According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are now a record high of 82.4 million people forcibly displaced by violent conflict, and the majority of deaths in conflicts are among civilians. This makes the protection of civilians from physical harm in contexts of war and other political violence a pressing issue of our time. While the international community has acknowledged the need for protection, the physical safety of civilians is still imaged predominantly as a task of armed actors (UN blue helmets, national police or militaries, armed local self-defence groups, etc.). Yet not only does the demand for protection from physical harm exceed the offer by far; armed actors are often also rather (part of) the problem than the solution.

The originality of the Creating Safer Space research network is its focus on active nonviolent protection provided by unarmed civilians and deployed at the local level of communities, be it by outside specialists or insider/local protection actors. Unarmed civilian protection (UCP)[1] is “the practice of civilians protecting other civilians in situations of imminent, ongoing, or recent violent conflict. It involves trained international civilians protecting local civilians, local civilians protecting each other, and even local civilians protecting international or non-local civilians.”[2] For more information on unarmed civilian protection and self-protection, please visit our website and our UCP research database.

There are over 40 international NGOs and a growing number of national and local organisations currently undertaking protection work in at least 24 countries in conflict, in addition to local self-protection initiatives such as peace communities and weapons-free zones using a range of proactive strategies to create safer space for civilian life amidst violent conflict. They illustrate that the protection of civilians by civilians without the use or threat of force can work to create physical safety and may even do more: by providing a role model, and by not fuelling further violence, UCP can help break cycles of violence and thus contribute to longer-term peacebuilding. Initial research has suggested that UCP may often be more effective than armed protection and indeed, latest UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions mention the potential of UCP, indicating some change in thinking even at the level of governmental organisations.

The focus of Creating Safer Space is on nonviolent (self-)protection of civilians in conflicts in Colombia, South Sudan, Myanmar and the Philippines, but research on other Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) will also be supported (as specified below).

[1] UCP is used here as a shorthand to a wider field of practice. Organisations and communities use different terminologies to denominate their work, and there is a lively debate over this within the community of practice. While unarmed civilian protection and protective accompaniment are the most commonly used terms, the Creating Safer Space research network is interested in all practices of protection from physical harm of civilians by civilians through nonviolent strategies, regardless of their specific denomination.

[2] Oldenhuis, H., Furnari, E., Carriere, R., Wagstrom, T., Frisch, A., & Duncan, M. (2021). Unarmed civilian protection: Strengthening civilian capacities to protect civilians against violence. An introductory course in 5 modules. Second edition. Geneva: Nonviolent Peaceforce.

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We seek to fund research projects that will further our understanding of unarmed civilian protection and self-protection from physical violence, as explained in the ‘Research Focus’ section above. Research projects must address one or more of the following themes, or the linkages between them:

1. Understanding vulnerability to physical harm in violent conflict

Vulnerability to physical harm is complex, context-dependent and often situational, suggesting that common universal understandings not only obfuscate nuance in protection needs, but also neglect people’s agency. There is therefore a need to better understand how different kinds of vulnerabilities interact in situations that require protection, how vulnerabilities may differ depending on the context and the identity and positionality of the people concerned, and which different protection strategies these complex vulnerabilities require.

Potential research questions include, but are not limited to:

• How is vulnerability to physical harm understood by the conflict-affected communities?
• How is it shaped by the historical, political, socio-economic, cultural and legal context and the dynamics of the violent conflict?
• How can common vulnerability markers such as gender, age, ethnicity or religion be unpacked to account for the intersectionality of experiences, which may lead to agency and empowerment as well as vulnerability?
• How do context and identity-related factors come together to create specific vulnerabilities, but also to enable agency and resilience?
• Which role does violence-affected communities’ mental health play in vulnerability, resilience and protection? What strategies enhance mental health and resilience (e.g., cultural and artistic strategies)?
• How can UCP actors assess vulnerabilities in dynamic conflict contexts in order to best tailor their approaches, so as to protect without disempowering or undermining specific groups such as ‘women’ or ‘youth’?

• Building local protection infrastructures:  

Unarmed civilian protection has been shown to be most sustainable, where outside nonviolent protection initiatives have not only concentrated on addressing urgent protection needs, but also have built on existing practice or engaged in establishing more long-term local ‘protection infrastructures’, for example by enhancing and expanding local protection capacity through trainings and giving other types of material and knowledge support to local volunteers. A second research theme therefore focuses on exploring how outside protection strategies, national protection initiatives and self-protection mechanisms in communities can work together for best protection results and without undermining each other.

Potential research questions include, but are not limited to:

• How and to what effect have local protection mechanisms and capabilities been harnessed in UCP interventions to protect civilians in contexts of violent conflict and displacement?
• How have local communities and nonviolent protection actors adapted UCP strategies to their respective contexts?
• How have specific local protection initiatives (e.g., women protection groups or youth protection groups) helped to address specific vulnerabilities? What can be learned from them for other contexts?
• Which role do different types of relationships (with communities, armed and unarmed stakeholders etc.) play in enabling or complicating collaboration?
• How has UCP built on international law (e.g., IHL, human rights) in culturally diverse legal contexts (e.g., customary law)?
• What are the (potential) uses of digital technologies in imperilling or protecting communities?
• Which factors influence the success or failure of protection in the short (emergency response) and longer term (as basis for sustainability and resilience, and for creating conditions for positive peace) in different contexts?
• How do successful local UCP infrastructures impact on the short-term and long-term quality of peace arrangements?

• Developing civilian protection capabilities:  

The field of practice of organisations using active nonviolent protection strategies has grown over the last decades and UCP has been successfully used in a wide range of countries, suggesting its versatility to adapt to very different contexts and types of political violence. Despite these positive experiences, however, the scope and reach of unarmed civilian protection has remained limited. A final thematic focus of this network is therefore on the question of how unarmed local protection can be scaled up or broadened out in size and/or scope, or include new actors and collaborations, with a view to protect more people from violence and displacement and develop stronger nonviolent protection capacity.

Potential research questions include, but are not limited to:

• What would enhance a wider acceptance and/or adoption of active nonviolent protection? What would be necessary to change dominant ways of thinking about protection, power, security, agency etc. at the national and/or international level?
• How can positive experiences with proactive nonviolent protection strategies be shared between communities and grassroots organisations within and across countries and regions?
• With what existing organisations—multilateral organisations such as the UN, the African Union, ECOWAS or ASEAN, or large INGOs working in the area of protection of civilians in conflict zones—, if any, can UCP actors collaborate, and how would this be done most effectively? Is there a risk that such collaboration may undermine the core principles of UCP?
• Given the central principle of many UCP actors of working and living with violence-affected communities, groups and individuals, (how) can UCP work on a larger scale?
• (How) Can UCP methods interact with other protection approaches, including armed ones, and what are limits or dangers of such interaction?
• (How) Can UCP work remotely between outside protectors and violence-affected communities in areas not accessible to outside support, e.g., due to extremist violence or national travel/access restrictions?
• How does UCP interact with wider efforts at peace-making (including conflict resolution, mediation) and peacebuilding, and how does it impact on the quality of the resulting peace?

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There are two types of grants available – Large Grants and Small Grants – with different criteria.

Our funding forms part of the UK’s foreign aid budget. Our grants therefore have special requirements in regard to involvement of Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) on the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) List of Official Development Assistance Recipients (DAC list). References to ‘DAC list countries’ in the text below include any country on the DAC list, except China, India or any country due to graduate from the DAC list in the near future.

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