Page 10 - Empowerment and Protection - Conclusions Chapter

or organisations, and involve generating social solidarity through mediating social conlict at a grassroots level. Collective empowerment can transform the cultural norms and relationships that foster insecurity.
Mexicans have been able to build social movements capable of pressuring the government to reform security policy. One national victim’s movement, the Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia
y Dignidad, has conducted mass actions that have raised awareness of the victims of the violence
in Mexico. The movement also calls for broader social transformation: “The movement is not only focused on victims’ attention, but in a deep and meaningful transformation of the country.” Social movements have been sources of profound citizen empowerment that can change government policy.
Conlict resolution mechanisms old and new
Civilians have found empowerment by turning to community conlict resolution processes. In the Philippines, civil society and tribal leaders have de-escalated longstanding intertribal violence by reconciling tribal differences and emphasizing their shared kinship. Through bottom-up consultative processes, tribes have forged intertribal covenants and revived traditional conlict resolutions processes. In the absence of rule of law, pre- existing traditional customs have illed the void of governance. These traditional conlict resolution systems have reduced the length and escalation of violent conlict.
In Zimbabwe, the Ecumenical Church Leaders Forum (ECLF), a grouping of church leaders
from all denominations, succeeded in bringing together diverse political leaders, traditional and church leaders to equip them with mediation and dialogue skills for conlict prevention, management, resolution, and integration (CPMRT) to decrease community violence. In the district of Nyaki, one of the sites of extreme political violence in the 1980s, police have noted a decrease in crime and violence since the programme began. The success of the CPMRT program and the need to sustain it in their communities prompted participants to form local peace committees (LPCs) on their own. According to an advisor to a traditional leader in Masvingo, the LPCs have enabled the community to de-escalate political violence.
The other side of empowerment:
arming civilians
Citizen empowerment strategies are not always nonviolent. The chapter on Mexico distinguishes between functional empowerment strategies such as lobbying and holding the state accountable
to human rights standards, and dysfunctional empowerment strategies such as forming armed militia groups. The latter might solve immediate security problems but create larger problems in
the future. Similarly in Mindanao, in the face of ongoing violence and few avenues for protection or recourse, IPs have armed themselves, sometimes forming small militia groups. Empowerment in the short-term may lead to greater insecurity in the long-term.
Disempowerment
There are also varying level of empowerment. Palestinian accounts, particularly those in Gazad, stand out for the extent of disempowerment expressed by respondents. A lack of state protection and avenues for redress of grievances has fed resignation, and respondents say that the multitude of problems is psychologically overwhelming:
“there is despair and depression, because people are insecure, their rights have been stolen, and there
is no one to turn to. People have just started to surrender.” Experiences of cultural fragmentation have also contributed to the erosion of internal sources of resilience. This sense of a cultural lack of empowerment was also visible amongst the more vulnerable respondents in other contexts, such as Ukraine, where respondents expressed extreme pessimism that they could ind protection or help anywhere in society. As Sen and Ogata point out, empowerment often depends on the existence of legal systems and alternate avenues of power that citizens can leverage to advocate on their behalf. Empowerment and protection go hand in hand.
d Interviews were conducted in early 2014 prior to the Israeli aerial and ground campaigns in July 2014.
115