Social protection and sustainable peace in the Middle East and North Africa Region: Building a new welfare-centered politics

Led by the MENA Social Policy Network, University of Bath, www.menasp.com (founded in 2012 and convened by Jawad, PI), in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), this proposal brings together a host of UK and international research leaders and partner organisations to undertake an ambitious programme of cross-disciplinary innovation and capability development in the governance of social policy in MENA. The distinctive contribution this network will make is to introduce a paradigm shift in MENA conflict prevention research, policy and practice that will enhance the social welfare politics of Arab countries in the Sothern Mediterranean region (Levant and North Africa) - our geographical focus. These are ODA compliant countries, the highest exporters of economic migration to Europe and historically, at the nexus of armed conflict in MENA. The Network management team includes expertise in ethics, mental health and disability, Middle East history, anthropology, urban planning and the environment, gender, visual arts and education.

Our Network vision is: to demonstrate, through a mutually supportive framework of innovative, cross-disciplinary research and capacity development for policy change, how effective social policy governance in MENA can provide nuanced and contextualised pathways to peace and emerging localised solution-driven initiatives. We will do this through a programme of work that will serve GCRF goals as follows: (1) maximising the impact of Co-I-led proof of concepts and an £800,000's worth of LMIC and UK-led commissioned research strand that is co-designed with LMIC partners and builds on localised expertise; (2) fostering shared learning across innovative peacebuilding research projects and testing the feasibility, scalability, transferability and effectiveness of different approaches across diverse fragile MENA countries; (3) bringing conflict prevention research more centrally into sustainable development planning and programming through the apparatus of social policy governance and its affiliated concept of social protection thereby addressing directly SDGs 1, 3 (reduce poverty; achieve wellbeing across life course), 5 (achieve gender equality), 10 (reduce inequalities) and 11 (promote inclusive peace). Our aims are: (1) Cross-disciplinary innovation: to improve knowledge bases and practices in conflict prevention and sustainable peace in MENA by focusing on the interconnections between community-level social justice grievances and the macro-level governance of social policy; (2) Capacity development of existing research and policy practice: we will support policy learning and "design thinking" such as through policy labs, social policy governance seminars and an e-learning course for policy-makers.

We argue that there is momentum for a fresh and expanded reassessment of the nature and scope of conflict in MENA which directly addresses the long-overlooked question of community-level social justice grievances and how these react against or are reproduced by macro-level political decision-making. We will advance current knowledge and practice by showing how conflict prevention and social policy governance share common concerns: how to enable communities to live cohesively and share resources equitably. This is a fundamentally cross-disciplinary question about state-society relations, otherwise referred to in the contemporary international development literature as "political settlements". It is an issue of relevance to volatile MENA countries that are now implementing austerity policies at a time when they are also mandated to produce national development plans supporting the universal social protection vision of the SDG 2030 agenda. The challenges of social and income inequality in MENA are stark: in a 2015 report, the World Bank acknowledged the need to address the "quality of life" grievances that had fueled the Arab uprisings.

Academic impact: LMIC researchers based in universities, NGOs, government institutions and independent think tanks are the primary academic beneficiary group. Our international Co-Is, partner organisations such as CREAD, IFI and ARDD-legal aid and the early career researchers in our advisory board (such as Bailey - UK, Zaki - Egypt and Al Jabiri - Iraq) already give an idea of the wide range of researchers we will work with and who will support the commissioning and synthesis of our network activities. The Network will undertake a suite of capacity building and knowledge sharing activities with strand (ii) grant-holders, including ECRs and researchers in our partner organisations, civil society and policy stakeholder groups using various tools such as research ethics training (IFI, Lebanon seminar in year 1) and social policy governance (CREAD, Algeria Seminar in year 2). In addition, researchers will benefit from peer mentoring activities and an e-learning course (see IPC-IG letter of support). In line with the Impact strategy and Theory of Change plan, the project manager will support the management team in tracking the milestone academic activities of the network through progress meetings, mentoring clinics, synthesis events and the online tools of the www.menasp.com website.

Societal impact: There are various ways in which our Network will achieve societal impact since it is directly focused on understanding and tackling the major social justice grievances that drive conflict in MENA such as precarious work, social exclusion and lack of voice . Indeed, our research will directly enhance understanding and test the applicability of the current spread of the Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) framework which is informing government and donor agency interventions in MENA countries and calling into question state capacities in addressing the rights and needs of citizens and refugee populations. Hence, policy officials both internationally and in MENA, community groups and NGOs working on conflict prevention, social protection and social justice issues are key stakeholder groups. By engaging global organisations as Network partners (such as Friends of the British Council, UNDP, IPC-IG, Centre for Social Development in Africa, Centre for Poverty, IFI-AUB and NGOs such as the ARDD-legal aid), this proposal will directly reach, inform and influence state and civil society actors in MENA. It will do this by exposing them to new policy learning opportunities and involving them in the analysis and synthesis of project findings. The Policy Lab activity in year 3 (Mohammad V University, Morocco) feeds directly into the societal impact pathway since it provides a safe space to introduce principles and elements of "design thinking" to NGOs working on social protection issues. Marginalised populations such as unemployed youth, refugees, female-headed households, people with disabilities, religious minorities are also key beneficiary groups. The Network will work with its advisory board and partners to create space for new policy dialogue by engaging hard-to-reach groups like unorganized male protesters in Basra (Iraq), powerful religious endowment institutions or Waqfs (Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia), marginalised populations (such as IDPS in borders along Yemen and Syria) and people with disabilities (whether this is caused by conflict or not). This effort directly supports the aim of the network to link micro- and macro-level analysis of social policy governance. The policy lab will be a way to reach marginalised populations via their community representatives.

In our due diligence and planning meetings, we will highlight examples of confirming actions or corrective actions that may be taken by the management team to mitigate the risk factors to the theory of change assumptions. We will rely on pre-existing networks of trust that our management team and advisory board provide to anticipate risks to our impact pathway strategy.