community Authorship group

WHO IS THIS FOR?

This programme is for local, national and diaspora civil society organisations from countries and communities directly affected by explosive weapons in populated areas. It is not designed for international NGOs or organisations whose primary role is to represent affected communities from the outside. This space belongs to the communities themselves.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Since 2022, more than ninety states have signed a political declaration agreeing to do more to protect civilians from explosive weapons in populated areas. A political declaration is not a treaty or a law. States are not legally required to follow it.

Political declarations work differently. They build international norms, the shared standards that shape what states see as acceptable, even without the force of law. Whether they shape behaviour depends largely on whether states are held to them, including in the formal meetings where they review what they have done.

The declaration includes a clause saying that international organisations and civil society organisations should be able to take part in those review meetings. In practice, "civil society" usually means large international NGOs from outside the affected communities, headquartered mostly in London, Geneva, and Brussels. The reality of explosive weapons reaches policy meetings translated, abstracted, and second-hand. The organisations that represent the communities the declaration is supposed to protect can speak directly. They have rarely been in the room. That distance isn't inevitable. The direct connection is achievable.

The Community Authorship Group exists to change that. We prepare affected community organisations to participate not as observers but as authors of the documents those meetings produce.

When you speak in those meetings, your words enter the official record. When you contribute to a written outcome, that contribution is on file under your organisation's name. Policy processes are documentation processes. Being in them is how your community's analysis becomes part of the record, on your terms.

FORMAT

The programme runs over six months. Each month, the cohort works through one module: an original podcast episode is released at the start of the month, accompanied by a workbook of structured prompts. A 90-minute live group session lands roughly mid-month for reflection on the podcast and discussion of the workbook. Continuous async presence in the cohort runs throughout the six months. Sessions are recorded so no participant is locked out by missing one, and the programme accommodates participants whose circumstances make scheduled attendance impossible. The programme is free for participating organisations. Each cohort is small by design, between 8 and 12 organisations, so that the sessions can be genuine conversations rather than presentations.

How to support the Community Authorship Group

The cohort is free for participating affected community organisations. If you are not eligible to apply but want to support this work, there is one main way to do so.

Sponsor a seat in the cohort.

A sponsored seat puts an affected community organisation into the room where the policy that affects them gets written, and covers what that participation requires. If you are an institutional funder, foundation, organisation, or individual who would like to fund participation for an affected community organisation, please write to uldduz@thecivilianagenda.org. We are happy to discuss what cohort participation involves and how a sponsorship would be structured.

AUTHORSHIP

The communities most affected by explosive weapons are rarely the ones shaping the policies that are supposed to protect them. This programme is built for local, national, and diaspora organisations from affected countries who want to change that.

This programme is not a training in what to think. It is a six-month engagement designed to equip your organisation with the knowledge, language, and strategic orientation to put your community's own analysis into international policy spaces, on your own terms. Across six months, participants from a small cohort of 8 to 12 organisations work through the policy landscape, the language of international advocacy, the practical skills of diplomatic and media engagement, and the longer strategy of sustained norm change. Each month is built around an original podcast episode, a workbook, and a live group session, with continuous async presence in the cohort throughout. The programme treats what your organisation already knows as the most important thing in the room. Everything else builds from there.

MODULE OVERVIEW

  • International policy frameworks treat some forms of knowledge as authoritative and others as anecdotal. Whose analysis is taken seriously when EWIPA is discussed, whose is treated as testimony, whose is filtered through other voices. This module surfaces that asymmetry, and works against it by starting where it should: with what affected communities have already documented, and with what each organisation in this cohort brings that no one else does.

  • A concrete, honest map of the EWIPA process. Policy processes are documentation processes. Being in them is how your community's analysis enters the official record, in your own words, under your organisation's name.

  • The difference between learning to speak policy language and being absorbed by it. You will work on translating your organisation's analysis into policy-legible vocabulary without losing the substance, and on resisting the framings that flatten the reality you are documenting.

  • Practical preparation for diplomatic and media engagement, including any live policy moments that arise while you are in the cohort. When your organisation speaks in a formal policy space, its words go on the official record. Those rooms are also political environments. This module covers what it takes to use the record well: building coalitions with sympathetic states, identifying where international pressure can amplify local positions, and navigating the counter-pressure that comes when organisations from affected communities speak directly

  • Norm change accumulates over years, not over single moments. The Mine Ban Treaty and the Convention on Cluster Munitions both started as campaigns long before they became international law. This module covers the rhythm of long-horizon policy work. Each participant builds their own twelve-month engagement plan during the cohort, with peer feedback from others in the group.

APPLY FOR THE NEXT COHORT