Phase I Study report: social cohesion and community based protection mechanisms in chad and Burundi

The fields of child protection, education and peace building are not commonly viewed as interconnected, nor have they been juxtaposed in prior studies as a means to better understand societal dynamics in conflict or post-conflict countries. Generally speaking, the themes and subjects of peace building and social cohesion are areas of inquiry that have suffered from having a weak evidence base, including too little attention to systematic evaluation. In addition to being a relatively new field, there is little agreement on what peace outcomes look like in practice. For peace programming that aims to build a protective environment for children at the community level there is even less of an understanding. This study aims to examine and better comprehend how social cohesion is central to child protection, education and peace building for women and youth in conflict-affected Chad and post-conflict Burundi. Community, in this sense, is both defined by those within it, as well as a general meaning of all those “living together” in the same region or area.