Previous Research
Phase II
Within the NCCR swisspeace heads the "Governance and Conflict" work package, which is conducted in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
Research on "Governance & Conflict" aims to enhance understanding of complex processes of governance, economics, and conflict transformation on the basis of in-depth analysis on local, national and regional levels in South America, South America, West Africa, the Horn of Africa, East Africa, and Central Asia. Individual studies are carried out by researchers from Switzerland and the concerned research areas. Activities are grouped around the following research themes: negotiating statehood, conflict and economy, governance, environmental conflicts.
Negotiating Statehood
This research module provides empirical analysis of how new types of statehood are negotiated by politico-military, customary, and international actors in conflict-prone circumstances. It challenges commonly held views about "State failure" in Africa and developing countries around the world. Against such normative perspectives that tend to "measure" the State against Western models, we argue in favour of an empirical approach that looks at the ways in which state power is enforced, discussed, negotiated, appropriated and at times "privatised" on the ground. Proposed research looks at processes of decentralisation and devolution of state power from the centre to the periphery and changing conceptions of citizenship and "belonging". Research will be carried out in Ethiopia, Sudan, Côte d'Ivoire, Peru and Bolivia in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
Conflict and Economy
This research module focuses on the roles of local and international business actors in reducing violence in fragile socio-economic environments. Particular attention is given to the contribution of business actors towards reducing the violence proneness of fragile environments and towards achieving sustainable development. Complementing existing research, it concentrates on agro-commodities, resources associated with public goods, and financing services. Strategies for improving insecure livelihoods in violent settings, transforming war economies, and improving economic and institutional framework conditions at international, national, and local levels are documented and conceptualised. Research is carried out in Ethiopia, Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania, Kenya and Nepal.
Governance and Gender
NCCR North-South research on governance is based on case studies relating to the issues of biodiversity, vulnerability, decentralization, health and labour. Special emphasis is placed on examples of "bottom-up" governance, where previously "voiceless" social groups such as women, indigenous peasants or labourers have succeeded in asserting their citizenship by taking the political initiative in the public arena. Other framework considered is the gender, as a core and transversal tool in the approach of governance and conflict.
This research module is housed at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
Phase I
Between 2001-2005, swisspeace concentrated its research activities within the NCCR North-South on the links between natural resources and conflict. Amongst them, special emphasis was put on international water disputes and violent land conflicts.
International Water Disputes
Strategies to overcome national and regional "dilemma of hydropolitics" such as international water disputes in the Eastern Nile and Syr Daria basins were at the centre of this project component. Ecological and policy linkages between the regional, national, and local arenas of water and conflict management were identified in view of assessing cooperative initiatives and agreements. Interventions at the international level are researched in regard to their impacts on national and local levels. Supply and demand side water management strategies were assessed in light of conflictive and cooperative relations among the various water user groups. Research was carried out in Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Violent Land Conflicts
Research within this project component investigated ways to transform violent land use and resource conflicts in border regions within the Horn of Africa and South Asia. Land conflicts and management strategies were examined in "frontier" areas characterised by weak state penetration, socio-economic marginality and the duplicity of formal and non-formal institutional rules. Special attention was given to the effective and / or potential harmonization of customary and state resource and conflict management institutions and strategies. Competition between settlers and indigenous people and the dynamics of multiple resource user(s) conflicts in pastoral areas represented major objects of analysis. Research was carried out in Ethiopia, Sudan, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia.