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Paper short abstract

In the face of worsening insecurity especially amongst Nigeria's rural farming communities, there has been a renewed interest in establishing State Police. Against this backdrop, this study sought the imaginations of locals on the architecture of the touted State Police.

Paper long abstract

One of the unresolved issues surrounding the structure of the Nigerian State, the question of effective policing remains paramount, particularly given the nation's size, heterogeneity, and complex threat profile. This debate has gained unprecedented urgency in the Fourth Republic, as multidimensional internal security threats have overwhelmed the Nigeria Police Force—the statutory first-line responders. Amid escalating insecurity in Southwest Nigeria and the polarized debate over State Police, this study conceptualizes policing as a public service. It posits that local communities, as the primary 'consumers' of security, should influence its architectural design. Consequently, this research seeks to unearth organic perspectives on the desirability and implementation of State policing across the Southwest.

Keywords: Local, Imagination, Architecture, State-Policing & Nigeria

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Informal community actors are reshaping counter-terrorism responses. In border communities in northern Ghana, Chiefs, faith-based organisations, and community groups demonstrate that security can be co-produced from below. pointing to an alternative security paradigm.

Paper long abstract

This study explores the role of soft power strategies in mitigating terrorism threats in Ghana through the lens of community agency. The study argues that conventional top-down security and development paradigms are inadequate for addressing the complex sociopolitical drivers of violent extremism. Instead, it emphasises how indigenous institutions, and informal community actors are reshaping counter-terrorism responses by offering grounded, culturally resonant alternatives. Drawing on the soft power theory and the Human Security framework, the research employs a qualitative case study design to investigate how non-military tools embody forms of local agency against violent extremisms and enhance resilience. Preliminary findings reveal that within Ghana, soft power strategies increasingly rely on bottom-up processes that elevate communal voices, indigenous knowledge, and informal governance networks. Chiefs, faith-based organisations, and community groups not only complement state efforts but also critique and transform dominant policy narratives by demonstrating that security can be co-produced from below. The study points to an alternative security paradigm that centers on community agency, leverages indigenous problem-solving mechanisms, and embraces approaches beyond state-centric frameworks. Realising this vision, however, demands deliberate localisation of best practices, shared ownership among citizens and state institutions, and strategic coordination to ensure that grassroots innovations meaningfully influence national policy and practice.

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This paper analyses how informal and interlocking security networks shape local responses to insecurity in northern Nigeria. It shows how traditional and religious leaders and community groups engage in non-state policing practices that both complement state security and reveal important limitations

Paper long abstract

Northern Nigeria has been profoundly affected by ever-evolving threats, ranging from the activities of insurgents and bandits to other criminal groups. These dynamics have disrupted peace, security and development, while undermining social cohesion. While existing research has highlighted the importance of examining local institutions and actors (Van Metre and Scherer, 2023; Walch, 2022; Kaplan, 2017), few studies have provided an in-depth context-specific analysis of how these actors understand and perceive their role in building peace. This paper examines how informal and interlocking security networks function as bottom-up approaches to building peace in northern Nigeria. Drawing on qualitative interviews, it shows that traditional and religious leaders, alongside neighbourhood watches, vigilante groups, and security committees, engage in local initiatives that combine vigilance, intelligence-sharing, and coordination alongside formal state security actors. These strategies exemplify forms of non-state policing and constructive partnership, through which local actors frequently complement state security provision. However, important limitation arises, including the potential for overreach, such as the targeting marginalised or vulnerable groups. Despite these risks, local actors frame these responses as anticipatory, contextually embedded, and oriented towards mitigating specific threats, including petty crime, violent phone snatching, and potential insurgent activity. Conceptually, the paper situates informal security networks as relational and socially embedded resilience practices that mobilise pre-existing social actors to sustain peace and contributes to debates on bottom-up approaches to peacebuilding by highlighting both their potential and limits in conflict-prone settings.

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Why do unarmed, Indigenous and Black communities secure land redistribution during civil war? I argue that, amid peace negotiations, non-violent civilians reconfigure land ownership by combining mobilization strength with political incorporation. I conduct a case study of 1991-2002 Colombia.

Paper long abstract

Why do unarmed, Indigenous and Black communities secure land redistribution during civil war? I argue that, amid peace negotiations, non-violent civilians reconfigure land ownership by combining mobilization strength with political incorporation. Facing a political opening, rural movements grow in mobilization capacity and gain recognition as legitimate actors with new rights and state access. Mobilizing on the ground, rural movements activate land claims, while they shape policymaking from within state institutions after political incorporation. I test this argument through the case of Colombia between 1991 and 2002—a least likely case—using a mixed-methods design integrating process tracing with regression models. I show that Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities secured collective property rights in municipalities where they mobilized more, while their leaders influenced land policy by occupying national bureaucratic posts. My findings underscore how marginalized actors extend political incorporation into economic redistribution, advancing scholarship on ethnic politics, civil war, and inequality.

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This paper shows how liberal peacebuilding reforms in Pakistan’s former FATA, were reshaped by local elites. Drawing on ethnography, it argues reforms were used through patronage to sustain exclusionary politics, challenging liberal peace and attempts to romanticize “the local.”

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how internationally driven liberal peacebuilding reforms, intended to address security and governance in Pakistan’s former FATA—mainly via the Political Parties Act to counter militant influence—were interpreted and appropriated by new local political elites. Drawing on political settlement theory and ethnographic fieldwork, the study shows that new actors instrumentalized reforms through patronage, networks, and clientelism, producing exclusionary political marketplaces. The paper challenges liberal peacebuilding by exposing the limits of externally imposed reforms. It also challenges post-liberal peace by contesting romantic claims that ‘the local’ is participatory or emancipatory, showing instead that it often reproduces exclusionary politics.

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Farmer–herder conflicts in Nigeria reveal that community-led conflict resolution systems can grow stronger under stress. This study finds that antifragility depends on cultural legitimacy, adaptive learning, and decentralised authority, offering a path beyond top-down solutions.

Paper long abstract

Farmer–herder conflicts in Nigeria have grown markedly more frequent, deadly, and politically charged over the past two decades. While official responses have often faltered due to limited local legitimacy and inflexible structures, community-led conflict resolution instruments (CL-CRIs), have remained central to managing tensions. This article investigates antifragility—a term coined by Taleb (2012) to describe systems that strengthen through exposure to stress.

Drawing on an exploratory design and qualitative secondary sources, including NGO reports, peace committee records, and peer-reviewed research from Plateau, Kaduna, and Ogun States, the study applies a six-part antifragility framework: adaptation through learning, legitimacy through local compliance, innovation and hybridity, institutional durability, social interdependence, and the conversion of shocks into structural strength. Findings reveal that Kaduna demonstrates a relatively advanced antifragile peace architecture, shaped by layered governance, hybrid legitimacy, and embedded procedural learning. Plateau shows partial antifragility, with adaptive rule-making offset by fragile leadership transitions and political interference. Ogun displays early-stage antifragility, especially in its use of digital platforms, market-based interdependence, and swift institutional improvisation during fresh outbreaks of violence.

These Nigerian cases are placed in conversation with global community justice models, including Kenya’s Wajir Peace and Development Committee, Somaliland’s guurti, Rwanda’s gacaca courts, the Bougainville reconciliation process, and Colombia’s community action boards. The analysis identifies three core enablers of antifragility in CL-CRIs: embedded cultural legitimacy, dynamic learning systems, and decentralised authority. The article concludes that long-term resolution of farmer–herder violence will depend less on hierarchical state intervention and more on empowering adaptive, locally rooted peace infrastructures.

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The complex relationship between pastoralists and farmers in Nigeria has intensified due to shifting migration patterns and evolving policies such as open grazing prohibitions. This study thus advocates for the cultivation of improved fodder that contextualises local solutions.

Paper long abstract

Pastoralist-Farmer relationships have been exacerbated by migration patterns, competition over land and water resources, and evolving policies such as open grazing prohibition; while these dynamics have led to significant socio-economic challenges, including resource depletion and environmental insecurity. While previous studies have highlighted political and legislative drivers, existing interventions overwhelmingly employ top-down strategies that overlook the nuanced perspectives and voices of those directly affected by the crisis. This study thus suggests the implementation of a bottom-up participatory approach that actively involves farmers, herders, extension agents, and government representatives to grow short-cycle nutritious grasses for all year-round fodder supply for the cattle. The cultivation of fodder offers a pathway to constant availability of the scarce resource which is the major driver of the conflict ab-initio. This collaboration of the locals will help to develop sustainable, equitable, and culturally sensitive framework for conflict resolution- moving beyond narratives shaped solely by media or policy. This paper envisaged that local actors and extension agents as agents of change can help to strengthen and transform livelihoods, foster peaceful coexistence and enhance the adaptive resilience of both herding and farming communities.

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Despite repeated failures of top-down post-conflict interventions, Rohingya survivors demonstrate how grassroots activism fosters justice and peace. Drawing on fieldwork in Bangladeshi camps, this article examines bottom-up participation, its transformative potential, and its challenges.

Paper long abstract

Over 40 percent of post-conflict societies return to conflict within a span of five years. Despite substantial investment in ‘top-down’ blueprints, projects and mechanisms, the most common outcome of a civil war is another war. Its been increasingly suggested that the issue of bottom up approach of survivors’ participation needs to put on highest priority to fight against impunity and sustain peace in any post conflict society. Especially for a displaced population like Rohingya community, movements and activism from grass root level is imperative in absence of any ongoing formal justice initiative. This local ownership of conflict transformation is a ‘sensitive’ and ‘overlooked’ issue has also been recently recognized in the UN Secretary-General’s Report on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice suggesting a need for respect and support for local leadership to sustainable reformation. The reason is, local responses have tended only to be implemented in a vague, weak and ad hoc manner. This article aspires to see the potential of unique, bottom-up participatory approaches of Rohingya displacees through awareness, education and community involvement. In my field work in last December in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, I have experienced their immense empowerment to close the justice gaps both from individual and collective level. They are involved with various grassroots movements like documentation, education and awareness on various human rights issues, cultural activities and social media activism which are enabling them to tell their own stories and to ensure any further oppression against them.

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Smallholder farmers in the conflict-affected areas of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARRM) in the Philippines have learned photovoice as means to understand their own ecological environment and adaptive practices from the effects of climate change.

Paper long abstract

It is a common view that communities in post-conflict context face a huge challenge in capacitating individuals and groups to establish systems and structures that would allow them to access government services. In this article, we show that smallholder farmers of Cotabato City in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARRM) in the Philippines have learned the critical importance of collective participatory processes using photovoice as means to understand their own ecological environment and adaptive practices, particularly when asked about the future of their livelihood with their farmlands being constantly flooded from the effects of climate change. We explain that communities strengthen their awareness, agency and collective participation when their lived realities become shared sensing processes using visual documents that reflect on their landscapes, flood exposure, livelihood challenges, and coping strategies. We argue that collective meaning-making using an array of participatory methods that includes photovoice are likely to build community capacity to demand for actionable and relevant interventions from power bearers in the agricultural sector. In post-conflict contexts, so much demand and input conditions are missed when programs are delivered for efficiency purposes to avoid pockets of discontent. The images captured by farmers served as the visual narratives that enabled them to articulate systemic root causes of their farming issues and strengthened their confidence to identify priorities and engage government as co-designers of agricultural programs. In doing so, it challenges technocratic, top-down models, and offers a model of governance that centers ecological justice, climate resilience development, and local ownership.

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An international collaboration to promote grassroots women’s participation and leadership in conflict contexts: Can a focus on equitable partnership working enhance the agency of ‘the locals’?

Paper long abstract

The drive for ‘localisation’ in the humanitarian sector has existed for decades, with recent processes such as the 2016 Grand Bargain promoting ‘localisation’ and ‘participation’ to address the humanitarian funding gap and the 2023 UNOCHA Flagship Initiative calling for ‘systemic and participatory community engagement’ and ‘decentralized area-based coordination’ (i.e. localisation) to redesign humanitarian action. Yet, little authentic change in how humanitarian organisations engage local communities is demonstrable. Now, with global aid budgets slashed and a humanitarian reset on the horizon, there is still more drive towards localisation. In this paper, we reflect on efforts towards equitable partnership across a multi-country programme, whether this can increase local agency, and how different actors’ conceptualisation and rationale of ‘local agency’ shapes peace and development practices.

This paper analyses efforts to promote women’s participation and leadership in conflict and crisis-affected settings (Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia and Ukraine). Across these four contexts, a common methodology is used with local women’s groups to support their reflection, organising and action. This methodology, rooted in participatory action research, aims to build participants’ confidence and agency - ‘power within, power with, and power to’ (Veneklasen & Miller 2007, Batliwala 2021). We reflect on the use of a co-designed partnership rubric to explore and respond to the challenges of navigating power dynamics across a multi-partner programme, and its value as a tool for amplifying local perspectives and increasing local agency.

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Communities in Plateau and Southern Kaduna are quietly sustaining peace despite violence and uncertainty. This paper examines how local actors use everyday agency to mediate conflict, adapt livelihoods, and negotiate development pathways in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

Paper long abstract

Nigeria’s Middle Belt has long experienced complex patterns of communal violence, yet communities in Plateau and Southern Kaduna continue to demonstrate strong forms of local agency that sustain everyday peace and development. This paper explores how local actors shape their futures amid insecurity, climate pressures, and limited state capacity.

Drawing on qualitative insights from peace committees, traditional institutions, youth groups, women’s networks, and faith-based mediators, the paper examines how communities build and maintain local infrastructures of peace. These include inter-group dialogue platforms, informal early-warning systems, collective livelihood adaptation, and community-driven mechanisms for managing land, identity, and mobility pressures.

The analysis draws on adaptive peacebuilding and everyday peace perspectives to understand how these practices emerge, evolve, and interact with wider political and institutional dynamics. The paper also interrogates how local agency is sometimes constrained or reshaped by elite interests, security actors, and donor interventions, especially where external support risks displacing community priorities.

By foregrounding practices from Plateau and Southern Kaduna, the paper provides grounded insights on what meaningful “local ownership” looks like in conflict-prone contexts. It concludes with reflections on how governments, donors, and national peace infrastructures can better enable community-led initiatives that advance sustainable peace and development in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.

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This paper emphasizes the need for supportive institutional frameworks, capacity building, and robust measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems.

Paper long abstract

The livestock sector in Nigeria is crucial for food security, rural livelihoods, and economic growth but faces significant environmental challenges due to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study investigates how carbon credits can be leveraged to promote sustainable livestock farming and mitigate farmer-herder conflicts by incentivizing climate-smart practices. Through a mixed-methods approach involving policy reviews, stakeholder interviews, and case studies from Nigeria and West Africa, the research highlights the potential economic and ecological benefits of carbon markets. It emphasizes the need for supportive institutional frameworks, capacity building, and robust measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems. The paper recommends integrating carbon credit mechanisms into existing agricultural development programs to advance sustainable livestock production and reduce resource-based conflicts.