Resilience rapid learning brief
This brief explores how local social and political factors shape social cohesion, and how development and humanitarian programs can increase social cohesion in support of strengthening long-term peace and resilience outcomes.
Hypothesized to reduce violence, social cohesion is a necessary component for building resilience and improving long-term well-being outcomes. Understanding what helps strengthen social cohesion improves the ability of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding programming to build resilience in areas prone to ongoing conflicts, natural disasters, and other shocks and stresses.
This brief uses baseline survey data from USAID’s Preventing violent Extremism Actions through increased social Cohesion Efforts (PEACE) program in the Tillabéri region of Niger to examine which factors contribute to local-level variation in social cohesion in order to shape improved programming. The survey measures six dimensions of social cohesion: trust, tolerance, inclusion, cooperation, interactions between groups, and collective action. Additionally, the survey analyzes contextual factors like governance, the participation of women and youth in conflict management and peacebuilding, and patterns of peace and security within the community, which are associated with variations in local social cohesion.
Key findings
Key findings from Niger provide examples of both strong and weak dimensions of social cohesion and demonstrate the variations in these relationships across villages:
- Higher levels of collective action and collaboration with other groups do not necessarily increase intergroup trust — but positive interactions do.
- The relative strength of different components of social cohesion varies considerably across villages.
- Some dimensions of social cohesion differ by gender, but not by age.
- There is no clear relationship between trust in leaders and social cohesion.
- Higher levels of access to public services are associated with increases in social inclusion.
- Conflict management mechanisms can help facilitate inclusion, but they may not contribute to other dimensions of social cohesion.