What is EMIC?
Countering Conflict, Promoting Cohesion
The EMIC Methodology is an identity-based approach to solving problems, preventing physical and cultural harm and violence, and enhancing and fulfilling human potential. Identity-based approaches have been shown to be effective in the following contexts:
● Countering and preventing discrimination or marginalization of a minority group(s).
● Countering and preventing division making between groups along ethnic-cultural-political-religious-or other lines.
● Responding to and repairing cultural divisions and facilitating processes of reconciliation.
● Ensuring cultural environments are preserved, and ideally enhanced, during transformations of the physical environment.
● Building common community identity and cohesion and releasing human social, political and economic potential.
The EMIC (Engagement Methodology for Identities in Conflict) method aims to utilize the power of identity in countering discrimination and conflict and helping to build peace and cohesion. EMIC (the word itself is Latin for “understanding from within”) is the product of over a decade of theoretical and practical development by the OICD.
The EMIC method begins by gathering detailed data on a population’s use of cultural symbols and narratives. This data is plotted and modelled in accordance with the latest knowledge on identity dynamics. An EMIC-trained team then proceeds to develop and test strategies that counter root causes of division. EMIC strategies are distributed in the form of capacity building initiatives and interventions.
In short, the EMIC method provides the relevant information, strategy, implementation and evaluation tools needed to increase the effectiveness and mitigate the unforeseen negative outcomes of a wide variety of transformation programs.
EMIC experts have worked across a wide variety of human development contexts, including: Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) in the Caribbean, Middle-East and North America; Security and Intelligence-led Policing in Serbia, Armenia, Ukraine, UK, and Rwanda; Identity-Based Conflict in Guyana, Mali, Japan, Fiji, Canada and the UK.