Peace and stability
NIRAS has over 20 years of experience contributing to the prevention, resolution and mediation of conflicts and building of stability, resilience and long-lasting peace in fragile, conflict-affected contexts. Over this time we have fully embraced the evolving opportunities that digital technologies offer for enhancing our peace and stability work.
What digitalisation can achieve
Digital technologies provide crucial opportunities for gathering data and insights in difficult-to-reach conflict contexts, and provide information for real-time peacebuilding strategies and crisis mapping. Decentralised online digital platforms and communication tools, such as social media and messaging applications, can be used as a transformative force for engaging, connecting and ultimately mobilising collective action. While digital technologies can be used as a powerful force for good, misused they can pose high risks to peace and stability (e.g. through censorship, surveillance, radicalisation).
Services we offer
- Using digital solutions and data sources to identify and map risks to livelihoods and other causes of conflict, conduct conflict sensitivity analyses and collect and analyse citizens’ perceptions of risk and conflict, including crowdsourcing;
- Developing customised and secure web-based platforms for sharing information with project stakeholders;
- Creating strategies for promoting peace through digital communication, online civic participation and networking tools (social media, digital storytelling, peace messaging, dialogue platforms);
- Developing robust approaches on using digital data and solutions in a secure, ethical and inclusive way that follows our principle of “Do no harm”;
- Combining traditional analogue and digital tools, contextualised to local realities;
- Deploying cutting-edge frontier technologies and ‘big data’ for data gathering and processing, e.g. mobile-phones, AI, satellite data and drones; and
- Using digital data and tools for monitoring, evaluation and learning of peacebuilding interventions within difficult-to-reach conflict contexts.
Examples from our work
Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF)
NIRAS is a core partner in a consortium contracted since 2019 to support the UK Government’s CSSF in developing an overall monitorial, evaluation and learning (MEL) system at the fund level. As part of this, the consortium has worked with the client to generate learning on how data analytics can support decision making across the fund. This involved piloting a range of data analytics techniques, some of which involved machine learning prediction tools on future events or trends such as migration flows or terrorism events.
We have also developed products to demonstrate how the client could use social media data to develop evidence bases to support programme decision-making. One such product involved using Twitter to gauge how migrants and refugees are perceived by the host population over time by location. To accomplish this goal, the project team created a web application/ dashboard that uses Twitter data and an AI model to classify sentiments. The dashboard displays a map of the country with highlighted negative and positive sentiments related to migration and plots showing change over time. The entire project was created in the R programming language, which is open-source and free to use. The web application is created using R Shiny, the R programming language’s primary web application/ dashboard API. The AI sentiment model is a state-of-the-art bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model trained explicitly on Twitter data. The web app/dashboard is self-sustaining and updates nightly with new data.
EU4SmallFarms
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the war created new, acute vulnerabilities for smallholder farmers. Many small farmers are not officially registered and are therefore liable for conscription rather than be allowed to continue farming. The war also reduced access to working capital, fuel, fertiliser and equipment. The NIRAS-managed EU4SmallFarms project adapted its approach as a result. The team has provided a variety of support to farmers, including matching agricultural requests with international donor support; managing a grant initiative to farmers; and supporting displaced farmers in western Ukraine to get back to working on land. A key challenge was the lack of a database of smallholders, who account for 90% of agricultural produce in Ukraine. The EU4SmallFarms team worked with the World Bank to develop software so all farmers can register online and thereby get the support they need during the war.
Refugee Response Fund in Uganda
NIRAS was the administrative manager of this Fund set up to ensure the wellbeing of South Sudanese refugees and the communities that host them. As part of our management of the fund, NIRAS coordinated a needs-mapping for the refugee response and established a web-based platform to ensure access to the data for all stakeholders.
Rasmus Klitgaard
Sector Lead Peace & Stability, RKI@niras.de
John Skelton
Project Manager, CSSF Project, JOSK@niras.com
Gender equality and human rights
Through our digitalisation advisory capabilities, NIRAS accelerates gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights. We are able to identify the drivers of the digital gender divide and support inclusive digital transformation.
What digitalisation can achieve
Digitalisation provides immense opportunities for the advancement of women’s empowerment, gender equality and human-rights. Technology has re-shaped how people access and share information, providing new opportunities for empowering people and building human-rights. For example, digital technologies can provide new opportunities for women to earn additional income, access financial services, cope with emergencies and tackle gender-based violence. Significant barriers such as social norms and digital literacy, however, need to be addressed before women can fully benefit from the digital transformation, especially in the Global South. When misused, digitalisation poses risks that threaten to reverse and entrench gender inequality and human-rights abuses. Digitalisation can be used to suppress and violate human rights, through online harassment and state surveillance.
Services we offer
- Tailored strategies for closing the digital gender divide (at work and in education and public service delivery) drawing from our gender-responsive participatory approaches;
- Understanding the risks of digitalisation for human rights and gender equality, and developing strategies to avoid and reduce the risks;
- Advancement of women and girls in innovation, technology and entrepreneurship (promoting women as innovators and entrepreneurs);
- Promotion of women in STEM and digital technology training;
- Development of regulatory frameworks for technologies that promote gender equality and human rights;
- Collection and analysis of gender-sensitive data to inform policy decisions and evaluation;
- Ethical frameworks for AI gender equality and human rights; and
- Digital literacy training and tailored e-learning for women and girls.
Examples from our work
Digital Access Programme
NIRAS provided evaluation services to the UK FCDO’s Digital Access Programme, one of the largest digital inclusion interventions in the world. The programme’s primary aim is to catalyse inclusive, affordable, safe and secure digital access for excluded and underserved communities in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia by addressing both the demand and supply constraints to internet and digital access. A key cross-cutting objective of the programme is to improve digital access for women and youth. NIRAS’ work supported the ongoing learning and adaptive management of the programme, our team included digital inclusion specialists who provided valuable insights for improving the strategic direction of the programme.
Improving the Quality of Data and Strengthening Policy Making in North Macedonia
Funded by the EU, NIRAS worked with government ministries in North Macedonia to improve the quality and accessibility of digital data for policy-making. A key part of the project involved developing an innovative information management system to support decision-making from the national to the local level on labour market forecasting, education and other social policies. The work involved designing the system closely aligned to end-user needs and providing follow-up training and capacity building for relevant stakeholders.
UK Research and Innovation Fund’s Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Programme
NIRAS’ in-house data scientists used AI-based natural language processing tools to assess the extent to which a gender perspective was included by grantees for the UK Research and Innovation Fund’s Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Programme. The NIRAS data scientist team worked closely with the NIRAS gender team to develop the methodology and verify the findings. The approach included defining a rules-based system for differentiating between grantee reporting that was gender neutral or transformative. The work was conducted as part a wider evaluation of the Fund and included other innovative machine-learning-based data science methods to automate the analysis of grantee research outputs linked to SDG outcomes.
Catharina Schmitz
Sector Lead Gender Equality & Human Rights, CATH@niras.se
Governance and democracy
NIRAS offers our clients advisory services to harness the full potential of digitalisation to strengthen the performance of government, public institutions and wider democracy.
What digitalisation can achieve
Digitalisation has huge potential to transform the transparency, accountability and efficiency of governance systems and wider democracy. The digitalisation of government services and processes (e-government) can improve service delivery efficiency and reduce corruption. Digital platforms and digitalisation generally offer new ways for citizens, the independent media and civil society to engage with democratic processes, decision-making and hold government institutions to account.
Services we offer
- Enhancing opportunities through digitalisation for non-state actors (civil society, independent media, and communities) and citizens to express their views, take part in decision-making processes (deliberative democracy) and hold public institutions accountable;
- Advisory for e-government and digital government initiatives, improving the accountable provision of government services and business access to government through digitalisation;
- Identifying the risks of digitalisation (e.g. cybersecurity, disinformation, surveillance) to democracy and mitigation strategies;
- Specialist services for improving public financial management, as part of our wider e-government capabilities and supporting engagement of citizens and local communities;
- Digitalisation processes and technologies tailored to boost decentralisation and local governance effectiveness and accountability;
- Development of online tools for procurement to increase the transparency and time-efficiency of processes and decrease corruption risks;
- Development and implementation of customised and interactive Online trainings and workshops for civil society actors as an inclusive education and knowledge exchange form; and
- Development of Apps, e.g. for GPS markings, and direct feedback options from citizens to the municipality.
Examples from our work
Ukraine Local Empowerment Accountability and Development programme (U-LEAD)
NIRAS implemented U-LEAD, a project focused on decentralisation and delivering administrative services to the Ukrainian people, with great success. U-LEAD saw the establishment of Administrative Service Centers (ASCs) across the country. Within this project, NIRAS developed an online tool for procurement. The use of this tool allowed for transparency of procurement processes in line with procurement guidelines, time-efficient procurement, records for auditors and a decreased corruption risk.
Civil Society in Uganda Support Programme (CUSP)
NIRAS contributed to CUSP with the overall goal of strengthening the service delivery and advocacy of Ugandan civil society organisations (CSOs) by increasing their capacity in eight pre-defined topics. While initially standardised in-classroom trainings for nationwide implementation were developed, NIRAS switched to a blended learning approach (e-learning sessions with offline coaching) during COVID-19 to facilitate continuous learning progress even during nationwide restrictions. Using this approach, very remote CSO staff members could participate in the trainings. Also, by offering one-on-one coaching, the trainers were able to answer their questions and support them in their individual challenges. In total, 1654 participants were trained, of which 44% were women.
Active Citizen Participation in Tunisia (PACT)
In the PACT decentralisation project that NIRAS is implementing together with Fondation Hirondelle on behalf of the SDC, a digital tool has been developed to facilitate the participation of citizens in local governance of municipal services. The application 'Madinaty' was created to allow for citizen input to municipality's services. It that engages Tunisians to collaborate and communicate with their municipal administration.
Meghan Stuppert
Project and Tender Manager, MEGS@niras.de
Emilie Fity
Project and Tender Manager, EMF@niras.dk
