Lessons from Deris Wanaag for Peace and Stability Programming

The Deris Wanaag project offers critical insights into building peace and stability in the volatile Kenya–Somalia–Ethiopia borderlands, demonstrating how integrated, evidence-driven and gender-sensitive approaches can reduce the threat of violent extremism and strengthen community resilience.

Key Recommendations

• Build diverse, multidisciplinary teams: Combine research, development, peacebuilding, humanitarian and monitoring and evaluation expertise to adapt to rapidly changing contexts and stakeholder priorities.
• Engage communities in problem identification and intervention design: Systematic community engagement ensures buy-in and contextually relevant solutions.
• Embed flexibility in project planning: Enable rapid response to humanitarian, mediation, and infrastructure needs to build trust and facilitate broader objectives.
• Integrate research and analysis throughout the project: Use ongoing political economy analysis to inform strategy, partner selection, and adaptive programming.
• Ground gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) interventions in local evidence: Align strategies with local norms and ensure donor-implementer risk alignment.
• Prioritise localisation while avoiding reinforcement of exclusive power structures: Leverage local civil society organisation capacity but remain conflict-sensitive in partner selection.
• Strategically build partner capacity: Use organisational assessments to tailor support in finance, compliance, conflict sensitivity and GESI.
• Allocate resources for ongoing government engagement: Manage expectations and clarify roles with state actors at all levels.
• Maintain multilevel stakeholder engagement: Engage regional, national, subnational and community actors to ensure operational access and policy alignment.
• Leverage joint communications with governments: Use project networks to strengthen social cohesion and the social contract between communities and the state.
• Support security officers in operational environments: Policy-level interventions can improve officer welfare and community relations.
• Address both structural grievances and include 'at-risk' individuals: Combine community-wide and targeted interventions for comprehensive impact.
• Adopt flexible, adaptive monitoring and evaluation: Agree on frameworks with donors to capture the diverse impacts of interventions.

This paper distills three years of operational experience, highlighting both successes and challenges. It provides actionable recommendations for both donors and practitioners designing interventions in fragile border regions.