The exhibition is a collective work between artists and researchers, displaying photographs, embroidery, music, cartoons and artistic installations to create a dynamic conversation between Colombia and South Sudan.
More information about the exhibition is available here.
Assessing the impact of unarmed civilian protection in the South Hebron Hills between 2018-2023
This project aims to assess the impact of the ongoing collaboration between international volunteers and the Palestinian community in the South Hebron Hills, West Bank. With the Palestinian residents facing violence from Israeli settlers, particularly towards school children, Operazione Colomba (OC) has provided essential support by accompanying them through UCP. It is crucial to evaluate how this partnership has influenced safety and well-being. The project focuses on understanding OC role in creating a sense of security between 2018 and 2023, aligned with the nonviolent resistance efforts led by the Palestinian community, and the ability in remaining responsive to the needs.
The project pilots the participatory evaluation methodology developed by the Creating Safer Space network in a workshop series with academics and practitioners.
Project Team: The project is lead by Association Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII (Operation Dove / Operazione Colomba), Italy, in collaboration with Youth of Sumud, Palestine.
Their work invites us to consider how the arts and heritage can contribute to our understanding of safeguarding and survival in a fragile context, but also how protecting the arts could be essential to creating a safer society.
Artists and keepers of cultural traditions from South Sudan, Sudan and Colombia have worked with researchers to investigate the ways we seek out protection and how those strategies for safety are narrated.
Contributions of grassroots organisations to the implementation of unarmed civilian self-protection strategies in violent urban contexts
Towards the security of diverse and vulnerable populations in socio-segregated environments
This project investigates from a participatory methodological design the impacts of actions carried out by grassroots organisations in violent and socio-segregated urban contexts in the city of Cali on these territories and on the perceptions and realities among the diverse populations that are settled there. Specifically, it focuses on how actions and perceptions of security and protection relate to identity and territory among these populations.
The project pilots the participatory evaluation methodology developed by the Creating Safer Space network in a workshop series with academics and practitioners.
Project Team:
Luisa María Colonia Zúñiga, Masterpeace Cali (principal investigator)
Gustavo Suárez, Masterpeace Cali (investigator)
Final Report:
The final report on the project findings is available here (Spanish only):
Using a participatory action research design, this pilot project will engage with organizations serving migrants at the United States/Mexico border to develop tools for evaluating the impacts of unarmed civilian protection and accompaniment (UCP/A) to protect migrants in the North American border region. Meta Peace Team has been working since 2018 with US/Mexican organizations attempting to protect migrants increasingly exposed not only to violence by militarized border security on the US side of the border, but also by both police and gangs as they waited in Mexican communities. The UCP/A initiatives aim to protect migrants through accompaniment, humanitarian relief, and documentation aimed at advocacy. The pilot evaluation will assess the impacts, successes and challenges of the UCP efforts through participant observation and guided conversations with UCP/A organizers, delegation participants, and migrant leaders.
The project pilots the participatory evaluation methodology developed by the Creating Safer Space network in a workshop series with academics and practitioners.
Project Team:
Stephen Gasteyer, Meta Peace Team / Michigan State University (principal investigator)
Kim Redigan, Meta Peace Team (team member)
Mary Hanna, Meta Peace Team (team member)
Booklet about artists and strategies for safety in Colombia and South Sudan
Their work invites us to consider how the arts and heritage can contribute to our understanding of safeguarding and survival in a fragile context, but also how protecting the arts could be essential to creating a safer society.
Artists and keepers of cultural traditions from South Sudan, Sudan and Colombia have worked with researchers to investigate the ways we seek out protection and how those strategies for safety are narrated.
Four team members of the N+ project Art That Protects visited mid-Wales in October 2023. Project PI Beatriz Arias López and research assistant Laura Jimenez of the University of Antioquia were joined by project partners Adriana Diosa and Oscar Manuel Zuluaga of Harlequin and the Jugglers for an event at Aberystwyth University that showcased the work and findings of the project’s first phase. Read more about the event here.
Art That Protects team members at Aberystwyth University
In addition, Adriana and Oscar gave a theatre workshop for 3rd-year students of the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies (TFTS) and contributed to a seminar on dance as a form of resistance in Colombia in the Department of History and Welsh History. They also presented the Art That Protects project at the Community Hwb in Machynlleth.
Adriana and Oscar at the Community Hwb Machhynlleth
Creating Safer Space network participates in Geneva UCP Gathering
15 members of the Creating Safer Space network took actively part in an International Gathering of Unarmed Civilian Protection and Accompaniment Organisations, which was held in Ferney-Voltaire, France and Geneva, Switzerland from 9-11 October 2023. Organised by Nonviolent Peaceforce with input from a range of UCP/A stakeholders, this was “the first global gathering of UCP/A practitioners, their community partners, researchers and allies collaborating to advance the UCP/A Community of Practice by creating opportunities to grapple with shared issues, explore creative solutions, and build relationships with colleagues working around the world”.
Ten of the 15 N+ Creating Safer Space members who participated in the International Gathering in Geneva
N+ members – from the core network team, different project teams, and the advisory board – were involved in planning, implementing and facilitating the gathering, offered workshops on different UCP/A-related topics including decolonisation, learning and evaluation, looming threats, and peace processes, spoke about UCP and community self-protection research at a policy event for humanitarian organisations and UN member countries, and contributed to the gathering more widely by sharing their experiences and knowledges.
Ellen Furnari, Creating Safer Space advisory board member, played an essential role in the research and planning process that led up to this Gathering. Ellen together with core N+ team members Nerve Macaspac, Rachel Julian and Roger Mac Ginty organised a workshop on “Learning What Works in UCP/A”, while core team members Beatriz Arias López and Laura Jimenez were active in the “Decolonising UCP/A” process and workshop. South Sudan project team member Moses John contributed to the “Looming threats: Shaping challenges into strategies” plenary, and project PI Juan Mario Diaz led a workshop on “The Role of UCP/A in Contemporary Peace Processes”.
N+ Project PI Enrique Chimonja Coy speaking at the Policy Roundtable in Geneva
Project PI Enrique Chimonja Coy and Network PI Berit Bliesemann de Guevara contributed to a Policy Roundtable, co-hosted by the Permanent Missions of the Netherlands, Costa Rica, the Philippines and Sierra Leone to the United Nations and Nonviolent Peaceforce.
Other N+ members participating in different roles in the Gathering included project team members from or working in Colombia, Myanmar, and Indonesia, and Palestine. The Gathering was co-facilitated by Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and Beatriz Arias López.
The N+ team also organised a small preview of the Creating Safer Space exhibition, which involves creative outputs from our projects and will be shown in full in different locations around the world in 2024.
Learn more about the Community of Practice process and the Gathering here.
A small preview of the Creating Safer Space exhibition
Fieldwork in South Sudan uncovers cultural practices for early warning and conflict preparedness
Diria Vicky Thomas and Haji Elias, two researchers working with Community Aid for Relief and Development (CARD) and Lomore Development Organization (LDO), partnering Chas Morrison from Coventry University (UK), have been investigating cultural self-protection and conflict preparedness measures in South Sudan. They report on their findings:
“We have uncovered a huge range of cultural practices employed for early warning and conflict preparedness. These are generally distinct among different tribal groups in the country.
They tend to be traditional, hierarchical, procedural, formalised, low-tech, non-literate and highly divided along gender lines. They include use of tied grasses, ash circles, drumming/song, cursed water/goatskins/charcoal, prayers and fasting practices, and other spiritual defences/curses. We have collected examples of many such practices.
Briefly, symbols for early warning/preparedness are multi-purpose, used against different threat types (violence, ghosts, insects, floods etc), embedded in tribal identities, and conflate preparing for fighting with avoidance of violence. That is, avoiding conflict is not necessarily a goal in itself, but that violence should be carried out under strict demarcated lines and in accordance with tribal norms. As one village chief stated, “We prefer witchcraft protection, more than physical protection”.
UCP organisations and programming should be sensitive to such cultural practices, and embed them into formal structures and responses to violence. There is a clear division between traditional and formulaic practices of inter-tribe violence, and modern forms of violence which are associated with struggles for political power, criminality, and proliferation of small arms (rather than traditional spear, or bow & arrow).”
Men in South Sudan illustrating the use of grasses tied together to convey a specific symbolic meaning. When the heads of the grasses are tied together, it symbolises a clash (that there will be fighting). When the heads of the grasses are apart, as the man in the middle demonstrates with his hands, it symbolises that violence will be avoided.
Research Café: Top tips for publishing in academic journals
At the next Creating Safer Space Research Café, Dr Sukanya Podder will draw upon her experience as Deputy Editor of the academic journal Civil Wars to explain how the publishing process works, and to share some top tips for publishing in academic journals.
This session will be especially relevant to early career researchers, researchers working within practitioner organisations, and others who are new to publishing in academic journals. The session will finish with an open discussion, and we also warmly welcome senior researchers to come and share top tips of your own.
1.30 – 2.30 pm UTC on Monday 30 October Please use a timezone converter to check your local time.
The session will be held in English and Spanish with simultaneous translation.
The aim of this network-wide Creating Safer Space Research Café is to enable people in different parts of the world to exchange knowledge and to help build a community of Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) researchers and practitioners.