Stage 3: Proof of Concept
We
started documenting community responses to crime in 2016, with the aim of
creating a global network of resilient communities, as part of SDG 11. Last
year, we launched the Resilience Dialogues in Sinaloa, identifying key
resilience actors. We hosted an event which included a workshop, a women’s
forum, and an arts festival. We are developing more initiatives in Sinaloa
and the Mexico-US border. With funding, we want to expand to three areas:
Central America, The Philippines, and South Africa.
Focus Areas:
Peace and Resilience
Peace and ResilienceSEE LESS
Problem
In
areas where criminal governance is entrenched, policy makers tend to overlook
the community responses that deal with criminality at a local level. Where
organised crime has thrived, criminals are often seen as providers. Top-down
solutions rarely succeed, because communities see criminality as a way to
survive. SDG 16 is to create peaceful societies where justice serves all, but
families and children that have been affected by organised crime are not
served by distant institutions.
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Solution
Our
vision is the creation of a global network connecting resilient actors of
communities world wide. Community resilience can be identified as a
community’s ability to respond to adversity, whilst retaining its functional
capacities. We wanted to highlight the inspirational and impactful work
undertaken by communities in arduous circumstances, and develop
resilience-based initiatives in order to protect and empower citizens who
have taken and continue to take a stand against organised crime. In the context
of organised crime, the community resilience approach demands understanding
how organised crime can become a part of a community’s culture, impacting
people’s lives in more ways than might be immediately obvious. Through
research driven workshops, dialogues, and participant feedback, the GI hopes
to identify the vulnerabilities of communities, and highlight the factors
that make communities resilient. Our ultimate vision is the establishment of
a strong network, developed in conjunction with key resilience actors in
Mexico, Central America, the Philippines and South Africa. We want to produce
a sustainable model that will strengthen community resilience against
organized crime and violence.
Competitive Advantage
We meet
the solutions where they already are: in the work that communities are
carrying out for themselves. Traditionally, policies are drafted at a remove
from the reality of the circumstances faced by those affected by crime, and
as a result, an increasing number of vulnerable communities have been over
militarized, which has led to human rights abuses. Instead, we look at
organised crime from a multi-angled perspective, prioritising development,
gender, and resilience. Our goal is not to focus on the eradication of crime
in a particular area, but rather to incubate and develop existing local
initiatives that mitigate the consequence of crime and violence and/or
function as a prevention mechanism. Unlike other global programmes addressing
transnational organized crime, the #GIresilience project puts the local
resilience actors at the forefront of the solutions, so that instead of
becoming another statistic, the communities are acknowledged as the first
responders to crime.
Planned Goals and Milestones
After
successfully running a pilot project in Sinaloa, Mexico, the Resilience
project is now also being implemented in communities along the Mexico-US
border, and we are looking to establish networks in South Africa, the
Philippines, and Guatemala. We have recruited three people for our South
Africa project, including a gang mediator, and are currently recruiting
someone to launch our project in Guatemala. In South Africa and Philippines,
experts from the GI are already beginning work, with our South African
partners developing three baseline papers, researching gang dynamics in three
South African cities: Cape Town, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay, that
will be published in 2019. This year we also recruited a local coordinator in
Sinaloa, Mexico, where we have an established a resilience network of more
than 50 organizations and individuals, and the second edition of the
Resilience Dialogues will take place at the end of October 2018.
