Beyond Formal Aid: Community-Led Governance and the Role of Universities in Gaza’s Recovery

Swiss partners

• Swisspeace: Laurent Goetschel (main applicant), Martina Belotti

 MENA partners

• Islamic University of Gaza: Hatem Elaydi (main applicant), Amani A. Ahmed, Bisal Marwan Ahmed Sharaf, Roba Kamel Salem Abo Daher, Nora Hatem Alaydi

Presentation of the project

The aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks marks one of the most devastating periods in Gaza’s history. The ongoing war has created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with mass civilian casualties, the displacement of over 90% of the population, and the near-collapse of essential infrastructure—including electricity, water, healthcare, food systems and education. In this context, community-led networks and Gaza-based civil society organizations emerged as the primary providers of humanitarian assistance. Their adaptive strategies—decentralized decision-making, flexible resource distribution, and locally grounded accountability—represent a vital yet under-documented form of subaltern governance.

At the same time, Gaza’s universities, despite the destruction of more than 80% of their infrastructure and the loss of hundreds of staff members, have continued to operate as active centres of education, social cohesion, and recovery-oriented knowledge. They remain crucial anchors in Palestinian society, demonstrating that institutional resilience is as important as community-level survival.

Against the backdrop of severe access restrictions and the Israeli-imposed blockade, external engagement with Gaza has been uneven. Some actors, including Qatar, have nonetheless maintained channels of support to Gaza’s higher education sector and local organizations. Examining this engagement provides an entry point to understand how external humanitarian and academic actors interact with, recognize, or bypass community-led governance and resilient local institutions under conditions of institutional collapse. 

Building on its work supporting higher education in conflict and post-conflict settings, and recognizing the often overlooked role of universities in peacebuilding, swisspeace, in partnership with the PhD Programme in Governance and Crisis Management at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), will examine how humanitarian governance is enacted when formal systems collapse, how universities document and transmit locally generated knowledge, and how external actors engage with these emergent and subaltern governance mechanisms. Through fieldwork, interviews, and participatory observation, the project’s findings will be integrated into the IUG’s curricula and foster evidence-based dialogue with Swiss and regional stakeholders, positioning Palestinian universities as central knowledge hubs driving recovery and resilience.