Reintegration assistance: Good, Promising and Innovative Practices Series. A new factsheet on community-based planning and small infrastructure construction in Somalia produced by the Knowledge Management Hub.
Group discussion during the CAP review event held in April 2019. ©Hussein/IOM
The Knowledge Management Hub is releasing today a new factsheet on community-based planning and small infrastructure works in Somalia as part of the “Reintegration Assistance: Good, Promising and Innovative Practices Series”.
Community-based planning (CBP) is a community-centred approach used by IOM in some post-crisis and recovery contexts to engage local communities affected by displacement, migration, civil conflict and other crises in transition and recovery, stabilization and peace building. With an emphasis on inclusion and participation, various socio-economic groups (including vulnerable and marginalized populations such as internally displaced persons, returnees, refugees, women and youth) are consulted and define collectively the local needs and priorities.
In Baidoa, Southern Somalia, this approach was implemented to increase social cohesion and improve the town’s absorption capacity to enable reintegration of returnees. Implemented through a synergy between IOM’s community stabilization programming (under the Midnimo project) and reintegration programming (under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration), the intervention led to the definition of 90 projects, of which 17 have been implemented by IOM and other actors to date.
The newly released factsheet “Practice #8: Revitalizing Economy and Enhancing Social Cohesion through Community-Based Planning and Community-Prioritized Infrastructure Works: the Construction of a Bridge in Somalia ”, describes the community consultation and community-based planning process that led to the identification of these projects. It illustrates how members of the community, partners, local authority and local leaders were brought together to dialogue, negotiate and reach consensus regarding the identification of socio-economic groups, the selection of representatives of these groups’ and the identification and planning of interventions addressing the different groups’ development and (re)integration needs. It also provides additional details on one of these projects - the construction of a bridge - that significantly improved movement in the city and thus access to the main business area as well as to basic services.
This series of factsheets aims at highlighting good or promising reintegration practices along with operational details and recommendations allowing reintegration practitioners to learn more about such activities, understand how they are implemented and could potentially be replicated or adapted in their respective contexts. The other factsheets of the series are available on the Platform’s repository.
Do not hesitate to get in touch with us and share good and promising practices on reintegration assistance. The information and evidence collected on such practices is translated into short knowledge bites in the form of factsheets for easy dissemination among reintegration practitioners.
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