Affiliate & Associate

Research

Unbundling Peacebuilding: How Mediation and Community Dialogues Help to Prevent and Manage Violent Conflict in North Central Nigeria 

Executive Summary: The effects of conflict last for generations, from the untold lives lost, protracted displacements, reduced economic activity subjecting people to poverty, limited security preventing travel to school or for healthcare, and the continued trauma of living under violence and uncertainty. Consequently, both governments and donors invest in numerous types of peacebuilding interventions, hoping something will stick. While there is a growing evidence base about the effectiveness of peacebuilding interventions, this diverse set of activities are typically implemented as a bundle that attempts to address as many different types of conflict drivers and underlying causes as possible. However, this mode of implementation makes it difficult to know which parts of the bundle of peacebuilding interventions are having an impact on which outcomes. As a result, it is difficult for practitioners and policymakers to use this type of evidence to improve the effectiveness of their programs and make decisions about what types of programs should be scaled up in any given context. 

To fill this evidence gap related to the disaggregated effects of bundled peacebuilding activities, we conducted a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) on a peacebuilding program that combined two different types of peacebuilding interventions: community dialogues and mediation training for local leaders. The program, Community Initiatives to Promote Peace (CIPP), funded by USAID, has worked across six states in North Central Nigeria since 2019. The study was conducted in Benue, Kogi and Plateau states, where farmers and herders have fought for decades over scarce resources, shaping deep-seated negative narratives across this social divide. Aside from community-level mediation training and community dialogues, CIPP also implemented a range of other activities at the LGA-level, including (but not limited to) designing and airing social media campaigns and radio programming that promote peace, youth-led action research, and supporting women’s peace groups to help advance Gender, Peace, and Security aims.