Conflict Prevention, Stabilization &
Transition

DT Global’s experience in conflict prevention programming enables us to recognize early warning signs and identify strategic windows of opportunity to interrupt cycles of violence. This expertise allows us to detect when conflict is germinating and design programs that prevent flashpoints from devolving into wide-spread violence. DT Global targets the root causes of conflict by correcting misperceptions, dispelling disinformation, and changing attitudes and behaviors.

DT Global works with local communities to address underlying tensions, resolve violent conflicts, and increase the communities’ ability to identify early warning signs of conflict. Our approach addresses perceptions of marginalization and exclusion that can drive violence or disrupt reconciliation processes. We use trauma-informed approaches to support local and national peacebuilding and seek to include all groups—most importantly marginalized communities. We tailor our peacebuilding approach to each community to enhance and amplify local ownership. For example, our work increases meaningful civic participation in political processes through community peace dialogues, facilitates negotiations among warring communities, and strengthens peaceful mechanisms for engaging with local government. By supporting the social and economic integration of conflict-affected regions, we create the conditions for communities to build and sustain peace.

At DT Global, we systematically incorporate locally informed research and analysis into our day-to-day work. To do this, we engage with a broad range of trusted local partners, key community and religious leaders, strategic media sources, and open-source data to understand more fully the quickly shifting dynamics that drive communities to engage in violence. In contexts where conflict is already dynamic, we identify trusted social or religious leaders and media influencers to help ensure community access to timely and credible information. Our experience conducting key informant interviews and focus group discussions helps inform local impact and reception to the activities we implement.

DT Global brings deep experience working with communities through a continuum of active conflict into stabilization, and then transitioning into longer-term peaceful coexistence. We do this by working with our local partners to assess, prioritize, and provide the resources they need to stabilize the immediate impact of crisis. With our partners, we identify, prioritize, and implement flexible and responsive mechanisms and activities to promote peaceful transition. These activities include community dialogues, rehabilitating markets to re-establish livelihoods, supporting credible media outreach, organizing sporting events and cultural festivals, and providing support for infrastructure needs. We prioritize investment in transparent and collective community decision-making to build trust in legitimate local government while maintaining the flexibility needed to prevent backsliding.

Violent extremism is a dangerously infectious source of instability. Actors such as Al-Shabaab, the Islamic State, and Al Qaeda are particularly adept at planting disinformation to prey on weak governance and vulnerable societies. In response, DT Global collaborates with trusted local partners to conduct assessments, identify recruitment tools, and understand the rationale for social acceptance of these organizations. We subsequently work with our local partners across civil society, local, regional, and national government, and the private sector to design and implement targeted strategic initiatives to increase resilience against disinformation propagated by violent extremist organizations, provide alternative messaging through credible local influencers, and help sustain local government and civil society.