Bringing the opinions of local people in conflict-affected communities to the attention of international policymakers is an essential step in ensuring appropriate policy and programming responses. People most closely affected by conflict or instability often have the greatest insight into its causes and ideas to resolve it.

Conciliation Resources has been working with peacebuilding partner Saferworld on an 18-month project to achieve this and now together we are presenting in Brussels the lessons learnt from all 18 national and regional conflict analyses.

People's Peacemaking Perspectives (PPP) is about giving people living with conflict a chance to voice their views and ideas to decision-makers, who don't usually have access to these local insights and perceptions, so decisions and policies are better informed.

This project has given us a chance to have our say. Only those who live with violent conflict have the insights that can lead to lasting peace.

Margarita Akhvlediani, Go Group Media, Tbilisi

The project has provided European Union institutions with analysis and recommendations based on the opinions and experiences of local people in a range of countries and regions affected by fragility and violent conflict.

Overcoming barriers and providing a platform for peace

A couple of the challenges we encountered in carrying out this research were how to encourage enough women to take part in contexts where they rarely had the opportunity to make their voices heard, and to create an environment in discussions for an open expression of views.

But once people realised that it was a meaningful opportunity to talk about the ways in which violence and the threat of violence affects their everyday lives, many were keen to take part:

Some participants felt powerless to change the situation, 'we are victims and what can victims do?' Yet it was interesting to see that, the further we got into discussions, the more they realised that actually they had a lot to offer.

Kennedy Tumutegyereize, Director of East and Central Africa Programme, Conciliation Resources

This European Union-funded project was also a great opportunity to build the capacity of local peacebuilders and leave a legacy of relationships, knowledge and skills from the People's Peacemaking Perspectives project.

We worked with local people, many of them civil society actors, in advocacy workshops – using a specially created training toolkit – and helped them to communicate their opinions and ideas in direct meetings with European policymakers in Brussels and their home countries, drawing on a range of reports and policy briefs.

The challenge was not just to make local voices heard, but also for others to listen and understand their perspectives on violent conflict.

Feedback received on the research, policy briefs and reports indicates that this work is filling a gap in understanding of conflict situations within policy circles.

Adopting a more participatory approach to analysing situations of conflict or instability takes a lot of investment, both in finance and time.

However, both Conciliation Resources and Saferworld agree that the benefits make it well worthwhile.

Why not see for yourself?

It's really important that your understanding of the context – and therefore the design of your programme – is grounded in a really rigorous and robust understanding of what actually makes people feel scared, what actually makes people feel insecure, and what opportunities they have to build peace in their environment.

Rob Parker, Director of Policy and Communications, Saferworld