unconditional cash transfer program triggered multifaceted conflicts which were accompanied by social unrest. While the government failed to reduce resultant conflicts, community leaders were able to minimize conflicts through informal channels of redistribution (Sumarto, 2020).

# 3.2. BRIDGING: INTER-COMMUNITY RELATIONS

<mark>Establishing bridges across communities and promoting more positive engagement with “out-groups” can be an important part of promoting social cohesion in FCV settings. Several evaluations have reviewed interventions that target inter-community relations and either implement them independently or in conjunction with other social programs. We draw on insights from a systematic review of interventions targeting intercommunity relations and a</mark> dditionally identify ten studies that assess similar interventions as well as traditional economic support interventions that also measured impacts on inter-group cohesion. These additional studies largely encompass research published after the systematic review, while others are included for measuring impacts on social cohesion even if fostering cohesion was not their principal objective, such as economic support programs.

The International Initiative on Impact Evaluation (3ie) in 2021 published a systematic evidence review <mark>on w</mark> hat works to improve inter-group relationships across 24 studies, assessing 31 interventions (Sonnenfeld et al., 2021). The review identified five key types of interventions–school-based peace education interventions; collaborative contact<sup>11</sup> interventions; intergroup dialogue interventions; workshop-based peace education with intergroup contact and economic support; and media for peace interventions. Overall, the review found small but statistically significant positive impacts across intervention types and measures of social cohesion, with programs that accurately identified local bottlenecks to intergroup social cohesion having larger and more positive effects.

The review found (i) largely positive impacts in school-based peacebuilding and interventions that bundled inter-group facilitated contact with economic support, (ii) mixed impacts in interventions focused on collaborative contact and media promoting peace, and (iii) negative or adverse effects in interventions promoting controlled inter-group dialogue. School-based peacebuilding<sup>12</sup> was found to improve inter-group social cohesion by inducing more pro-social behaviors, and had small positive effects on trust, willingness to participate and willingness to help, as well as weakly positive effects on acceptance of diversity. The review looked at five studies evaluating bundled interventions combining workshop-based peace education interventions with intergroup contact and economic support and found a positive impact on trust, and imprecise but positive impacts on sense of belonging and willingness to participate.<sup>13</sup> Collaborative contact was

> 11 Collaborative contact interventions involve bringing different groups to work together on shared projects and emphasize influencing social cohesion through improving relations between groups by working together.

> 12 For example, Alan, Baysan, Gumren, Kubliay (2020) evaluated the impact of a perspective taking curriculum implemented over a year in elementary schools in Türkiye where 18 percent of the students were refugees and found that the program significantly lowered peer violence and victimization on school grounds, reduced social exclusion and ethnic segregation and enhanced prosocial behaviors such as trust, reciprocity, and altruism.

> 13For example, Dawop et al. (2019) assessed the Mercy Corps CONCUR program that trained community leaders in conflict resolution combined with economic support for four years in Nigeria’s middle belt, with treated communities reporting reduced tensions and improved economic mobility.

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