GCRF Development Award: Social protection and inclusive peace in the Middle East and North Africa Region: Towards a welfare centred politics

This proposal is organised around the four core principles of the AHRC development award call which are to develop equitable and sustainable partnerships in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), support LMIC capability development, develop pathways to impact and enhance inter-disciplinary working. To this end, we will undertake a programme of: (a) strategic consultations with existing and new international and local experts, partners and practitioners regarding our network's research agenda and approach; (b) face-to-face and online knowledge sharing and co-design activities to enhance our network and partnerships.

This programme of work will directly frame our final stage Network Plus proposal and strengthen the foundations of our network plus "hub", the MENASP network (www.menasp.com), for sustainable, cross-regional and equitable partnership working in conflict-affected countries. In so doing, this development award will directly support the core aims and scope of our shortlisted outline proposal whose strategic vision is to forge a paradigm shift in the critical analysis and policy practices of conflict-prevention in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) by advocating a shift towards a welfare-centred, social policy perspective. The latter requires a focus on the governance and impact of social protection policies in tackling the most overlooked yet urgently pertinent drivers of civic unrest and conflict in MENA.

The centre piece activity will be a five day practice-based planning workshop made up of three inter-related streams, that will take place in Dubai in February 2020 with the support of the British Council UAE office. The workshop will be managed by a local facilitator. The three steams of work will be:

(1) Workshop stream 1 (1 day): Safeguarding and inclusion in contexts of conflict - the management team and partners will consider the meanings of safeguarding and inclusion within the scope of the project. They will produce a protocol to guide the work of the network long term. This protocol will also be explained in a training film that will also be produced as part of the project.

(2) Workshop stream 2 (2 days): Consultation on research objectives and network approach - the aim of this stream will be to review the conceptual parameters of the network plus research agenda with the key co-Is and project partners. We will refine our country case study focus, consider in more depth and also test how we undertand change and impact will happen in the project and who will benefit from our research.

(3) Workshop stream 3 (2 days): Enhancing interdisciplinary engagement - the aim of this stream will be to focus two days of activity and discussions on dialogue between social scientists involved in social policy and conflict related research with practitioners and researchers from other discipline areas such the arts, humanities, education and management design thinking. These will enhance the project design and wider societal impact.


As stated above, in addition to the workshop will also produce a training video about the safe-guarding protocols and run a webinar during the later half of the project to review the project plans and future activities. Using our menasp.com website, we will support learning and partnerships for example by encouraging the network team to write blogs about their experiences of working in the network and how we can develop it further.

Interested members of the public will be able to follow our work on the website of the MENASP network www.menasp.com

The core research team has engaged with key beneficiaries and policy stakeholders in the conceptualisation and design of the project. Through the existing activities of the MENASP network, the core team has had the opportunity to receive feedback on the network plus design and research questions. The UK-based research team have also consulted closely with the local research partners via the MENASP network during the design of the project, through a number of face-to-face and skype meetings.

The imperative to maximize the dissemination and impacts of the research has been built into the development award's design. First, through MENASP's existing interactive and user-friendly website, the MENASP twitter account (and active promotion of these resources through other University of Bath institutional accounts such as the Centre for Development Studies, Institute of Policy Research, and Department of Social and Policy Sciences twitter accounts). Second, through the active and ongoing involvement of policy makers, which has been structured into the work plan from the outset.

The project will work with various 'communities of practice' to ensure that the research is relevant and feeds into current policy debates. This will occur at different levels. First, through the stream 1 workshop, research partners will have the opportunity to shape procedures to promote inclusion and safeguarding in the wider scope of the project. Second, through the stream 2 workshop, policy makers and stakeholders from a variety of sectors (NGOs, private sector, government ) will have opportunities to feed into the stakeholder mapping exercise, and the refinement of conceptual parameters of the network. Third, in workshop stream 3, academics working from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (including history, area studies, religion, education and management) will be provided with space to develop a richer understanding of the varied conceptualisations and experiences of conflict in the MENA region, and to explore a wide range of potential policy solutions.

Third, a range of materials will be generated and tailored to different audiences. All materials will be produced in Arabic and English, circulated directly among workshop participants and disseminated to a wider audience online via the MENASP website.
- A set of safeguarding, gender and inclusion guidelines (5 pages), which summarise key findings and lessons from the workshops around safeguarding, gender and building equitable and effective research partnerships, highlighting key challenges facing research partners from the global South.
- A workshop synthesis report (10 pages), which will highlight the main learning milestones achieved during the three workshop streams.
- A summary document (5 pages), capturing key findings from workshop stream 3, which focuses on how conflict in the MENA region is understood, lived and communicated from varied disciplinary perspectives and which explores possible interventions and policy innovations to address the challenges and drivers of conflict.
- A series of three blogs, published on the MENASP website, which will summarise and help to disseminate key lessons from the workshops to a variety of interested parties in the region and internationally.
- A short film (10 mins), recorded during the workshops in Dubai, which will be used as a training tool in due diligence and safeguarding. The film will be produced in both English and Arabic.
Fourth, we will share findings and invite input from colleagues and specialist centres based at Bath including the Centre for Development Studies and the Institute of Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath , each of which has strong links with policymakers and practitioners working in these areas. We will also share emerging findings with representatives from the peacebuilding and conflict prevention community including leading international peacebuilding organisations such as International Alert.