 the UNUCPR and the Conflict Security and Development Research Group, the Kings College London. The title of this talk or the panel discussion today is, Exiting Conflicts on a Two-Way Street, Understanding the Relationship between Individuals, Exiting Armed Groups and their Communities. And a lot of the discussion is going to draw on and focus on some of the preliminary findings and the general thinking behind a really interesting UNUCPR project, yng Ngwneud yma ar y cwrdd ar gyfer y FFF, ac mae'n meddwl mewn MEEC. A MEEC yn ei bod yn cyflawni cyntaf i ysgrifennu unifigol yn y dyfodol i gweithio ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ar ein cyflos a'u gweithio cyflawni cyffredinol a'r ysgrifennu yn ysgrifennu phrygol i'r cyfrwysau i sylwg. So, mae'n yn ddileidio i'r gwasanaeth i'r ddysgu'r ysgrifennu bobl yma ar y cyflosol yn cyflawni cyffredinol, a'r cyfnodd y gallwn gwneud y bydd y cyfnodd yn ymddangosio ar y cyfnodd o'r bwysig i'r eich bal gael adeg. Yn cyfnodd y byddai'r cyfnodd yn y cywasgol. Y rhaid o'r pwysig yn ymddangosio, rwy'n ddomog eich panelist yn oed. Wrth gwrth i'n meddwl, ac mae'n ffawr i'r cwlau'r cwlau'r pwysig. Roedd ydych chi'n gweithio'r gweithio i'r cwlau'r cwlau oherwydd amdano, Maniwn da, ond nes uned yn teulu nhw i gydag fan i iawn. If you put them into the Q&A Box, we'll try to get through as many as we can, and I'll ask them directly on your behalf, it will save us a bit of time and we can get through more. Put your questions there, we'll come to you after the hour is up and we will have 30 minutes for some discussion with the panel. I'm not going to go into detail to introduce each speaker. What i'd rather happen is that each speaker, when they begin their talk, will give you whatever background they need i'r rhwng yn ymgyrch o'r projech o'r rheswch, felly rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'r panellysau a'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, ac mae'n ddweud o'r prysgwyr yw'r prysgwyr. Felly, y prysgwyr yw'r prysgwyr yn ddweud, yn gallu Gahw Bwyr-e-Habwa, yn cymdeithasol yn ddysgwyr, yn ddysgwyr, yn ddysgwyr, yn y ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Yn ymgyrch o ddweud o dr Sioban O'Neil, ym ymgyrch o'r projech o'r ddweud. Yn ymgyrch o'r prysgwyr yn ddweud, ymgyrch o'r prysgwyr o'r Cymru, ymgyrch o'r prysgwyr 4, ac oeddwn i'n ffwrdd i'r prysgwyr yn ddweud o'r panell yma, ac yn ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ffwrdd o'r ddweud, ymgyrch o'r prysgwyr yn ddweud, sydd yn dechrau, Cyryn, a dwi'n dechrau, sy'n dechrau yn ddweud o'r ddweud o'r panell yma, yn amlwg, ac yn ymgyrch o'r ffwrdd o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. A'n cael ei ddweud yma yw'r wneud, rwy'n ei ddweud o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r rhanol i ddweud, ac, cyryn yn ddweud, rwy'n ddweud o'r Unedig Nesaf o'r Ddr. I'm the coordinator of the Department of Peace Operations for the 26th member interagency working group on DDR, so working a lot at the policy level, in addition to support to DDR field components as well. At the same time, I also have an academic background having done some research on the transformation of former rebel movements to governing political parties in the African Great Lakes region and of course DDR was also a central role. I played a central role in that regard as well so I'm coming into this discussion having a policy lens, but also an academic lens. I'm not part of the mere project but I'm very familiar with with shaman and her team and the work they've been doing over the past few years. I thought that since a lot of the participants today are students that are currently following a seminar on DDR more generically. I thought it would make sense that it maybe start off with a brief acknowledgement of the conceptual evolution that DDR has gone through over the past decade. This is due to the fact that I'm looking at some of the current research on DDR but also listening to policymakers and practitioners that work on peace and security but not specifically on DDR. We realize that the way the term DDR is used in that context refers to traditional sequence DDR programs that can be implemented in post conflict settings when certain preconditions are in place. These preconditions being a peace agreement, trust in the peace process by conserved parties, the willingness of former constituents to engage in DDR, as well as a minimum degree of security. Looking at where UN peace operations are deployed currently and including with the DDR mandate, you will quickly realize that you hardly have a context where these preconditions are actually in place. As a result, we've seen over the past 10 years more innovative approaches being developed by DDR practitioners that have continued to be deployed in these complex conflict settings where the preconditions for DDR program are not in place. Then, as a result, the UN Interagency Working Group on DDR has recently consolidated these innovations and new approaches through the revision of the integrated DDR standards, the IDDRS, which are the UN's policy of pre-non-DDR. They were originally published in 2006 and the revised version was launched in November 2019. Within these revised integrated DDR standards, there is a new UN approach to DDR that is outlined and within this new UN approach, we now speak about an integrated DDR process which maintains traditional DDR programs as one key element where the preconditions are in place. These can still be implemented. However, there are two new elements that are now part of this integrated DDR process. The first element are so-called DDR related tools, which can be implemented before, during, or after a DDR program, especially when the preconditions are not in place and they comprise initiatives such as DDR support remediation processes. There is also community violence reduction, transition weapons and ammunition management, and also support to transitional security arrangements. The third element that is now part of this new UN approach to DDR is reintegration support in the absence of a DDR program, meaning reintegration support that can be provided to individuals that decide to leave active armed groups during ongoing conflict. Two additional points that are worth highlighting when it comes to this new approach is that the scope of DDR now goes beyond post-conflict settings in settings where UN peace operations are deployed and basically are applicable across the entire peace continuum, including in what the UN refers to as non-mission settings, basically settings where the UN may have a country team in place, but there is no fully-fledged peace operation deployed. The second point is that there is really an emphasis on the fact that DDR should not be seen as a technical process and then end to itself. DDR ought to be anchored in a broader political strategy because DDR as such is highly political. I think this last point is a good segue then to my first point on reintegration, which is at the heart of today's discussion, which is that reintegration is only likely to be successful if the causes and the reasons why individuals decided to take up arms are actually addressed. Regardless of how good a reintegration program may be designed, if these root causes and grievances are not being tackled, then reintegration is not going to be successful. I think an important point to make here is that reintegration as a standalone intervention will not be able to address many of these factors. When we talk about reintegration, then there is a need to make sure that reintegration in DDR as a whole are basically plugged into a broader, comprehensive political conflict resolution approach in order to be successful. They can actually also contribute to this. On the one hand, reintegration is dependent of such an approach, but it can also contribute to a successful overarching conflict resolution approach. The second point, and this is related to the first point, is that reintegration in itself is a multi-dimensional approach, which ranges from political to social economic and other aspects. While there is usually a lot of attention paid to the socio-economic dimension of reintegration, I would just want to highlight an additional dimension that I have come to appreciate as a key aspect to be looked at, both through my work here in the UN but also through my research, and that is the psychological dimension of reintegration. During my own PhD research, I realized that for many individuals, the hardest part about reintegrating back into their own communities was dealing with the legacy of having lived through the realities of rebellion. This was not necessarily the experience of combat fighting against the enemy at the front lines, but it was actually everyday life in a rebellion and the individual and collective vulnerabilities stemming from that. Horrible things happen, in the case that I studied yesterday in Burundi, from internal killings and massacres, sexual exploitation and abuse. These are all internal things, so it's really just everyday life and things to cope with. Also, the coping strategies that individuals would develop to deal with that would not necessarily be helpful, but certainly very human, including substance abuse, etc. So, as part of reintegration programming, I believe there needs to be a very strong component looking at psychosocial support for the individuals that are returning to communities, but also for community members. Even where such support has been granted, my sense is that there's been a lot of focus on the rank and file, but actually this psychosocial support needs to encompass the entirety of the movement, including the movement's leadership. Of course, it gets challenging if you're now talking in the post conflict, when this political leadership becomes the government in a post conflict setting. It's very challenging then to talk about psychosocial support etc, but I do believe that it is necessary. The third point I would like to make is actually related to the social economic reintegration. The key observation here is that social economic reintegration approaches need to be more innovative and better tailored to the economic realities in the communities to which ex-combatants will be returning. And I would like to give one example where this has not necessarily been the case, which is the DRC. I've been working a lot on the DRC and for the past 20 years as part of DDR programming, we've trained ex-combatants in carpentry, masonry, animal husbandry, hairdressing, etc. Apart from the fact that there's only so many hairdressers that any given community could absorb, these skill sets have not necessarily matched the economic realities in Eastern DRC, which as you may know are to a large extent shaped by the exploitation of natural resources and artisanal mining. So, while this mismatch of skills and economic realities is one of the reasons why scholars have detected a phenomenon which they've referred to as the revolving door whereby former DDR beneficiaries end up rejoining armed groups. A recent project by IOM has also detected another dynamic whereby active combatants leave armed groups and seek livelihood opportunities by themselves in artisanal mining sites that are not under control of armed groups. So, if the combatants themselves are seeking livelihood opportunities in this sector, then surely if we are there to support reintegration, then we need to look at that sector. And it is problematic of course the whole phenomenon of war economies, etc. It's something that is certainly challenging to deal with, but certainly it is worthwhile to at least explore opportunities in this sector. So, just one example pointing to the fact that we probably need to be more bold, more innovative when we're looking at socio-economic reintegration opportunities. And finally, and link to this, the fourth point I would like to make is that we shouldn't, you know, our approaches to reintegration should not underestimate or even undermine the agency of the individual. Of the individuals themselves, the individuals that leave armed groups to return to the communities, but also members within the community, within the receiving communities. So, the point here is that if we are looking at ideal reintegration approaches or effective reintegration approaches, then surely they should be designed in a way that this agency is not just acknowledged but fostered and basically becomes the core element of the overall reintegration support that we are aiming to provide. So, I'll leave it here for now. And I'm looking very much looking forward to any questions you may have and also to a fruitful discussion. Thank you very much. All right, I think I'm up next. I'm Siobhan O'Neill and I'm the project director of the Managing Exits from Armed Conflict Project at UN University Center for Policy Research. For those of you not familiar with UNU, we are a constellation of think tanks in the UN system. We're kind of a strange UN entity because we are a UN partner but we have academic independence in our charters. So, it's really our job to try to bring the best scholarship from the academy into the policymaking and program design implementation discussions and process. The project that Crystal and Kato and I work on is trying to really understand the impact of various UN supported interventions that help people exit armed conflict. So, including DDR, including child or community reintegration, a defectors program, any of the type of interventions where we're trying to help individuals, groups and entire communities separate from conflict down and return to civilian life. Despite working in the space for a long time, we don't have a lot of strong evidence for what type of interventions work and when and under which conditions. I come to this project formally as someone who worked in counterterrorism and did my PhD on when countries negotiate with terrorist groups. But I think this has been really interesting working in a space is sort of moving away from not necessarily that sort of the high level sort of policy intervention, but really the lived experience. It's a term I really like and Randolph says it often. And so I think this is a great point to start with, which is, you know, we talk about reintegration, meaning a program that the UN supports. But then there is a reintegration, not necessarily been processed, but a reintegration transition that lived experience of the individual or the community of moving away from an armed group or from armed conflict and transitioning to a life that is not oriented to that group or to that conflict, a civilian life if you will. And in this I think it's really important that we acknowledge that this is a two way street. This does not happen in a vacuum right so as much as you may have a really well fought out program that that's well supported. That's responsive that that addresses the agency of each individual. It's not just up to the individual. It's up to the community that will accept or not accept some back right and I think there's sort of three points you may hear so one understanding this is a two way street. I think so first of all we need to contextualize the process of an individual against that of the community. Let's just say for instance, some of the things we're interested in better understanding are people's the norms they embrace around the use of violence. Is it justifiable to engage in violence to pursue your goals, regardless of the fact that it's illegal or that it would hurt other people. If we ask an ex-combatant or someone who had been associated with our group that question, and they say yes it's permissible. We can't see that in a vacuum, you have to understand what the community would answer as well right because these communities have also been impacted by violence. The norms around the use of violence have changed with the conflict so we cannot see the individual, we cannot expect the individual to reintegrate to make that transition fully impermanently. So understanding the community has to meet them halfway at least and we cannot sort of evaluate that individuals transition alone in a vacuum we have to situate it in what's happening in the community. And I think there's two other key points to mention here. One is that the UN increasingly works in places where we don't necessarily have a peace process, or we have ongoing fighting. The other problem that you have is that, you know, reintegrate people into what, right. So if we're talking about taking people out of an armed group, and then just putting them into a civilian context that is completely ravaged by war where the economy is still oriented towards the conflict where everyone is affiliated for protection. Do we have a realistic, you know expectation that they would stay out of conflict. And I think related to that is this discussion around community mobilization. So I think about this in individual terms, but in many of the conflicts where the UN supports programming you have entire communities that either mobilize their own self defense group, or they align with another group, including groups that get listed as terrorist. And it's not necessarily because they're buying into an ideology or anything like that. It's often part of a protection scheme for that community, but the entire community is oriented to that conflict and affiliated with this group. And so even when you think about children, young children, they don't necessarily have the ability to make an individual decision to stand down, or to sit out right this is something that happens at a community level so I think, not something we need to think about in this discussion about the role of community in reintegration. My next point is really about this process this reintegration transition that individuals go through. Actually now that we have so many groups that are listed and kind of part of this discussion about how you reintegrate people. There is very much the political expectation that your, your exit from an arm group occurs like this, as they would say in the US cold turkey. It's an event, right, it's not a process. From what we know certainly from exiting gangs and other kinds of violent groups. This is something that's a transition, it's a transition full of fits and starts right and imagine you're in a conflict effective society. You can imagine a lot of things that would trip you up as you are trying, you know really earnestly sort of trying to separate yourself. So I think this is something to remember we view in and others who work in this space, think about DDR and reintegration is a short term humanitarian intervention. But the process of exiting our group or distancing yourself from conflict is likely a process that takes quite a while and it's one full of fits and starts it's not likely to happen on a singular a single day. So, we maybe have a mismatch between the process we're trying the individual process we're trying to support, and the types of programs that we run. So how do we, how do we address that and I think part of the answer is potentially the community. And I think that happens for a lot of reasons one one of the lessons we have learned in the space is that really targeted programs on ex combatants can backfire because it creates a lot of resentment in the community. We've never seen as having been involved in violence and then receiving benefits from the international community so finding that balance, sort of in child integration one of the takeaways has always been about a matching or doing a community oriented program so it's not just those children who are affiliated it's the broader group of children who have been impacted by the community or in the community to try to help everyone. So I think there's sort of that component here as well which is thinking about investing in the community not only to reduce any frustration that there might be because of the support for people coming out of conflict, but also to invest in a community that also needs to transition with those individuals. I think here this is this is one of those sort of last points I'll make, which is, you know, we think about these programs very much sort of coming top down. But if we're going to sort of bridge this nexus and kind of think long term about we are providing support to communities and individuals who are trying to transition away from conflict. We need to probably embed this support to build capacity at the local level. And so, you know, the UN or others won't be there within a certain period of time, but those individuals still may need help. We worked on a project a few years ago on children and their involvement with our groups, and we worked with a former child soldier and Sierra Leone who went back and interviewed eight other former child soldiers, and they were doing 15 years after they demobilized. And what was interesting is many of them had had support, and they had had job trading programs. They had had livelihood interventions, but they reached a point where they just couldn't proceed any further in their careers. And part of that problem is that it was a community that was very oriented towards a mentorship kind of model and they had no mentors. They had had a funded program, which was helpful, but it only got them so far because it just wasn't embedded into the way the economy was built into a trades were built in that society. And so I think it's a good sort of takeaway to think about how do we, how do we build up those organizations, those capacities where people will have to rely on support. And today, I think, sort of the, the acceptance, the communication sort of framework around people coming back. So there's a real investment that needs to happen in the community and I think that there has been movements in that space but that's certainly an area we probably have to explore more for for long term effective reintegration. But just to say that the project that we're working on is very much trying to get towards that evidence base to really understand what it means. What it means in different contexts to fully and sustainably exit an arm conflict, and how we can actually measure that progress over time. So, I look forward to hopefully coming back and to this forum and maybe updating you as we have even more data. I'm excited for Crystal and Kato to tell you a little bit about what we're doing in two of the context where we're applying this approach. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Hi everyone, my name is Crystal Downing. I'm the Columbia case study manager for the MEAC project. I'm also lucky enough to be Karen's advisor in the PhD program in war studies at King's. I'm really happy to be here today to present some of our Columbia plans for the managing access from arm conflict research and also some some very early findings from from some of the interviews that we've been doing so far. So I'm just going to share my screen. Okay. So, MEAC in Columbia has has a few different upcoming plans for for different research methods that we're going to be rolling out over the next few weeks and months. We're doing ongoing desk research and stakeholder interviews to try and understand kind of the background to DDR in Columbia and some of the decision making that has been going on over the last 20 and more years in Columbia through different peace processes and and immobilisations. Over the next few weeks we're rolling out a phone survey of about 2000 community members in nine conflict affected and urban communities across Columbia. We're also planning to do a survey of community leaders and surveys with approximately 200 former combatants in both the reintegration and the Fox specific reincorporation processes. We're doing some qualitative some qualitative work as well to kind of delve a little bit deeper into different issues and talk to different kind of subgroups within the reintegrating population. So, Afro-Colombian indigenous groups, women, children, people with disabilities, and others will all be involved in the qualitative work. And we're hoping later in the year to do some participatory work with some more kind of visual non-traditional methodologies to especially with young people affected by conflicts that kind of kind of get some different expressions of the factors that are affecting their daily lives, and especially their daily lives for the daily lives of those who are reintegrating after after spending time associated with armed groups. We're also hoping to do some social media analytics, which will hopefully kind of draw on some of these themes, especially in Columbia at the moment where transitional justice processes and others are kind of very happening in, you know, very much in the public eye and bringing out some of the topics that will be discussing or we are discussing here today, really into the public conversations. So, we're hoping to use social media analytics to kind of analyse how how those conversations are playing out online. So, so far in the research with stakeholders, we've interviewed practitioners, members of the government and far negotiating teams from the recent peace process, and people who were involved in an earlier process with the AUC paramilitary groups from 2003-2006 to really try and understand how how decisions were made, how kind of top down policymaking has affected DDR design and implementation over over the last 20 or so years in Columbia. And there are three themes that have have really come out so far in this part of the research. The first is that DDR design elements that aim to ensure group cohesion, which is something that in Columbia has particularly interested gorilla groups over time who are entering politics. Can actually have the opposite groups, opposite effects and push individuals out of the political party and and out of the reincorporation process. So, so especially in the case of the FARC just to provide a kind of an example here. They really saw reincorporation of the FARC rank and file as being almost synonymous with membership in the political party and so the decision making has been so far very much top down. Made by the political leadership who are part of a national reincorporation council. And, and over time, some of the decisions that have been made and, and, and kind of the kind of faults and weaknesses in the process of policymaking have resulted in delays around reincorporation and that's been very frustrating I think for some of the rank and file. So these three quotes I think illustrates some of the different perspectives. The first is Andreas Garcia, who was a member of the FARC of I'm sorry of the government negotiating team during the FARC process from 2012 2016. And he said they originally wanted to maintain the cohesion of the gorilla base. And I understand that logic, but it's turned out to be counterproductive for those same purposes. A lot of people could have felt connected to the party without their reincorporation process depending on the party. And I think that the next, the next quote really kind of highlights the effects of that emphasis on group cohesion, and the fact that this has caused frustration among, among many ex combines. So this is a quote from a former rank and file member of the FARC in 2019. He said we want to decentralise reincorporation and the productive projects because decisions are being made by the leadership of a party that does not represent us and abandoned its gorilla base a long time ago. And he was part of this, this former FARC combatant was part of a group that's kind of separated from the formal reincorporation process formed its own NGO, and is now reincorporating quite independently of government and UN supported processes. And, and kind of represents an increasing group of former FARC combatants who are still committed to reincorporation and to, and to moving away from armed group life, but are very frustrated with the way that things have been implemented over the last few years. And then the last quote is, is from pastoral api who was a member of the FARC negotiating team and is now on the FARC component of the National Rain Corporation Council, who kind of reflects on the differences between kind of decision making in within the armed group and now as part of the political party. So our practice was every morning, you do this, you do that, in combat, it was an order and today we're working with a different logic. New experiences, someone to organise in one way, others in another. The party can't be one of only ex gorillas. So the separation of some members is part of that. I'm not worried about it. It's logical to be like that to adjust the political basis and the leaderships. And I think it's important to note here that this is quite this contrast quite greatly with other members of the of the FARC political leadership who are much still much more kind of concerned with maintaining that cohesion and, and kind of, kind of, that's that's that kind of connection between the rain corporation process and the political party. So a second theme that's come out so far in the state stakeholder interviews is that the, the, as, as Garhou said that you know that DDR is a political political process and, and obviously is often discussed and negotiated as part of political peace and peace processes. But it's the one of the things that's really coming out is that an over emphasis on politics and political goals during negotiations by leadership can actually be detrimental to rank and file reintegration because either not enough time is spent discussing rank and file reintegration or, or it's not it's not addressed in a in a really kind of comprehensive way. One practitioner who was, who was involved in the implementation of the AUC demobilisation and reintegration process said quite simply the negotiation was only for the AUC commanders and she put that in the context of the rank and file reintegration just really being a second, a second priority or not a priority at all. And similarly during the FARC process, Andreas Garcia kind of highlighted that on the government side. There was a lot of pressure to arrive at an agreement they were this was negotiated at the end of four years of of talks. And so there was kind of a political need to arrive at an agreement and on the FARC side there was a lot of emphasis on the political aspects of of reincorporation. And so the FARC reincorporation was negotiated in a rush. That's why it was set out in such a general way and left so many things pending that had to be defined during implementation. Political reincorporation was prioritised. That's what most interested the FARC negotiators. So socio economic reincorporation was not well outlined and that gap had implications delays for the government, the pressure to arrive in an agreement was great as well. One of the other themes that I'm that I'm kind of exploring in these interviews is the fact that children are often excluded from DDR and policy making processes that actually aim to address their needs. So it's, it's kind of public knowledge at this point children were not discussed at all in the AC negotiations. And in fact, between 11 and 14,000 of them were sent home with any without any kind of reintegration support at all. And that that was after the AC demobilisations from 2003 2006. A few years later, the various stakeholders in Colombia kind of realised this this mistake and there was an effort called finding Nemo to to find some of the some of the children who had been sent home without without reintegration benefits. And that effort resulted in finding 275 of those 11 to 14,000 children. So obviously now, you know where we're around 15 years later, there are potentially, you know, 11 to 14,000 people who are who have who have just kind of reintegrated on their own and and it's really not clear what the impact of that has been. There has been other progress on the inclusion of children child recruits in reintegration but really it's mostly on paper and the practice of it has not has not moved very far past where it was. So what's the impact of these kind of weaknesses on communities. I think one of the first points that we're seeing in Colombia is that community services face extra pressure. Excombanants leave reintegration sites or reincorporation sites the ETCR by the Spanish acronym, and they established new collective settlements in communities that place pressure on community services which are already scarce, like water roads and electricity. You know, you're talking about potentially 100 or more people over over a short period of time arriving in a community and establishing a new settlement. And obviously that impacts community services, the same with education schools, schools and universities don't have the resources to accept children who are not registered for the reintegration programs and adults who want to enter universities and professional training programs. And so that obviously has has an effect on both the schools and universities themselves and and also to to those formerly associated children and adults and their access to education. Another point is that communities and excombanants face security threats. I think in both the AUC and the FARC processes we've seen kind of 40 ddr leading to armed group activity people refusing to mobilize or rapidly returning to to armed activity. And that obviously affects both communities broadly and excombanants specifically who are facing targeted threats by by their kind of former colleagues in in the armed groups. And finally delays in economic reintegration, meaning that communities see less benefits associated with the presence of excombanants. Whereas you know economic reintegration productive projects might might bring employment to the communities if they're well if they're well supported in actual fact if they're if if excombanants are reintegrating and and seeking jobs in their own then then communities may see it more as as additional pressure than than any kind of economic benefit. Now just to to to talk just very briefly about some of the mayach survey work and the and the community surveys that we're going to be rolling out in Colombia. So the community survey that we have addresses a number of different issues from demographics to politics, social relationships security experiences of conflict climate security and the impact of on on all of these kind of dynamics. And what we're really trying to do is the very similar topics between community survey and the excombanants survey so that we can really compare and see and see the individuals in the context of their communities and and see kind of what the differences and similarities are between all of their experiences. In the Columbia community survey some additional kind of context specific topics that we're going to be addressing so we incorporation of the FARC within within broader implementation of the peace agreement in all of its different dimensions. Continued activity by armed and distant groups so so obviously we've got the ELN who's still active the as a gorilla group continuing the conflict and and then other criminal groups and the FARC dissident groups who are who are continuing as well. Community knowledge and perceptions of the peace agreement and dynamics around the presidents the presence of Venezuela migrants from refugees and the and the kind of outcomes and and experiences that have been seen as a result of those factors so far. And then finally just kind of a note on on me I can and adapting the survey to the Colombian context. I think one of the really interesting objectives of of the project as a whole is to create these tools so that the UN can can really rigorously assess its interventions in different context and so that the experience of adapting the the survey instrument to to Colombia is kind of part of the project and and we're going to be we're going to be looking at lessons learned as part of that process. So just to note some of the really interesting factors that we've been looking at in the in the during the adaptation of the of the survey. So obviously gender, religious and political ideology are different across different contexts the length of the conflict so are two case studies at the moment at Columbia in Nigeria in Nigeria you can ask questions about before the conflict in Colombia because it's been going on for 50 plus years. It's more difficult and so we've had to think creatively about how to how to address kind of questions that or how to adapt questions that ask people to compare but between a before and after. Climate change and conflict related environmental degradation because in Colombia we've got this that you know a lot of illegal mining and and deforestation that's associated with our group activity. And then language age and COVID related restrictions which is obviously affecting affecting research all over the world at the moment and and obviously something to take into account. So anyway, I will stop there and I'm really pleased to pass over to my colleague Cato who will tell you a bit about the Nigeria work. Thank you so much Chris. So this is actually a really great setup for for what I want to present on Nigeria you've done excellent job and kind of laying out the topics of the research and we have similar topics in Nigeria so that's very helpful. I'm also going to share my streams screen because I want to share some numbers and I think visualizing those will be will be easier. And I should also mention that my neighbor just started snow shoveling right outside so you're getting some free sound bites from New York in the winter. I apologize if it's if it's distracting. So I just quickly more present some really really new and fresh data that's coming out of our research in Nigeria. I really made kind of analyzing this and cleaning this data so it's really so new that I would ask you to not yet court or reference any numbers will will publish this soon. Once they're finalized. So very specifically we did a phone survey in December and January in Borno State in northeast Nigeria, a phone survey on community experiences and perspectives on the conflict. I mentioned that this survey was done in partnership with Dr Rebecca Litman who's at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Dr Zoe marks was at Harvard Kennedy School. We had 3173 respondents, men women children, kind of across the metropolitan area of my degree which is a which is a city with a very high level of displacement so a lot of response coming coming from outside my degree. The topics I think we're still actually already did a really great job in outlining some of the topics it's very similar so norms and perceptions run violence in conflict victimization acceptance of former members of our group so that that's broken around but also self defense groups like the CJTF Youngora and a few others. We have questions around COVID questions around climate change. And I think for this specific presentation I really just only want to pull out a few specifically on victimization and exposure to violence. Then a few on kind of perceptions around acceptance and experiences with people coming back. Just a few key things that I think will connect very nicely to the presentations of Caho, Siobhan and then Crystal. So very quickly just to start with victimization and kind of exposure to conflict. As you can see here the respondents really really displayed a very high level of experience with the conflict and exposure to the conflict the blue bars represent the experience of the respondents themselves, and then the orange bars, those were questions about close relatives so, for example, almost 2.5% of the respondents were ever abducted by Boko Haram themselves. And when we asked if they had close relatives abducted by Boko Haram. This was close to 28%. So really pretty high levels the same. We asked if they were ever beaten, tortured or shot as a result of the conflict. That's 21%. But then if we ask about close relatives that goes up to to 57.65%. And one very important thing to mention there actually we asked a follow up questions on the perpetrators of these acts and, for example, with beaten tortured or shot questions. About 65% said that they were beaten tortured or shot or their close relatives were beaten tortured or shot by Boko Haram. But about 36% said this was by the military. And so that's really significant to point out. I think this connects a little bit to what Caho was saying about addressing root causes and grievances in a conflict. Especially in a conflict in northeast Nigeria where you're trying to integrate great people coming out of armed groups, while the conflict is still ongoing. You can also see that there's very high levels of displacement. 68% had to leave their community because of the conflict and out of those about half of those have not returned to their community at the moment of surveying them. It's a little bit also I think out to what you were saying about psychological effects for former combatants, of course, but also for community members, right? So that's really the question here is how did these experience impact kind of the acceptance and the preparedness to welcome people back. On the flip side, association also seems quite common and high. So we asked people if they were ever with an armed group or force, even just for one day. You can see here that I think roughly a little bit under 5% said that they were ever with Boko Haram. We expect this number to be a little bit higher. You can see that the refuse to answer response on this question was close to 18%. But still significant numbers admitted to having been with an armed group. And I think this is really a very relevant thing to take into account when you're designing reintegration programs in a setting where you have that ongoing conflict. I mean, Siobhan talked about this right into what are we reintegrating people, especially if you have armed groups who are recruiting still. I think I talked a little bit about those kind of existing grievances as well. So I think this is a very interesting point. I also think that we need to be a bit mindful of the fluidity of association and whether it is related at all to absence in the community or I think from the outside and I do this as well. We talk a lot about welcoming people back in the community, but this idea of going away and then coming back. I'm not sure if that's often really what's going on in reality. Now I quickly want to run you through some questions. These are, these are really quite interesting. So we asked people if they, if they knew anyone, if they knew people abducted by Boko Haram and if they knew people who came back to the community. If they said, yes, we asked, did you welcome them back and if they said no yes, would you welcome them back and really across the board you can see that the perceptions around this, the hypothetical. The levels of acceptance are much lower than than kind of in reality so would you welcome them back 60% says yes. So these are really quite high numbers. We asked this of people abducted by Boko Haram and also we asked about people who willingly joined Boko Haram and so here you see lower numbers but still a significant update between would you and did you so it does seem like in reality people are accepting those who were with Boko Haram back in their communities. The same question about close relatives. And so again you see the same trend would you welcome them back. It's pretty high actually for relatives who were abducted by Boko Haram 76% then did you it goes up to 83%. I do want to be very clear that the concerns around stigma are real. There were legitimate concern you can see in the, did you welcome them back 14% said no that's that's actually pretty, pretty high right so I think we also have some emerging evidence from other surveys we're doing in in northeast Nigeria that really suggest that there are some very real concerns around certain groups, for example, women who come back to their communities with children that they didn't used to have. Before they went into the armed group so just to point out that there that there is a real concern here. We asked about close relatives who willingly joined. And so, again, you see kind of the same. Actually this one goes up significantly from from 55 to in that in the 80% and it's interesting because the, the number from close relatives who were abducted to who joined willingly goes from 76 to 55% in the green. But with the did you questions, it goes from 83 to to 80 so that's only a 3% difference between, did you welcome back family members who were abducted versus willingly joined. Very quick final points, just to end on kind of a positive note we asked if people had heard any stories about returning vocal around associates who had been good community members 35% said yes, and when we asked about negative stories only 13% said yes. So, all of these numbers. Again, these are tentative emerging findings but but I do think that the brother point here is that that communities are open to accepting people who come back from from vocal around, and they have indeed been doing so. As I said, these are emerging will soon be publishing a lot more kind of short findings briefs so for those who are interested in this definitely keep an eye on the new and new CPR website. We're also doing a lot of other surveys. We're rolling out surveys with people who were formerly associated other community members surveys. We have a survey with community leaders that's currently ongoing and we already have one findings report on that one on the on the website. So this is really just to give you a little taste of what we're currently doing in in nature. Yeah, and I look forward to that to the discussion over to Randall, I think. Yeah. Fantastic. What a pleasure to be able to follow all of some of my favorite colleagues here and a challenge to be the anchor to round out the presentation part of this seminar. Hopefully what I can do is I can, you know, circle back around connect some of the different ideas that we've got here and tie it all in a neat little package. But the clock is ticking so I'll get going. I think this is a great opportunity I really wanted to jump back to, you know, taking off my policy hat taking off my advising processes in the field hat and jump back to some more academically oriented work that I did in the past. The work that I think in its own small way is maybe some of a precursor to some of the work that the team at UNU is doing now with the MEAC project in its own small way. And why I'm so excited and supportive about the project that they have now taking the whole premise of doing these big studies, comparing across countries, taking it to a whole nother level. So I'll give you a little bit of very brief background on some of my work. I want to focus on a few micro issues about the lived experience of reintegration as Siobhan mentioned, and then maybe zoom out to some of the macro questions about what is this all mean for the successes and failures of DDR and reintegration support. So background, this research was taken undertaken during a time when I was working for the World Bank. I was working mostly on monitoring and evaluation of reintegration support. And the main focus of that being, you know, we're spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars on reintegration support across in this instance I was working in the Great Lakes region of Africa. So across the five countries in the Great Lakes region, we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on reintegration support. Were we getting anything for it? Was this having an effect was really the question we were trying to answer all the time. But kind of paradoxically, we very rarely spent any time looking at, you know, the kind of underlying social, political and economic processes that individuals themselves navigate as they transition from a life as a combatant to a civilian. So we had a very poor kind of understanding of what we were even trying to observe. So I wanted to go try to take a stab at trying to figure out what I could about this. So, you know, very briefly working from the longitudinal data from across, you know, maybe a five year period from five countries, about 10,000 respondents, both ex combatant and community members, about 1000 data points on each respondent. If you've got some quick maths there, you have a sense that there's a lot of data, quite rich. And I'll leave that there. So if I jump to a few kind of micro insights on some of these processes. I think one of the first things that really actually took me a while to appreciate because it's something we often assume is true. And this idea that yes, there is actually a huge amount of evidence to support the idea that ex combatants start the process of reintegration at a huge disadvantage to the communities to which they return. And this is in almost every, you know, every one of the 1000 measurable aspects, you know, we were looking at. And maybe if we tried to put some kind of umbrella over this and kind of make it neat how to think about these kinds of disadvantages. A lot of them are you can associate with what I call missed opportunities, missed opportunities for a normal education trajectory, skills development, socialization, social networking, and etc. All these things that we do in the normal course of a life that provide the foundation for where we are later on. So individuals who have been in our groups, you know, have often missed a large portion of those kind of foundational processes. And this is especially acute for those who are mobilized into armed groups under the age of 18. And the further you slide down that scale of the younger the age at recruitment, the more acute these problems are. But what does it all translate to when we start talking about, okay, how do people start navigating ex combatants start navigating these processes of reintegration. And I think there's kind of maybe two main stories or narratives that I want to focus in on here first economically and then, you know, a social component of them. Because it was really clear that in the Great Lakes region there was kind of some predominantly identifiable patterns that were able to draw out and see that there were some processes happening. And one of these kind of reintegration pathways or processes that individuals were undertaking was really based around small scale business or wage labor, to the extent that wage labor even exists in these contexts. And keep in mind when we talk about, you know, small business, this could be, you know, a stall at the market selling staple goods, this could be, you know, a small carpentry business. This could be, you know, selling watered out gasoline on the side of the road. All of that, you know, could fall within that category. And really, the forms of support that were most useful that really showed evidence of kind of triggering a positive trajectory here were around skills and education that we saw that those ex combatants who received skills and education support were more likely to have improved income and savings through, you know, through a. Small business or wage labor, that this translated to increased food and housing security, and that all of this could affect an increased perception of self empowerment, the ability to affect change in one's life, and that that was correlated with stronger success and access to formal credit. Which all of this, you know, starts being a positive cycle that was really observably, you know, propelling some ex combatants upwards. Another version of this story is one that's really based around subsistence or small scale agriculture, where, again, the key factor here is access to arable land that those who have, you know, access to arable land have greater food and housing security have greater income and savings. If they're really successful that can feed back into their food and housing security and even in some instances feedback into access to arable land, right, moving beyond subsistence into a small scale production. Now, I've just elaborated the kind of positive versions of these of these two loops, but there's a flip side, right, there's those who do not have the skills and education to get into being successful in wage labor or small business, so those who do not have access to arable land or not able to activate that kind of pathway. And if we try to look at what is the big factor that separates those who are successful in these two pathways, which I should briefly note, the most successful individuals are those in the Great Lakes region where those who combine these two pathways, right, especially given that growing in large parts of the season can large parts of the area can be seasonal. Right. So there's a combined livelihood strategy, but really jumping back who's successful and who's not. One of the key factors we found with those who are more socially connected are the ones who are more successful in either of these pathways right social connections. And it's not so difficult to understand why, if we think about small business, for example, a wage labor really wasn't a big part of this really small business. And I reflect back on some of my early experiences working at a demobilisation site site in South Sudan. And being in a market outside of the demobilisation site and, you know, kind of eight stalls were in the middle of nowhere in South Sudan, and I was kind of like, well, every stall, everybody here selling the exact same thing. They're selling the same bag of maize, some soap, some other basic staple goods, they're all selling it at basically the rock bottom price that they can sell it for. How do you decide which stall you're going to buy at? Well, you go to the person you know. So social connections are accessed above tangible and intangible resources. And in this instance, it was really a matter of fact that those who had stronger social connections were able to get a greater market share there to really make that livelihood happen. Likewise, in these kinds of contexts in the Great Lakes region, we're talking about a setting where access to arable land is almost entirely socially mediated. It's really about familial structures, inheritance, which has some very particular gendered aspects in that often women are not able to inherit land, which creates some blockages to certain pathways for women. And we could spend hours just talking about the gender dimensions of this. But ultimately, this idea that social connections, social integratedness is key to economic success and to the experience, the lived experience of reintegration overall. So well, how do we build social connections? How successful are ex-combatants at doing that? Well, what we see is very clear that those who are able to build trust and acceptance within familial networks as a symbol of acceptance within the community are able to leverage these familial networks towards broader communal networks. And it's those communal networks that are really the ones that are more important for the economic outcomes. And this is super interesting looking at this. We see that it's really clear that those who, it's possible for individuals to make broader communal networks without family support, but it's not as likely. So I think this is something that's more and more well recognized is that, you know, in many reintegration settings, it's really the family that bears the onus of responsibility, the brunt of support for ex-combatants. But in many settings, many ex-combatants are returning to communities where they do not have familial networks that can support them. And it's a huge disadvantage going into reintegration. So there are so many things I would love to talk about on these micro aspects, but I want to make sure I just briefly get to some more macro reflections. And this is just a teaser, but I think ultimately what I want to get the message here to be is that the social and economic aspects are deeply intertwined, deeply complex, inseparable. It almost becomes meaningless to even talk about them as separate things because they are one and the same. So let's jump out macro picture. So, you know, I'd spent, you know, some time developing, you know, more or less a model of reintegratedness. And my boss said, OK, well, what can this do for us? We still have to, you know, figure out, you know, what's been successful and what hasn't. But with this kind of model, there was an opportunity to start looking at, OK, well, I've been looking at individuals. What if we start looking at groups? We can look at, you know, demographic groups, all kinds of insights there, geographic communities, how do people in different geographies do? Or we could even start looking at the entire set of country program beneficiaries, all the ex-combatants that had received reintegration support. And in most countries where we were working at that time, I think there was something really positive happening. It's kind of the ideal model how we think DDR and reintegration support looks. In that, as I said, you know, at the start of reintegration, we see that ex-combatants have a significant disadvantage to community members. And, you know, conflict ends, you know, there's a peace dividend, you know, economy start going, people start moving. There's a lot of hope about what's going on. We see the communities go on this upward trajectory. Things are getting better, right? And ex-combatants over time are also going upwards. They're also benefiting from that peace dividend. But with reintegration support, this additional support that they're getting, they're able to close the gap, right? So they're moving up and the space between communities and ex-combatants reintegratedness is really shrinking. And that's kind of the ideal. That's how we think it's supposed to work. But what we also saw in some settings, for example, in DRC, where, while large-scale international conflict had stopped, a multiplicity of more interrelated local conflicts with transnational dimensions, you know, kept burning. So in DRC, there was this kind of continued context of local insecurity and violence. And in that setting, what we saw was that, okay, it's true, ex-combatants still start disadvantaged communities. But the space between them at the start was much smaller. Over time, we saw that there was no peace dividend. There's no bounce back for communities. They're on a slow, slight trajectory of decline. And ex-combatants who are getting a little bit of support, they close the gap. But the delta meets at one point, and then there's kind of an end of the possible trajectory of improvement. And I think it poses a lot of really kind of deep questions that I hope we can pick up in the conversation here afterwards about what is successful reintegration programming. Are there differences between a successful reintegration experience, the lived experience, and a successful reintegration programming outcome? Are those always the same thing? I think there's evidence to support the idea that they're not always the same thing. But I think it's really interesting because this ties back around to what Gauho was presenting here at the beginning of the session, right? We see that today in the settings where we work, it is settings like Eastern DRC. It is settings with ongoing protracted conflict, a multiplicity of armed groups with transnational dimensions, organized crime, possibly terrorist designations. All of these issues drastically complicate the endeavor of supporting individuals in this process that they themselves navigate with or without support. And I think that I will stop there because there's so many issues that are really interesting to discuss here, so many points. But I hope we can pick up some of these in the discussion afterwards. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Randolph. Thank you to all of our panellists for really in-depth and fascinating discussion. There's lots of questions that I have. I'm not going to abuse that privilege and go straight in. I will prioritise the questions that have come in from our audience. Just for those of you that have joined us a little bit later, if you have any questions, you need to put them in the Q&A box and then I'll put them to the panel. If they're for a person in particular, please specify that the person you would like me to address the question. Otherwise, I'll assume it's up for grabs and it could be claimed by any of the panellists. So I will go through a couple of questions to start with and then we'll come back to the others. There's a question here from someone about whether DDR has done a better job and it's more recent and updated conceptions of dealing with children born in conflict and to give the example of the Lord's Resistance Army, for example. So it would be interesting to hear generally how DDR is at least on paper if not in practice dealing with that issue. There's another question here by G. Leslie and perhaps Crystal, you would want to address this one in particular about whether the change in the Colombian government has affected the peace process and the broader process of reintegration. Perhaps for the rest of the panel that might be a broader question about how the permissive environments are related to the political context of the day. In the DRC and elsewhere, how important is it that there is that kind of permissive political context and how effective our programs and other interventions are dealing with that at the community level. If you want to, Crystal, start off with that question on Columbia and then maybe touch on the question of children and anyone else who would like to answer please follow on from Crystal. Sure. Thanks, Karen. So, yeah, it's a great question. I think there was a lot of uncertainty just generally around implementation of the peace agreement when Duque took office and that uncertainty has continued. And I think that throughout the kind of FARC, both the political party and more broadly the former combustion population, there's just a lot of uncertainty about how the current government approaches their legal status, how much resource there is for implementation of reincorporation. On the transitional justice side, there have been a few attempts by the by the government to modify the transitional justice system in a way that that many think is not entirely coherent with how it's thought out in the peace agreement. So, I think broadly it's a sort of general kind of uncertainty about the current government approach to implementation of the peace agreement. I think in terms of direct effects on reincorporation, the government's placing a lot of emphasis on economic reincorporation and the productive projects. And I think it's under a lot of pressure to make those projects work, but also doesn't have the resources. I mean COVID has obviously impacted the Colombian economy in similar ways to how it's impacted economies around the world. So the government doesn't have a huge amount of resource to commit to reincorporation and certainly not at the scale that I think was expected as the peace process was developing and as envisioned in the final agreement. So there's been an emphasis on the economic side, perhaps to the detriment of other kind of more psychosocial and broader aspects of reincorporation. So I think, but I do think that the government has shown commitment to continuing reincorporation. I think the biggest problem is probably just the uncertainty around if further attempts will be made to modify aspects of implementation. On the question about children. So it's a really interesting, I think it's a really interesting question. In Colombia, there are fewer cases of children who were born within the armed groups who are still with the former members of the armed groups. So there were quite strict rules, unfortunately, against having children within the armed groups, but there's been a baby boom among the former combustion population since the peace agreement, which is, it was initially seen and I think still as a kind of reason for optimism that people were leaving the FARC and they were kind of part of their transition into civilian life was really kind of creating families and putting down routes. And so a lot of the kind of government and UN efforts around supporting those individuals making the transition to civilian life is around ensuring that their families are also supported and that there is efforts are made to support the children that have been born since since they left the armed group, but I know that in other in other contexts it's different so I'll let others on the panel answer that question as well. Thanks. Yeah, I don't know if anyone would like to go to Siobhan. I want to say a couple things. I mean, I think historically DDR programs have not necessarily been oriented to ensure that women in there and girls in there should be very varied associations with our groups were recovered or eligible. In some of the efforts to make sure that they would have a safe space that they would be eligible. They haven't always necessarily ended up with people having that safe space to be involved I'm thinking of Somalia when we did some work there and some of the requirements to have a separate space but there wasn't a separate space led to women being locked out or we having day programs so it is not something we've we've been particularly good at I know there's a real effort now to make sure that we can have more gender sensitive programs more accessible programs. Plan International is undertaking a huge effort right now particularly around girls and to see that programming could be adapted to their needs which is really needed so that's really good. One thing just to say on this very specific issue of people coming out with children that they didn't go in with. This is an area where I think we need to not only just think of short term programming but also sort of long term support structures for people who may have not had those children by their own. Other on the will. And so I'm thinking specifically of Iraq. So one of the challenges here is is how those children are recognized or not. And that's not necessarily for the UN, but it might be more of an advocacy role. And so in that particular case you have people coming out with birth certificates and marriage certificates from Islamic State that are not recognized by the Kurdish regional government or by the Iraqi government. It's a huge cascade of effects for them right so that means you cannot and first of all it means they are illegal because they've been had out of wedlock. It makes the women illegal. It makes it impossible to access school and medical care and other social services so we are potentially creating a cycle where a lot of young people will really struggle moving forward that that's not a good situation for anyone. We need to find a way to address some of these sort of structural challenges to women coming out with children but do it in a way that is responsive to their needs and recognizing those needs might change over time so you know that there's one of the challenges here particularly for girls coming out with children is we're potentially recognizing forced marriages so there's there's a real sort of resistance to getting to involve with that and yet they'd be creating enormous challenges for them if those marriages are not recognized. And so I think having a flexible approach one that that is responsive to the needs of the individual and those will vary by person and also one that will will change over time. So what a girl with a child or one of the child needs in this moment now. It may be very different three years from now and we have to have some flexibility built in the system to adapt to those changing needs. Thank you. I'm going to ask three questions, three different speakers to get through some of these. So, for Randolph specifically, perhaps you could talk more about one of the questions here about how X combatants leverage familial trust and acceptance at the community level. And they're asking in particular for any published research or recommendations. We have a question from, from Kay Neil Jenkins as well. Kate, so perhaps you can speak a little bit more about the methods used with the telephone interviews. Obviously, you stated that these are preliminary findings but nonetheless they are really interesting statistics, but how did the different methods and the challenges around how it was undertaken affect the answers kind of I guess about strengths and limitations of that approach. Henry Levenson has a question, which Gahawad, hope that you might be able to address initially at least, but perhaps the rest of the panel also wants to comment on. He talks about Ethiopia having had a series of DDR processes, but now returning to violence. And the question really is at what point to researchers of DDR start a post mortem of the DDR process in countries that return to conflict. At what point, I guess, does is it accept that a DDR process is completely derailed. So if we, if we, if we start with, I think it was Randolph, I came to first and we'll move through those. Great. Yeah, I can touch on that point of familial networks and community networks. And I hopefully also can just comment briefly on the issue of child reintegration as well. So starting with familial networks. Now, my all, I used to know all the figures and exactly in my head perfectly and could just cite off numbers like crazy, but I have to go with vagueness now instead. Yes, familial networks as a symbol of trust and acceptance shift and identity, and the most clear pathway through which this is observably transferred into broader communal networks is through marriage. And it's really interesting to look at because there's a really clear gender dimension here as well. Because we see if you ask, you know, community members and ex combatants about their various attitudes about marrying, you know, non combatants or ex combatants. You know, it's pretty stark that nobody wants to marry a female ex combatant, but there's some wiggle room with male ex combatants. And those who are able to return to a family network, and that family's broader set of connections can often find their way into a situation and where it's possible to marry, build an extended familial network, and that that's really the gateway into broader communal social networks. What's the policy implication here, it's not get everybody married, that's not what it's about. It's about what it symbolizes its trust and acceptance. And I think that, you know, a lot of my earlier work actually course, I triangulate some of the points that crystal, or I'm sorry, Cato was bringing up earlier about, you know, if you ask people beforehand, you know, or do you fear the return of ex combatants, they all pretty uniformly say yes, we're very worried about ex combatants returning to our community. If you ask them, you know, a year or three years after ex combatants have returned, how do you view ex combatants as in your community, they're more likely than not to describe them as the positive contribution to the community, and that there's an increased level of trust there. It's really this kind of slow cathartic process of doing things together, of being exposed to each other, and marriage is just one embodiment of that. If I can really just brief published, it's out, it's out there and World Bank documents on the internet. I don't know where they are these days they used to all be on the TDRP.org website, which doesn't exist anymore, but in the World Bank knowledge repository. You know, you'll find it. On the issue of children's reintegration. I think one big thing that we often, that often happens that, or that one reason why DDR practitioners often haven't had to deal with this issue as much as they might, is that, you know, recruitment of children is a war crime and armed groups know this. So that as soon as they're, you know, thinking about the process of entering into some kind of DDR program, they send all the kids away, they say, no, no, we don't have any children, none here. And so that all these individuals may not formally exist within DDR support, but they certainly are navigating these processes of reintegration themselves. And I think it's a really gray line between adult and child as well, because we end up with this over under feature, right? There are some who are under this line of 18 or sometimes under the line of 16, depending on which legal frameworks we're working in, who they may be legally a minor, but are coming into a DDR process perhaps married, maybe with a child or multiple children, maybe they've been a commander. They're coming with all of this life experience where chronologically they are a child, but their position within an armed group has been as an adult, and it's a really tough transition to treat that in a, in a post conflict environment. Likewise, this is one of my actually my my pet projects is this whole invisible demographic, which is those who are mobilized as children but demobilize as adults, because they're over the line of 16 or 18. But they carry some of the huge challenges that child soldiers do the same challenges but they get no specific support for those because they're over this line. So it's a really tricky issue. And there's a spectrum of perspectives on how to approach that they're really hardline child protection advocates who are on one side they say you can't even put the words DDR and child together unless you're saying there is never DDR and children together, there's that perspective. And then you know there's maybe some middle ground where we say there is a parallel approach to release return and reintegration of children that needs to be coordinated intact with a DDR process, because they're obviously related to each other. I'll stop there for now on those two points and turn over to the others. Gato, I think on the Nigeria methods. I just jump right in on the Nigerian methods or did anyone else want to jump in on Randolph's great points. I think you can speak on methods now. I think there were several questions in here so the telephone calls were made from my degree actually by a local team of operators in Hausa and Canary. And our surveys I should mention are going to be published as kind of public public goods. Once they've been kind of tested contextualized a little bit further, we're aiming to add Shua Arabic as well for some of our other surveys, but we're still working on that translation. I should also just mention that this telephone survey was partly done because of COVID-19. One of our goals with the MEAC project had always been to find ways of doing research or assessment with people in hard to reach areas, which is in any conflict setting, right? But COVID really pushed us to do this kind of faster in a larger scale way. It was a two-layered kind of introduction through respondents. We wanted to initially buy phone lists that was not possible and we couldn't find phone lists that were really good enough. We ended up recruiting our own sample. We did a kind of randomized household outreach with a very short in-person kind of intake. Interviews to ask people if they wanted to be part of a research sample and then from there randomly call people. So I think that really helped with the response rate because the team that did the participant recruitment already had a chance to kind of explain the MEAC projects and the goals of the project. Then again, when we would call them for the interview, we would of course have a elaborate kind of consent script, which again would run through the goals of the project. In addition, specifically on the question on whether people were ever with an armed group, this is the exact question that one of our research partners had already used in previous in-person research. And she, I think, Siobhan, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think she found slightly higher rates. And so in the near future, if COVID allows it, we're going to do this in-person as well. And so that will be very kind of interesting because then we'll really be able to compare how a phone survey elicits maybe different responses than an in-person survey. On the team of enumerators, we have our own kind of team of enumerators on the ground who are doing several surveys for us. We're working with Mohammad Bakar, who is a really, really excellent and experienced enumerator. For this specific flash survey, we also work with IPA as an implementing partner. So they helped in conducting this survey from my degree. I'm trying to see what else I missed. I think we can leave it there. It was probably a lot more difficult. Yeah, and I'm happy, of course, to have a separate conversation on this and have more details. Great, thank you, Gato. Gaho, that question about when we should pronounce a DDR programme effectively dead. Did you want to comment on that? Yeah, no, I'm happy to do so. And looking at the question, and it's a good question because I will use it to emphasise a point that I made earlier. Because key assumption here is that the reason why we're seeing the Tigray crisis currently play out is because previous DDR efforts between 2013 and 16, and also 1991 and 1997 following the fall of the dirt failed. So that's an assumption that I would not agree with. I think the Tigray, their historical and broader historical political reasons for what we're seeing in the Tigray crisis right now. And they are certainly to a certain degree maybe related to incomplete the efforts of the past or implications of the processes of the past. But certainly I would not make that direct link to say that because of the implications or even shortcomings of previous DDR processes we're seeing the Tigray crisis play out as it's playing out right now. Of course, and I'll zoom out of Ethiopia just to make the point that, of course, incomplete DDR processes, they can need to new grievances amongst the beneficiaries or even communities that have been involved. They can lead to fueling existing grievances. And of course, given that you have these former ex-combatants somewhat in limbo in their communities, of course this increases the potential for mobilisation or remobilisation along these past or new grievances. Certainly that is a factor that can play into renewed crisis. But I would really avoid, and this is something that I see a lot in academic literature, that scholars zoom into the DDR process and then centre everything that happens in a specific context when it comes to conflict dynamics on that DDR process. But I think the lens needs to be a different one. In the end, we're dealing with a political crisis. And I think the lens, you need to look at what is being done to address this political crisis at the political level. And yes, as I put it earlier, DDR can contribute to that. But DDR should really not be seen as an end in itself. It needs to be driven by this political strategy. So I would hope that maybe going forward, we can see scholars better analysing this link between political conflict resolution approaches and how DDR evolved. Or was used in this context rather than zooming into the DDR process and then highlighting all the flaws which you will find. But in most cases where I think DDR has been declared as a failure, the real failure was a conflict resolution failure. And it manifested itself in the way that DDR played out. And this can be due to different reasons. This can be due to the fact that there was no concrete link between DDR and the conflict resolution strategy. And this is something that even within the UN, we keep on sensitising our leadership saying that if you see armed groups in a specific context, don't jump to the conclusion that you can just simply DDR them. Because these armed groups have concrete political, social, economic grievances that need to be addressed. So before you even talk about DDR, think about how you want to address those. And then the DDR practitioners will work something out for you once you've established that framework. At the same time, and this is something that was mentioned earlier, there's also the issue of political will at the national level by the government. Is there really a commitment for DDR or is it just, you know, something that, you know, a rhetoric that is used maybe even to appease international supporters on this aspect. And also another point is even where we have a political will to move forward with DDR, a challenge that we keep on running into is that there is a lot of focus put immediately on programming, resource mobilisation, etc. But the most important point, once political will has been established, is to come up with a solid policy framework that will guide DDR processes, including support by international actors. So, I think I'll leave it here, but the key point is, don't see DDR in isolation, and don't apply for the policymakers or practitioners that might be listening, don't apply DDR, you know, as an end, you know, don't see it as an end in itself, don't apply it in isolation. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's probably a good point to finish just because we have to finish, unfortunately, with a with a good broad content textualisation of what DDR can and can't do, or should be expected to do. There are lots more questions that I had, and there are some really great questions that we didn't get around to so apologies to our audience for that. The best way to deal with that is to have you all back. It would be really great to have another panel further down the line when, you know, some of the research has progressed and dare I say it may be even after the pandemic is over, when, you know, some of this findings might be followed up with in person research. Thank you really, really thanks to our speakers today, our panellists. There's so much expertise and knowledge on this panel that we've only scratched the surface of what we'd like to discuss, but thanks for taking the time, and thank you to our audience for the questions. And, you know, we hope to see you all soon and best of luck with the research project as you go. Thanks, Karen. Thanks everybody. Thanks everyone so much.