Based on a study conducted in the Pakistani town of Haripur that investigated children’s attitudes toward identity, this Peace Brief finds that identity-based divides are in fact not the primary drivers of conflict at the community level, but notes the continuing salience of gender identity, which produces differing social expectations and differing understandings of conflict resolution roles.
Summary
•That identity-based divides are key drivers of conflict at the community level is not borne out in a study conducted in Haripur, Pakistan. Children in particular do not demonstrate familiarity with identity-based politics or conflict.
•One form of identity, though, remains salient across all age groups—gender. Distinct markers of identity are based on gender, and girls and women almost consistently demonstrate different views than boys and men on diverse issues.
•Dispute resolution in the community is also primarily a gendered activity.
•Agreement is limited within the community, however, on what the main drivers of local conflict are.
•Future programming needs to take into account how gender affects attitudes toward conflict and participation in community initiatives and dispute resolution mechanisms.
Introduction
In recent years, theoretical and practical literature has moved away from assumptions that poverty drives conflict, particularly extremist violence.1 Instead, studies assert that identity is a crucial factor in precipitating violence. Identity-based divides have become particularly salient in explaining current forms of violence, extremist or otherwise.2 Specifically, perceptions of injustice experienced on the basis of identity have in some instances been an important trigger of violence.
To address this idea, programming within the peacebuilding sector has sometimes targeted children in the hopes of addressing identity-based divides at a young age. A study conducted in Haripur, a town near Abbottabad in Pakistan’s province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, aimed to investigate whether identity played a prominent role in children’s attitudes toward conflict. Haripur was chosen for having a particularly representative population—a good mix of urban and rural and a wide range of tribes, castes, and ethnicities as well as communities displaced by natural disasters (such as the 2006 earthquake) or military operations (especially those in FATA)—and a higher literacy rate than the rest of the province (roughly 54 to 35 percent). This Peace Brief uses the example of the study in Haripur to demonstrate that identity-based divides are not the primary drivers of conflict at the community level. However, it would be unfair to conceptualize such divides as an undifferentiated whole; some elements of identity are salient at a young age and do shape attitudes toward conflict. In this case, gender emerged as one such marker.
