In 2019, we kick-started our partnership with the regional pastoralist network Réseau Billital Maroobé (RBM). We are supporting their organisational strengthening and capacity to scale up their role on conflict prevention and social cohesion in pastoral areas.
The partner
The RBM network comprises 75 pastoralist organisations from nine countries in West and Central Africa, including PeaceNexus focus countries of Niger, Burkina Faso and Senegal. It represents an overall constituency of 750,000 pastoralists.
Our support
Pastoral communities have been directly affected by escalating violence across the Sahel and West Africa. In 2018, RBM successfully applied to PeaceNexus for conflict sensitivity support. PeaceNexus facilitated a participatory kick-off workshop which gathered pastoralist member organisations representatives from eight countries as well as RBM leadership.
Building on the assessment of existing strengths and priority challenges affecting the network’s ability to address conflict and facilitate dialogue, a roadmap was established, and external accompaniment recruited to help with its roll-out.
The overall vision is for RBM to systematise the use of conflict sensitive approaches at all levels in the network, from local support to pastoralist organisation members up to regional policy influencing, so as to realise its full potential to contribute to peace in the Sahel and West Africa.
As youth in pastoral areas represents a large but often misrepresented constituency, the partnership zoomed on how to strengthen inter-generational dialogue and youth voices to help RBM build its vision for the future of pastoralism. Steps included supporting RBM in its contribution to the design of a large ECOWAS-level youth employment programme, where RBM highlighted how to better address the needs and aspirations of youth from pastoral areas. RBM also convened young people from across different countries and backgrounds as part of an intergenerational workshop with RBM senior leaders. They supported follow-on virtual exchanges among the group to pilot youth-led local initiatives in pastoral areas. PeaceNexus also provided ongoing accompaniment to RBM on conflict sensitivity aspects of strategic and operational decisions.
The Results
While the partnership is still at an early stage, RBM has already achieved remarkable results. The regional secretariat team built a solid understanding of how conflict sensitivity applies to their work as a pastoralist network. RBM succeeded in embedding conflict sensitivity and social cohesion approaches as part of 40% of their new programmes, both at local level in support of pastoralist organisations and at the regional dialogue and policy level. The network built new conflict-related indicators as part of its regional monitoring mechanism of trends and events affecting mobility in pastoral areas. This has helped RBM members to prevent violence in multiple instances, including at tense times when borders of coastal countries were being closed to pastoral movement. Future directions include leading an in-depth research across the region on how exactly pastoral communities, and notably youth within them, are affected by the degraded security; and how different actors, including RBM but also states and regional institutions, can best respond.