Pastoral mobility cuts across political boundaries, jurisdictions and authorities. This usually happens with a high degree of cooperative engagement among local communities. But pastoral mobility can also become enmeshed in borderland violence—from criminality, to human rights violations, armed insurgency and inter-community fighting.

Conciliation Resources and the Institute of Development Studies worked with communities and local research partners to learn about how violence works and priorities for peace in some key borderlands. Our research, conducted in 2022-23 as part of the UK Government-funded Cross-border conflict evidence, policy, trends (XCEPT) research programme, covered borderlands across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Central African Republic, and between Uganda and Kenya.

Our research identified that pastoralists experience multiple prejudices that perpetuate and escalate insecurity systems in borderlands. Pastoralists’ insecurity is linked to their political and social exclusion in marginalised borderland areas. Climate change volatility and increasing environmental pressures compound social and political exclusion to further erode pastoralists’ security, wellbeing and livelihoods.

In response, pastoralist communities need greater ‘vertical’ political agency to participate meaningfully in policy discussions that affect their security and wellbeing. National governments can enhance formal collaboration with pastoralist community institutions to co-design and -implement policies. International donors and civil society can fund long-term programmes that support communities to represent themselves at scale.