Participatory Research for Effective Collaboration in Response to Non-War Violences

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UN Resolution A/73/338 which set up the International Year of Peace and Trust in 2021 lays an important foundation for building a 'culture of peace', recognizing that peace is not only absence of conflict but requires a positive, dynamic participatory process where dialogue is encouraged and conflicts are solved in a spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation. The proposed Network is about participatory forms of research and their capacity to build new forms of collaboration in particular contexts of chronic, non-war violences.Contexts of violence outside of war are on the rise globally and challenge assumptions that peace is the opposite of war or conflict. This is still not recognized sufficiently in the international system. The number of violent deaths outside of war has long exceeded deaths in armed conflict. And violence is recognized to have many non-lethal as well as lethal expressions.Latin America has one of the highest rates of homicides and non-lethal violences in the world, aggravated by the expansion of organized crime. Building 'dynamic participatory processes' in such contexts raises many challenges, but the academics proposing this project have been working for many years on how to enable communities and civil society groups to analyse these violences and the insecurity they live in their everyday lives, in order to develop practical propositions to address them and to then dialogue with state actors. The last few years they have focused particularly on Mexico, currently undergoing one of the most serious crises of violence in the world.Building on previous research experiences, the Network will connect research participants in communities and civil society groups in Mexico with Mexican, UK and other academics and organisations working on global violences and crime, to evaluate how participatory research processes of varied kinds can contribute to more effective collaborations with state actors aimed at reducing violences and crime. While there is ample evidence of corruption among state actors, our research has shown that others can be encouraged to engage with civil society and community groups.The Network recognizes the importance of an interdisciplinary lens, and will bring together expertise in law, history, development, human rights, religion and the arts, as well as social scientists, to engage with the Mexican community members and organisations. Spanish will be the working language, but we have partnered with academics and civil society who work in violence-torn countries beyond Latin America.The main output will be a Guide to Participatory Research for Effective Collaboration in Response to Non War Violences aimed at civil society organisations and at generating debate beyond Mexico about how to engage with communities and state actors for effective collaborations to reduce non-war violences and crime.Other Network outputs include a series of academic articles, a dataset deriving from the Mexico partnerships, and an interactive website that will host the Guide and incorporate users into a Network that will be sustained through future annual events, funded by U Aberdeen's Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law.