There will be interpretation in English, French, and Spanish during this event.
All safety practitioners around the globe acknowledge the necessity for multi-dimensional, multi-actor action to deliver safety. We often neglect the crucial role of communication in achieving safety. Communication is crucial to facilitate integrated, transversal action, it is necessary to build trusted relationships both internally and externally in local government, it is critical to shifting social norms and attitudes, beliefs and behaviors around gender, substances, collective action, public space and more. Municipal officials are not frequently equipped with communication skills to enable these outcomes.
In December 2025 Peace in Our Cities launched Tackling the False Dilemma of Mano Dura: Communications Guidance for Balanced and Effective Public Safety Approaches. This tool acknowledges the nuanced requirements for advocating for policy and resources that enable prevention and people-centered approaches. In this follow-up discussion, we will look at the localized communications needs of safety practitioners, the link between communication and relationships and trust, and gaps in local capacity to enable coherent collective action using communication.
This webinar will explore communication as an underutilized tool at the core of municipal strategies, not in the form of a campaign or a political speech, but as a conversation that is led by the needs of community members, that provides accurate and transparent and useful information about government plans and timelines, that supports effective consultation, enables coherent collective action and updates and guides social norms to support improved safety outcomes. This in the context of environments often drowning in false narratives and sometimes malicious, sometimes just ill-informed messaging on social media.
The webinar will be co-hosted by Peace in Our Cities and Fixed Africa and will respond to lessons emerging from a South African local safety practice case studies project led by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) Violence and Crime Prevention Programme in South Africa in 2024 which canvassed prevention and safety practices from around the country and published some key learnings on communications, resourcing and data as a collective output. In this webinar the South African lessons on communication will offer a platform for discussion about global and local safety and communication needs and opportunities.
