Creative Events Manager
Rachel Rea Luxton is a curator and artist based in Aberystwyth, Wales. She is the Creative Events Manager for the Creating Safer Space network and is excited about raising awareness of the practice and opportunities of UCP through the Arts.
Marwan Darweish, Mahmoud Soliman and Andrew Rigby spent ten days doing field research in the South Hebron Hills, in the south of the occupied West Bank, during October-November 2022.
A few weeks prior to our visit one of our co-participants in our research project, a community leader in the village of Al Tuwani, suffered serious injury at the hands of thugs from a neighbouring illegal settlement, who attacked him with staves and metal bars, breaking both his hands.
The settler-thugs acted with complete impunity – confident they would face no legal sanctions for their acts of violence. They are emboldened by the knowledge that the violence they perpetrate against Palestinians serves as a major informal tool of the Israeli state in its pursuance of its annexationist policies. In the words of a report by the Israeli human rights agency B’tselem, ‘settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation.’
In such an asymmetric struggle the local inhabitants have few resources of resistance beyond their own everyday courage, tenacity and stubborn steadfastness – sumud. To support them different Palestinian, Israeli and international agencies, organisations and groups have sought to offer various forms of accompaniment as agents of civilian protection, assisting the local Palestinian communities in their efforts to achieve a degree of ‘safe space’ within which to pursue their lives.
During our field work we interviewed local Palestinian community leaders and activists, in addition to members of international groups engaged in different forms of ‘accompaniment’. We are now engaged in the process of analysing the material we gathered from our interviews and observations. A number of interesting insights are beginning to emerge, which we shall pursue in subsequent fieldwork.
1) The limitations of traditional approaches to accompaniment and civilian protection when the local population face risks to their well-being around the clock, with night raids by settlers increasing in frequency.
2) The symbiotic relationship between local Palestinians and international accompaniers. The accompaniers are there to enhance the security of the Palestinians, but the Palestinian in turn ‘protect’ the internationals – advising them of potential threats, identifying escape routes in case of attack, indicating where they should stand in order to minimise the risk of injury during encounters with settlers.
3) One of the key ways in which internationals can enhance the capacities for self-protection of local Palestinians is by letting the locals know that they are not alone. This awareness has a significant impact on local morale.
Mahmoud Soliman and Marwan Darweish talking to Abu Nidal from South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta), October 2022.
Soldiers from one side and activists on the other side. Al Tuwani October 2022.
This month, Creating Safer Space is co-hosting a collaborative workshop with Nonviolent Peaceforce and Institut Catholique de Paris.
In this event, Dr Cécile Dubernet and Prof Rachel Julian will lead a French language session with top tips on how to write a grant application. There will be time for questions and discussions following a presentation.
16.30 – 17:30 UTC on Wednesday 14 December 2022.
Please use a timezone converter to check your local time.
All welcome, join the meeting here: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86973196809
Following a successful first meeting, the working group on Innovation in Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning in Unarmed Civilian Protection / Accompaniment will meet again:
14:00-16:00 UTC on Tuesday 24 January 2023. Please use a timezone converter to check your local time.
The Working Group will discuss participatory methods of monitoring and evaluation and how best to jointly work towards methods of monitoring and evaluation suited to UCP/A.
Welcome to the launch for the working group on Innovation in Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning in Unarmed Civilian Protection / Accompaniment.
The Working Group will discuss participatory methods of monitoring and evaluation and how best to jointly work towards methods of monitoring and evaluation suited to UCP/A.
2 – 4 pm UTC on Thursday 1 December
Please use a timezone converter to check your local time.
The session will be held in English and Spanish with simultaneous translation.
The Creating Safer Space network has funded 21 research projects around the world, and we have set aside funding for a few more projects. These will undertake research in 10 different countries in the Global South.
You can find a summary of each project by clicking on the pins on our Project Map. Each project also has a bespoke website on our Projects Page, where they provide more detailed information about their plans and activities.
The Creating Safer Space research network invites Expressions of Interest to participate in a 10-week training course on Strengthening Civilian Capacities to Protect Civilians.
This course is an introduction to the objectives, principles, sources of guidance, and methods of Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP). The course is led by Dr Ellen Furnari and Dr Thor Wagstrom, and is based on course content developed by our partner organisation Nonviolent Peaceforce. There are no course fees, and course material will be provided for free. More information about the course is available on our website.
Course Structure
The course dates are 7 January – 17 March 2023. The course will require about 8-10 hours per week to read, participate and complete assignments. Participants complete all activities online through modules that are accessed through the course website. There are no required meetings for this course. However, participants are invited to meet the course facilitators and each other during an informal kick-off Zoom meeting on Saturday 7 January. Up to three additional meetings will be arranged during the course for opportunities to meet and question experienced UCP practitioners and to practice UCP methods through role-play exercises. Attendance for these meetings will not be required but is encouraged.
Eligibility
Researchers, Masters/PhD students and relevant practitioners are invited to submit an Expression of Interest to participate in this course. Anyone is welcome to apply, but places are limited. Priority will be given to those candidates who are most likely to benefit from the course, with priority to candidates from the UK and from the Global South. We especially encourage Principal Investigators, Co-Investigators, Project Partners and Research Assistants on Creating Safer Space research projects to participate in the course.
How to apply
Please submit an Expression of Interest of no more than 100 words to creating-safer-space@aber.ac.uk by 22 November 2022, with an explanation of your interest in the course and how it would benefit you in your work or studies. Please specify if you are involved in a Creating Safer Space research project, including your role in the project.
The aim of the Creating Safer Space 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.
This month, Prof. Chantana Wungaeo and Prof. Mark Tamthai will discuss their Creating Safer Space research project, “Introducing Unarmed Civilian Protection in Thai Society: Opportunities and Challenges”. The team will share the aims of the project, their experiences of carrying out the project, and preliminary findings and anticipated outcomes.
12.30 – 1.30 pm UTC on Thursday 17 November
Please use a timezone converter to check your local time.
The session will be held in English and Spanish with simultaneous translation.
All welcome; please register here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcrdu6vrzwqGNAh3SRpvoWosvRm2c4sBn9L
This research project involved learning from a collective impact initiative for unarmed civilian protection launched in 2017, in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. Using quantitative and qualitative research on local violence reporting from newspaper archives; focus group discussions, and a video documentary with the members of the Jos Stakeholders Centre for Peace (JSCP) network, this project contributed new theoretical and empirical insights on enhancing civilian protection through unarmed collective action in the area of community security. Prominently, the research included partner organisations and collaborators in Nigeria to promote grassroots advocacy, capacity building, and knowledge dissemination around unarmed civilian protection (UCP) in Maiduguri, Borno state, where civilians have witnessed both state and non-state directed violence due to the Boko Haram insurgency. A growing normalisation in state-insurgent relations since 2015 has created the opportunity to build the self-protection capacities of local communities. Towards this end, the novelty of the project was three-fold. First, it encouraged inter-regional learning of the collective impact model in UCP. Second, it built the capacity of the people at the grassroots, and those in positions of local power and influence through workshops, mobile video projection and community discussions around UCP in Maiduguri, Borno state. Third, it developed the local capacity in Maiduguri to arrest conflict escalation and mitigate both state and non-state armed violence directed against civilians, through unarmed community security initiatives.
RESEARCH TEAM
PROJECT DATES
1 November 2022 – 31 January 2024
RESEARCH OUTPUTS
Article in Humanitarian Exchange Magazine
Podder, Sukanya, ‘Unarmed civilian protection through collective impact: The Jos Stakeholders Centre for Peace (JSCP), Plateau State, Nigeria’, Humanitarian Exchange, 82:11, 2023.
Short Film: Inter-regional learning on UCP in Nigeria
This short learning video captures insights from an intergenerational and collective impact model adopted by the Jos Stakeholder’s Centre for Peace in Jos, Nigeria, to reduce violence in the context of two communities, Angwan Damisa and Balakaze, that have witnessed several episodes of communal conflict. The insights could help other Nigerian communities adapt the model to reduce or prevent violence in their specific context, such as in Maiduguri where ex-Boko Haram fighters and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are returning and changing the composition of the communities.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
The Jos-based model of intergenerational collaboration through multi-stakeholder driven collective impact has had the following lessons to offer for the practice of civilian protection.
The project findings point to the diversity of local capacities that exist for civilian protection that is inclusive and collaborative in nature. In our presentation of the learning video and discussions with governmental and non-governmental stakeholders (n=23) in Maiduguri we found similarities with the Jos model, although these were less deliberate in including a youth-focused, intergenerational and collective impact design.
One of the areas of success in Bala Kaze and Angwan Damisa was collaboration between security agencies (police) and the community leaders. This collaboration included reporting on violent and crime-related incidents. The Breaking the Borders (BtB) Ambassadors who were trained unarmed
defenders of the community would arrest miscreants and hand them over to the police for further action.
The BtB included members of different age groups and their ability to use unarmed methods of civilian policing presented an improvement on localised jungle justice methods. In both communities youth involvement in drug abuse and high levels of unemployment were cited as a trigger for localised fights at the stream dividing the two villages. This area of cooperation between formal security agencies/police and the civilians had mixed results in the Tudun Wada community. Some level of complicity between criminals and the police was observed; miscreants were often released without repercussions when the local community leaders attempted to hand them over for selling narcotics or for any other localised crime-related issues.
This variation in the success of the collective impact model suggests that cooperation with the formal security agencies and their willingness to work with local communities is a significant factor in defining the success of civilian protection methods in the area of community security provision.
Finally, the success of civilian protection methods in arresting conflict escalation and maintaining inter-community peace in Angwan Damisa and Bala Kaze does offer important lessons around when unarmed civilian initiatives can become sustainable, locally led, and locally maintained networks for security and protection. They suggest that state agencies need to become willing collaborators and supporters of these initiatives. Local arrangements need to include different age groups and genders.
Following the video screening at the Maiduguri workshop, the five communities whose members took part (communities of Gangamari, Kawar Maila, Limanti, State Low Cost and Old Maiduguri (n=150, 45 F, 105 M), were encouraged to launch an informal civilian protection network and a WhatsApp group to report on civilian protection-related developments.
The sustainability and effectiveness of these networks are likely to be variable and could benefit from the adoption of a more deliberate organisation structure grounded in collective impact-type design. The communities in Maiduguri would benefit from adopting intergenerational collaboration and not just dialogue, as we found that the collective and inclusive decision-making model that was adopted in the case of the Jos network was more effective than one that is consultative or based on elders directing younger members of these networks on proposed routes of action.
We are pleased to announce that a new research project will start in October: “Safety and dignity: Enhancing unarmed civilian protection amongst Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta)”
The project received a Creating Safer Space Small Grant through our open funding competition.
The project is led by Marwan Darweish at Coventry University (UK), in collaboration with Co-Investigators at Coventry University and the Al-Shmoh Cultural Center (Palestine).
The project focuses on the South Hebron Hills of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), where the civilian population face acts of violence by Israeli settlers in which their crops, livestock, dwellings and lives have been targeted. The project will analyse attempts by civilian actors to support the local communities in their attempts to create safer spaces within which they can continue to maintain their livelihoods, hold on to their land and way of life.
More information about the project is available here:
https://creating-safer-space.com/safety-and-dignity-enhancing-unarmed-civilian-protection-amongst-palestinian-communities-in-the-south-hebron-hills-masafer-yatta/
