Pelotas joins the Peace in Our Cities initiative in partnership with the DOVE Research Centre
Pelotas is the second Brazilian city, after Niterói in Rio de Janeiro, to join the Peace in Our Cities programme, in partnership with the DOVE Research Centre at the Federal University of Pelotas and the Instituto Cidade Segura. The initiative unites municipal leaders and civil society organizations in taking action to towards achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals target 16.1, to “significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere”. Following an agreement signed by the mayor of Pelotas, Paula Mascarenhas an, Daniel Mack, representative of the programme, in late October, the city becomes part of a knowledge exchange network with 30 other cities and 2o community and international institutions across the world, engaged in reducing urban violence by creating concrete, participatory, and evidence-based platforms.
“We’ll only overcome violence if everyone gets involved, given that it is a matter that requires integration. We will take part in Peace in our Cities with great pleasure and pride,” said the municipal manager .
The engagement of the city is based on the experience of the Pelotas Pact for Peace, a municipal public policy that combines 17 projects to tackle the deep roots of violence, and involves a working partnership with the DOVE Research Centre, especially in the area of social prevention of violence through programmes tested by rigorous scientific methodologies.
“Fortunately, science provides us with evidence-based tools and solutions that have been proven to contribute to reducing violence. There are solutions that work”, said DOVE director Joseph Murray.
The collaboration between the university and local government began in mid-2018, when a pioneering study in Brazil (the Parenting Interventions for Aggression – PIA Trial) was conducted to assess two early prevention programmes to support children and parents in the Pelotas community – a Book-Sharing programme and the ACT, Raising Safe Kids programme. The programmes aim to guide families on how to raise children based on affection, stimulation of children’s cognitive and social development and use of violence-free discipline strategies. Two years after the beginning of the programmes, in 2020, the work had already earned the city the designation of a Pathfinder City within the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, led by the United Nations. As well as continuing the evaluations of the PIA programmes, the DOVE Research Centre is now engaged in a new scientific study on the impact of the whole Pelotas Pact for Peace on violence in the city.
The entry of Pelotas into the Peace in Our Cities programme starts a process of defining the best actions to reduce future violence. The partnership functions to builds bridges between cities, and offers services and research support, based on the identification of priorities and phenomena specific to each city. In a statement to the city’s website, the representative of Peace in Our Cities, Daniel Mack, points out that just as each city has its own challenges, they also have much to teach each other. He identifies the Pelotas Pact for Peace as a “model that needs to be celebrated internationally” in the area of public security, highlighting its open dialogue with the community and the reduction of homicide rates in the city. He added: “From now on, we will work to do this”.
