Equipped for Peace

Across fragile and conflict-affected contexts, donors and practitioners increasingly invest in integrated youth programs that combine economic support, civic engagement, and peacebuilding goals. These approaches reflect an important reality: violence is rarely driven by a single factor. However, despite growing investment in youth programming, there is still limited causal evidence on which specific program components reduce support for violence, how they interact, and under what conditions they produce meaningful peace outcomes. 

This research builds on Mercy Corps’ growing evidence base on Interest-Based Mediation and Negotiation (IBMN) as a scalable peacebuilding approach. Earlier studies in Nigeria tested whether IBMN training for local leaders reduces violence and examined the added value of combining mediation training with community dialogues—including how these approaches perform on violence, insecurity, and social cohesion outcomes. Equipped for Peace extends this evidence by testing whether IBMN can be adapted for youth and layered into integrated youth economic and civic programming in a fragile setting. 

Equipped for Peace presents findings from a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) embedded within Mercy Corps’ Youth Connect program in Niger. Youth Connect provided vulnerable youth with vocational training, entrepreneurship support, civic education, and soft skills development. This study focused on the Nigerien regions of Maradi and Tillabéri, where youth face high unemployment, weak state presence, recurrent local conflict, and growing exposure to violent extremist organizations. 

To test whether adding a targeted peacebuilding component could strengthen violence prevention outcomes, Mercy Corps layered a light-touch conflict resolution intervention —IBMN — onto Youth Connect in a randomly selected subset of villages. IBMN is a low-cost, community-based training approach designed to help participants de-escalate disputes, identify underlying interests, and negotiate nonviolent solutions. This study is the first experimental evaluation of IBMN delivered directly to youth as primary peace actors. 

The study compares outcomes across three groups: 

• villages that received Youth Connect only, 
• villages that received Youth Connect + IBMN, and 
• control villages that received no intervention. 

Drawing on survey data from youth respondents, list experiments designed to measure sensitive attitudes toward violence, and geo-referenced conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project, the research assesses impacts on support for violence, norms around violent behavior, and conflict incidents. 

The study finds that: 

• Layering IBMN onto Youth Connect reduced youth support for violence. Youth in villages that received Youth Connect + IBMN were less likely to endorse political violence, justify violent responses to everyday disputes, or perceive violence as socially acceptable in their communities. 
• Youth Connect alone had limited effects on violence-related attitudes. The results suggest that economic and civic programming, while important, may be insufficient to shift norms and behaviors related to violence without directly addressing conflict dynamics. 
• IBMN effects were stronger in more economically disadvantaged villages. Conflict resolution training may be especially valuable in areas where poverty, exclusion, and weak governance increase the risk that local disputes escalate into violence. 
• Exploratory ACLED analysis suggests fewer violent incidents in IBMN villages. While these findings should be interpreted cautiously due to data limitations, they provide suggestive evidence that shifts in attitudes and norms may translate into reductions in real-world violence. 

These findings provide rigorous evidence that layered youth programming — combining livelihoods, civic engagement, and targeted conflict management — can produce stronger violence prevention outcomes than standalone youth development approaches, and suggest a practical model for strengthening existing livelihood, humanitarian, and climate resilience programming while also promoting peace and stability in fragile settings. They also highlight the potential of low-cost, scalable conflict resolution training to increase the peacebuilding impact of youth platforms resource-constrained environments. 

Based on these findings, governments, donors, civil society, and implementing actors should consider the following: 

• Layer conflict management training onto youth economic and civic programs.  The study shows that Youth Connect alone did not measurably reduce support for violence, but adding IBMN did; indicating that livelihood and civic support are more effective for violence prevention when paired with conflict resolution training. 
• Adapt conflict resolution tools to engage youth as agents of peace. IBMN shows that youth can be equipped to de-escalate disputes and mediate broader community tensions and should be treated not only as beneficiaries but as actors in violence prevention. 
• Target areas of greater deprivation with conflict management tools. IBMN effects were strongest in areas with more limited access to water (used here as a proxy for deprivation), suggesting layered interventions may have greater impact in poorer, more remote communities. 
• Integrate youth-led IBMN into broader peacebuilding and resilience efforts.  Youth-led conflict management should be embedded not only in youth-focused programming, but also in wider community peacebuilding efforts where youth play important roles in cohesion, dispute resolution, and early warning. 
• Invest in scalable peacebuilding models for fragile and humanitarian settings. The findings point to the value of light-touch, locally grounded conflict management in fragile contexts and support integrating peacebuilding into humanitarian and resilience programming, while continuing to build evidence on what works under severe constraints. 

As aid budgets tighten and humanitarian needs grow, these findings offer practical guidance for donors and implementers seeking cost-effective, evidence-informed strategies to reduce youth vulnerability to violence and strengthen community resilience.