“This publication outlines the key processes, as well as challenges and opportunities, with implementing Participatory Action Research (PAR) in the Somali context – expanding upon the Life & Peace Institute’s (LPI) own internal research and scholarship on implementing PAR in different conflict contexts. The report engages with current research on applying PAR to local peacebuilding efforts, and offers new insights from original participant and staff interviews, and findings of a summative evaluation of the first phase of LPI’s Conflict Transformation and Inter-Clan Joint Resource Management (or CRM) project (implemented from March 2012 to September 2015) in central Somalia. The report, thus, aims to examine the processes of negotiation and adaptation of applying the PAR methodology to the specific context of peacebuilding programming across south central Somalia, to explore whether PAR programming (as a methodological approach to dialogue and peacebuilding discourse) has proven effective and contributed towards de-escalating local tensions (around certain issues and in certain contexts), and if so, how it could be further adapted and standardised (across programmes and disciplines).”
