Creating Safer Space: international partnership wins multi-year research grant

The grant from UKRI – AHRC/GCRF has been given to fund work with communities affected by armed conflict in order to create safer spaces to live and work for peace. The £2million project is led by Prof Berit Bliesemann de Guevara from Aberystwyth University with partners in Colombia, Kenya, South Sudan, Thailand, Myanmar and Philippines.

Every year hundreds of thousands of people are threatened by direct violence, through war, communal violence, gangs and sexually based attacks. Although there are international mechanisms setup to try and address these injustices, they are insufficient to help everyone, and most people rely on defensive approaches routed in local community and self-protection. Across this project we are studying how one of these approaches, ‘unarmed civilian protection’ (UCP), is being implemented and can be applied to a range of situations in which people want themselves and their communities to prevent and de-escalate violence.

The work of protecting your own community using nonviolence and building strong relationships, involves being present, patrolling, listening and being proactive in how to change the behaviour of armed actors to make civilians safer.

The Creating Safer Space project has just approved its first projects:

• Strengthening Local Capacities for Unarmed Civilian Protection in Uasin Gishu, Kenya
• Civilian (Self-) Protection from Violent Conflict in West Papua
• Introducing Unarmed Civilian Protection in Thai Society
• Art that Protects (Colombia)

The Creating Safer Space network offers an opportunity for new practitioner-researcher projects who can apply to us for research grants. We will fund 15 – 20 research projects to understand and support unarmed civilian protection and self-protection in the midst of violent conflict.

You can sign up to receive news from the project, and follow the research, on the website.

About Rachel Julian’s work

Professor Julian is a world expert in unarmed civilian protection. Her own research has shown that UCP is effective in saving lives and preventing displacement. She has studied the importance of including the lives of protection staff in designing programmes, listening to communities on the protection roles and tasks they undertake in Mindanao, and challenging international protection of civilians approaches to include nonviolent community and self-protection activities. 

Her research influences a lot of her teaching and students on the MA International Human Rights Practice and MA Peace and Development take a module called ‘Civilian Protection’ in which they study the many protection mechanisms in the world, including local protection.

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash