Between November 2008 and May 2009, BICC conducted a project (generously funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ) on traditional conflict resolution (TCR) in three societies. The project aim was (a) to provide an empirically-based assessment of TCR; (b) to lay theoretical and empirical foundations for examining how TCR functions in cases of major inter-ethnic and intra-state conflicts; and (c) to examine the mutual interaction of TCR and development at the community level. 
Fur this purpose the research team carried out three field studies in Ghana, Uganda and Timor-Leste with the help of a new developed scenario-based approach. This new tool allows gathering data on specific categories from groups of participants, but at the same time is flexible and open to any new information presented by the informants. 
A major overall goal of this study was to support development workers who find themselves caught up in local conflicts or having to provide amelioration for recent conflicts.