Raising Silent Voices: Harnessing local knowledge for communities' protection from violence in Myanmar

生活在暴力冲突中的平民，就像每个经历冲突的人一样，知道谁参与了冲突，知道历史使其变得更糟或减少了对他们的影响。他们拥有冲突之外的人所不具备的知识。国际机构和非政府组织的主要和平与冲突干预战略首先使用基于西方对冲突轨迹、社区复原力和建设和平的理解以及外来者理解的模型来评估冲突局势。尽管当地人可能参与其中，但他们的知识很少能为干预和支持战略提供信息。这项研究将显示将当地有争议的知识置于干预战略的中心的重要性，赋予当地人民权力并使其有可能使干预措施更有效。研究以缅甸克伦邦和孟族地区的当地冲突知识为例，培训当地研究人员使用讲故事、艺术和手工艺的方法，使当地人能够以文化上适当的方式表达和分享他们的知识，通过这种方式分享他们对冲突、暴力与和平战略的理解。它们所产生的内容将与当地伙伴现有的冲突分析相对应，以便分析主题和差距。当地伙伴是非暴力和平部队，这是一个向世界各地的地方社区提供非武装平民维持和平和保护平民的非政府组织。他们自2012年以来一直在缅甸，这项研究的结果将使他们能够更好地获取和使用关于冲突、暴力与和平的当地知识，为未来的项目选择提供信息。这项国际性和创新性的研究将通过使当地人的声音更响亮和清晰而对他们产生影响，通过潜在地使其更有效地对非暴力和平部队的干预产生影响，以及关于冲突分析的学术和政策方法、“当地”以及用于理解冲突与和平的知识类型。它跨越了和平与冲突研究和艺术学科，在方法上和我们教授冲突知识的方式上增加了内容。

Civilians living amidst violent conflict, like everyone experiencing conflict, know who is involved, the history what it makes it worse or lessens the impact on them. They have knowledge that those outside the conflict do not possess. The dominant peace and conflict intervention strategies of international agencies and NGOs begin with assessing the conflict situation using models based on western understanding of conflict trajectories, community resilience and peacebuilding, with an outsiders understanding. Although local people may be involved, their knowledge is rarely informing intervention and support strategies. This research will show the importance of placing local, contested, knowledge in the centre of intervention strategies, empowering and enabling local people and potentially making interventions more effective.The research takes a case study of local conflict knowledge in Karen and Mon areas of Myanmar, training local researchers to use storytelling, arts and craft approaches to enable local people to represent and share their knowledge in culturally appropriate ways, through which they share their understanding of the conflicts, violence and peace strategies. The content of what they produce will be mapped onto the existing conflict analysis of the local partner in order to analyse the themes and gaps.The local partner is Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO who provide unarmed civilian peacekeeping and protection of civilians to local communities around the world. They have been in Myanmar since 2012 and the results of this research will enable them to be more able to capture and use local knowledge about the conflicts, violence and peace to inform future project choices.This international and innovative research will impact on local people by making their voices louder and clearer, on Nonviolent Peaceforce interventions by potentially making them more effective, and on academic and policy approaches to conflict analysis, 'the local', and the types of knowledge used in understanding conflict and peace. It crosses peace and conflict studies and arts disciplines, adding methodologically and to the way we teach about conflict knowledge.