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This Primer provides guidance for DDR practitioners, peacebuilding stakeholders, and international partners on how to sequence DDR efforts alongside political transformation in ways that align and ideally strengthen one another. Using insights from cases like Nepal, Liberia, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, and Colombia, it examines how different sequencing choices affect the relationship between security and political inclusion in post-conflict settings. The document presents conceptual frameworks, comparative case examples and practical principles to help develop more coordinated and context-sensitive strategies.

• Year2025

The Primer explains the importance of informal political spaces in achieving long-term peace. These arenas are often the most immediate and accessible venues where marginalised groups or lower-level fighters -- including women and young people -- can express their views, develop leadership skills, and take action, especially when formal institutions are inaccessible, exclusive, or no longer trusted. Acknowledging and supporting these peaceful forms of organisation allows DDR and peacebuilding actors to enable ex-combatants to pursue social change without violence, resolve grievances constructively, and rebuild confidence between them and the wider community.

• Year2025

This Primer guides DDR practitioners, peacebuilders, and partners in promoting gender-responsive political transformation within or beyond DDR processes. It calls for expanding reintegration efforts beyond livelihoods and security to include political participation as essential to lasting peace. Drawing on field experience, it shows how women, men, and gender-diverse ex-combatants face unique gendered challenges in entering politics. The Primer stresses tackling patriarchal norms and integrating gender-responsive approaches across all DDR phases, offering practical tools to support equitable and inclusive political participation for all former fighters.

• Year2025

This paper, the fourth in our policy insight series on gender-inclusive conflict transformation, examines the formal and informal roles played by women in and associated with resistance and liberation movements (RLMs) during peace processes. We conducted focus group discussions, interviews and peer-learning workshops with women from South Africa, Northern Ireland, Colombia, the Philippines, Kosovo and other contexts in Latin America, Europe and Southeast Asia who contributed to peace processes either as formal negotiators or informal peace leaders.

• Year2025
• Author(s)Claudia Cruz Almeida, Fee Högner

The objective of these short policy briefs is to inform national, regional and international institutions on key topics related to insider mediation and to inform the development of more holistic and supportive policies for insider mediators. While women still face cultural, logistical and security barriers in their participation in local mediations, they are able to play critical and unique roles in mediating family, land, socio-economic, and environmental conflicts, contributing to a high success rate of mediation agreements. The value of building and supporting (informal) networks of insider mediators is key in environments that do not always welcome the contributions of civil society and where more flexible and nimble networks can act as early warning and response mechanisms, raising the chances to achieve sustainable and transformative peace.

• Year2024
• Author(s)Marine Jacob, Claudia Maffettone, Stephanie Sarta, Nura Detweiler, Victoria Cochrane

L’objectif de ces brèves notes d’orientation est d’informer les institutions nationales, régionales et internationales sur des sujets clés liés à la médiation interne et d’éclairer l’élaboration de politiques plus holistiques et plus favorables aux médiateurs internes. Bien que les femmes soient toujours confrontées à des obstacles culturels, logistiques et sécuritaires lors de leur participation aux médiations locales, elles sont en mesure de jouer un rôle essentiel et unique dans la médiation des conflits familiaux, fonciers, socio-économiques et environnementaux, contribuant ainsi à un taux élevé de réussite des accords de médiation. La valeur de la création et du soutien de réseaux (informels) de médiateurs internes est essentielle dans des milieux qui n’accueillent pas toujours favorablement les interventions de la société civile et où des réseaux plus souples et plus agiles peuvent servir de mécanismes d’alerte et de réponse précoces, augmentant ainsi les chances de parvenir à une paix durable et transformatrice.

• Year2024
• Author(s)Marine Jacob, Claudia Maffettone, Stephanie Sarta, Nura Detweiler, Victoria Cochrane

The inaugural edition of The Berlin Moot conference brought together experts from diverse fields with peace and mediation practitioners to explore how we can reshape peacemaking. Read key findings and recommendations from the conference.

• Year2024

Together with Fight for Humanity and supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, we initiated a participatory action research initiative in Yemen involving three key political movements or entities: The Islah Party (Al Islah), the Southern Transitional Council (STC), and Ansar Allah. A team of local researchers, alongside a national coordinator, set out to identify and better understand the factors that encourage the movements to promote the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security framework.

• Year2024

قامت منظمة الكفاح من أجل الإنسانية ومؤسسة بيرغهوف، بدعم من وزارة الخارجية الألمانية، بالتعاون لإنجاز بحث عمل تشاركي في اليمن ضم ثلاث حركات أو كيانات سياسية رئيسية: حزب الإصلاح، والمجلس الانتقالي الجنوبي، وأنصار الله. وقد أجرى فريق من الباحثات المحليات، إلى جانب منسقة وطنية، هذا البحث لتحديد وفهم أفضل للعوامل التي تشجع هذه الحركات السياسية على تعزيز جهود التنفيذ لإطار المرأة والسلام والأمن وخاصة في مجالات حماية النساء والفتيات ومشاركتهن السياسية في حالات النزاع المسلح.

• Year2024

ဤမူဝါဒအကျဉ်းချုပ်သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ပူးပေါင်းပါဝင်ဆောင်ရွက်သော သုတေသနပြုမှု၏ သက်ရောက်မှုများကို စူးစမ်းလေ့လာရန်နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ လက်နက်ကိုင်နှင့် နိုင်ငံရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှုများ ထိန်းချုပ်ရာဒေသ သို့မဟုတ် ဩဇာလွှမ်းမိုးရာဒေသများ (APM) အတွင်းရှိ အမျိုးသမီးများ၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် လုံခြုံရေးကဏ္ဍ အကောင်အထည်ဖော်မှုများကို သုံးသပ်လေ့လာမှုနှင့် ပံ့ပိုးမှုများ ပြုနိုင်ရန်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ဤစီမံချက်က ဟောပြောဆွေးနွေးမှု ဖြစ်ရပ်များ၊ မူဝါဒနှင့် လုပ်ငန်းစဉ် အပြောင်းအလဲများ၊ ခေါင်းဆောင်မှုနှင့် ထိတွေ့ချည်းကပ်ဆက်ဆံမှု၊ လူအများပါဝင်ဆောင်ရွက် ထိတွေ့သည့်နည်းနာဖြင့် ချိတ်ဆက်မှုများအပေါ် မူတည်၍ မတူကွဲပြားသော အရေးပါသည့် အုပ်စုများ၏ ထင်မြင်ယူဆချက်များကို စုဆောင်း၍ သုံးသပ်စိစစ်မှု ပြုပါသည်။

• Year2024
• Author(s)Tilman Papesch, Zin May Phyo