A Micro-Level Analysis of Violent Conflict Synthesis and Reflections

1. A Micro-Level Analysis of Violent Conflict Synthesis and Reflections Patricia Justino Director, MICROCON IDS, 30 June 2011 www.microconflict.eu Twitter: @microconflict #microconflict

2. Key lessons • Ordinary people matter • People are more than victims: the importance of agency • People build resilience in the face of conflict • It is about understanding the conflict • Length and structure of conflict • Nature of violence • Institutional change • Agency and resilience shape conflict processes and outcomes

3. MICROCON

4. Main purpose • Advance the field of conflict analysis through micro level approach • understand individual and group interactions leading to and resulting from violent conflicts (full conflict cycle) • violent conflicts: systematic breakdown of the social contract resulting from and/or leading to changes in social norms, which involve mass violence instigated through collective action • Better informed domestic, regional and international conflict policy – placing individuals and groups at the centre of interventions

5. MICROCON Consortium

6. Evidence and data New Data Existing Data

7. Facts and motivations • Until recently conflict and violence not mainstreamed in development policy • Concern with state security and state capacity • What about the people? • 1.5 billion people affected by conflict and violence • One third of those living in extreme poverty • Over 1/2 of all child mortality in the world • Over 40% of all out of school children • No conflict-affected country will achieve the MDGs • Limited knowledge and evidence of how people live in contexts of violent conflict

8. Knowledge gaps  At a fundamental level, conflict originates from people’s behaviourand how they interact with society and their environment • Who are the people affected by violent conflict? • How do they live? • What do they do to secure lives and livelihoods? What options do they have? What choices do they make? • Why are they get affected by violence? In what way? How does violence change options and choices? • Are they part of the conflict? What led them into it?

9. What have we learned?

10. Framework People

11. Ordinary people matter • Important macro causes of violent conflict • military, financial, technological, ideological beliefs, mobilisation capacity, strength of state presence • Processes of violent conflict also related to: • what happens to people during violent conflicts • what people do in areas of violence – adapt to secure lives and livelihoods  micro foundations of violent conflict

12. Adaptation affects conflict • Welfare effects: • Direct: killings, injuries, disability, assets, displacement • Indirect: • local institutions: markets, social relations, political institutions • national economy: economic growth, distribution • But people adapt to survive • take on available opportunities • adapt forms of livelihoods to survival needs • join in informal exchange and employment markets • form social and political alliances • negotiate with local actors • Adaptation shapes and is shaped by conflict outcomes and processes

13. It is about understanding the conflict

14. The conflict • People’s behaviour, choices, attitudes and preferences shape conflict processes on the ground • Where to fight, with whom, for how long • Conflict is not a shock • Lasts across generations and people adapt accordingly • Long-term legacies • Some negative; some positive • Conflict alters people’s behaviour, choices, attitudes and preferences • Transformation and change; not short-term effects

15. The violence • Contexts where conflict managed through violent means • People’s behaviour, choices, attitudes and preferences enable (or constrain) strategic use of violence • Beyond destruction: violence used to force transformation • some of it may create more certain and secure environments • Interactions between types of violence: • violent riots, organised crime, communal violence, domestic violence armed fighting

16. Institutional transformation • People resort to local institutions to protect economic status and lives • Policy focus on the importance of building institutions – but what institutions and how? • Focus still on solving violent conflict through peace agreements between selected leaders, followed by the panacea of DDR, SSR, elections • What about the mechanisms that govern the effective implementation of these policies on the ground? • Social interactions and local governance structures

17. Social interactions • Social norms of trust and cooperation • Development and peace-building focus on community-level • Support new investments (physical and human capital) • DDR and reconstruction programmes? • Forms of social organisation • Management of property rights • Dispute resolution over land and common resources • Distribution of public goods and common resources • Regulation of access to public goods, basic services and markets

18. Local governance • Close link between violent conflict and the absence of the state • Absence of state does not mean absence of governance – local order determined by who holds the gun • These institutions can be persistent and efficient – provision of basic sense of security • Long term process: no short answers to peace and state-building • change behaviour, norms and organisations

19. From research to policy

20. How to improve conflict policy • Defusing mechanisms: entry points to break long-term negative legacies and build on positive changes This allows: • Development policies: incentives to halt use of violence as strategy to influence allocation of power • Institution building: what institutions and how?

21. Defusing mechanisms • Key channels linking interventions and outcomes • Exercise of agency in conflict settings (not always positive) • Structure of the conflict • Close links between people and conflict processes Which entry points? • Development: focus on supporting resilience • It is not enough to just look at the ‘poor’; vulnerable to violence • Violence and conflict as constant factors in people’s lives • Vulnerability is everywhere; not just among those that we can see • Institutions: engagement with new/emerging power structures • New development actors? From ordinary people to non-state armed actors

22. Development policies • Current international policy: (our) security as major goal; development aid as means to support stability • Beyond ‘hearts and minds’: (re)establish social contract (broken or contested, sometimes for good reasons) • It is about helping to provide opportunities and equality • Development should be priority in itself • Security is priority for people but for whom, how and what the trade-offs • Health, education and economic security beyond emergency aid • If states does not provide then someone else will • Not just aid: building structures and guaranteeing equitable access to them • Humanitarian aid useful but limited to short-term intervention

23. Building institutions • Need to get institutions right: Which institutions? How? • More attention paid to the other side of the story – what do we do about the institutions that emerge from conflict? • Violence instrumental role beyond destruction • Emergence of social and political order • Implications: • Explaining why conflict persists, mutates, and how peace may emerge • Survival and security of ordinary people • Negotiate with, engage and understand complex distributions of power within populations in conflict-affected contexts

24. Looking ahead

25. Ongoing/Recent Conflicts Recent Internal Conflicts / Uprisings Ongoing Internal Conflicts Intergroup Violence Recent Revolts / Major Protests Drug Related / Gang Violence