Repatriation and Reintegration of Displaced

From 2010 to 2012, Search For Common Ground, with support from UNICEF, conducted a project to assist the local Nepalese NGO leadership and staff in shaping capacity building on youth and peacebuilding. As a component of a reintegration and rehabilitation program, the ‘Capacity Building in Youth and Peacebuilding’ project was evaluated using various methods of Focused Group Discussions (FGDs), survey, interviews, and project reports to assess the impact on capacity building and training in Nepal....

The statistics on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are grim. Recent studies have estimated that women are raped at a rate of nearly one per minute. Although Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) has received significant attention, and much is being done in response, the problem persists....

This article describes a participative ranking methodology for identifying local understanding of reintegration and adjustment of potential value in programme planning and evaluation. It was applied in the context of girls formerly associated with fighting forces in Sierra Leone....

People have fought over land since the beginning of recorded history. Population growth and environmental stresses have exacerbated the perception of land as a dwindling resource, tightening the connection between land and violent conflict. Land can also be a critical element in peace-building and economic reconstruction in post-conflict situations. This toolkit provides a practical introduction to the relationship between land and violent conflict, whether we are talking about how land issues function as causal or aggravating factor s in conflict, or whether we are thinking about land issues that arise in post-conflict settings. ...

The Children’s Voices, a UNICEF co-funded project, was established at the first national-level DDR working group, the Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups (CAAFAG) Working Group. The project aimed to provide a platform for children and youth’s voices in the transition to peace so as to prevent the further manipulation of youth to violence....

It was decided by Search for Common Ground in April 2004 to evaluate “Nashe Maalo”, one of its larger projects in Macedonia. Nashe Maalo (“our neighbourhood”, referred to generally as NM) is a television series aimed at promoting inter-cultural understanding among children with a view to conflict transformation....

Search for Common Ground’s refugee programming in the DRC underwent two evaluations in 2008: an internal evaluation with support from the United States Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration in August and September 2008; and an external evaluation by UNHCR in September and October 2008. The objective of these evaluations was to assess the effectiveness of SFCG’s programming in fostering peaceful repatriation, including whether it is culturally appropriate for the region and effective in shifting behavioural norms in the short-term. Primarily, the studies attempted to evaluate the success of radio programming and theatrical performances in their capacity to: Provide information to refugees, returnees and residents about the repatriation process to dispel rumours and enable informed decisions to be made Foster dialogue and collaborative approaches to conflict between returnees and residents in the zones of return. It should be noted that data is subject to the historical moment and specific context of survey sites....

Mercy Corps implemented the two-year, $2. 5 million, Governance Promotion through Conflict Management in Iraq (GPCMI) program from January 2009 through the end of December 2010. Funded by a generous grant from the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the United States Department of State, the goal of the program was to help influential Iraqi leaders from all 18 governorates gain the tools, skills, and support they needed to address a wide range of tensions and conflicts that – if left unaddressed – could have escalated to wider violence and threatened to derail Iraq’s fragile transition to peace and democracy. To support this goal, the program: 1) provided Iraqi leaders at the local and provincial level with conflict management and negotiation tools and skills; 2) worked with these leaders to use their new skills to resolve concrete disputes in their communities; and 3) created a nation-wide network of Iraqi conflict management and negotiation practitioners who would continue this work into the future. ...

As a response to the effects of the post-election violence in Kenya in December 2007, Search for Common Ground (SFCG) and Media Focus on Africa (MFA) developed and produced a TV and radio drama, The Team – an episodic series which asks a central question: can Kenyans find ways to put the past behind them in order to have a better future? The series presents a microcosm of Kenyan society in which members of a fictional football team, who come from different ethnic groups and social classes, are challenged to overcome their fears and biases so that they can see one another as individuals not as members of “the other.” The central metaphor for the players – and for Kenya – is: If they do not cooperate, they will not score goals, and they will lose....

In 2007, Search for Common Ground (SFCG), with financial support from the United States Department of State: Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), launched the twelve-month project, Mass Information In Support of Congolese and Burundian Refugees....

This external evaluation was conducted in October 2010 at the end of the two-year “Promoting locally-driven transformation and collaborative action in Burundi” project funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The project aimed to promote constructive political dialogue between and among parliamentarians and their constituents on issues of local and national concern, and foster dialogue and collaborative approaches to conflict between returnees and residents in return zones....