Ten Years of COMPAZ: Building Social Cohesion through Local Participation in Brazil

In March, the city of Recife in northern Brazil celebrates ten years of COMPAZ, its Community Peace Centres. Over the past decade, the centres have become reference points for neighbourhood engagement, integrated service delivery and local peacebuilding. To reflect on this milestone, Paulo Moraes, former Executive Secretary of Citizen Security of Recife, shares his insights from the growth and development of COMPAZ. 

Paulo Moraes at the UCLG World Forum 2025 with The Hague mayor and UCLG president Jan van Zanen.

Peace Begins in the Neighbourhood

Urban violence affects daily life in communities. People threatened by violence avoid using public spaces or engaging with local institutions. Inversely, local governments seek to interact with citizens every day. They manage services, public facilities and neighbourhood infrastructure. This proximity gives local governments a key role in building trust and fostering cohesion, which is crucial to peacebuilding.

Recife launched the COMPAZ community centres in 2016 in neighbourhoods facing high levels of violence and social exclusion. The centres began offering sports and cultural activities, educational workshops, and community events as new forms of connection for disenfranchised people. As executive secretary for citizen security, Paulo was one of the initiators of these centres. He says  the first barrier they faced was changing the community’s lack of trust in governance. “Police was the only representation of the state,” Paulo explains, “without any other examples, people did not believe this project would even be implemented.”

Paulo highlights that they needed a coordinated, intersectional approach to overcome  mistrust in reaching out to community members. In addition, the COMPAZ-centre also host conflict resolution experts and offer legal and psychological assistance to solve conflicts in the community ??.

“In addition to security, we need to addresss issues of health and education. This requires that all parts of the municipality are present and work together.”

A COMPAZ community center in the city of Recife.

A COMPAZ community center in the city of Recife.

New Places for Communal Gathering 

Citizen were involved in the creation of COMPAZ from the start. Recife’s officials were inspired by peer learning visits to Colombia, where they explored community-led initiatives like the Articulated Life Units in Medellín. They envisioned new places in Recife that would serve as communal gathering points, reinforcing social cohesion through repeated, positive forms of interaction within the community.

“We learned from Medellín’s experience, but we adapted it to our reality.” Paulo says.

The municipality translated the learnings from Medellín into local practice  by consulting the residents before construction began. Neighbourhood communities were asked about their needs and priorities. This process helped define the focus of each centre, for example sports, culture, or technology.

Continuous Engagement 

Paulo stresses that community involvement was essential for legitimacy and sustainability. Through consultation and dialogue with the community, each COMPAZ location developed its own profile relecting neighbourhood demands in addition to a basic package of services such as medical care, libraries, psychologists, sports income-generating workshops.

Paulo notes that citizen engagement is still ongoing. Residents can approach the centre manager directly, while community meetings and forums are organised regularly. These meetings offer an opportunity for citizens to raise their needs and concerns.

“They will complain in their right to complain, and we have to keep this in mind,” Paulo says.

Community members seek quality services and continuity. For Paulo, the fact that people share their complaints shows that they trust the authorities and feel ownership of the space. This strengthens accountability and reinforces trust between citizens and local government.

“People see that it works,” shares Paulo, “and want to be involved.”

From Local Initiative to National Policy

The community centres have led to more citizen security in Recife. Ten years after their creation, homicide has decreased impressively in the neighbourhoods surrounding the COMPAZ centres: 35 and 23 fewer homicides each year in the neighbourhoods where the first two centres were established. This shows how local governments can increase security for citizens by fostering social cohesion in neighbourhoods. Apart from more security, the cooperation between different departments in the municipality has led to improved citizen services. Furthermore, the participatory approach led to more involvement of citizens and increased ownership and trust between citizens and local government. Moreover, through peer learning the impact of this initiative has expanded considerably: what began as a local initiative has now grown into six local centres in Recife, which delivered an impressive 944.584 different services. But it doesn’t stop here. Inspired by COMPAZ’s success in Recife, the federal government announced plans to establish similar community centres in 29 other cities across Brazil.

Learn more about urban security, social cohesion and peacebuilding

The Hague Academy facilitates peer learning  about the role of local governments in promoting security and peacebuilding though social cohesion. Find out more on the upcoming Local Security Governance and Peacebuilding course.