By Idris Miliki Abdul.
Community Resilience is a key to the overall security strategy of any Nation, for in the end nations are as strong as the collective resilience of their communities. It was from this perspective that (PCVE), is undertaking research on community Resilience in the context of violence extremism. The objective of the research is to understand what factor make communities perpetrated by terrorist in Nigeria.
What form of community readiness to anticipate risk exist in the community?
Have the insurgents been able to penetrate and operate successfully in the community, and if so, how did they do it?
What are the forms of mitigation of devastation of community life that are identifiable within the community?
What capacity of the community to bounce back after undergoing shock of devastation done by the insurgents?
What factor or variable explain the higher capacity of certain communities to bounce back than others
The project is part of the larger effort to find solution to the conflict, as well as to prevent future occurrence of similar conflict. It specifically sought to understand what makes communities withstand and repel attack by insurgents or, on the other hand ,to succumb and give them space to operate the activities is to enable us to learn from these comparative experience and be able to address what can make community resilience strong in the face of adversity or weakened by it .By learning from experience in the mobilisation of community resilience to repel the insurgents, policy makers can seek to activate and empower those factors that enhance the capacity of communities to resist or to ensure that they do not provide space for such conflict to occur.
THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Nigeria and its communities have a high structural vulnerability to crisis due to shock such as natural disaster, hazards and violent conflict. This means that there is a constant threat of damages or disruption caused by such shocks. Resilience refers to the capacity to absorb the impact of a violent conflict or natural disaster, and the speed with which that impact absorbed becomes very important. Resilience is therefore just about coping and bouncing back but also about bouncing forward because the endgame for poor society hit by a shock cannot merely be to bounce back to the original position of poverty. It must be about substantive improvement to human wellbeing. There are many definitions of community resilience, with each one emphasising different aspect of the concept. Perry and the centre for community enterprise (2000) (in Costello et al 2006), argued that people, argued that people, organization, resource and community process are the four key dimensions of community resilience. Based on these dimensions, they have identified an array of community resilience characteristic, with the ones directly related to social factors listed as follows:
Leadership is representative of the diversity within the community
Community members are involved in significant community decision;
Member feels a sense of pride in attachment to their community
People feel optimistic about the future of their community
There is a spirit of mutual assistance and cooperation;
The community is self –reliant and looks to itself to address issues;
There is a strong belief in the importance of education
Organization works in collaboration and partnership;
Citizens are involved in the development and implementation of the community’s vision and goals;
QUESTIONS
What factors or variable explain the relative ease with which the insurgency has been able to penetrate and operate successfully in certain communities in the Nigeria? What is the impact of the insurgency on communities in the Nigeria? What is the element in terms of degree of institution, resources, leadership, social cohesion, community organization, governance and religion discourses contained within the communities’ activities local capacities and proper innovation and collective action that correlate positively or negatively with the development of community resilience? Specifically:
What form of community readiness to anticipate risk exist in the community
Have the insurgents been able to penetrate and operate successfully in the community, and if so, how did they do it?
What are the forms of mitigation of devastation of community life that are identifiable within the community
What is the capacity of the community to bounce back after undergoing the shock of devastation done by the insurgents?
What factor or variable explain higher capacity of certain communities to bounce back than others?
SUGGEST METHODOLOGY
Nigeria is vulnerable to shocks because it has a relatively low capacity to anticipate prepare for, manage and recover from the impact of violate conflict or natural disaster. The hypothesis underlying this work, however is that communities often have the capacity to respond to crisis that confront them and we make a huge error in thinking that communities simply suffer the consequences of adversities that affect them.
The indication that we have is that all communities have positive mode response to crisis we need to identify, so that they can be strengthened, deepened and made into example that other communities could learn from adapt. Schematically, some societies have low resilience and therefore have low capacity to bounce back to their previous situation after shock. Other communities have increase and could bounce back to the previous situation of poverty, which is not good enough. The strategic objective is to have communities with high resilience. Who cannot only cover after a shock, but also continue to progress after bouncing back.
The tools that will be use will be focus group discussions (FGD) within the selected communities. The FGD enable us to probe how communities responded to the threat of violence extremism , what they considered to be successes or failures in the responses and what lessons they could ,in reflection , identify from their engagement .the attention to the issues of social cohesion, that when section of and undermine the rest of the community.in this way, the collective resilience of the community will be undermine the importance of credible and accepted leadership in boosting community resilience should be stressed.
GENDER AND ROLE OF WOMEN IN BULIDING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Nigeria has been in the grip of heightened insecurity because of violence and terrorism. In spite of the recorded progress in the fight, the insurgency remain a deadly issue for communities in Nigeria.
WOMEN, GENDER AND RESILIENCE
Men, women, boys and girls not only experience shocks differently, they also differ in their responses to these shocks while men and women are biologically different, this distinction has more to do with level of testosterone and muscle mass, rather than with intellect, agency, or capacity, which are often used as justification for gender inequality thereby discriminating against the contribution and abilities of women. Gender on the other hand refers to the social, behavioural, and cultural attributes, expectation and norms associated with being a woman or a man.
Men and women may be exposed to different type of risk because of combination of biological, economic and cultural factors including gender roles – the socially determined relationship between women and man. Men and women also have different way of ensuring against and coping with risks.
Understanding different exposure and responses to shock is important. Many narratives of resilience rightly recognise the resourcefulness of women and men living in poverty and their energy and ability to overcome adversity. Furthermore, a gender integrated approach to resilience addresses gender specific vulnerabilities to identify shocked and stresses and build on gender specific capacities, while also understanding that perception, exposure and sensitivity to disturbance are gender –differentiated . In other words, gender influence the skill, strategies and mechanism individual use to cope with and adapt to disturbance, it is important to adopt approaches to resilience which challenge gender inequality and promote woman right and address the structural causes of gender inequality that entrench vulnerability, such as boosting gender related resilience capacities ,including decision making which would boost resilience at different level of system such as the community . This way, women participate can be evaluated within broader and more contextualised social processes
Woman’s roles in addressing conflict, violence, and extremism have been highlighted in a number of studies. Women are also targeted as audience and potential partner in countering violent extremism and de –radicalisation. Nigeria is highly patriarchal society with men dominating every sphere. Although evolving and manifesting in different way, culture, tradition and religion have dictated the relationship between men and women, and entrenched male domination into structure of social organization and institution, resulting in gender inequality and discrimination. violence compound and reinforces these disadvantages and exclusion.
GENDER AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Building community resilience is most effective when women have integral roles in the process. However, the tendency is that they are often excluded from decision –making completely in time of crisis, gender inequalities have worsened implication and put women in extremely volatile and vulnerable position.
Crises situation also provide opportunity for transforming gender roles, as research has shown with women taking number of hitherto socially ascribed men’s roles, including becoming the head of household. Similarly, CSOs that work with the women are often an important source of resilience against violence and extremism. they also play important roles in challenging, delegitimising, and reducing support for extremist groups.
LESSONS
Women’s response to violence extremism from the different example given reflect an enormous resource for building and strengthening community resilience
Women contribute to building community resilience in the diverse role they play (as ahead of households and main/sole provider, counsellors, drivers of changes etc. should be recognise and integrated into recovery plans.
The insurgency affects men, boy’s women and girls differently, with women and girls exposed to high rate of SGBV from both violence extremism insurgents, security agent and government officials.
There are number of interesting issues ,which have direct implication for women and girls ,such as GBV, protection and sex for instance , women and girls engaging in transactional ‘survival sex for the benefit of their families;
Support and intervention must be context and need specific.one size does not fit all and is an insufficient approach to addressing challenges and needs.
Gender inequality is expressed in gender roles , with the result being that women lives and experience are strengthening women resilience would require understanding the relationship between individual ,their families and the society
Gender relation change substantially as a result of conuict and this needs to be properly reflected in development intervention. However, according to Boutas et (2005), development actor has difficulty translating this information into practical policies and sustaining positive changes in gender role and relationship in the post –conuict period;
Gender inequality affect how system, including informal and formal governance system, serve the needs and build to adaptive capacities of men, women, boys and girls. therefore, to promote resilience, effort must be made to address the structural causes of gender inequality that entrench vulnerability.
Utility of the concept of resilience from gendered perspective entail recognising the reality of difference and inequality within the household and not approaching household as unified and neutral unit. It is essential to know about intra –household relation to support resilience –building and insert women needs and right to assume leadership roles in household and communities.
The major effort of women toward community resilience relate to devising coping strategies and mechanism of bouncing back and forward, such as in changing live hoods, consumption pattern and nutrition, skills acquisition, as well as in the fight against violence extremism;
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Resilience, The capacity to bounce back from traumatic experience and shock such as disaster, conflict and war is very critical to continuity and sustainability of communities and system. However, for a community to be resilient, its member must put into practice early and effective actions. This implies that after a shock, member of the community should not only be able to cope and recover but also change to reflect different priorities arising from the shock. Cultivating a culture of resilience and relationship building across the significant human difference apparent in any community will be essential components of our work together. Women should be addressed, not only as victims of conflict but also agent of changes as they are very important actor in building community resilience, and thus strengthening their gender specific capacities. When properly supported, women strong adaptive and reactive capacities can be translated into individual and community resilience. Therefore, considering women ‘s needs their priorities and capacities ensure the durability and effectiveness of development interventions. Building as well as in informing development intervention, this is done by considering and analysis from a gender frame, the role, experience, capabilities and need of men intersection with other cleavages such as gender, class and age. This is with the understanding that it is impossible to build resilience in the house hold communities without addressing systematic gender inequality.
Particularly, in promoting resilience, effort must address the structural causes of gender inequality that entrench vulnerability. In accounting for and addressing gender inequality, there is need to ensure that factor entrenching vulnerability for the entire population are not ignored, otherwise enable factor that support household and communities to become more resilient would be missed out, the other word ,as it has been argued in many literature ,building resilience is most effective when a women have integral roles in the process, especially as women are disproportional affected by shocks therefore supporting women household ,and communities to become more resilient would involve recognising the existing resilience that women already use or have used , and planning to bolster reserve to ensure that resilience is boosted in future.
Also importantly, conflict, post –conflict, recovery and recovery and reconstruction context provide windows of opportunity to address long term structural gender inequalities and to usher in social changes and a more equitable development process. That is, post conuict reconstruction should not merely recreate past failed structure and systems, but should do things differently while reversing the damage caused by war and rebuilding more accountable, and cohesive societies, further more as the FG start its recovery and reconstruction intervention, there are key lessons to be learned about the role of women in building their community resilience. These lessons are important and necessary entry point for gender responsive recovery and ]reconstruction of the country is a unique opportunity to transform gender relation and roles by promoting gender sensitive and gender just process, system and practices. mindful that gender exclusion undermines that effectiveness of development effort, particularly in counties that must rebuild before embarking on path of sustainable development as post –disaster reform will show strengthening women resilience, therefore, require understanding the relationship between individuals, their families and household, the community and wider society.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The following recommendations are provided from gender equity perspective and based on experience from the field and example from literature. These recommendations emphasise, in particular, the need to thoroughly examine relationship, between, which is women; household and community resilience respectively as well as the promotion of gender awareness and gender sensitive development interventions and reconstruction.
Ensure women and girls are included in the recovery and reconstruction process. Their inclusion should be informed by gender analysis to ensure gender responsive and gender-transformative intervention, they should be accorded full participation in different programme and roles, from being member of committee making decision to contraction, vendor and agents doing the actual labour.
Information is critical component of community resilience; women should also be sensitised and included in all matters of their community, particularly in relation to policy and issues of recovery and reconstruction;
Establish formal vocational training centre (pastry making, sewing, printing press, construction etc.) for women and girls, they would help to further strengthen the already transformed livelihood and local economy;
Encourage women empowering space by supporting initiative that enable women, strengthen their social capital, as well as develop network to assist in social personal and professional development. They would involve also strengthening the capacities of local women’s organisation and network to promote and build community resilience;
Leverages and incorporate women’s community resilience effort by formally recognising their knowledge and expertise.
Encourage gender quote in both formal and informal hiring and recruitment to ensure gender balance, so women and girls are fairly represented;
Adopt the women’s peace and security agenda drawn from UN Resolution 1325, Which details the steps to be taken to improve the protection of women in conflict zone. Resolution 1325 is critical globally accepted law that addresses how women are affected by war and the importance of their participation in building sustainable peace;
Women and girls have been huge burden bearers in the whole crises, they should participate fully in all structures (formal and informal) of reconciliation and peace building programme as leader and member
Promote gender equality and women’s voice as a core approach in all processes and systems, while engaging men and boys in order to change traditional structure to become more powering for women.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION PREVENTING ACCOUNTERING VIOLENCE EXTREMISM (PCVE)
Information and communication are very vital in enhancing community resilience. As Norris et. observed, having accurate and timely information about an adverse event or disturbance is crucial. But equally important is the public trust in the source of information. Community competence is displayed when a community demonstrate the capacity to process and assess information, think critically, evaluate option and solve a new emerging or evolving problem.
CONSCEPTUALISING COMMUNITY RESILENCE
Perhaps the only issues common in the literature on resilience is the concept itself is fluid and lacks definitional clarity .this is partly because the term has been variously used by a number of interested parties including environmentalist ,psychologist ,development practitioner, disaster risk manager ,educationist etc. for instance ,Oxfam define it from a development viewpoint as’ the ability of women , men ,and children to realise their right and improve their well-being despite shock ,stresses ,and uncertainty (Jennings and Manlutac,2015p.23) Adger (200) sees resilience as the ability of an ecological system to absorb perturbation or disturbance which is required for its proper functioning . Resilience is both a metaphor for measuring the strength, durability and adaptive capacity of things and as well a theoretical framework for studying the dynamic of their strength durability and adaptive capacity
RECOMMENDATIONS
Scales up inter and intra faith dialogue and mediation to other communities with weak social bonds for strengthening social bonds for communities
In a view of critical role played by community participation, the Directorate of community development currently underutilized by the state government need to be reinvigorated to bolster civic engagement by communities across the country.
Civilian JTF being a critical aspect of community competence require to be strengthened and blended with communities’ needs and aspirations
IDPs engaged in resilient livelihood also need to be assisted to consolidate community resilience. Community can leverage on existing professional organisation.
Women capacity for engaging in livelihood need to be ungently address in a way that skills education and domestic role including child bearing are holistically intergraded, the director of women affair in the Ministry of Women Affair social Development (MWASD) across Nigeria
The need for community member to know themselves better require to be introduce by way of knowing your neighbour. Security agencies and civic society organization need to partner on this
COMMUNITY COMPENTENCE
As earlier observed, community competence is composed collective effective efficiency, decision –making, collective action and collective empowerment. These components show the extent of the collective worth in a conflict –ravaged community
Community competence could also be ascertained by the rate of school attendance, which in our case serve as an indicator of many factors indicating recovery, including restored electricity, transportation infrastructure and access to medical service.it also reflect the level of consciousness of communities to adjust, as far as coordinating their demands and taking appropriate decisions is concerned.
COMMUNITY RESILAINCE TO THE VIOLENCE EXTREMISM INSURGENCY: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT
Historical instance present to us the opportunity to learn from the past and to plan, in anticipation, of the future. The Violence extremism insurgency that devastated much of the North-East and part of the North-West and even North Central of Nigeria is one such historical instance. Whether it was entirely preventable is now a moot point. For us to prevent future occurrence or to be able to respond more effectively to such threat in the future, we need to draw on the lesson learned so far. The way in which a community responded to the insurgency and the outcome of its response are shaped by community resilience. Community resilience is the capacity of to adapt when faced with hazards or shock by taking the required action to maintain an acceptable level of function and statures resilient communities have robust social network and system that support recovery after adversity. Probably the most embracing definition of the term is given by united Nations as the ability of a system to Reduce, Prevent, anticipate, absorb and Adapt or recover from the effects of a hazardous event in a timely and Efficient manner’(United Nations Plan of Action on Disaster Risk Reduction For Resilience , 2013). In the case of the violence extremism Insurgency, community resilience would be seen in a way Communities way either able to resist, bounce back or cope with the Situation by establishing some normalcy under abnormal situation. Our point of departure is that resiliency is present in all communities. This means that no community can be said to have no resilience. However, community resilience can be dormant and often has to be activated. Equally, important is the fact that community resilience can be either enhance or be inhibited.in this study, we have learnt that in term of social cohesion when a section of a community feels excluded, it tends to align with third force to undermine the rest of the community .in this way, the collective resilience of the community as a whole is undermined. While poverty is necessary condition, it is not in itself sufficient to move disaffected communities into violence. The appropriate injection of external development assistance that is focused and targeted at supporting community development effort has also been an important aspect of key to preparedness is the ability of a community to anticipate adversity. The ability to anticipate danger is made possible through the early capture and analysis of information that can allow the community to evaluate the possibility or otherwise of a grave situation occurring. Environment resilience ensures that communities are not just a collection of people but a system that ties place, people practice together. In this sense, geography is part of the eco system that determine the state of the resilience of a community. When a place cannot support economic activities such as food production, the resilience of the community is weakened.
STRENGTHEN COMMUNITY GOVERANCE
Community resilience proper’s when there is inclusivity and a robust community platform for active citizen participation and democratic decision-making. the absence of such platform in many communities led to their quick and brutal destruction by violence extremism.
FRAMEWORK TO CURB RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM
Violence extremism exploited the existence of ungoverned spaces in our communities to incubate and cultivate its extremist religious ideology, because local government was too far away from the problem, local elite were too concerned or complicit to intervene and local police officials were too intimidated by religious authority to challenge them. The country, and its citizen have paid dearly for this level of neglect and lack of care
COMMUNITY AND CIVIC SOCIETY
Communities, support civil society must enact additional bye-law at community level to regular religious activities, prohibit hate speech and ensure that such activities do not infringe on the right of other religious groups and minorities. Civil society must also monitor hate speech and help communities develop mechanism to minimise such speech
INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS
Though religion is very sensitive in Nigeria, it is clear that the present state of things cannot be allowed to continue. International partner needs to support development of capacity by Nigeria National Human Rights organisations. international partner should also help with example of lesson learnt and policy sample on how to protect religious right and enforce the law.
COMMUNITIES AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Communities must not submit to the hopelessness that relate to youth unemployment reconstruction provide space to train youth in marketable service and skill. Even in the area of informal security groups, community can support the youth for providing that service and as they await to find more enduring jobs.
INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS
Working with civil society, international partner should establish more skill acquisition centres to provide economic empowerment programme skill building, and access to market, credit and other opportunities the news communities that are being reconstructed will be lacking in many Services. If well-articulated such skill can enable them to fill the gaps and therefore reduce the inequality that presently exist. support and intervention must be context and need specific. Working with women and men in the country should involve different activities that address both women’s and men’s practical and strategic needs and specific to their contexts.
– Idris Miliki Abdul
Executive Director, Conscience for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR),
Lokoja, Kogi State.
