The Platform for Dialogue and Peace (P4DP) convenes a stakeholder forum on resilience in Monrovia

On Friday November 27, the Platform for Dialogue and Peace (P4DP) hosted a validation forum in Monrovia to present the recommendations of the National Working Group (NWG) on Resilience, an initiative that began in June, following on from nationwide consultations on resilience.

P4DP has been working alongside Interpeace as part of the Frameworks for Assessing Resilience (FAR) programme to document the strengths that Liberians possess. This is a key step towards understanding the strategies that exist within Liberian society to resolve conflicts peacefully.

The 2014 Ebola virus epidemic has proven to be a real test of Liberian society’s resilience. The epidemic claimed thousands of lives and came only a decade after the 2003 Peace Accords ended a protracted period of civil war. The health crisis affected Liberia’s social fabric, and put a strain on already weak state-society relationships. However, it should be noted that of the three most affected countries in West Africa, Liberia was the first to be declared Ebola-free even if a small number of new cases have re-appeared since.

To understand what allows Liberians to face up to adversity of this kind, and transform it into an opportunity to build peace, P4DP undertook eight months of intensive field research and engaged over 1,100 Liberians from all 15 counties and across all sectors of society. The findings were documented in a Country Note that served as the basis for the National Working Group, whose mandate was to develop strategies and policy recommendations to strengthen resilience by building upon factors identified in the consultation phase.

More than 65 people attended the validation forum including county representatives who had participated in the initial consultations, as well as members of civil society organisations and government institutions based in Monrovia. Over the course of the one day workshop, participants had the opportunity to hear both the key findings of the consultation and the principal recommendations that the National Working Group developed. Participants were given the opportunity to share their thoughts on the recommendations during discussion groups.

“These recommendations are practical structures that we can build upon to take Liberia to the next level,” Marie Kolenky, a member of the Working Group and deputy director of the Liberia Opportunity Industrialization Center (LOIC), noted on behalf of the NWG.

Stakeholders present at the workshop prioritized the following recommendations, which they believed would best strengthen the resilience of Liberians:

Support to women’s livelihood and participation in economic activities through affirmative actions and targeted programmes that build upon existing women solidarity initiatives. Examples include:
1. Strengthening support to cross border women traders to cope with and overcome harassment,
2. Encouraging community dialogues,
3. Implementing cash transfer programmes for the most vulnerable women, and
4. Creating awareness around the inheritance law and advocating for harmonization between customary and statutory marriage laws
Build on the findings of the research to establish an ‘architecture for resilience’ along the lines of the ‘architecture for peace’ dialogue mechanism that mediates and supports peaceful resolution of community disputes. This would be especially relevant to pervasive issues of Sexual and Gender Based violence and land/property disputes that exist throughout the country and tend to manifest at the local, community level. The coping mechanism, and initiatives to transform these different forms of violence, and which have been identified over the course of this research, could serve as the basis for the dialogue and dispute resolution processes and should engage traditional leaders and chiefs, youth, women and people with disabilities.
Continue to provide and strengthen empowerment programmes for youths whilst also creating economic opportunities for them. Disenfranchised youth represent a big threat to the stability of the country and are easily drawn into criminal networks or engage in petty crimes when they are economically, socially and politically excluded. Raising political awareness on this issue is also necessary.

For James S. Shilue, the executive director of P4DP, the resilience orientation of this programme highlights the importance of inclusion and collaboration between different sectors of society. He said that going forward it will be important when implementing each of these recommendations that “we adopt a tripartite approach which engages state actors, prioritizes community involvement and draws on local and international civil society.”

Documenting the resilience of Liberians in the face of threats to peace and the 2014 Ebola Crisis

L' Platform for Dialogue and Peace (P4DP), in partnership with Interpeace, has produced an extensive report which documents the ways in which individuals, families, communities, institutions as well as the government, are coping with, adapting to, or in some instances even transforming the challenges to peace into creative and innovative opportunities. In order to do so, P4DP consulted over 1,100 Liberians across all fifteen counties of Liberia through focus group discussions and interviews. This research took place against the backdrop of the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa and as such explores the ways in which such a humanitarian catastrophe interacted with longer-term drivers of conflict that persist despite over a decade of official peace since the end of the civil war.

The report is part of Interpeace’s Frameworks for Assessing Resilience (FAR), a SIDA funded project that is exploring approaches to assessing resilience for peace through participatory research in three pilot countries: Liberia, Guatemala and Timor-Leste. In addition to the consultation, P4DP facilitated a 5 month long stakeholder dialogue process convening representatives from different sectors of society in order to develop policy recommendations for strengthening resilience for peace in Liberia. These recommendations will be presented at a stakeholder forum in Monrovia on November 27th 2015.

The full report can be found Cliquez ici, and the executive summary of the report is also available.

FAR Country Note Liberia

This study reviews the most pressing challenges to peace in Liberia today and documents the ways in which individuals, families, communities, institutions as well as the government, are coping with, adapting to, or in some instances even transforming these challenges into creative and innovative opportunities.

Recognizing the resilience of Liberians

-The Platform for Dialogue and Peace (P4DP) held a Validation Forum to discuss how the existing strengths in Liberian society can contribute to peacebuilding programmes and policies-

"When you have a society that has the conditions to create the vision, then you can move forward in the face of the threats."

Recently, the Platform for Dialogue and Peace (P4DP), Interpeace's partner organization in Liberia, organized a one day Validation Forum on the theme of Resilience for Peacebuilding. This event was the culmination of eight months of participatory research conducted throughout the country and is part of Interpeace's Frameworks for Assessing Resilience (FAR) project. P4DP documented the resilience mechanisms that Liberians draw on in order to overcome and prevent violent conflict and remain united.

The Validation Forum brought together participants from different sectors of society – representatives from various ministries, members of the House of Representatives, traditional chiefs, religious leaders, civil society organizations as well as participants from the fifteen counties of Liberia. This diverse audience, deliberately convened to be representative of Liberian society, was asked to validate the findings presented during the event. There was a strong appreciation and affirmation of the research by participants, including by Hon. Morris Dukuly, Minister for Internal Affairs who said that this research resonated because it acknowledged "the difficult past of Liberians coupled with their determination to grapple with their realities and that it cannot be over emphasized that they are resilient people."

James Suah Shilue, Executive Director of P4DP added that this research on resilience was a good fit with the participatory research methods that the organization has adhered to since its inception: "Researchers become students of the participants consulted.," The P4DP researchers learn from fellow Liberians what capacities and strategies they possess. "We were interested in finding out what has enabled us to overcome years of conflict, continued hardship, and most recently, the devastating Ebola crisis." Going further, a participant, attending on behalf of the Governance Commission, added that resilience changes the perspective on peacebuilding as it helps us to "see the glass half full instead of half empty." This is important because "when you have a society that has the conditions to create the vision, then you can move forward in the face of the threats."

Graeme Simpson, Director of Interpeace USA, present at the event, noted that it was important to view resilience as "not only remedial, but also preventive; While going back to normal, bouncing back from Ebola, is in itself to be applauded, it is even more important that if Ebola struck again tomorrow, we are prepared." Echoing this concern, participants acknowledged that the consultation phase had accurately captured where the strengths of Liberians reside: in communities and traditional structures as well as innovation and perseverance of individuals. On the other hand, participants were keen to see concrete policies and actions developed that take the findings of the research into account.

In order to deepen the research and formulate policy recommendations and a programme of action to strengthen resilience against possible relapse to conflict, P4DP will now initiate a multi-stakeholder dialogue process with a select group of individuals representing different sectors of society.. Over the coming months, this working group will meet regularly and with support and facilitation from P4DP, will draw on their expertise to deepen the research on the sources of resilience identified during the consultation phase. They will develop recommendations on how these can be strengthened and harnessed to consolidate peace and enhance the capacity of Liberians to manage future shocks and mitigate fragility.

Download the Executive Summary of the findings.

Executive Summary - FAR Country Note Liberia

The Executive Summary summarizes the findings from the consultation phase of the Frameworks for Assessing Resilience project in Liberia. These results document the resilience of Liberians in the face of threats to peace.

Liberians demonstrate resilience in the face of threats to peace

On 29 April, the Platform for Dialogue and Peace (P4DP), our partner in Liberia, will convene a one day validation workshop to present the findings of its nationwide research. This research has explored the capacities and strategies for resilience that Liberians possess to overcome and prevent conflict. The work in Liberia is part of the Frameworks for Assessing Resilience (FAR) project, which is currently being piloted in Liberia, Guatemala and Timor-Leste. The project’s overall objective is to provide guidance on assessing resilience from the point of view of local actors in ways that are context specific.

The first phase of the FAR project was the consultation process, which ran from June 2014 to February 2015. Over 1,100 Liberians were consulted through focus group discussions and interviews with key stakeholders in all fifteen counties. The team consulted a diverse range of sectors of society, including local communities and authorities, policy-makers, donors and regional organizations, civil society, as well as religious, social, cultural and political institutions.

Liberians display resilience in response to drivers of conflict

The findings from the consultation phase demonstrate that Liberians are resilient in the face of three key structural drivers of violent conflict. Liberians discussed how they deal with three sources of conflict in particular: shifting gender identities and the patriarchal structure of society; increasing pressure linked to poor regulation of land; and the weakness of the state evidenced in governance failures and poor access to public goods.

In light of these challenges, Liberians turn to traditional customs and dispute resolution mechanisms or migrate to areas where there are more opportunities. Some communities have set up communal farming or village savings clubs, these are groups that farm land together and save the earnings so that they can be shared with members who are going through tough times. The organizational capacity and solidarity of communities is also leveraged to provide security such as by forming vigilante groups.

In most cases, the strategies developed enable people to cope with the immediate consequences of the above mentioned threats to peace. There were nonetheless some initiatives that had the potential to address and displace the root causes of conflict: community dialogue and media advocacy are two examples. Dialogue not only allows community members to voice their emotions and frustrations, but also actively allows them to point out governance failures, that are seen by many Liberians as a primary cause of the hardships and inequities they face. At the other end of the spectrum, the research unveiled some resilience mechanisms that have the potential to fuel conflict in the long term such as the involvement of young men in motorbike clubs. On the one hand, these clubs provide a source of income and a sense of belonging to the young people, but on the other hand many Liberians perceive these groups as dangerous as they have provoked violence and disruption in the past.

The Liberian pilot project – a unique situation

The Liberian pilot had the particularity of being conducted during the Ebola crisis. As a result, the research team used this unique situation to study how a sudden and unpredictable crisis interacts with the challenges that exist in a post-conflict environment. The Ebola crisis both magnified the threats to peace and was itself exacerbated by these underlying sources of conflict, notably the weakness of the state. The initial state response to Ebola was seen as ineffective because it did not take into consideration the impact that the crisis was having on social cohesion and trust, for example by suppressing the behavioural norms that regulated daily life. Only when it started working through community initiatives and respecting traditional norms did the Ebola response become more effective. In fact, some of these initiatives have the potential to positively impact resilience in the long term.

A Validation Forum to present the findings and prioritize entry points for the National Working Group

The Validation Forum will convene approximately 60 participants from across the country and key representatives of government, civil society, the private sector and academia. Together, they will validate the findings of the research and grant P4DP the mandate to move forward with the Frameworks for Assessing Resilience (FAR) programme in Liberia. Concretely, this will involve setting up a working group composed of national stakeholders who will extend the preliminary research. Particular attention will be given to how the previously identified resilience mechanisms can best contribute to durable peace. The working group will also make recommendations on how to strengthen these factors of resilience and propose methods to assess progress in peacebuilding.

The Frameworks for Assessing Resilience (FAR) project is made possible with the generous support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).