New community-informed approaches to humanitarian protection and restraint The number of armed conflicts around the world, as well as the number of parties fighting in these conflicts, has risen significantly between 2001 and 2016. We therefore need to better understand the key factors at the community level that promote restraint and de-escalation in violent environments. Former studies show the value of understanding how a culture of restraint is socialised within a community. However, not much is known about the role that communities play in influencing the behaviour of armed groups. Current approaches to humanitarian protection are rooted in formalised legalistic approaches. However, these approaches have limits in contexts where global humanitarian norms are contested or ignored on the ground. A new bottom-up approach to humanitarian protection is needed and this research seeks to identify successful examples of local protection measures and generate methods for communicating these to similar communities experiencing violence and to aid agencies.

This project will work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where human rights abuses are widespread, including extremely high levels of sexual violence. Whilst the resolution of the conflict on a national and regional level is clearly the long-term solution, in the meantime aid agencies, local religious institutions and civil society groups struggle to protect civilians. This research aims to provide new understandings and tools to both communities and aid providers to reinforce protective measures. By identifying where such local measures have worked, and under what circumstances, the research will provide an evidence base for policy and practice.
Our consortium is formed of the Institute of Development Studies; two partner organisations in DRC - the Centre d'etude et de promotion en interventions socio-economiques (CEPRISE) and Institut National des Arts (INA); and Action Aid. We are ideally placed to undertake this research, bringing together deep experience of participatory methods, indigenous knowledge, gender and bottom-up approaches to humanitarianism, with storytelling through drama, music and literature.

Through identifying, locating, documenting and understanding where local protective measures have worked; we aim to help aid agencies and policy makers find appropriate ways to support these efforts and possibly find ways to replicate them. Our objectives are:

1. To generate evidence on whether local, community-based protection measures work, and in what circumstances.
2. To generate evidence on whether local, community-based measures to prevent or reduce sexual violence work and in what circumstances.
3. To generate evidence on differing local and community-based attitudes to victims of sexual violence, and under what circumstances these allow for rehabilitation.
4. To develop innovative local communication methods for transferring knowledge of successful protective measures.
5. To generate programmatic lessons for aid agencies so that they can adapt protection programmes to support local measures.
6. To generate policy lessons for aid agencies such that systemic approaches to protection can incorporate and support local action.

This research aims to have conceptual impact and provide new understandings and tools to both communities and aid providers to reinforce protective measures. By identifying where such local measures have worked, and under what circumstances, the research will provide an evidence base for policy and practice. Further, the research will have impact as it builds networks and connectivity; it will design, with communities, ways of communicating these successes so they can be adapted and replicated in other contexts. The project has a strong intellectual core, but also addresses an important policy and practical question, as the global humanitarian community have struggled to understand community level dynamics and factor them into their programmes. Research and development activity contributing to the UK’s strategy to address key development challenges.