Participatory Research for Effective Collaboration in Response to Non-War Violences
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Aberdeen
Department Name: Sch of Language and Literature
Abstract
UN Resolution A/73/338 which set up the International Year of Peace and Trust in 2021 lays an important foundation for building a 'culture of peace', recognizing that peace is not only absence of conflict but requires a positive, dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation. The proposed Network is about participatory forms of research and their capacity to build new forms of collaboration in particular contexts of chronic, non-war violences.
Contexts of violence outside of war are on the rise globally and challenge assumptions that peace is the opposite of war or conflict. This is still not recognized sufficiently in the international system. The number of violent deaths outside of war has long exceeded deaths in armed conflict. And violence is recognized to have many non-lethal as well as lethal expressions.
Latin America has one of the highest rates of homicides and non-lethal violences in the world, aggravated by the expansion of organized crime. Building 'dynamic participatory processes' in such contexts raises many challenges, but the academics proposing this project have been working for many years on how to enable communities and civil society groups to analyse these violences and the insecurity they live in their everyday lives, in order to develop practical propositions to address them and to then dialogue with state actors. The last few years they have focused particularly on Mexico, currently undergoing one of the most serious crises of violence in the world.
Building on previous research experiences, the Network will connect research participants in communities and civil society groups in Mexico with Mexican, UK and other academics and organisations working on global violences and crime, to evaluate how participatory research processes of varied kinds can contribute to more effective collaborations with state actors aimed at reducing violences and crime. While there is ample evidence of corruption among state actors, our research has shown that others can be encouraged to engage with civil society and community groups.
The Network recognizes the importance of an interdisciplinary lens, and will bring together expertise in law, history, development, human rights, religion and the arts, as well as social scientists, to engage with the Mexican community members and organisations. Spanish will be the working language, but we have partnered with academics and civil society who work in violence-torn countries beyond Latin America.
The main output will be a Guide to Participatory Research for Effective Collaboration in Response to Non War Violences aimed at civil society organisations and at generating debate beyond Mexico about how to engage with communities and state actors for effective collaborations to reduce non-war violences and crime.
Other Network outputs include a series of academic articles, a dataset deriving from the Mexico partnerships, and an interactive website that will host the Guide and incorporate users into a Network that will be sustained through future annual events, funded by U Aberdeen's Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law.
Contexts of violence outside of war are on the rise globally and challenge assumptions that peace is the opposite of war or conflict. This is still not recognized sufficiently in the international system. The number of violent deaths outside of war has long exceeded deaths in armed conflict. And violence is recognized to have many non-lethal as well as lethal expressions.
Latin America has one of the highest rates of homicides and non-lethal violences in the world, aggravated by the expansion of organized crime. Building 'dynamic participatory processes' in such contexts raises many challenges, but the academics proposing this project have been working for many years on how to enable communities and civil society groups to analyse these violences and the insecurity they live in their everyday lives, in order to develop practical propositions to address them and to then dialogue with state actors. The last few years they have focused particularly on Mexico, currently undergoing one of the most serious crises of violence in the world.
Building on previous research experiences, the Network will connect research participants in communities and civil society groups in Mexico with Mexican, UK and other academics and organisations working on global violences and crime, to evaluate how participatory research processes of varied kinds can contribute to more effective collaborations with state actors aimed at reducing violences and crime. While there is ample evidence of corruption among state actors, our research has shown that others can be encouraged to engage with civil society and community groups.
The Network recognizes the importance of an interdisciplinary lens, and will bring together expertise in law, history, development, human rights, religion and the arts, as well as social scientists, to engage with the Mexican community members and organisations. Spanish will be the working language, but we have partnered with academics and civil society who work in violence-torn countries beyond Latin America.
The main output will be a Guide to Participatory Research for Effective Collaboration in Response to Non War Violences aimed at civil society organisations and at generating debate beyond Mexico about how to engage with communities and state actors for effective collaborations to reduce non-war violences and crime.
Other Network outputs include a series of academic articles, a dataset deriving from the Mexico partnerships, and an interactive website that will host the Guide and incorporate users into a Network that will be sustained through future annual events, funded by U Aberdeen's Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law.
| Description | The Network's aim is to articulate principles for CSOs looking to collaborate with states and communities harmed by non-war violences, especially those aggravated by organised crime. Though the Network is ongoing, I can report the following advance against the Network's 3 specific objectives: 1. Ensure the principles are of global relevance by complementing the Mexico partnerships with other global experiences and perspectives: The Network has set out its provisional findings in a 40000-word analytical document, developed by the 4 Mexican teams in dialogue with non-Mexican Network partners. Among other findings, we have determined that organizations contemplating collaboration with state should: - Understand that influencing through collaboration involves a complex process, full of challenges - Establish if there are conditions, or not, prior to attempting a collaboration and throughout the process - Create enough agency prior to collaborating, for a more balanced correlation of forces - Seek to understand institutions, including their interrelationship, to effect changes appropriate to chronic violence. With additional funding provided by Aberdeen University, Network members have travelled to Colombia - like Mexico a key context where societal violence has been exacerbated by organised crime - to develop the global significance of the principles for collaboration that we have identified. One of the Network members who travelled to Colombia is an expert on El Salvador, and we have discussed the significance of our findings for the Salvadoran context. 2. Enrich the principles by bringing arts and humanities perspectives to balance social science insights: Network members focused on arts and humanities have been involved in all our online and in-person meetings, including the forums and meetings held in Mexico in August 2022 and the additional activities (funded separately) in Mexico and Colombia in February-March 2023. In particular, Benjamin Smith (History, Warwick) participated in our Mexico activities and Chris van der Borgh (Humanities, Utrecht) in Colombia. Among other findings, the Network has drawn on arts and humanities perspectives to confirm the importance of the role of churches, legal strategies and arts-based research, although we require further analysis to define and develop those contributions. We are also considering how to draw on partners' arts and humanities expertise to communicate our findings to diverse audiences. 3. Engage with CSOs as potential users to ensure the Guide meets their expectations, and build a sustainable network with CSOs worldwide: We have engaged throughout with CSOs including in our in-person events and meetings in Mexico and Colombia, and we are in discussion with partners Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime and International Catalan Institute for Peace about using their platforms to disseminate our messages to CSOs, and to build sustainable networks wit them. |
| Exploitation Route | Though the Network is ongoing, and we need to firm up our findings, we envisage they will be of value to civil society organizations considering collaboration with state agencies with a view to reducing violences, especially in contexts of non-war violences including those exacerbated by organised crime. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://cisrul.blog/civil-society-collaboration-response-crime-violence/ |
| Description | 1. Locally, our Network includes 4 teams - each including a Facilitator - in different locations in Mexico, each of which track attempts by civil society organisations to collaboration with government agencies in order to improve policies with the aim of reducing violences. The 4 Facilitators' role in the ground is primarily to track these attempts, but this research in turn can inform the organizations' attempts to collaborate. Further, they themselves play roles in the attempts in question. Though this is early stage, we can report the following initial impacts: - In Zamora, our Facilitator working with Stack identified issues with how judges referred people under trial to substance abuse clinics, including referrals to non-certified clinics. Since then, referrals to the one certified clinic have increased, though we cannot be sure this was due to our research. - In Apatzingan, after our activities there, our partner organization expressed appreciation for the value of state-civil society collaboration, and among other actions, has taken a lead in organizing the Local Participation Group which meets weekly with state officials in the local army barracks to discuss security matters. 2. Nationally, as proposed, we held a series of forums and meetings with practitioners in Mexico in August 2022. In addition, we used a grant from funds held by the University to present our findings in February 2023 to practitioners and academics in Mexico, alongside further practitioner meetings. (Several Network members were funded to participate in these activities.) We have made available one of those presentations on YouTube. It is difficult to register the impact of these activities since they finished a week ago, but we were received by high-level officials such as a state Minister of Citizen Planning and Participation. 3. Internationally, the University of Aberdeen grant allowed us to travel in March 2023 to Colombia, a country affected by comparable levels of violence, to hold further presentations of our findings and practitioner meetings, again with several Network members. In one of the presentations, we presented in an innovative format to juxtapose government and civil society perspectives, and our presentation was followed by an artistic intervention to help the audience to engage with the idea of collaboration. Again, it is too early to report the impact of these ongoing activities. We will take advantage of the extension to complete, disseminate and ensure engagement with a range of project outputs. Having completed an extensive analytical document (40000 words) we now propose to produce an executive summary for circulation, prior to developing a range of materials targeted at different audiences, including via our website. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Energy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal,Policy & public services |
| Description | AHRC Research Network |
| Amount | £53,314 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2022 |
| End | 01/2023 |
| Description | How to achieve collaboration between organizations and institutions to improve the design and implementation of multi-sectoral policies to reduce violences |
| Amount | £18,453 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | RG16701-12 |
| Organisation | University of Aberdeen |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2023 |
| End | 03/2023 |
| Description | Public event series on Civil Society-State Collaboration to Reduce Violences |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | We conducted a series of public events and private meetings in August 2022 and February 2023 in Mexico, and in March 2023 in Colombia (ongoing), to present findings of our 2016-19 ESRC project and our current 2022-23 AHRC Research Network (which built on the ESRC project among others). The events and meetings were with primarily civil society organisations and state officials. The AHRC Research Network is still ongoing, but event and meeting participants have indicated informally that they were influenced by discussion of our findings, specifically with regard to the value of civil society-state partnerships to reduce violences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023 |
| URL | https://cisrul.blog/civil-society-collaboration-response-crime-violence/ |