Community action research works because those who are affected by an issue are at the centre of decisions about how it is researched (Bryden Miller et al., 2003). When done well, it generates trustworthy, useful and relevant findings which often are contribute to improving relationships in a society, political system or organisation (Bradbury and Reason, 2001). The rationale is that the questions and findings generate workable solutions because those who are embroiled in an issue take a step back and apply informed logic to its analysis (Greenwood and Levin, 2007). This is especially the case where the issues that need to be investigated involve the volatile mix of suffering and power that characterises violent insecurity.

"We are men and women, youth, and elders, from town and kraal, formally and traditionally educated. On the Turkana side we are from Loima and Turkana West Sub-counties. On the Karamoja side we are from Kotido, Nakapiripirit, Napak and Moroto. Local organisations Karamoja Development Forum and Friends of Lake Turkana supported by Institute of Development Studies invited us to form community research teams to help find solutions to insecurity. Over eight months we have been researching the insecurity faced by our communities. This research is different from other research, as we are community members." - Young male researcher

The knowledge generated from community action research is ‘vital to the well-being of individuals, communities, and for the promotion of larger-scale democratic social change’ (Bryden-Miller et al., 2003). It is in this light that the researchers worked with their own communities to generate an analytical overview of the issues they face. The intended audiences for this work are the communities themselves, those who govern them and those that seek to support them. The community teams hope that non-pastoralist audiences hearing the messages will gain new insight into a system of disorder that has been much studied, yet seldom fully understood. As members of government, civil and bilateral agencies, we are all part of the governance system that the pastoralists are criticising. Even as primary responsibility for a failure of governance must be laid at the door of government, secondary responsibility lies with those of us in civil society if we get in the way of accountable relations between citizens and their governments.

The method is ethnographic and emphasises diversity. It uses storytelling by diverse people as a means of exploring key events, understanding interactions, and elucidating their salience. Storytelling is a mode of communication and learning that is fitting to the culture in the region, and at the same time has important ethnographic pedigree (Falconi and Graber, 2019).

It is often the case with action research that outsider research professionals assist insiders who want to lead change, and that has been the approach here (Coghlan and Brannick, 2005). Being both locally and internationally trustworthy, the research approach offers a bridge between people and policy: showing the vital understanding of people on the ground about the workings of the problem they face, while also including the insights of people across the governance system and offering points of debate and convergence.

In June 2022, FOLT and KDF sent out messages to communities in Karamoja and Turkana, inviting women, men, and youth to join the research. Candidates needed to be part of communities in the study area and interested to take part in the research, not as research assistants, but as research leaders. IDS gave 40 candidates a week of action research training at FOLT’s airy meeting house in Lodwar, Turkana, and FOLT and KDF selected 16 for the research. The selected researchers were a mix of formally and traditionally schooled community members, some urban, some rural, some elders, some youths, a mix of women and men, coming from different parts of the study area and having different livelihoods, predominantly pastoralist. This diversity of membership is essential to success, since each team member brings a capability and a perspective on the issues under discussion, and connections with diverse actors in the spectrum of people and institutions with understanding of the issues. Once the community members had started researching, the IDS team returned frequently to support multiple rounds of analysis and continue the training based on questions arising from each iteration of question, encounter, and interpretation.

The teams designed what to do in the first round. They began by identifying their research question. After much debate they settled on a question that would open explanation of insecurity and conflict in a way that is fitting with their own culture of knowledge exchange. They chose: how is the peace here? They then set out on what was to be four iterative rounds of research, each building on the last. They were uncertain at first, since all they had seen of research was that it was externally designed and left little room for local construction. It wasn’t until they were out in the rangelands and settlements, with their question, that they began to realise the potential that the research held for them and their communities. The community researchers secured permission from men and women community leaders to hold discussions and develop analysis before moving on to speaking to others. They made commitments to return to validate the analysis and discuss the implications of the findings with all the people they met. They addressed researcher and participant security as a continuous process: agreeing the ethical and risk mitigating approach, securing commitments from IDS, KDF and FOLT in relation to dissemination, publication, travel and resources and discussing with community leaders each time they visited. Their research plans were also subject to an institutional ethics process by IDS.

The difference between a storytelling approach with an open question and a semi-structured focus group or interview approach became clear. Storytelling needs only one relevant question to get it going. It widens the scope, thus risking diluting the focus, but it rejects nothing.

"In the research we found many people who value the lives of the people and the animals. We will tell you the things that we heard. We will also show the value of this kind of research. I have admired how we have managed to research what people have told us about the challenges they face and about how pastoralists can work on them from our strengths. We have been speaking about these things, we are now aware of our own community story, and of the stories of all the communities. We can find solutions." - Older male researcher

Behind the question ‘how is the peace?’ lay questions that interlocutors answered in their stories without being asked directly, such as: what do we mean by peace? What good things does it afford? How is it kept here? Why is it not being kept? What are the effects of climate, politics, society, or the actions of customary institutions, security forces the administration and NGOs? ‘Peace and security,’ they realised, meant safe lives, lands, and livelihoods, but it also meant good relations within and between communities and with authorities.

"Although many people are upset, angry or tired of the insecurity, they spoke to us willingly. We are researching things that we know. The people trust us to raise their voice. It is our role as community researchers to be impartial and take the stories as we heard them, and not to take sides. There are stories of suffering, pain, and weakness. There are also stories of strength, struggling, managing, and sharing resources. Some of the challenges are defeated when we recognise our strengths." - Younger female researcher

Each tour of fieldwork on both sides of the border was followed by an analysis meeting, involving retelling pastoralists’ stories, comparing, and enriching a combined analysis with all the different perspectives gained. To develop an analytical overview, the teams created a ‘Story of Stories’ which they built on at each meeting, wherein they tried to encompass the different viewpoints and pull out the key messages. After each analysis session, they went back to the communities to ‘fatten’ it with more detail, in a way that fitted with the culture of storytelling in Turkana and Karamoja. They checked and re-articulated the key messages.

The last round of data collection and analysis involved validation and dissemination of the messages. The researchers took the findings to communities and, with community leaders, into the policy arena, seeking to inform and influence, while at the same time continuing their investigation about how politics and policy was contributing to insecurity. They presented the authorities in Uganda and Kenya with evidence and arguments for improving security and cross-border relations. In this phase they encountered and built relations with military officers, members of the administrations and civil society at levels all the way up to the regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). IDS led on writing up the findings, producing briefing notes and an illustrated report (Karamoja Turkana Research Team, 2023) designed for use by the communities in their engagement with one another and government.⁴ A weekly online meeting of the team leaders with the three international analysts/research methodologists was another part of the analysis and a forum for discussing and agreeing methodological adaptation.

The next section presents evidence on and analysis of insecurity on the ground. It begins with a brief history of insecurity and disarmament interventions drawing on the literature, before turning to the communities’ descriptions of the impacts of the violence and their understandings of how it works. While most of the evidence and all the analysis presented is from the communities and the community teams, we also refer to other research, media coverage, satellite data analysis and policy material where it adds historical depth, geographical scope, or gives us insight into policy arenas to which the community has less access. This is followed by a section that analyses interaction of community members, community researchers and authorities over a period of several months in the light of this new comprehensive view of the problem. This was the ‘action’ part of the action research, wherein community members (including researchers) opened new pathways for solving the problems of violence and insecurity through dialogue and challenge. In so doing they found their understanding and analysis deepening and becoming ever more concrete and focused.

Footnotes

⁴ The report has an innovative visual layout designed for community members who read and who do not read, to share among themselves and to use when discussing the issues of their security to government and others.