The Addressing Root Causes (ARC) Mali programme is being implemented under a consortium partnership with Norwegian Church Aid (NCA, the project lead) and ICCO, the Dutch inter-church development organization, and is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Together with local partners, who will ensure the sustainability of the programme, HSC is addressing systemic problems underlying conflict and violence in Timbuktu, Gao, Mopti and the district of Bamako.
Along with women, youth, community and religious leaders, we are developing and applying a Human Security approach to address security-related problems faced by communities. HSC is mainly responsible for the third outcome of the program, which entails that 'the interests of the involved communities related to conflict, peace and local security are represented and scaled up towards the national government and international security and development actors through a networking approach, to effectively address the root causes of conflict'. In line with this, we help these groups engage with relevant local and national government and international entities.
The intervention strategies of the programme at this level have consisted mainly of reinforcing different approaches and themes (networking, Human Security, violent extremism, etc.), setting up of networks (women, young people, religious leaders, leaders at local and national levels), and the linking up of these networks at different levels through the development and implementation of concerted action plans. This has taken the form of awareness campaigns and advocacy activities to engage the youth and local leaders/authorities as well as government officials and parliamentarians in preventing and countering violent extremism in Mali. In addition, HSC facilitates collaboration between CSO umbrella groups, private actors, and Financial Intelligence Units in the West Africa & Sahel region to raise awareness on issues around money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and how this impacts NPO operations.
Because the G-5 Sahel context is becoming increasingly important in terms of the security and development nexus, HSC is reaching out to the G5, together with our Malian partners, on our approach to mitigate violent extremism through addressing the root causes of violence and conflict. A partnership is developing between HSC, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and UNDP to disseminate and operationalize the ODA and PVE toolkit.
For an overview video of the ARC programme, click here.
For an at-a-glance outline of the programme, see this leaflet. And click on this magazine for more details.
