Civilian Protection by Direct Combatant Interventions: What works and what Doesn’t? A Field Experiment leveraging combatant incentives through IHL training and combatant empathy through perspective taking

Does training in IHL among combatants protect civilians? Is its effect amplifed by a values-based intervention? Can perspective-taking, designed to promote empathy, reduce civilian abuse? IHL/value-based interventions and perspective taking program participation were administered at the combatant level in 2022 among 213 new combatants. Seven months into the weekly perspective taking program and after the IHL/Value-based trainings, we found: 1. initial trainings resulted in very limited learning thus no behavioral change, yet renewed training after 7 months led to successful learning, underscoring the need to tailor these interventions to low-skilled combatant populations; 2. Participants in perspective taking are THREE times more likely to exit the militia, statistically signifcant and unexpected (outcomes of interest were originally violent behavior towards civilians as measured through supervisor and peer evaluations). Baseline data analysis and qualitative interviews allowed us to interpret the effect on leaving the group as due to the centrality of empathy to civilians, promoted by perspective taking and countering efforts by the group to de-sensitize their combatants, thus sustaining discomfort that arises from working in an organization that, whatever its motives, can ultimately ve violent towards civilians. The proposed project will: a. provide booster trainings of IHL/value-based training; b. extend the scope of the perspective-taking program (in time, from 7 months to over 2 years, and in sample); c. collect a second endline among combatants but also among leavers 2 years after to analyze why they left. This will generate knowledge of interest to humanitarian organizations working with warrying parties, such as ICRC and Geneva Call, providing a first test of classic interventions and proposed new ones. It will help learn about the determinants of violence and help protect the most vulnerable populations, civilians in conflict.