Karuna Center: Peacebuilding is When enemies become partners

For decades, communities in Nigeria have been experiencing land and resource conflicts resulting from global climate change. Cycles of violence involving crop farmers and livestock herders have pitted people of different ethnicities and religions against each other—and threatened the security of people across the region.

The Protecting Our Communities Initiative (POCI) empowers people directly impacted by these conflicts with systems they can use to prevent and de-escalate violence. The project is led by Karuna Center for Peacebuilding and Neem Foundation in collaboration with community-based organizations. POCI’s community-run early warning-early response (EWER) committees and structured dialogues have united diverse community members and strengthened their skills and relationships, allowing farmers and herders to rebuild trust. 

Over the past four years since the project began, local peacebuilders have identified and addressed more than 850 incidents that could have sparked broader violence. These peacebuilders are now widely respected as first responders to emerging threats. During the contentious 2023 elections, none of the project's communities experienced election-related violence—a development that local community members attributed to building social cohesion across different communities. 

POCI also incorporated outreach and advocacy strategies with security officials, traditional leaders, government agencies, and associations of farmers and of herders. State-level leaders of farmers’ and herders’ associations are now advocating jointly for policy solutions that address the drivers of farmer-herder conflict, and POCI is working with government agencies to incorporate lessons learned into their plans for improving EWER and strengthening farmer-herder relations nationwide.