Monique Bennett, Doctoral Researcher at the Policy Innovation Lab, recently participated in a DISARM project event on Taking Away the Guns: How Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Can Contribute to Peacebuilding at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) in Oslo, Norway. The seminar brought together leading scholars and practitioners to discuss new insights from the DISARM project — an initiative examining how Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes can adapt to the changing nature of conflict and contribute to sustainable peace.

Presenting findings from the project, Senior Researcher and project leader Júlia Palik (PRIO) highlighted that while disarmament remains the most common provision in peace agreements, full DDR packages are still relatively rare, appearing in only 26.9% of cases. The research also shows the symbolic importance of disarmament processes, drawing on examples from Colombia and Mozambique, as well as the critical role of third-party actors in facilitating DDR efforts.

Monique’s doctoral research, supported by the DISARM project, contributed to this event with some of her empirical findings on Mozambique. Monique’s research aims to understand how actor dynamics, spatial variation, and timing shape DDR implementation and subsequent outcomes. Using newly available archival material from the United Nations and interviews, Monique’s research aims to contribute toward a granular view of the complexities involved in implementing peace provisions like DDR in the hopes that practitioners can improve their design of these provisions in specific contexts.

As the UN’s New Agenda for Peace calls for renewed attention to DDR as a tool for addressing conflict drivers, the DISARM project’s findings offer timely and policy-relevant insights for peacebuilding practitioners and policymakers alike. Monique’s participation in the DISARM project meeting at PRIO reflects a core value of the Lab which is to leverage research to inform policy and practice in contexts of complexity and change.