September 2025 – August 2027
Humanitarian organizations promote restraint to limit violence against civilians, but this is increasingly difficult amid today’s fragmented and complex conflicts. This project examines how local leaders—such as religious, traditional, or local state authorities—can influence armed groups to show greater restraint toward civilians in conflict zones. It develops an evidence-based framework using the ACCP (Actors, Content, Context, Process) approach to identify key mechanisms of influence. Focusing on South Sudan, the study combines qualitative case studies, a protection dialogue dataset, and survey experiments to assess how local authority shapes restraint.
ETH PI: Prof Dr. Allard Duursma
ETH team: Janek Bruker & Valentin Felix Geier
ICRC partner: Florence Gillette (head of the ICRC South Sudan delegation)
Other partners: Dr. Naomi Pendle, Dr. Sophia Dawkins & Peace Canal
Photo: Local leaders of the Gawaar and Murle during a peace engagement in Gumuruk, South Sudan. Copyright with Peace Canal.
