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#GIResilience project Sinaloa 2018

The #GIresilience Project is part of the efforts of The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime to encourage the resilient capabilities of communities affected by organized crime. The aim is to identify and promote successful practices that can be replicated and applied at local, national, regional or global levels.

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime is a non-profit international organization that comprises a network of nearly 300 independent global and regional experts. The Global Initiative seeks to open new lines of analysis to provide creative solutions to the challenges of organized crime, and to serve as an exchange and collaboration platform among governments, civil society, scholars, the private sector and other actors. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Geneva, the Global Initiative has representation in every continent.

The ultimate aim of the #GIresilience Project is to create a global network of resilient communities to counter and mitigate the effects of criminal networks. This involves incubating and developing resilience-based initiatives that can protect and empower citizens who have taken a stand against organized crime.

PHASE ONE

The Resilience Dialogues

The #GIresilience Project started in Sinaloa, México in 2016. That year, the GI conducted a series of interviews and field visits to assess resilience against violence and other effects of organized crime.

¿Why Sinaloa?

Historically, Sinaloa has been one of the main narco-trafficking hubs worldwide. The birthplace of some of Mexico’s most powerful drug lords, Sinaloa is home of presumably one of the largest criminal organizations in the world. The Sinaloa Cartel is present in more than 50 countries, and has permeated all aspects of Sinaloan life, all the way from licit economies to popular music and religion. At the same time, the state is the home of extraordinary community responses.

In 2017, the GI published Resilience in Sinaloa: Community Responses to Organized Crime. The report uses the resilience approach to analyze five local initiatives addressing the effects of violence and organized crime.

This report was the basis for the creation of the Resilience Dialogues, a series of activities that took place over three days on August 2017 in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

These dialogues were designed as a participatory research tool, to achieve a better understanding of resilience capacities in communities affected by organized crime.

The events included a workshop where community leaders learned to identify their own resilient capacities, and a forum for women to enable dialogues about violence in Sinaloa, from a gender perspective. The activities concluded with an arts festival, organized in collaboration with the Recuper-Arte collective.

PHASE TWO

The Incubator

The #GIresilience Project seeks to recognize the important work of civil society against organized crime, collaborate with the actors and strengthen their networks.

The next phase of the project will focus on developing joint initiatives among different communities to encourage cooperation and collaboration. The GI will activate a community of resilient leaders that was formed as a result of the Dialogues. From February to July 2018, the GI will carry out interviews and consultations on specific topics while continuing to document community responses to organized crime.

Three initiatives from Culiacan will be selected in developing activities to build resilient capacities.

In October 2018, the progress of the work with the selected initiatives will be presented back to their communities, building the strategies that will define the next phase of the project.

Contacto: siria.gastelum@globalinitiative.net

Geneva, 2018