"Creating Safer Space" is a four-year international, interdisciplinary research network, which supports local civilian processes that build sustainable structures of protection from physical harm for and with communities affected by violent conflict. The Network brings together conflict-affected communities, protection practitioners, academics, policymakers and artists to jointly work on the vision of enhancing unarmed protection practices, which create safer space for communities and individuals amidst violent conflict, raise their levels of resilience and help prevent displacement. According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are now a record high of 68.5 million people forcibly displaced by violent conflict (UNHCR 2019), and the majority of deaths in conflicts are among civilians. This makes the protection of civilians from physical harm in contexts of war a pressing issue of our time. While the international community has acknowledged the need for protection, the physical safety of civilians is still seen almost exclusively as a task of armed outside actors like UN blue helmets. The originality of this Network is its focus on protection provided by unarmed actors and deployed at the local level of communities, be it by "outside" specialists or "insider/local" protection actors. Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) organisations accompany human rights defenders and deter armed actors from carrying out attacks against them through their presence and proactive engagement strategies. They use networks of relationships built with armed and unarmed parties to a conflict to negotiate safe passage of internally displaced persons to a safe camp or to bring forcefully recruited youth back to their families. They also monitor ceasefires & agreements. Moreover, some violence-affected communities self-protect by setting up peace communities and weapons-free zones, creating safer space for civilian life amidst violent conflict. There are over 40 international NGOs and a growing number of national and local organisations currently undertaking protection work in 24 countries in conflict, in addition to local self-protection initiatives. They illustrate that the protection of civilians by civilians without the use or threat of force can work to create physical safety, and may even do more: by providing a role model, and by not fuelling further violence, UCP can help break cycles of violence and thus contribute to longer-term peacebuilding. Initial research has suggested that UCP may often be more effective than armed protection and indeed, latest UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions mention the potential of UCP, indicating some change in thinking. "Creating Safer Space" aims to enhance and broaden the practice of UCP by engaging a wide range of stakeholders in networking, capacity-building, research and impact activities around three broad themes: A. Understanding vulnerability to physical harm in violent conflict: Which different kinds of vulnerabilities interact in what ways in situations that require protection, and which different protection strategies do they require? B. Building local protection infrastructures: How can outside protection strategies and self-protection mechanisms in communities work together for best protection results and without undermining each other? C. Developing civilian protection capabilities: How can unarmed local protection be scaled up in size/scope and include new actors and collaborations with a view to protect more people from violence and displacement and develop stronger protection capacity? To address these questions, our Network delivers activities for academic and non-academic partners from the Global North and South across three strands of work: networking and capacity enhancement; collaborative and innovative research; and knowledge sharing and advocacy. Taken together, these activities aim to increase the number of people benefiting from civilian protection worldwide.

The Development Award project "Creating Safer Space" works towards the vision of enhancing unarmed civilian protection practices, which create safer space for communities amidst violent conflict and help prevent displacement. According to United Nations Refugee Agency, there are now a record high of 68.5 million people forcibly displaced by violent conflict (UNHCR, 2019), and the majority of deaths in conflicts are among civilians, not armed actors. This makes the protection of civilians from physical harm in contexts of war a pressing issue of our time. While the international community has acknowledged the need for protection, the physical safety of civilians is still seen almost exclusively as a task of armed outside actors like UN blue helmets. The originality of this project is its focus on protection provided by unarmed civilian actors and deployed at the local level of communities, be it by "outside" specialists, "insider/local" protection actors or the conflict-affected communities themselves. Specifically, the project supports the building and consolidation of equitable partnerships in the field of unarmed civilian protection (UCP) between researchers in the UK and researchers and practitioners in four Low and Middle Income countries (LMIC) in Latin America and Southeast Asia, which have witnessed long-term and/or large-scale violence and displacement of different types and have been home to a variety of local protection initiatives: Colombia, Mexico, Myanmar, and the Philippines. The project's activities concentrate on five core objectives: (1) building and consolidating UCP partner networks that work equitably to enhance UCP work and knowledge; (2) scoping existing knowledge on UCP, including academic, non-academic and other sources (such as film, art or craft) and ways of knowing (such as indigenous knowledges and cosmologies); (3) enhancing research capacity and procedures by developing online training materials that enhance UK and partner country researchers' capacity to conduct safe, ethical and inclusive research; (4) creating communication channels for South-South learning by building a digital platfom that works across technological, lingusitic and cultural divides and enables a transnational sharing of experiences, and (5) facilitating advocacy and impact through stakeholder mapping. Through these activities the project will leave a sustainable legacy by putting in place partnerships, capacities and procedures for equitable research and impact which are of benefit to partners in their UCP work and also lay the foundations for future collaboration between UK and/or LMIC colleagues and organisations in the field of UCP. Taken together, these activities will work towards increasing the number of people benefiting from civilian protection worldwide.

Civilians living amidst violent conflict, like everyone experiencing conflict, know who is involved, the history what it makes it worse or lessens the impact on them. They have knowledge that those outside the conflict do not possess. The dominant peace and conflict intervention strategies of international agencies and NGOs begin with assessing the conflict situation using models based on western understanding of conflict trajectories, community resilience and peacebuilding, with an outsiders understanding. Although local people may be involved, their knowledge is rarely informing intervention and support strategies. This research will show the importance of placing local, contested, knowledge in the centre of intervention strategies, empowering and enabling local people and potentially making interventions more effective. The research takes a case study of local conflict knowledge in Karen and Mon areas of Myanmar, training local researchers to use storytelling, arts and craft approaches to enable local people to represent and share their knowledge in culturally appropriate ways, through which they share their understanding of the conflicts, violence and peace strategies. The content of what they produce will be mapped onto the existing conflict analysis of the local partner in order to analyse the themes and gaps. The local partner is Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO who provide unarmed civilian peacekeeping and protection of civilians to local communities around the world. They have been in Myanmar since 2012 and the results of this research will enable them to be more able to capture and use local knowledge about the conflicts, violence and peace to inform future project choices. This international and innovative research will impact on local people by making their voices louder and clearer, on Nonviolent Peaceforce interventions by potentially making them more effective, and on academic and policy approaches to conflict analysis, 'the local', and the types of knowledge used in understanding conflict and peace. It crosses peace and conflict studies and arts disciplines, adding methodologically and to the way we teach about conflict knowledge.