This is being done in collaboration with Open Society Initiative of West Africa (OSIWA). This project was conceived to broadly contribute to the attempt to amend the Nigeria Constitution with particular reference to the problematic of citizenship rights in Nigeria. The project was executed in two phases: The research and the intervention phases.

The research phase which has been concluded consisted of comprehensive review of attempts by successive Nigerian governments to deal with the issue of citizenship and indigeneship Rights. Under this phase, all past constitutions and report of panels of enquiries or committees were reviewed in order to understand in a historical context the approach which has been adopted over the years to address the problem.

The second phase of the project which is the intervention phase derived in fact from the findings of the research phase. So far, speakers from the State Houses of Assembly in the south and North have been engaged in dialogue sessions. The 13th - 14th September, 2005 while that of the North was held in Benin, Edo State between 20th - 21st September 2005. We targeted the Legislature deliberately because we expect the issue to have grassroot acceptance.

The Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution (IPCR) and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) began a programme of collaboration in October 2005, to produce a framework for Mainstreaming Peace in Development Programming and Implementation in Nigeria. The expected outcome of the project is to produce a user-driven inter-agency toolkit that will assist development planners and implementers conduct development interventions in ways that build peace and reduce the risks of violent conflicts. In line with the workplan the draft framework document has gone through several stages.

Over the years, Nigeria's contributions to peace at the domestic, regional and international levels have been on ad hoc basis. This is not good enough for the country in a knowledge-driven world. Thus:

i) The National Peace Policy Project is designed to provide a national framework for defining and subsuming all Nigeria's domestic, regional and international efforts in peace operations;

ii) The National Peace Policy will provide focus and direction for Nigerians to understand and situate their actins in the context of peacebuilding;

The Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC) of the National Action Plan (NAP) on the Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA) of Nigeria

Following the country-wide Strategic Conflict Assessment of Nigeria and its outcome which eventually came out as a National Action Plan to mitigate issues of conflict in the country, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR, endorsed and adopted the NAP as his government's response to conflict. Mr. President thereafter put together a 25-member Presidential Implementation Committee (PIC) to lead the implementation of the NAP with His Excellency, the Vice President as Chairman and the Institute's Director General as Secretary. The DG of the Institute is the Head of the PIC Secretariat. After its inauguration on March 2, 2005, the PIC set up five sub-committees, based on sub-themes, to oversee the implementation of the NAP. These are:

a. Security Sector Reform Sub-committee with the Honourable Minister of Defence as Chairman and the Director, Defence and Security Studies Department of the Institute as Secretary;

>b. Early Warning and Early Response Sub-committee with the Honourable Minster of Internal Affairs as Chairman and the Director Internal Conflict Prevention and Resolution Department of the Institute as the Secretary;

c. Political Conflict Sub-committee with the Honourable Minster of Inter-governmental Affairs as Chairman and the Director External Conflict Prevention and Resolution Department of the Institute as the Secretary; and

d. Mainstreaming Conflict Prevention Sub-committee with the Secretary to the Government of the Federation as Chairman and Director Research and Policy Analysis Department of the Institute as the Secretary.

In essence, the NAP is now at the stage where most questions of concept and vision have been answered and only funding is needed for its implementation to pick up speed.

This project hosted by the Institute's Department of Defence and Security Studies explores the nexus between the illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapon and the rising wave of crime in Nigeria. It also entails the building of capacity for relevant stakeholders to check the menace of small arms and crimes in our society and in particular their relationship with communal conflicts. The project is on-going, but the dearth of fund is limiting the project's activities.