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.

Our Conflict Advisory Unit continued to advise international humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors and donors on conflict sensitivity and effective peacebuilding in 2022–23. We carry out this work via conflict sensitivity facilities in Afghanistan, South Sudan and Sudan, and through helpdesks and other advisory arrangements for institutions such as the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the UK government and the European Investment Bank.

Informed by earlier Saferworld advocacy that saw the US Agency for International Development (USAID) launch a Central America Conflict Integration Hub in Honduras – modelled after Saferworld’s long-standing Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility in South Sudan – we secured a two-year, USD$1.7m grant from USAID to support the
Conflict Sensitivity Facility in Sudan. This is the first US investment in one of Saferworld’s conflict sensitivity facilities, reflecting a new push to shape US responses to conflicts and crises. The Conflict Sensitivity Facility has also seen an increase in requests from the aid community for technical support.

The demand-led Afghanistan Conflict Sensitivity Mechanism (ACSM) – led by Saferworld, swisspeace and Afghan NGO partners, and funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) – met with the British & Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group to push for dedicated dialogue with Afghan women as part of an FCDO-NGO collaboration. The ASCM also assisted the FCDO’s Afghanistan Policy and Programmes Department in briefing UK ministers. The department integrated ACSM’s insights on international engagement with the Taliban in the 1990s in an internal paper on FCDO policy engagement with the Taliban, which was shared with senior officials.

Through our helpdesk on human security and humanitarian assistance for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, we carried out a review of the World Bank’s overall integration of a conflict perspective, providing recommendations for how to increase the peacebuilding expertise of the Bank’s technical committee (which determines what projects the bank supports). As part of a helpdesk on conflict for the European Investment Bank (EIB), Saferworld and consortium partner swisspeace had regularly recommended that the EIB adopt a more strategic approach to working in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. In the summer of 2022, the EIB launched its first-ever strategic framework on conflict and fragility, which reflects this input.

In South Sudan, the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility’s outreach and capacity support to humanitarian clusters helped their members adopt more conflict-sensitive approaches in their emergency responses. For example, the water, sanitation and hygiene cluster developed and disseminated a conflict sensitivity checklist for all partners to adopt, while the Emergency Rapid Response Mechanism consortium adopted new guidance and minimum standards for conflict sensitivity in emergency response across South Sudan.

Saferworld is leading the way in encouraging aid organisations to make sure that the ‘peace’ pillar of the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus – the ‘triple nexus’ – is not forgotten, and that conflict sensitivity and commitments to ‘localisation’ and locally led responses are integrated into nexus policies, strategies, programming and practices.

Saferworld has been a leader in conflict sensitivity for over 20 years, developing tools and guidance for aid actors that embody our approach to understanding conflict, shaping global policy and building peace. Since 2017, our Conflict Advisory Unit has supported Saferworld teams, donors, and international and national organisations to better understand and contribute to peace in the societies they work in. This has included setting up specialist conflict sensitivity facilities in South Sudan and Sudan.

In South Sudan, the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) – established by Saferworld and swisspeace in 2016 – supports the provision of conflict-sensitive HDP aid. Since 2022, it has contributed towards several changes to the UN’s approach to revitalising the Partnership for Peace, Recovery and Resilience (PfPRR). As the UN’s main initiative for promoting stronger collaboration and coherent programming across the triple nexus in South Sudan, the PfPRR process has enabled the CSRF to influence the uptake of conflict-sensitive approaches across a wide range of donors, UN agencies, and international and national NGOs. Since June 2022, the CSRF has accompanied PfPRR partners as a critical friend and adviser, including through authorship of briefing papers, facilitation of workshops, informal outreach and technical support. This support contributed to decisions by the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office to: facilitate the representation of NGOs at more senior levels of the PfPRR governance structure; allow more inclusive community consultations that include partners’ and South Sudanese perspectives in the design of pilot programmes; and create more space for the inclusion of peacebuilding perspectives in the design process.

The support from the CSRF was also reflected in tentative changes to plans for the first PfPRR pilot programme in Bentiu, Unity State, which will focus on responses to climate-related crises and conflict. Relationship-building and feedback from the CSRF contributed to the selection of a wider geographical area of focus, including more marginalised flood-affected areas in Unity State, as well as commitments to integrate a conflict-sensitive approach and objectives into scoping visits and to identify the existing community structures that need to be involved and built upon. The PfPRR is now seeking funding to translate the HDP ideas from theory to practice in South Sudan, amid wider cuts and restructuring of the aid response.

Saferworld set up the Conflict Sensitivity Facility (CSF) in Sudan in 2021 to support the adoption of conflict sensitivity among donors and aid organisations working across the HDP nexus. The CSF has been a pivotal player in an emerging collaboration between the World Bank and the World Food Programme. The CSF team met with the World Bank in November 2022 to raise awareness of the importance of incorporating conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding perspectives in the World Bank’s forthcoming support to a large cash programme – a follow-up to the Sudan Family Support Program, initially conducted in partnership with the Government of Sudan. This project aimed to improve the resilience of vulnerable groups in the context of a significant economic crisis as part of Sudan’s political transition. As a result of this engagement, the World Bank instructed the World Food Programme to conduct a conflict sensitivity analysis (with input from the CSF) to identify specific risks and opportunities that could be addressed through adapting the programme design. While planning for the new programme was interrupted by the outbreak of fighting between the Sudan Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, this collaboration between peacebuilding, development and humanitarian organisations is helping to stimulate interest in conflict sensitivity within the World Food Programme Sudan and to forge relationships that can support the uptake of conflict sensitivity through future HDP initiatives in the country.

The illegal flow of arms and ammunition is fuelling civil wars and enabling violent groups to launch attacks against governments and communities in Africa.

Since 2019, we have been working to tackle the illicit trade and diversion of arms into and within Africa, through an Africa-China-Europe (ACE) project that we implemented with two partners – the Beijing-based China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
(CACDA) and the Nairobi-based Security Research & Information Centre. Over three years we published six substantive policy and research reports, and held nine meetings of the ACE Expert Working Group, as well as other side events, meetings and seminars.

Over the past year – the project’s last – we produced a briefing on the risks of arms diversion in Africa, written by Saferworld’s Arms Unit, as well as three case study briefings authored by members of the Expert Working Group, which focused on illicit small arms in Burkina Faso, South Africa and South Sudan.

We continued to promote and publicise our work across a variety of international contexts. At a side event in April 2022 during working group/preparatory sessions for the Eighth Conference of States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty, we launched our briefing, Preventing and mitigating the risk of arms diversion in Africa, with a presentation by the Nigerian Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Abiodun Richards Adejola. The briefing was widely welcomed by participants, including by a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.

We presented the findings of our three research case studies at another side event in the margins of the Eighth Biennial Meeting of States under the UN Programme of Action on small arms and light weapons in June 2022. Staff from CACDA also gave a presentation on new technologies for marking and tracing small arms, creating a key opportunity for Chinese experts to discuss arms diversion.

In August, ACE Expert Working Group member Guy Lamb convened a meeting with the South Africa National Planning Committee, where he presented the findings of our South Africa case study to government officials who expressed significant interest in our research and discussed ideas for practical projects to address the serious problem of illicit firearms in the country. We also gave presentations on the ACE project at the Beijing Foreign Studies University and Fuzhou Xiajiang College, where audiences included Chinese researchers, members of business and policy communities, and African scholars. Finally, at the UN First Committee in December 2022, the Chinese Government declared its intention to ratify the UN Firearms Protocol – a development that CACDA attributed to our joint work.

We shared a final report summarising our research recommendations and project achievements. Subsequently, in February, the Chinese Government issued an important ‘white paper’, The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper, which declared support for ‘cooperation among China, Africa and Europe on small arms and light weapons control’ – almost certainly a result of our work, illustrating the strength and productivity of the project partnerships.

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.