Communities can and do influence the behaviour of armed actors. They are highly strategic in who represents them. Close ties – including through familial, kinship, social and trade links – can provide critical entry points to initiate dialogue. Community representatives are often drawn from positions of moral respect, such as faith, spiritual and maternal authority, who can remain calm, persuasive and non-partisan.
The agency of communities in engaging with armed actors must be respected. Organisations seeking to support communities should understand existing community dynamics, approaches and mechanisms, and build from there, while recognising norms, values and traditions. Solutions cannot be externally designed or imposed, recognising that external interventions can undermine community-level efforts. Care must be taken to bring in representatives with genuine authority and influence. Inclusivity is crucial - a representative approach is not necessarily inclusive. Building trust through sustained presence is crucial, by demonstrating credibility and a non-biased position.
Humanitarian actors are often blind to the interaction of their presence with conflict dynamics and must reflect on the role they play in the political economy of South Sudan’s conflicts. Humanitarian assistance can be co-opted and do harm. If the status quo is maintained, it will continue to undermine objectives towards sustained peace. This requires systematic conflict analysis and conflict sensitive approaches throughout the life-cycle of interventions. Safe spaces for honest conversations between humanitarian and peace actors, donor states and diplomatic actors are needed. Humanitarian actors can learn from peacebuilding actors, who commonly take a nuanced approach to conflict and conflict-sensitivity analysis. This must inform adaptations and action in programming approaches and decision-making.
Facilitating community based dialogue is a critical entry point to strengthening complementary approaches between humanitarian and peacebuilding action, which can have profound outcomes to reduce or interrupt escalations of violence. It can help support the calculations that armed actors and those that support the use of violence make, and support communities to cut through power dynamics and reach outside power structures they usually interact with. Dialogue is iterative, and interventions to support it should reflect this. This requires flexibility, an ability to adapt, a readiness to accept and deal with setbacks, and even to fail. It requires patience, perseverance and a willingness to take risks.
A mindset shift is required. Humanitarian actors and those that support them must accept that peacebuilding action can and should be deployed in areas of high-intensity violence, while supporting livelihoods can be a frontline violence reduction strategy. Humanitarian actors must use their full toolbox to reduce violence, even if it means redefining the understanding and implementation of humanitarian principles. International organisations should be humble, and not assume there is a lead role for them. This requires a willingness to listen and to adapt according to community and armed actors’ suggestions. This may require a greater leadership role for local peacebuilders, with international humanitarian and peace actors supporting from behind.
There needs to be reconsideration of what constitutes success. A sole focus on top-down national-level peace processes to reduce violence and promote peace cannot be the only approach. This can and has triggered further violence and undermined progress towards lasting peace. But focusing solely on communities is not enough. By starting from communities, national and international actors can cautiously connect layers, identify and support champions for peace, and mitigate the influence of people with an interest in perpetuating violence. This means acknowledging that western notions of success may not be applicable or appropriate.
