- and gender-sensitive manner. We continued our collaboration with the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO), resulting in EPLO integrating our recommendation to include civil society experts from conflict-affected countries in policy meetings, as well as including our recommendations into ELPO’s submission for the 2024 Civilian CSDP Compact, which will provide strategic guidelines for the EU’s civilian CSDP missions.
Saferworld USA continued to promote people-centred and accountable approaches to security. As part of the Human Rights and Security Coalition, we met with National Security Council directors to discuss the continued use of drone strikes in Somalia and the lack of transparency around the US lethal strikes policy. This advocacy coincided with the publication of a Just Security article by members of Saferworld’s USA and Somalia teams on how the US could pivot from militarised engagement towards a peacebuilding and reconciliation approach. We also organised several presentations of Saferworld’s latest counter-terrorism research – on lessons from armed conflicts involving proscribed groups and successful integrated stabilisation – with US Government officials and congressional offices. The research was also the focus of a public event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In May 2022, Saferworld USA joined the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s re-launch of its Conflict Sensitivity and Integration Working Group to advocate for the integration of conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding across all relevant facets of US law, strategy, policy and programming. Co-led by Saferworld USA, the working group brings together practitioners from dozens of NGOs and US Government implementing partners. As part of this work, we provided framing remarks on conflict sensitivity and decolonised approaches to over 80 US Government officials tasked with developing ten-year country strategies under the Global Fragility Act – the US Government’s new conflict prevention initiative.
Following a series of diplomatic briefings hosted by the Sudan team in Khartoum in October 2021, Saferworld USA organised a meeting on Sudan for officials from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as a visit by a delegation of Sudanese civil society to Washington DC and New York for meetings with US civil society, USAID, the US Department of State, the National Security Council and the UN.
In May 2022, Saferworld USA organised a media briefing around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-US Special Summit, featuring Saferworld partners the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), Progressive Voice, and the Blood Money Campaign (BMC). The briefing was attended by reporters from The Economist, the Huffington Post and the Associated Press. We also organised briefings for the KHRG and BMC with several influential congressional offices.
In March 2023, Saferworld – together with Interpeace and the Life & Peace Institute – hosted a consultation event in Nairobi for civil society peacebuilding organisations to input their experiences and perspectives into the UN’s ‘New Agenda for Peace’ process. The New Agenda for Peace – a commitment from UN Secretary-General António Guterres from his ‘Common Agenda’ – updates the 30-year-old ‘An Agenda for Peace’, written by the former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The event aimed to feed local and national perspectives into deliberations at the UN level, and featured peacebuilders from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and included Saferworld partners Foundation for Tolerance International (Kyrgyzstan), Youth without Borders Organization for Development (Yemen), and the Organization for Nonviolence and Development (South Sudan). During the consultation, participants highlighted similar core challenges faced within each context, such as the issue of shrinking civic and operating space for peacebuilders and peacebuilding organisations. They worked together to produce an outcome report which they submitted to the UN interdepartmental team for the New Agenda for Peace. In the submission they called on the UN to:
- include strategies to safeguard and expand civic space in local, national and global spheres
- push back against the securitisation of multilateral structures and frameworks for peacebuilding
- massively upscale not just the quantity but also the quality of its support for local peacebuilding organisations
- dedicate resources for both climate-sensitive peacebuilding and conflict-sensitive environmental programming, to mitigate insecurity and violence
- direct all UN funds, agencies and programmes to review their partnership strategies to assess where and how these relationships can be made more equal
Throughout 2022–23, Saferworld responded to several decisions that threaten the UK’s historic leadership as a supporter of overseas peacebuilding work. These responses – including our parliamentary submissions, our March 2023 infographic briefing Time to turn around? The decline of UK peacebuilding (published with Mercy Corps), and meetings with members of parliament – informed written questions and challenges in parliamentary committees regarding the decline in funding for peacebuilding and conflict prevention.
Members of the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy drew on our evidence to challenge the increasingly narrow ‘national interest’ framing of the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund at the expense of sustainable conflict reduction, while the Foreign Policy Centre published our criticism of the extent of securitisation manifested in the International Development Strategy. We also sought to continue our work on security policy change, building on the programme inherited from the Oxford Research Group. We secured new funding for the coming years and pressed the UK Government for an increase in parliamentary oversight of special forces operations.
We also worked to support positive UK policy developments. We ensured that draft policy documents focusing on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s approach to conflict prevention included a more comprehensive mainstreaming of gender sensitivity and a greater acknowledgement of the value of locally led responses. Discussions of these documents also included experts from one of our Yemeni partners, alongside a Congolese NGO – rather than only INGOs.
We continued to host Rethinking Security, a network of UK-based organisations, academics and activists with a shared concern that the current approach to national security in the UK and beyond hampers efforts for peace, justice and ecological sustainability. As a member of both the council and steering committee we offer oversight and support at strategic, governance and operational levels to the network secretariat.
In China, Saferworld continues to establish relationships with the private sector to build their awareness of conflict sensitivity principles and contribute to shaping their approaches. In December 2022, the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters (CCCMC) invited Saferworld to participate in a public consultation on the draft procedures of their complaint and consultation mechanism, following Saferworld’s regular contact with the CCCMC. This demonstrates acknowledgement by the mining sector of the importance of considering conflict sensitivity in relation to business practices, particularly dispute resolution mechanisms.
While much of our work with Chinese companies and officials on climate, conflict and environmental degradation is at the exploratory stage, we had several positive interactions that demonstrate a growing potential for longer-term engagement. We continued our partnership with the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF) and the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies (SIIS) to understand the conflict awareness and environmental, social and governance capacity of Chinese businesses with overseas operations. In October 2022, together with SIIS and PRIF, we jointly organised a webinar, ‘Environmental security and investment sustainability in the Belt and Road Initiative’. This was the latest event in a series of international workshops jointly organised by the three partners since 2021, which aim to promote responsible and sustainable investment and business practices in the Belt and Road Initiative context.
The China Overseas Development Association reached out to Saferworld with a potential opportunity to work with the China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC), a construction and engineering company that is contracted to build a waste-to-power plant outside Dhaka, Bangladesh. We offered to conduct a conflict assessment and conflict sensitivity training for CMEC and we are exploring the potential for collaboration on community engagement when the pilot project starts.
The Dutch Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law (KPSRL) was established in 2012 to improve the quality and impact of security and rule of law policy and programming in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Since 2012, the platform has focused on creating opportunities for exchange and funding for applied research, knowledge brokering, and learning to improve the quality and impact of security and rule of law programming. This work has included the launch of a Programmatic Learning Instrument – a funding mechanism that acts as an in-depth tool to enhance the quality and impact of security and rule of law policymaking, programming, implementation, and monitoring, evaluation and learning.
Saferworld – alongside KPSRL members Clingendael and the International Development Law Organization – is managing the third and current cycle of the platform (2021–24). During 2022 we focused on three strategic areas: deepening partnerships, lowering barriers, and creating stronger foundations for learning. As well as numerous learning events that engaged a wide range of participants on different aspects of security and rule of law programmatic learning, we prioritised the design of the Programmatic Learning Instrument and the ongoing reform of the platform’s Knowledge Management Fund, to further develop KPSRL’s effective support to learning.
The Knowledge Platform Annual Conference is the platform’s signature event, bringing together representatives from international agencies, governments, think tanks and INGOs, as well as journalists, activists and field researchers. In 2022 the theme was ‘reimagining social contracts’. We discussed the struggle that many people and communities face in securing inclusive, legitimate and sustainable arrangements between communities and those who hold power, and ways of supporting community responses to security and rule of law arrangements. Our engagement in the KPSRL offers both significant learning opportunities as well as a platform to share our own programmatic lessons and experiences with a diverse group of peers.
Violence against women is pervasive in Somalia, and activists are critical for raising awareness and advocating for change. With partners, Saferworld is improving the safety and participation of women activists, including through micro-grants for women’s rights organisations and women journalists, and a new data platform to tackle gender-based violence.
Micro-grants: improving women journalists’ safety in Somalia
Smaller organisations across Somalia – including women’s rights organisations – often struggle to access the kind of funding available to larger, more established organisations, severely hampering their work to promote women’s safety and rights. For these organisations, micro-grants (comparatively small sums, given for shortterm projects) can be a lifeline.
With the support of micro-grants provided by the Somali Women’s Studies Centre in partnership with Saferworld, journalist Maryan created workshop and training spaces where women journalists could share their experiences and discuss the challenges they face in Somali society – such as gender-based discrimination, threats to personal safety, limited access to resources, entrenched patriarchal norms, and an absence of mentors and role models. “The micro-grant allowed us to conduct training sessions and workshops where women could express their experiences and challenges without fear,” Maryan explains. The grant also helped Maryan to acquire resources – such as high-quality cameras and audio equipment – to feature the voices of the women in articles and interviews.
Like Maryan, Abshiro used the grant to buy essential equipment to conduct photography, video and writing initiatives that enabled the women journalists to share their stories with a wider audience and highlight the risks they face. This has compelled local authorities to act; for example, the police gender desk in Jubaland established dedicated hotlines and reporting channels for women journalists to report threats, harassment or violence. Abshiro helped to set up these response mechanisms, which have made women journalists feel safer thanks to quicker responses and investigations into reported cases. “Our stories created a platform for dialogue and challenged societal norms. We received positive reactions from individuals and broader audiences,” Abshiro said.
Helping activists to tackle gender-based violence through a new data platform
Another initiative established by Saferworld, the Somalia Women Development Centre and the Somali Women’s Studies Centre is the Violence Observatory System, which documents cases of violence against women in Somalia. Volunteers collect responses on a digital platform that is monitored and analysed for trends and responses. The system – which collects data from regions such as Baidoa, Mogadishu, Kismayo and Wajid – supports survivors, helps authorities, and works with women activists who report on gender equality in the country. Hani Ahmed Ibrahim is an activist who documents cases of violence against women, informs authorities and raises awareness around incidents. She explains the process: “We collect information by actively listening to women. It allows us to gather first-hand accounts, capturing the true experiences of survivors. Our primary goal is to provide survivors with the support they need to heal and recover. We connect them with relevant resources, such as medical, legal aid or counselling services, to ensure they receive comprehensive assistance.
“We work closely with the local authorities to report cases of violence and urge them to take appropriate actions. By providing them with data and evidence, we strengthen our advocacy efforts. We are committed to amplifying the voices of survivors and advocating for their rights and safety.”
Hibo Hassan Sulub is another volunteer activist who dedicates her time to transforming the dynamics that lead to gender-based violence (GBV): “My role is to protect women and prevent any form of violence that results in physical, sexual or psychological harm. I make community members aware of these issues and work to create a safer environment for women. We actively observe our surroundings, seeking out any hidden cases of GBV. By using Kobocollect [a data collection tool specifically developed for GBV activism], we can efficiently collect information and document these incidents. Upon encountering cases, we prioritise ethical considerations and forward the information to relevant security agencies such as the police, health ministries and NGOs. We ensure that survivors receive the necessary medical and psychological support, counselling services and legal assistance.”
In the future, activists, volunteers and organisations plan to expand the system’s community awareness efforts, enhance data collection, and support more women activists to actively participate in reducing violence against women.
“We have been able to create a safer space for women to come together and advocate for our rights.”
Women’s rights activist Dhubo Mohamed Abdi and traditional leader Omar Abdi work to address violence against women and promote women’s participation in peacebuilding and politics. They took part in discussions, organised by Saferworld, that looked at opportunities for working with authorities, leaders and activists to improve women’s rights in Somalia. Dhubo faces many obstacles in her work as a women’s rights activist in Kismayo, in Somalia’s Jubaland State. “Lack of safety and security... acts as a major barrier to girls’ and young women’s activism,” explains Dhubo. Many women are unable to take part in political and peacebuilding activities, or to speak out against violence and discrimination. Women are expected to play traditional roles in the family and community, and their voices are often not heard in matters related to peace and security.
To push back against this, Dhubo is working with local authorities and community leaders to raise awareness of the importance of women’s rights and to advocate for policies and programmes that strengthen women’s involvement. By working together, women activists and traditional leaders have developed women’s peace platforms in Kismayo. The platforms bring together women from diverse backgrounds to discuss issues related to peace and security and to advocate for the needs and rights of women in the community. “By working with traditional leaders and establishing these peace platforms, we have been able to create a safer space for women,” says Dhubo.
Omar is a traditional leader in Kismayo. He works with government officials to strengthen women’s peace coalitions, detect and prevent conflict-related sexual violence, and support security and justice institutions that protect women from violence. “Traditional leaders can be important allies in this work. They have the power to challenge cultural and societal norms and promote women’s rights in their communities,” explains Omar.
By working together, women activists and traditional leaders have been able to create a conducive environment for women to participate in decision-making processes, including peace negotiations. They have established women’s centres in various parts of Jubaland, which provide women with a safe space to access support services, including counselling, legal aid and healthcare. They also offer skills training and income-generating activities. They have improved access to justice for women who have experienced violence, through legal aid and assistance and monitoring of court cases to ensure correct legal procedures are followed. These measures have improved the responsiveness of the justice system to cases of violence against women and increased women’s confidence in seeking justice.
Young people in Kyrgyzstan often face exclusion, discrimination, a lack of opportunities and social pressures. This can take a heavy toll on their mental health, and can lead to destructive behaviours or unhealthy coping mechanisms that undermine peace in their communities. This situation is further hampered by stigma associated with mental health, and a lack of mental health resources or services for young people.
With funding from the UN Peacebuilding Fund, Saferworld and partners DIA, the Institute for Youth Development and Peace Initiatives are training young mentors to set up self-support groups around the country, where young people can talk about their problems and receive support from their peers.
Two of these mentors, Altynai Abdysheva and Cholponai Talantbek Kyzy, spoke to us about
their experiences.
Tell us more about the self-support groups that you work with.
Altynai: My self-support group is in Osh, the second biggest city in Kyrgyzstan and a multi-ethnic city. Around a third of group members are Uzbek, while the rest are Kyrgyz – and most are young women.
My group mainly raises issues relating to interpersonal relationships – with parents, friends or partners. They also like to talk and share ideas on how to improve self esteem and confidence, and how to successfully achieve their goals.
Some of the challenges faced by group members stem from the lack of connections with their parents. There is an entire generation who grew up without their parents, due to labour migration abroad. Many have shared their stories of being left by their parents, and of having to move in with relatives where they did not receive the affection or love they needed. This generation is now in their teens or 20s, and they have problems building meaningful relationships with people around them. Many of these have told me that they wish their parents hadn’t left; they felt that they could have managed even with less money, as long as their parents were around.
Cholponai: My self-support group is in Bishkek, at a centre for people with disabilities – with people coming from all over the country. Half of my self-support group members are young people with disabilities.
My group members usually raise issues related to gender stereotypes, talk about their experiences in facing discrimination or bullying because of their disabilities, and about communicating emotions. As a person with a physical disability myself, I also share my own experiences of overcoming those barriers and try to provide moral support.
What are your biggest impressions of the groups so far?
Cholponai: The group members have made the biggest impression on me. One became my co-facilitator. She has cerebral palsy and has gone through a lot in life, yet she always knows how to ask the right questions to support a person to open up, to create space for them to think through their problems and to help improve their mental health.
Other members also bring really valuable contributions from different backgrounds. There was one member who grew up in the orphanage system. He discussed how fear of discrimination and bullying by others held him back in life and kept him from accomplishing his goals. But after a few sessions, he finally found the courage to apply for a job and ended up getting it.
Although many members share their concerns related to discrimination based on their disabilities, the truth is we belong to the same society and have the same rights as everyone else.
Altynai: I have a group member who has faced sexual abuse. She told us that she hadn’t realised before joining the group how her past experience had affected her life. Through our sessions, she realised she had been tolerating abusive relationships, even when it’s harmful to her mental and physical health. She’s now committed to pursuing self-care for herself.
Another young woman had serious problems with depression and loneliness, which led to her missing classes regularly for years. I recently noticed some changes in how she presented herself as the group sessions went on. She said that she started going to school again and even making friends. I believe that the group sessions contributed to this positive change.
What do you think could be some longer-term changes?
Altynai: No one was interested in or even aware of any available mental health and psychosocial support services or therapy. But now they are more familiar with who they could turn to for support. They have realised the benefits of therapy.
Cholponai: People are expressing their emotions more openly, and know how to set priorities and personal boundaries. Members became more empathetic and are ready to help others to express themselves and share their feelings more freely. Many improved their communication skills and have managed to build better relationships with their families and friends.
How has this work affected your own lives?
Altynai: This experience has been beneficial for me as I would like to develop community initiatives and awareness-raising campaigns in the future. Working as a mentor has enriched my practical knowledge of working on early childhood traumas.
Cholponai: The group sessions involve a lot of listening and asking leading questions, so I am learning to ask these questions in a more sensitive way and to not undervalue or judge anyone’s experiences. I am learning to ask different types of questions to get participants to open up. I am glad that I have this experience – it’s not often that I have the opportunity to mentor a self-support group for young people.
War in Yemen has had a dramatic impact on every aspect of people’s lives. For eight years, people in Taiz like Maeen and Ramzi have been unable to see their families or access essential healthcare, goods and services. We worked with Yemeni filmmaker and photographer Albaraa Mansoor to produce this moving documentary and photostory.
Our new organisational strategy, policies and procedures have helped promote a safe, harmonious and healthy working environment, including in our partnerships with organisations globally. Read how we are strengthening Saferworld in practice below:
Saferworld has a zero-tolerance policy for any type of abuse, exploitation or harassment of staff members, associates (interns, trustees, consultants and subcontractors), partners and programme participants. Over the last year, we prioritised the integration of our safeguarding principles into our organisational culture. This included the delivery of in-depth safeguarding training for nearly all Saferworld teams. In the future, these training sessions will be conducted on a biennial basis, ensuring that our staff are equipped with the knowledge and skills to prevent and address safeguarding concerns effectively, using a survivor-centred approach. We also carry out safeguarding inductions for all new staff joining Saferworld.
We conducted a safeguarding ‘training of trainers’ to enable colleagues to deliver safeguarding inductions to partners, ensuring we work together with partners to prevent and respond to safeguarding allegations. We continued to develop tools that support staff in their safeguarding responsibilities, including a managers’ safeguarding checklist to aid managers in ensuring that comprehensive safeguarding measures are implemented. We also provided training to teams on our safeguarding tools, which include: our risk assessment tool, safeguarding organisational assessment tool, safeguarding budgeting tool, and our gender-based violence and safeguarding services mapping tools. We developed a safeguarding communications plan, which identifies steps to take to update and engage staff in our safeguarding activities, policies, procedures and guidelines.
Our strategy commits us to partner in ways that are equitable and mutually accountable and to strengthen and enable local leadership. Over the last year we continued to explore ways of providing core, flexible and accessible funding, including providing microgrants to community initiatives and small grants to civil society organisations. This enables these initiatives and organisations to design their own interventions and remain responsive to the priorities of the people they work with. We also expanded our partnerships with youthled organisations and women’s rights organisations; over the last year we worked with 116 civil society organisations, of which 49 are women-led.
Through our Resourcing Change programme, we provided core, flexible and accessible funding to 27 women’s rights organisations in Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, enabling them to respond to self-identified community needs. They can also choose how to use these funds for capacity strengthening activities, such as training and peer-to-peer learning. Initial findings from an external review of the programme confirm that this kind of funding really does make a difference for women’s rights organisations in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, as it responds to their institutional needs and advances their priorities.
Over the past year, we provided bespoke support to our partners in developing and submitting their own funding proposals, so that they can increasingly access resources directly from donors where possible. We directly supported partner-led funding bids for partners in Kyrgyzstan, South Sudan, Uzbekistan and Yemen. We also explored models where a partner leads on part of a project and Saferworld is included as the ‘partner’; for example, in Uzbekistan, where our partners Istiqloli Avlod and Dialog are now the lead on a United States Institute of Peace proposal, with Saferworld as the named partner.
We continued to exchange insights and lessons from our work on partnerships with other practitioners. We are part of the steering committee for Bond’s working groups on locally led development, which aim to co-create a roadmap for change among UK INGOs to mainstream locally led development commitments.
We also provided input on a guide published by Bond, Becoming Locally Led as an Anti Racist Practice, and we participated in a Bond panel discussion on sharing indirect cost recovery with partners – we discussed our approach to participatory budgeting, including how we contribute to partners’ overheads as part of our commitment to supporting their long-term sustainability.
We were excited to launch a new blog series, Towards solidarity, on equitable partnerships. An adapted version of the first blog, Towards solidarity: Saferworld’s partnership journey, was published by Bond, which connects more than 400 member organisations. The second blog showcased the experiences of people working for women’s rights organisations in South Sudan. We were also invited to share our partnership practices and experiences at Accountable Now’s Annual General Meeting – a global membership platform bringing civil society from around the world together to question current standards of accountability.
We are committed to a vision of Saferworld as a place where everyone is valued and included, where the origins of difference are respected, where discriminatory socials norms are recognised and measures taken to transform them, and where every person has a chance to conduct meaningful work. In 2022–23 we finalised our inclusion, diversity, equality, anti-racism and solidarity (IDEAS) strategy, sharing it across Saferworld. We recruited two new IDEAS coordinators who support, engage and collaborate with diverse communities internally and with our partners to put the strategy into practice. The coordinators also manage the IDEAS committee, which supports Saferworld in developing the right systems and tools for advancing IDEAS in line with our overall organisational strategy. We have two IDEAS points of contact on our board, who have a keen interest and commitment to IDEAS and who meet with members of the committee on a quarterly basis to discuss strategy implementation and activities. In 2023–24 we will focus on engagement sessions to build understanding of IDEAS challenges and how they affect power relations within Saferworld.
