Revkin presents research at UN Development Programme Workshop in Iraq
Revkin is conducting studies on community reintegration of families with ties to ISIL.
Associate Professor Mara Revkin
Associate Professor Mara Revkin traveled to Iraq last week to present preliminary results of a study she is conducting with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at a workshop with Iraqi government officials, UN agencies, and embassy representatives.
The study uses data from door-to-door household surveys and interviews to assess progress made and continuing challenges for community-based reintegration of internally displaced persons (IDPs) with actual or perceived family ties to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) since the group's military defeat in 2017. Revkin trained UNDP's Iraqi research team to conduct the surveys in four communities that were partially or fully controlled by ISIL.
Pathways to Reintegration: Iraq Families Formerly Associated with ISIL, a report on the first wave of surveys conducted in 2020, provides an analysis of the current situation of families perceived to have ties with ISIL in Iraq, reviews a range of state- and local-level mechanisms being used to facilitate the reintegration of these families into their communities of origin, and ultimately offers a set of recommendations to develop a framework for the successful return of ISIL-affiliated families.
A second report on the results of a follow-up survey conducted in 2022 is forthcoming.
Revkin's primary research and teaching interests are in armed conflict, peace-building, transitional justice, migration, policing, and property with a regional focus on the Middle East and particularly Iraq and Syria. For more than a decade she has been conducting immersive field research on legal systems and social change in conflict-torn societies in the Middle East and North Africa, with the goal of using empirical research to help policymakers and practitioners develop evidence-based strategies to build peace, security, and respect for human rights, and mitigate the root causes of violence and armed conflict. She is a faculty advisory board member of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute.