Harmonie Toros - h.toros@reading.ac.uk

Understanding and Strengthening Civilian Agency

Submission by Professor Harmonie Toros, University of Reading h.toros@reading.ac.uk

The last decades have seen an increased attention by the international community and the UK government toward civilian protection, leading to a UK Protection of Civilian Strategy.[i] Despite the suffering we continue to witness around the world, civilian protection rationales are now included in military, diplomatic, humanitarian, and development practices in conflict and post-conflict environments. The recognition that civilians often bear the heaviest toll in armed conflict, insecurity, and instability is crucial.

This focus on protection, however, has come at the expense of recognizing that civilians are also active agents of change in their lives. Although often victims of violence, political instability and poverty, civilians always retain a degree of agency that has a key impact on how they behave and how they respond to malign and benign interventions by national and international actors.

Research carried out by the author[ii] has shown that civilian agency is often ignored in foreign policy and development programmes and, when taken into account, it is restricted to socio-economic agency. Civilians are seen as making choices based on who is delivering basic services of security, health, education, and infrastructure. They are indeed rarely understood as having political agency in conflict and post-conflict environment, i.e. the capacity to make choices based on politics, ideology and kinship. This is particularly true of women, who are most often represented as exclusively focused on protecting and feeding their children.[iii]

There is therefore an urgent need to understand civilian agency and ensure that it is taken into account in the framing of UK’s diplomatic, humanitarian and development-focused interventions. This focus area could help answer questions such as: How do political and ideological positions impact on civilians’ willingness to accept foreign aid and foreign-backed programmes? How do kinship ties affect the willingness of civilians to support informal governance practices of non-state armed groups?[iv] How can empowerment programmes be framed to make them relevant and attractive to women and girls?

Understanding civilian agency in its various forms is thus essential to ensure that UK government action and international collective action supported by the UK is effective and brings short-, medium-, and long-term benefits to the affected civilians, foreign allies, and the UK. Crucially, it can also help the UK design programmes that galvanize civilian agency, including women’s agency, to help communities be more resilient in the face of violence and insecurity. Such programmes can involve training women peacebuilders in conflict resolution skills to help them negotiate with armed actors[v], and encouraging civil society actors, particularly youth groups, to exert their agency in favour of peace, security and development. This increased understanding and support of civilian agency can act as a key force multiplier for UK action in international development.

Additional information:

In 2023, I submitted written and was invited to give oral evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on civilians in Northeast Syria.[vi] I have 15 years’ experience working with national governments (including the UK), international organizations (various UN agencies and NATO units), and conflict resolution NGOs in Kenya, Somalia, the Philippines, Turkey, and Syria. I can travel to London and back within the same day.