UNDERSTANDING THE TIPPING

POINT OF URBAN CONFLICT

Key Findings from the Sub-city Qualitative Study

Grace Lubaale

2 March 2012

STRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATIONSTRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATIONSTRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATIONSTRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATION

�Objectives of the study

�Methodology

�Types of violenceTypes of violence

�Spatial manifestations of violence

�Tipping points

�Violence chains

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY� To understand the nature of the qualitative tipping points

� Determine potential means to prevent urban conflict from tipping over into violence

� To identify policy entry points that would allow the implementation of violence & the break the links in violence implementation of violence & the break the links in violence chains

METHODOLOGY� Why Kawangware, Kibera, and Mukuru? Known violence hotspots at the city level, access, familiarity and safety for researchers

� Relatively understudied, significance of Kibera

� Purposively identified groups

� The Participatory Violence Appraisal:� The Participatory Violence Appraisal:� 74 focus groups (19, 37, and 18 for Kawangware, Kibera, and Mukuru respectively),

� 8 in-depth interviews, feedback workshops

� Conducted over 5 weeks in March- April 2011

Focus Group Discussion in Raila

Village in Kibera

TYPES OF VIOLENCEPOLITICAL VIOLENCE IS NOT HOMOGENOUS

� In all 3 communities virtually everyone was ruthlessly harassed by Admin Police� In Kibera youth used as cheap method to unleash violence; tenants occupied structures without paying rent for at tenants occupied structures without paying rent for at least 5 years

� In Mukuru most tenants moved to safer areas

� In Kawangware Kikuyu landlords increased rents by up to 400% for Luo/Luhyia tenants

Types and relative prevalence of violence

Nature of violence� Political violence is the main type of violence but not the only one

� Policy makers focus on political violence means that other forms of violence e.g. GBV are invisibilized

� Communities with less political violence are seen as less � Communities with less political violence are seen as less violent

SPATIAL MANIFESTATION

TIPPING POINTS

Important institutions

Tipping points

� An institutional focus shows that conflicts tips into violence in all 3 settlements (put this text after the table)

� OP tips conflict into violence while NGOS, FBOs work to tip it back into conflict

Chiefs/OP are able to keep landlord-tenant conflict from � Chiefs/OP are able to keep landlord-tenant conflict from tipping into violence

Landlord-tenant conflicts tip into violence

when:

� Ethicized

� Squatters do not have further space for development

� Rents are perceived to have been arbitrarily and unfairly

� Tenants refuse to pay rents� Tenants refuse to pay rents

� BUT Elders can tip landlord-tenant violence back to conflicts; while chiefs cannot

VIOLENCE CHAINS

Politics Tribalism

Loss of property

Displacement

Deaths

Poverty

Burning houses

Lack of food

Rape

Political fights

Violence chains

� Useful in showing the linkages rather than categories� Chains vary in strength; where there are stronger chains, communities are perceived as more violent

� Where there stronger chains, ethnic violence is frequently the driver determining linkages in chain from political to landlord-driver determining linkages in chain from political to landlord-tenant violence, e.g. Kibera.

� Communities with weak links, where ethnic violence is not a driver, are seen as less violent e.g. Kawangware and Mukuru

THANK YOU