Promoting Non-violent Masculine Identities in El Salvador and Nicaragua

The aim of this project is to prevent violence and increase resilience among individuals and communities in El Salvador and Nicaragua by contributing to more informed, effective, and participatory interventions. Although violence levels in the region are extremely high in both private and public spheres, not enough research has been developed to find linkages between the different types of violence. Research on violence against youth, women, and children tends to be treated separately, each with its own conceptual frameworks and approaches. This project will make the links through a multidisciplinary approach that focuses on common risk and protective factors affecting public and domestic violence against women, children, and youth in vulnerable areas. A strong gender perspective will be used. It will be focused on the construction of non-violent masculine identities, with particular attention to conditions under which non-violent masculine role models and identities can emerge. Focusing on young men from vulnerable urban communities in both countries, the project will combine two complementary methodological approaches. It will adapt and apply the renowned International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) to generate sophisticated and comparable data that can inform policy debates. It will also develop Participatory Action Research to engage activists, practitioners, local authorities, and policymakers in explaining practices and attitudes of young men, making sense of quantitative data and defining its relevance to improve policy and intervention designs. IDRC will partner with the Nicaraguan organization Fundación Puntos de Encuentro to implement the project. 108194 State-Community Collaboration for Safe Communities - Urban Violence Prevention through Public Employment Programs With one of the highest homicide rates in the world, and high rates of other forms of violence, South Africa is struggling to reduce crime and violence, particularly in its cities. This high level of violence in urban centres undermines economic growth and opportunities for human development. One promising avenue for addressing high rates of both public and private violence is through public sector employment programs, which address both immediate and root causes of urban violence. In earlier IDRC-supported research, South Africa's Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) identified the pathways through which one such program - the Community Work Program (CWP) - helps reduce poverty and violence. These pathways include providing a basic income for families to reduce stress and incentives for crime, engaging directly with perpetrators, building a sense of, and commitment to, community, strengthening community resilience, and supporting the community's capacity to work together to prevent violence. Building on these results, CSVR will develop and pilot violence prevention policies that draw on new research and are implemented in collaboration with policymakers and practitioners. The project seeks to develop evidence-based programming that can be scaled up across the more than 185 CWP sites across South Africa. In addition, researchers will identify lessons that can be shared internationally. The project will test and evaluate how civil society and the state can work together to reduce and prevent urban violence.