Reducing urban violence in developing countries

A policy brief

Published by: The Brookings Institute, 2006
Via: Docuticker

This brief is informed by the findings from participatory urban appraisals of violence undertaken by the author in 1999 in eighteen poor urban communities in Colombia and Guatemala. These provide perception data from an extensive number of local women and men, girls and boys, whose daily lives are influenced by violence, insecurity, and fear. While participatory methodologies are now recognized as an important way of bringing the ‘voices of the poor’ to policymakers, to date they have focused on the problem of poverty. Thus this study pioneers a new violence-focused research methodology—first as a pilot project by the author in an earlier study of urban violence in Jamaica