The pilot project by Community Safety Initiative (CSI-KENYA) sought to understand the underlying drivers of recurrent cross border violence in Laikipia, Baringo, Isiolo, West Pokot and Samburu counties and how the availability and proliferation of small arms and light weapons among these communities exacerbates conflict among local communities and with ranch owners.

A key lesson that emerged was that external actors design theories of change often assuming hard State led approaches will deliver inter-communal peacebuilding and thus devise ways in which the State is compelled to increase security approaches including sometimes military deployments in volatile regions in a bid to ensure that community members perpetuating conflict are apprehended and held ‘accountable’.

On the contrary, this intervention has found that in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings (FCVAS), there is need to re-evaluate the limitations of State led hard approaches and how intra and inter community allegiances play out when there are threats to commonly held community beliefs on existence, prosperity and power.