 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you are watching us from today. My name is Oge Anbargu and I am the director of the West Africa program at the U.S. Institute of Peace. We are delighted to welcome you to this important conversation on a new USAID OTI report on the ongoing demobilization, disassociation, reintegration and reconciliation efforts in northeast Nigeria. Boko Haram and its different factions, including ISIS West Africa, have terrorized parts of northeast Nigeria and the late Chad Basin for over a decade, provoking national, regional and international responses. In 2016, the Nigerian government started Operation Safe Corridor, a small intergovernmental program aimed at rehabilitating low-risk repentant Boko Haram fighters. After several years of this program, hundreds of participants have undergone rehabilitation in transition centers with many reintegrated back into communities. However, while Operation Safe Corridor has had some success, it still faces many challenges. With a substantial data set, including hundreds of surveys, individual interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders, including hundreds of Operation Safe Corridor graduates, as well as community members, family members and government officials, this USAID OTI report provides thought-provoking findings and uncovers what it takes to disengage from violent extremism. For us at USIP, today we are delighted to host this conversation because we've been deeply engaged in Nigeria for more than a decade, working in partnership with the Nigerian government and Nigerian civic leaders to build trust between local security forces in the community and to facilitate dialogues to prevent and mitigate intercommunal violence in communities across northern Nigeria. Last year, USIP established the country office in Abuja to continue to enhance our direct actions for peace in the country. We've also began to expand our work into coastal West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. As an institute, USIP has been elevating the need not just for preventing violent extremism in fragile states, but also how to enable people to leave violent extremism behind. USIP has been exploring what we call violent extremist disengagement and reconciliation, or VEDR, which highlights peace-building's vital role in reconciling people disengaging from violent extremism and their communities. USIP's CVE programme, led by my colleague Leanne Steadman and her team, have been developing frameworks that help address the entire social ecology that is part of why people leave violent extremist groups and how they can pursue a peaceful future. This year, USIP has been proud to host two Jennings Randolph senior fellows who are both pursuing research on these topics, one of whom is on the panel today. I encourage our audience today to check out more on USIP's VEDR initiative on our website, usip.org, and to also visit resolvenet.org to explore locally informed research on violent extremism. For today's conversation, we have an excellent panel to help us explore this report. First, Ms. Nicola or Nikki Mint is an M&E advisor with USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives, OTI. With significant experience working across Africa, Nikki's focus is on innovative research programming and M&E approaches to conflict, security, and CVE. She has a particular interest in using research to inform program design as well as to craft narratives and counter narratives in response to research to enhance empathy and reduce the drivers of violent extremism. Next on the panel is my colleague Marianne Iwara, who is a senior Jennings Randolph fellow for USIP's program on countering violent extremism. Her work highlights community perceptions of conflict related sexual violence and the reintegration of women and children associated with Boko Haram. Marianne is also a senior research fellow at the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution in Abuja, Nigeria, where she provides insights and policy solutions to capacity development challenges related to peace building in Nigeria and across Africa. She joins us today from Abuja. And next on the panel is Dean Piedmont, who is the senior reintegration and armed group advisor at Creative Associates International. Dean is a seasoned program and policy expert with over 20 plus years of experience with government, NGOs, the United Nations, universities and development implementers globally, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and South Sudan. He is a recognized expert in conflict prevention, peace building, DDR, child protection and gender issues. He also designs and teaches courses as an active professor in several US based universities, as well as redesigns curricula for peacekeepers oriented towards CVE and asymmetric conflict environments. Our panelists today will speak for about 35 to 40 minutes after which we will open it up for Q&A. We encourage the audience to share their questions through the chat function. We also encourage you to join the conversation using the Twitter hashtag reintegrating extremist. As we move into the conversation today, our hope is that this report helps spark new thinking and new policy choices when it comes to learning from those who have left Boko Haram and ISIS West Africa behind. So let's go into the conversation, Nikki, over to you. Thank you. Okay. Good morning, everyone. We are so happy that so many of you have been able to participate in this presentation. I will quickly go over our methodology for this evaluation before jumping into a few of the key findings. So as OK mentioned, we used a mixed methods approach with both qualitative and quantitative instruments focusing on KII focus groups and surveys. And we had a large sample size for this contrasted with other research that has been done to date. We were able to do surveys and interview over 104 ex-combatants who will be referred to as graduates in this presentation and in the report, as well as over 400 community members in four areas of reintegration. And we were also able to use random sampling for our sampling method. There were numerous limitations in understanding the behavior just by measuring personal perceptions and attitudes. And so in this study, we also utilized peer perceptions, meta perceptions and social network analysis to gain deeper insights. Other limitations were related to the sampling frames themselves. Every batch of graduates at Operation Safe Corridor is essentially a different sampling frame. And so we need to be very careful about making generalizations beyond the actual sample frame. There's also going to be an inherent bias in the sampling frame of OSD graduates in general. And this is because for the most part, they defected or left voluntarily, although we know that some are also cut up in sweeps. And so this is very clearly a different subset than those who choose to stay with the VEO. Another limitation was the sensitive nature of the research itself. Asking questions about VEOs is always difficult in eliciting honest answers. And this is especially the case when factoring in that it is a government-run program and half of the graduates who were surveyed were in a government facility at the time. Utilizing peer perceptions helped us get around this to a certain extent. Finally, there were geographic limitations. Given that it is an ongoing insurgency, some of the areas that we had hoped to conduct research for community members were not accessible. And so this obviously placed some limitations on where we could access this information. We can go to the next slide now. If we can just move to the next slide. Sorry, the next one. One more. There we go. Great. Thank you. So a quick note on what I will be presenting today. The evaluation itself covered the services provided by operation-safe corridor such as vocational training, psychosocial support, counseling, et cetera, as well as family tracing and visits, all to prepare the graduates for reintegration. Our findings were overwhelmingly and surprisingly positive with graduates expressing high levels of satisfaction with these services. These findings are outlined in the report, but for this presentation we are going to be focusing more on other interesting findings relating to why graduates join, stay, and leave the VEOs. So again, I just want to really point out this sampling bias that this data is for those who left the VEO. So obviously those who choose to stay will be likely more aligned with ideology and goals. The dream would be to be able to go to the active members to do this kind of research, but obviously at the moment this isn't possible. So let's instead talk about the data that we do have, what it tells us, and how this can inform DDR. To understand why people join, we evaluated trends between those who had indicated that they joined voluntarily versus those who had indicated they had been forced into an association with the group. So as you can see from the slide, approximately 50% of those that we were able to interview said that they had been forced into an affiliation with the VEO. And yes, this is different from other findings and other research, which are saying that about 60 to 70% were forced. So what can explain why our numbers are different? It's possible that the sampling methodology yielded a different composition. Other reports have done convenient sampling, effectively interviewing those who are willing to talk, whereas we utilize random sampling with both Shokari and reintegrated graduates. However, it should be noted that even with random sampling, we're only able to interview those who are willing and give consent. You can also see that with Shokari, the number is slightly higher than with reintegrated graduates in terms of those who said they were forced. A possible explanation for this is the fact that they were in a government facility and so we're too scared. But that being said, again, I just want to emphasize that each cohort is a different sampling frame. We can move to the next slide. A really quick note on education because we found some of these findings really interesting. So the percentage of those with only a religious education was actually similar for both those who had indicated they had joined voluntarily, whereas those who said they were forced into an association. This underscores that receiving only a religious education is not in and of itself a pathway to radicalization towards VE. And also important to keep in mind that other studies have found the opposite, which is that a poor understanding of religion is often correlated. So another thing we found interesting was that receiving no education was actually highly correlated with joining voluntarily. This is outlined in greater detail in the report. We can move to the next slide. So again, just remember the sampling bias that we cannot generalize these findings to all members of the VEO or even all members of operations of quarter just to the three cohorts that we were able to do the research on. So this slide outlines those who indicated they had joined voluntarily. When we asked these questions for Shokari interviews, we were also able to measure the peer perceptions, which is the descriptive norm. So that's essentially asking them how they thought their friends would answer. So when we asked them the reasons what best described why they joined, we also asked why they thought their peers had joined as well. Now, why would we do this? It's more likely to elicit honest answers. And this is especially the case in conflict settings where questions are sensitive. But just as important, the descriptive norm or the peer perception is also likely to be closer to the truth. Empirical data has demonstrated that we typically behave according to the peer perception, not our own attitude or perception. And we found some really interesting variances in this. There were notable distinctions and responses between the individual and the peer perception for instances such as the influence of financial incentives or ideology in Jihad. These again are outlined in more detail in the report, so I encourage you to read it if you find this interesting. We can go to the next slide. So while coercion is interesting to know, we're going to be very brief on this slide because it's very difficult to program to. Many said they were coerced and pressured and also important to keep in mind that other researchers indicating that those who were coerced and pressured a certain component were actually caught up in sweeps. And one other thing I wanted to point out in these this how we conducted this research was that the respondents were able to select more than one they could select all that applied so this number isn't going to add up to 100. We can move to the next slide. So as I mentioned one of the major shortcomings of analyzing the kind of data is the sampling bias because we are only really learning about those who left when what's actually critical is for us to learn the attitudes perceptions and behaviors of those who choose to stay. So we actually did try to measure this by asking the Shokari graduates this question as a descriptive norm, why they thought their peers stayed with the VEO after joining. Overall fear was mentioned the most frequently by Shokari respondents is the reason they believe individuals stay with the VEO after joining. This was fear of retaliation if they leave and fear of not being accepted back into the community. While 67% said financial reasons were a major reason why their peers joined only 15% thought it was a major reason why they stayed. Now this doesn't mean necessarily that financial support is not what was promised or that even that it diminishes although we think this is likely but rather that it's not what keeps people staying after they join. A quarter also said that the main reason their peers stayed was because of ideology or jihad. Now this number is important because when we asked this question we only let them choose one they had to choose the main reason. So this doesn't even capture ideology or jihad as a secondary or a tertiary reason and this suggests then that at a minimum a quarter of peers who stay with the VEO are hard and fighters. We can move to the next slide. Great. So the most frequently cited reason for disengaging from VEOs were wanting to return to a normal life, guilt about contributing to violence, poor living conditions, dangers associated with being a member and having friends in the group who also wanted to disengage. This was consistent with the accounts of graduates and KII's and focus groups who cited the VEO's bad behavior, guilt of bringing harm to their communities, disillusionment and wanting to return to their families. There was a strong correlation between individuals who cited social networks as the reason for joining and wanting to return to a normal life as the reason for disengaging. We also found that the desire to return to a normal life increased over time as the main reason for disengaging. What this means is that the Shokari graduates cited that more frequently than the reintegrated graduates. What could explain this? It's possible that awareness of Operation Safe Corridor increased as an option for defecting and that VEO members and affiliates saw a pathway that could bring them safely home, creating a pull factor to leave the VEO. There was actually also a moderate correlation for disengagement between citing dangers associated with being a member and knowledge of Operation Safe Corridor, suggesting that those who placed a premium on safety were more likely to take part in DDR and Operation Safe Corridor because it promises safety. We can move to the next slide. When asked about how they'd heard about Operation Safe Corridor, a third of respondents with knowledge before disengaging said they'd heard about it from fellow affiliates, either a family or a friend. Another third from the radio and 20% from non-affiliates or family members or friends, sorry. This suggests that the radio shows like Dental Cura are reaching current VEO affiliates with information that may further spread by word of mouth. I'm now going to hand it over to Marianne to talk about reintegration, community and gender dynamics. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon and good evening. My name is Marianne, like Oge has introduced me and I'm going to be speaking about reintegration and then also looking at gender. We all know that reintegration is mostly occurring in areas of active insurgency, that's areas that ongoing attacks are including mid-degree. So the findings of this report support reintegration. However, it also shows that some findings are also encouraging. The workings of OSCO are also encouraging. So now on slide 13. Good. Yes. So first of all, looking at the community needs and concerns and perceptions of safety. So the key informant interviews and the focus group discussions showed that respondents have noticed that there is no increase in violence since graduates returned. And then most community respondents actually even feel either safer or have some level of safety since the return of these graduates. It's also important to note that most stakeholders agree that so far Operation Safe Corridor has dealt largely with former fighters who were either coerced into joining, but then did not participate in any terrible violence or destruction. And so the correlation between perceiving graduates as victims and support for reintegration makes it easier for communities to accept graduates than if they were faced with those that they consider truly dangerous. And therefore it's likely that family visits that also help prepare the communities and make them feel more comfortable where one of the pointers that showed these perceptions. Next slide please. So in terms of community needs and concerns and the perceptions of safety. So it's the report shows that even the communities, community members feel that they are safe or they're safe as a result of DDR beneficiaries living within their communities. There is however a huge gap between how DDR beneficiaries think they're viewed by community members. And this has to do with perceptions. So for the purpose of this report and meta perceptions, the methodology of meta perceptions was employed. So this looks at how group members think you know how they feel that they are viewed. And then this is how and this is measured through like how communities think that they are dangerous. So to third of graduates actually think that communities view them as dangerous and that they should be, they should not be allowed to return. And this is actually surprising because only 20% of the communities view them as dangerous. And this is very important because we know that meta perceptions impact behavior, more than actually, more than the actual attitudes. So this is without a doubt impacting the relationship between graduates and also the community. But then the good news is that this is programmable. And studies that have measured and then coerced and corrected inaccurate meta perceptions in conflict affected societies have shown that by simply pointing out the inaccuracy of the perception and providing new correct information is enough to update meta perception and of course change the perception of onwardness. Next slide please. So we're looking at now perceptions and you know, competitive victimhood and relative deprivation. So now when we're measuring relative deprivation, we want to speak about what it means. First of all, it refers to the sense that one is marginalized compared to the others on unjust grounds. And this shows that it's more accurate predator of VE support than absolute levels of poverty on unemployment. Here we measured it using Muslim youths as a primer. So as it's noted, those who joined voluntarily had more higher competitive victimhood than those who were actually coerced into joining. And secondly, both categories called significantly higher than community members, which tells us that this isn't just the factor of being a youth in the north east. The next slide please. So now looking at graduate perceptions as regards and relative deprivation and relative deprivation was measured using being a graduate as a primer to see if that actually triggered more relative deprivation that just being a Muslim youth. So the findings show that the members or the numbers are actually surprisingly similar. And overall, those who joined voluntarily scored higher than those who who were actually coerced into joining the violent extremist organizations. And can we go to the next slide. So looking at graduate perceptions as regards competitive victimhood. So in defining competitive victimhood, it looks at groups or individual motivations and efforts to establish that they have suffered more than the adversaries. So this is a tendency that is actually associated with a likelihood of supporting violent extremist narratives. So victims experiences have dramatic consequences for relations between communities. And this has been shown in studies that have stumped reconciliation between conflicting groups. So the scores on the competitive victimhood here is extraordinarily high. And this should be considered a yellow flag, but also ultimately has a reason for us to research more on why this is happening. We would move to the next slide please. So now looking at the role of forgiveness and the report shows that when graduates were asked when they were being reintegrated back into the communities. You know, after going through all the steps of the operation safe corridor process. What elements were the most important for them. This is actually to consider what makes for successful reintegration. You know, what did they actually need to achieve the cost of successful reintegration. And also, that forgiveness emerged strongly as the most important criteria for graduates. And even though we have noticed that business opportunities, economical opportunities were also equally important. But then we see that as the, as the role of forgiveness was more important for them to actually be fully reintegrated and accepted back into the communities. So it's the assumption that as it becomes less important, you know, for other other factors, what is important is that more opportunity. There should be actually more focus. As much as on business opportunities, even though they're moving through transition comes from your and periodically. So can we go to the next time. So going back to the role of forgiveness as well. And what is striking about the findings of forgiveness is that they were echoed by community members as well. So when we asked community members the same question, what they think of former affiliates who were integrated back into their communities, even after going through the process of DDR at the OSC. Which all of them actually most to Ted actually say that it's very important, but then the assurances of seeking forgiveness also popped up. So forgiveness is a very important factor in the reintegration process. And so community members are very concerned that, you know, graduates must first of all be sorry so there must be a consciousness that they have done something wrong. And then they're ready to apologize and then live right. So this is the step asking for forgiveness. It includes asking for forgiveness. And also it's very important that this opportunity to ask for forgiveness is given. So if, if it is underscored, then the essence of DDR in the northeast will be defeated. In terms of looking at them, traditional ceremonies rituals and events and the findings show that this had very little rating and the report the responses that we got shows that it was shockingly low. So considering the fact that there's a narrative that traditional practices especially in Africa are important components of community reconciliation. So it turns out that respondents did not just view, did not view this, this traditional practices as the vehicle for forgiveness. So the focus now looks that forgiveness, the assurances of seeking for forgiveness is very important and a key component in reintegration. Next slide please. So on the risk of receiving them. First of all, we know that the ratings are very low. And there's only one case since the operation safe corridor started work. 29 to 35% range that actually 29 to 35% range that not everyone has disengaged, but they could have disengaged. So community members believe that at least some graduates are still affiliated with violent extremist groups. So whether they are communicating with them through informants or different mediums, but then community members actually know or perceive that these graduates are still affiliated with violent extremism. And this is shocking because if a community member or if community members are willing to forgive in spite of the fact that they know that members, former affiliates are still in touch with their affiliates then the essence or the focus on forgiveness should be paramount. So we now looked at the notion of risk and what are communities willing to give or what are communities willing to stake, you know, for forgiveness and also for integration. It turns out that social networks are very important and they are mostly tools that can be used to reintegrate OSC graduates. At risk, more likely to be in touch with former affiliates, but then we have to try to encourage defections. So overall looks that 50% of integrated graduates indicated that they are still in touch with affiliates, but then we do not know how this continued association will impact DDR graduates or impact their integration process, whether it is in the short or in the long term. It's like 21, please. In looking at graduate needs and then going back to social networks as I have spoken. So we said that social network analysis was used to conduct influencer mapping. That means that we wanted to understand how reintegrated graduates turn who they turn to when they are frustrated about an issue. You know, who did it, who do they lean on whether it's in the community. And then it shows that social networks are very important to lowering vulnerabilities. And we found out that when this when disagreed by data, those who were high risk and those who were low risk and wet in all seeking social networks for support. For example, the graph shows that notable difference between. Yes, notable difference between the two networks. For example, those who joined voluntarily and those who were coerced to join that across all boards parents, especially the mother's matter. So there was a focus on the needs or the presence of the mothers or the support of the mothers in how they could properly disengage and be reintegrated. The next slide. So looking at. Yes. So if you if you. Yes, can you click this if you look at this social gram, you see what it looks like with the mother at the center. No, the one the previous slide please yes, you have to click it twice again. Yes, so you see that the mother is a key feature at the center of how. So the mother's affiliates perceive that they'll be accepted and be properly reintegrated. So the mother, the mother, the role of the mother is very key. So the next slide please. Now gender support for integration and why this is important. So first of all, DDR processes that support and reintegration looks that there is a higher correlation for females than a male counterparts. And this, while this is still important, there's a lack of knowledge of DDR as it corresponds with male, and then we did not see that this there was a correlation for female. So what this means is that females in areas where this research was conducted have more knowledge. They say that they are more willing also to support reintegration. The first graph shows that women actually are more supportive this indicates that women are potentially catalytic and a voice for DDR, and they also play a key influencer role. So whether for any proper DDR program to be properly implemented, then there has to be a gender analysis. And I've also spoken about the role of mothers who are primary influences, and therefore for programmatic action, women and mothers should be primary targets. Next slide please. So social reintegration and why it is also important. When we look at actually what has been achieved we, we, it looks very rosy, but then turns out that most of the integration that has been ongoing is social. So based on KII with key stakeholders and the communities, it turns out that OSC graduates actually carry a social quota in one of the communities that I visited. I found that OSC graduates that were given vocational training and skills were supportive to how to community rebuilding. And then you see that community members are saying they are performing their social quota. They had skills in welding, they had skills in masonry, they had skills in cabinetry. So there were now in one way or the other supporting how their communities are rebuilt, and of course supporting how communities will be developed. So vocational trainings that end at graduation, even though they are a remarkable step, but then they also go a long way in a large, in a large context. So I would like to speak that oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and IOM has actually played a pragmatic step in vocational training as he has been creating equity on economic, social and psychosocial integration. IOM has been known to support, there's an IOM program that does one for two or two for one rather. So in supporting one affiliate, it actually supports, it calls on two community members to support them in vocational training. The second observation looks that communities see OSC as useful community assets and I've spoken about this. So we'll move back, we'll move to the next slide, which is on gender, female and oppression-safe corridor. So in the reports which I would advise that we all read, there's the taint and the stigma of association. So once there's a military sweep, women face the stigma of association with the sect, whether it is within the camps or when they get back into the community. So the association that comes with this is tainting, and therefore the legitimacy that is afforded, those who graduate from the GDR program, mostly men, is very important. And this is a problem because there's a largely on address need that wants greater attention for different actors. Women do not get this legitimacy that men get. And so the taint and the stigma that they, that's recorded with association with the sect is featured or constantly on them. So this goes also to the denial of say, an announcement. So the certificates that OSC graduates get, women do not get, and that's a problem with successful integration as this has the tendency to fester stigma that women are actually experiencing while they are returned back into their communities. With this, I would move on to the Mary Ann. Thank you very much, Nikki. Thank you very much. When I'm going to spend a few minutes doing is talking through some of the policy issues that come out in this report. And in doing so, there's going to be a bit of a, the report was designed to be very forward looking and also forward facing in terms of getting this out to the public. But working under a well founded assumption that DDR and arm group reintegration is reemerging. So how do we deal with this moving forward in doing so, I'll be threatening through some of what Nikki and Mary Ann had talked about, as well as looking at a bit of a juxtaposition on what's the DDR effect and well called the olden days. So we decided to focus on two areas. If we can. One will be going to scale and the next will be post release reintegration support and this will be subdivided very quickly into hard and soft DDR institutional arrangements civil coordination systems approaches donor coordination, dealing with designated terrorist organization, foreign terrorist fighter issues details and FTS and transactional issues that we're doing this I do think it cannot be understated. The amount of innovations and the data the way it can be queried is significant and the innovations and what I am has has brought to kind of the new newest generation of DDR significant Mary Ann pointed to it. The, the placement of the appropriate placement of vocational training as reasonable and not a panacea, the ability to look at social and cycle social support for reintegration. I would also say some of the strategic comms were being done by creative associates has been instrumental in popularizing a program with increased government credibility, and maybe even more so, or is or in tandem is with creative and I am the ability to take the social and cycle social indicator sets and starting to look at reintegration outcomes. And that is that has rarely been done we looked at socioeconomic outputs, but we struggled for years to do this. We can move through the next slide please. And one quick. One more quick. So, as Mary Ann pointed alluded to here, what this map is showing us is where conflict is occurring in the Northeast and where DDR is occurring in the Northeast. What we learned from this slide is that lots of operation safe corridor OSC support is occurring in urban areas. We also are learning that we can do DDR in conflict. Now this is a sharp, sharp break for programming and policy to the first 20 I'm going to say the first 40 years of DDR. This emerged in 2015 and the international community has been striving and struggling to figure out how this can be done. I would argue that Somalia and maybe more so or more recently Nigeria is providing an opportunity and certainly an awareness that DDR, in fact, is done and can be done during conflict. We can move to the next slide. So I had noted that we're going to talk about going to scale. In order to do so, we have to present what evidence is there that OSC can go to scale to begin with otherwise the issue becomes mute. Nikki and Mary Ann had pointed to this considerably and not withstanding the recent changes in leadership and depth of Boko Haram leaders which I'm sure we'll talk about later. We decided to look at two main elements and then package underneath this. One is public information or what what would be more in more contemporary settings, strategic communications, and the other is influencer mapping. So where's our juxtaposition here. Public information and sensitization has been a historic challenge in DDR settings of communities do not know what they gain. I think DDR will provide them a job. Both sides often lack comprehensive understanding of peace agreements which in this case do not exist. Communities perceive DDR and still do as we're warning the perpetrator and donors often question why ex-combatant and I employ DDR is perceived as a job creation program. The answer in PI terms has been more public information more sensitization to everybody everywhere. What do we know here. What we know is that DDR hasn't limited outreach. The further from the center of my duty we get the less people know about DDR. We know that 69% of people know nothing about operation safe corridor 86% feel their knowledge is insufficient while 64% are either somewhat or very supportive of reintegration and 69% do accept them. This indicates that feeling informed is not a necessary condition in this case for community acceptance acceptance. However, it does increase the likelihood of acceptance. So outside of a peace agreement where where we do not have to advertise nationally getting the right information to the right people is more important for community preparedness than getting more information to more people. That's tactical and strategic in terms of strat coms and public information. There is reason to believe that the potential to influence defections is increasing over time. This is not forward forward looking sure we're going to see this. What are the statistics telling us looking backwards. The first graduates went through the program I believe in 2016. At that point 25% of reintegrated graduates, reintegrated graduates cited knowledge of OSC as a primary reason for disengaging. This time around two years later 33% cited of Shikari graduate graduates cited knowledge of the program as a reason for disengaging. The Shikari graduates are 75% of the case load 60% of the case load 65% and have gone through the reintegration process between July of last year and probably still going on today since we started this study. This shows that increased knowledge of the program is accompanying defections. It suggests that that OSC is an increasingly influential reason for defection. What we know is that a third of people Nikki pointed out with knowledge of disengaging heard it from former affiliates, families and friends and 36% from show radio shows like Danville Curve which was supported by creative associates in this case. What we touch upon and what we did leave out of this section is this does raise the question and it's a policy question of how does the old thinking about breaking command and control and disassociation of combatant and affiliates members following the organization relate to what's happening today. Is there a case where former fighters should be encouraged to stay in touch with each other and under what conditions if they are facilitating defections. Can we move on to the next slide please. This is similar to the sociogram showed by Marianne. So we know who supports reintegration and that mothers are influencers. What we wanted to turn to is what happens to those people who are opposed to reintegration who did they turn to because that will be the key influence that it's another way to look at influencing influencers. What we learn from here again is very similar to what we know that the core influential network is almost entirely the family unit or the immediate social circle with the mother being the core here. Now this is somewhat dissimilar to in Somalia. All I am I am had did some evaluation in Somalia on its DDR program there. And what it had learned at least anecdotally is that wives were influential in affecting defections here in Northeast Nigeria. 96% of clients or OSC graduates are married. Yet only 17% report being influenced by wives. If we were to follow the Somali model we would be targeting wives for public information and defections. While here mother seemed to be the crime mover. If we can move to the next slide please. Here we're going to talk just one minute about the soft and hard DDR. And this is going to be particularly relevant in the coming months as we're going to see a splintering of Boko Haram based on recent events. Marianne clearly pointed to this. So what have we talked about prior. Most OSC clients are not hardcore fighters. This is likely made the demobilization and disassociation much easier. This does partially explain community acceptance and it does explain the military's shift away from its harder counterterrorism approach with adopted which was adopted four years ago to its very overt reintegration and rehabilitation with this approach. What is unknown is how the government of Nigeria will approach a DDR for Boko Haram and East Wa hardliners and they may be coming into the pipeline soon. We don't know. We need to know. Distilling the case load may change the nature of the conflict. This is not a post CPA scenario. This was pointed out very pointedly creative had sponsored a reintegration of armed group event with the Stimson Center. Probably about a year and a half ago and our colleagues from DPO specifically Sir Bush had pointed it out pointed this out very pointedly on DDR now has the potential to affect conflict and the military strategy in that conflict. That was not the case under comprehensive piece of limits. How could it possibly have this. What could be a possible impact. It invites increased military operations for hardliners. There is a higher risk of human rights violations that may undercut OSC's reputation and this would be a rollback to some of the criticisms we've seen four years ago. When community members felt in opposition to Boko Haram the civil joints task force as well as the military. Those advances could be lost without understanding us. Now we do have cases of this distillation process in older DDR was pointedly in South Sudan and South Sudan there was a distillation of women and children first type of operation. We've done through what would be called an interim stabilization measures these measures as currently scripted and written do not are not equipped to deal with non non peace agreement settings. We also don't know if hardliners will be accepted in communities without a degree of victimhood that's currently afforded OSC graduates. We don't know how they'll be perceived once they start affecting in mass. Next slide please. On institutional arrangements as a matter of global policy DDR is and has only been led by the civilian sector the civil sector with support from the security sector in northeast Nigeria the Office of the National Security Advisor on DDR is responsible for overseeing DDR. However, the military is in the driver seat with thousands of people potentially set to come through a minnow SC pipeline. Taking DDR to scale will be a major challenge. It will require continued political will that translates into institutional processes and institutional procedures. Currently not the case the force and generosity of personalities is driving a lot of the successes we see in DDR. So this brings us to two fault lines in the policy domain DC. One is there is a lack of implementation of the national DDR action plan. It is a document largely in paper that has not been sensitized to communities to stakeholders in this case, and we see an incumbent lack of coordination across sectors on the R's rehabilitation reintegration reconciliation or the reintegration part. The largest deficit we see in this program again this can happen back to most DDR programs. There's a deficit and a lack of attention to post release reintegration and reconciliation. A lot of the graphs that you've seen a lot of the successes are in the rehabilitation phase. When when affiliates graduates and clients are current are still have not yet been released into their communities. They are still a center based. This has been a shortcoming in Northeast Nigeria. Since 2005, we did an evaluation. We did a scoping mission in 2016 and evaluation in 2018, and these findings come up again and again. This has plagued DDR's globally. What we see is operational proficiency, the military at the expense of program efficacy, the civilian side, and the waiting here of the military in charge of DDR while Onsa owns the mandate is creating this imbalance in the program. What needs to be done. There needs to be a focus on single systems and multi systems approaches. Then this is not particularly new. It's just not often adhere to. So in a single system approach, Onsa, as the true lead for DDR should be upfront center in the DDR national plan. The multi system should deal with coordination while people are in rehabilitation, but more so, how are post release resources and attention allocated? Where is that equity of distribution? Some examples of where we see the shortcomings. The criminal justice system cannot prosecute former BH and Eastwood members. Since 2018, there has been no prosecutions we learned in the evaluation. This has a potential to radicalize persons. Why is this the case? The military does a case by case vetting. This is not sustainable going to scale. Suspects who were in detention wait to be prosecuted when released after long periods lack of evidence or they were found not to be hardcore criminals in this case. There is a fear that they may have been radicalized and suggestions that they've been now rerouted for OSC rehabilitation, even though they were never clients of a DDR program. That indicates that other institutions and systems outside of OSC are required to facilitate the DDR. An example, the Ministry of Women's Affairs and Social Development has been requesting support. We've had variable, we've seen variable engagement of governors in reintegration and the Northeast Development Commission has a larger role to play, which is currently not the case. On donor coordination, this was very interesting finding. GON officials consistently defense Borno State officials consistently expressed that while donor supporters appreciate and they prefer it continues, they can take on DDR alone. So, importantly here, funding may sustain rehabilitation in transition centers. However, this would be done without equitable resources again to reintegration and reconciliation, which is now largely within the domain of IOM. IOM, I believe the funding for IOM under the current USAID program ended this year or maybe late in 2020. The international donor support started in 2016. The first meeting occurred in mid-2017, another in early 2018. In the same year, it was suggested that there be increased donor coordination around reintegration. Only recently has the EC approved the support for the reconciliation and reintegration of former fighters programs of the S2R program, which would be a reintegration program for former members. This is said to be implemented by IOM, UNDP and UNICEF. One could argue that this is timely. However, our findings point to a persistent and increasing gap between reintegration and reconciliation. Now, as we're at time here, I am going to start to hand over. Top line issues moving forward is we see significant advances in specifically important for the U.S. government in addressing DTOs, designated terrorist organizations. These have not translated into treating foreign terrorist fighters, FTS. This is going to become an increasing issue in West Africa, the Sahel Lake Chad, certainly across MENA. This is currently done using diplomatic channels on a case-by-case basis. This needs to be further studied. In two years, 12 people top have gone through this type of programming. If this number would as well to dozens of people, if other countries started to engage in citizen scripting, we would have a stateless problem we've never seen before in DVR. On transactional issues, it was noted that DVR at the community level is negotiating outcomes, and this was a concern for some of our clients, some of the donors in particular. We invite you to look at this part of the report where it does make a case during conflict that we should consider on the policy level whether communities should be negotiating their terms and arrangements for accepting back former fighters. This is the purpose of the CPA, a comprehensive peace agreement done nationally. Without a peace agreement, this can devolve to the local level. So this is something that should be looked at, something that may be occurring, and is a standard bearer in DVR. Mary Ann points to the IOMs 2 for 1. Other programs are 4 for 1. Community-based reintegration is based on this model. I'm going to stop there and hand back to you again. Thank you very much Dean. Thank you, Nikki, and thank you Mary Ann. Obviously there's a lot of information to unpack in this report, so I encourage members of the audience to please re-true the report at your own time. There is a link to this report on the USIP website as well. So obviously you've basically pointed out the challenges. Nigeria really presents a good example of the challenges and opportunities that exist when it comes to implementing a DDR program within an environment of violent extremism and an ongoing conflict in the Northeast. And we've received tons of questions already. So as I see through them, first of all, as moderator, I want to exercise my privilege to ask you, three of you, the first question first before I go into the other questions. Obviously with this presentation today, it just brings to mind the recent reports that we've heard about the killing of Abu Bakr Shekhar Al, who is the leader of Boko Haram and is killed by a rival faction. Obviously, as we continue to see infighting between the different factions, possibly in the coming weeks and months, we may begin to see defections happening. So based on the findings in this report, how would you advise the Nigerian government and other international actors that are working in this space? And really this question applies to all three of you as you look at the policy issues on the inside, Niki on rehabilitation and Mary Ann on reintegration. So that's the first question and anyone of you can go ahead and start. I'll open there very quickly. I would invite people to look square in the middle of that policy report. Most everything we just touched upon falls dead center. And this was the idea of having a forward facing and future looking report. Prepare on the reintegration and reconciliation side now, not in a year and a half from now, which is often done, too often done. Start to look at the civil military coordination. If the military is able to scale this up communities will not be able to absorb them. This is in the report. The DDR action plan provides the framework engage in the security and political economy analysis of the soft versus hard DDR. The report will point you right to that as well. We know enough about strategic comms and public information statistically from this report to be able to start targeting messages and softening the ground. Continue international donor supports. I would strongly encourage the US government to stay engaged, stay involved and continue. This is an excellent opportunity to avoid the gender question. Do not do it. I'll hand that over to Mary Ann. And if we start to see defections of foreign terrorist fighters, the program is not equipped to to figure out what that means if there's large scale returnees needed. So look at diplomatic engagement now and studies for returning returning returning terrorist fighters over you guys. Okay, so as you've clearly pointed as regards gender. So I would say that the Nigerian government and OSC has to come up with a tailored strategy on how to receive, how to screen and how to rehabilitate and properly reintegrate women that could either be returning with their husbands or capture doing military exercises. As we all know, or as the report has clearly stated, OSC had little focus as regards to gender. So women that were returned were categorized as the lower risk screened and thus returned back into the communities without the OSC anointment or the certification that came and gave credence to men and of course reduce stigma. So looking at global best practices and DDR policy demands that women should also go through the same DDR process that men go through. And this, if this is properly adhered to then it has the chances of reducing any issues and of course building on the gains and successes that OSC already has. But then lastly, I'd like to say that the threat to stability and peace and security across the region and this doesn't just cut across to this doesn't just fall on the back of the Nigerian government but then it has to fall. So this is something that governments across the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin have to address issues around poverty, inequality and unemployment, state fragility and then climate induced tension. All these things, all these issues are challenges that push for instability in the region. So just to add on to what Maryanne touched on with case management. OSC is going to have to get ready for this to expect an influx in in the number of cases that they're going to absorb because if you think about the numbers they've been dealing with at the moment it's not huge you know I think by November when we were conducting the operation it was 900 that they had gone through the system so far and graduated and so if we're expecting thousands to start defecting and being absorbed into operation safe corridor that has huge implications on their ability to absorb this with case management with screening even you know the JIC, are they ready for this. And that goes even before just the overall capacity of operations safe corridor with the services family tracing prepping communities you know those are really important components of having them feel ready for reintegration and then having expectations met once they were reintegrated. And at the moment they've really dealt with such small numbers so though it's been you know relatively successful they haven't had huge caseloads yet with also a different mix of graduates so far it's been you know voluntary defectors, a lot of whom said they were forced to join with defections that are anticipated of hardcore fighters that's going to be a very different kind of DDR. Very true, very true and I think pulling on that thread that you've laid out there. I'm going to read through one of the questions that we have here from your research. Have there been any Boko Haram or ISIS West Africa threats or retaliation or attacks against OSC graduates or their family members. If so, has OSC built in any measures for for their graduates as they work to reintegrate them into back into the communities. From my side, we we looked at this but not in great detail, but it does comprise a comprised especially during conflict, a significant component of the responsibility to protect and do no harm principle. This is where we need to be very careful about a wholesale endorsement of defections without a cogent reintegration policy in place and a plan and that is a very real and very big danger for for DDR. That said, with the exception of one case, we have seen no threats against from Boko Haram or ISIS is well against graduates or their families, nor have we seen retribution from communities against those who clients and graduates who have returned back during reintegration also another danger that we've seen in previous DDR programs over. Okay, I think just on that same thread to as well. There's another question that is sort of closely linked asking it from your research if you looked at the role of security agencies in the community reintegration process and what evidence if any you collected through your research can be derived to help inform and influence policy moving forward. And on this point I'd like to, I'd like to get Mary Ann's gender perspective on this as kind of like preemptive or preventive security. One of the surprising elements of the DDR is really really interesting. In 2016, community members saw a triad of security threats to themselves as civilians, the military, the VO and CJTF. Now today CJTF is facilitating family visits, and the trust between the client and CJTF has increased considerably. This is a phenomenon that should be studied a bit more it should be looked at it falls on the periphery of older DDR frameworks. And it is truly an interesting and interesting dynamic in armed conflict transformation over. Mary Ann, would you like to chime in here as well. Yes. So, like Dean has said CJTF has been very instrumental to how communities are properly reintegrated by supporting family visits, but then also CJTF we found out that women who are enrolled or also members of CJTF has supported and are treated how women are received and also enabled their proper resettlement back into the communities. So the role of women in this armed and community based armed group, and especially with the evolving nature of community policing which the government of Nigeria is pushing then the likelihood that community based armed groups will be support like CJTF and the women who are also in these groups will be supporting a gender dimension to reintegration. Obviously the role of community and security actors is a whole new conversation on on its own as well. So I think during the presentation, each of you spoke about messaging and also mentioned the radio program as having an influence in in in the process as well and one of the questions that we have here is you know based on your findings. What would you say would be the key elements that could be included or should be included in messaging to promote defections and reintegration. I think that the from the data we have on the three cohorts that we gathered information on what was really important was the guarantee of safety that they can actually their safety is promised they can go through this system they don't disappear. And that they actually can be accepted back into their communities and I think that also goes back into the data on why people stay in the video and as you if you recall, a lot of the reasons why they stay had nothing to do with affiliation of the organization of the video but rather the fears of of you know going back to the community and what might happen then so as much as the messaging can address that and really clarify this promise of safety and reuniting with your community and successful reintegration into the community I think will have a huge effect. I think the second on this would be, and it pushes against policy, previous policy, engage of former associates affiliates in messaging. I have the statistics all screw here, 88% of former fighters and affiliates believe they have a role to play in PCV e preventing youth from joining and in defections, 80% of community members, I believe agree or feel that these persons are already engaging. This probably prevents the risk of recidivism, probably aids in social reintegration, and probably psychosocial reintegration as well. So it's not only the message is the messenger. This was discovered initially in Somalia again by IOM we did an evaluation out there, where persons with disabilities who were traditionally ignored in these programs felt very strongly, they had a role to play. And specifically was, if you don't die in your jihad, and you don't get your 72 virgins this is what may happen to you. And they had lost all their fear. They were working around persons with disabilities, and had lost all their fear of retribution from the group. They had felt that the group had done their worst, and that they absolutely lost their fear I think those are very very strong elements to be included in messaging. Thank you very much so we have about five minutes left and there's so many really good questions here unfortunately we will not have the time to go through all of them. But I think you know as as we round off there is one question on here that I will pose to all three of you just to hear your, your thoughts on this as we conclude the conversation. So this question is on your thoughts on oppression safe corridor do you think that it could make sustainable impact on the radicalization and repented and repentant extremists without the involvement of victims of Boko Haram and the community. So given each of you at least a minute to respond to that and also add in your closing remarks as we as we round off. I would say that the involvement of victims and also the community is a very important for the success and for oppression safe corridor to make gains in the DDR process. You cannot actually conduct DDR without those elements. So it's important that oppression safe corridor. It's very very militarized first of all so we have to find a way for oppression safe corridor to advance towards a DDR process that is very civil and as much as there is a security element to the mobilization and disarmament but then there's more of a civil and civilian factor to how people are received and how people are returned and reintegrated. So DDR processes are very important and oppression safe corridor has to build on the civilian aspect in all these programs. Thank you Marianne. Let's go over to Nikki. I'll just quick response and then over to Dean but I would say you can't have a proper reintegration without bringing in the victims of the VEOS themselves and we saw that with the data on forgiveness how critical it was not just for the reintegrated graduates to be asking for it but for them to feel forgiven as well. It's a two way process and so I think it's not just the community themselves but the graduates I think also need this. I tend to agree with my colleagues here. When we first started the study and I do this for every study I ask for us to define terms and in doing so it's surprising how many people get caught in this. I think about terms. What I what I had observed is that the rehabilitation reintegration reconciliation the terms we had asked there were largely the sense of sequencing rehabilitation occurs before we see them. Reintegration occurs when they're back in the community and we can chart their behavior and reconciliation is when we are all and the community is healed and we can prevent conflict know where we're living in peace. So one necessitates the other certainly I don't know if they need to be sequential they need to be clearly defined for sure. I think the great value in this report and this presentation was designed in this way the report certainly is that yes we evaluated DDR however we strove and went to great lengths to show that DDR is the input is a bit of the scaffolding. It's the it's the architecture around reintegration of armed groups and reconciliation and if you were to pull the scaffolding away. DDR is certainly this positive. The U.S. government has said it's a preferred method for reintegration. However what we've learned should help stabilization reintegration peace building reconciliation irrespective of whether it's a formal DDR program or not. I think that's the great value in here and the great value in a lot of the data we've collected is you do not have to be a DDR practitioner to understand and utilize these findings and it's it goes right into victims assistance recidivism criminal justice reform. All sorts of different areas that many of us deal with on a very as part of our jobs as part of our livelihoods a very regular basis. Thank you. Thank you so much Dean. Thank you Nikki and thank you Mary Ann for this very very informative conversation. Thank you for writing this this report with so many thought provoking questions. You know, apologies that we weren't able to get to all the questions in the chat today, but we really encourage everyone to continue the conversation online using the hashtag reintegrating extremist. So thank you so much for joining us for this conversation today. And please everyone enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you everybody.