Transcript Slide 1

Conflict-Sensitivity
in Service Delivery and
Programming
for Pastoralist Areas
A RELPA Workshop of MSI/PACT
Nairobi, Kenya, February 12-14, 2008
Aims and Overview
What is “Conflict Sensitivity”?
Capacity of organizations to:
• Understand conflict contexts of programs
• Understand the impacts of programs on their
conflict contexts
• Act on this understanding to avoid negative
impacts and increase positive impacts.
Workshop Structure
• Analyzing Conflict Contexts of Our
Programs
• Achieving More Conflict-Sensitivity in:
• Service Delivery
• Programs
• Taking Steps to Integrate ConflictSensitivity
I. Analyzing the Conflict Context
Conflict destroys societies and development
Relief and development programs are not
neutral but may worsen conflict
But designed and implemented sensitively, these
programs can avoid harm and help mitigate
conflicts
To see how, requires understanding how
conflicts arise and persist.
Key Concepts
1. Conflict:
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All conflict is not the problem, violent conflict is.
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Peaceful, non-violent forms of conflict are
common and can be healthy.
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They need to be actively promoted.
2. Causes of (Violent) Conflicts
• Underlying structural “root” conditions -- socioeconomic and historical conditions that are latent, but
indirectly may increase the risk of violent conflicts
• Enabling factors – processes, institutions, ideas and
policies that activate the structural conditions
• Immediate actions or events (“triggers”) -- manifest
occurrences that directly provoke and sustain violence
Underlying (“root”) causes
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For example:
Distinct, separate ethnic or other identity
groups
Rapid economic decline
Severe population pressures
Past violence between groups
High unemployment
Enabling processes and institutions
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For example:
Ongoing discriminatory policies toward a major
identity group
Ethnic group-based political parties and
exclusive organizations
Weak state institutions
Available arms or capturable natural resources
to fund armed activity
Immediate sources (“triggers”)
For example:
• Key leaders’ provocative public statements
• Political violence such as assassinations
• Natural disasters discrediting a regime
External causes
Each of above levels of causation also can arise
externally, such as
• Economic globalization leads to winners and
losers
• Global trends like post-Cold War breakdown of
socialist models of governance and economy,
popular pressures for pluralism
• Regional security threats
3. Convergence of Causes
• No one causal factor will produce violent
conflict
• Several factors need to combine and interact in
the same place and time.
Converging Causes
Like the committing of a crime, violent conflicts
usually require some:
• “Motive” = structural bases for grievances
• “Means” = process/institutions/resources for
taking collective action, and
• “Opportunity” = triggers
The “Dry Woodpile on a Hot Day”
The Violent Conflict Equation
Susceptible Conditions + Catalysts + Sparks =
Violent Conflicts
4. Escalation and Stages of Conflict
• If such convergence is not stopped, violent conflicts can
escalate in a spiral and persist.
• They may eventually go through several stages in a
whole life-cycle from peace to violent conflict and back
again:
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potential conflict,
open armed conflict,
waning conflict,
post-conflict,
re-erupting conflict.
Stages of Conflict
Stages of Peace
or Conflict
PEACEMAKING
PEACE ENFORCEMENT
(Conflict management)
WAR
(Conflict mitigation)
Chechnya,
early 1995
cease-fire
outbreak of violence
CRISIS DIPLOMACY
CRISIS
(Conflict termination)
settlement
North Korea, 1994
confrontation
Kosovo, 1993
PREVENTATIVE
DIPLOMACY
UNSTABLE
PEACE
PEACEKEEPING
Bosnia, early 1996
(Crisis management)
Cambodia, 1995
(Conflict prevention)
rapprochement
rising tension
STABLE
PEACE
(Basic order)
PEACETIME DIPLOMACY
OR POLITICS
Russia, 1993
U.S.-China, 1995
POSTCONFLICT
PEACE BUILDING
El Salvador, 1995
South Africa, 1995
(Conflict resolution)
reconciliation
U.S.-Britain, 20th Century
DURABLE
PEACE
(Just order)
Early Stage
Duration of Conflict
Mid-conflict
Late Stage
5. Clarifying Common Terms
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Conflict prevention/preventive diplomacy
Crisis management
Conflict management/peacemaking
Conflict mitigation/peace enforcement
Conflict termination/peacekeeping
Conflict resolution/post-conflict peacebuilding
Yet violent conflict is not inevitable,
but highly contingent
• Escalation of structural and other factors into violence
can be interrupted at many points and stages
• These entry points are found at differing levels on
society and involve differing long-term and short- term
timelines.
• Therefore they call for differing types of programs and
other responses – development, institutional, diplomatic,
etc.
6. Capacities for Peace:
Stabilizing, Peace-Promoters
Structural and direct factors often inhibit or deter
escalation of conflict into violence, by reducing
problems and channeling or co-opting
grievances:
• Population emigration and remittances
• “Grey” economies, organized crime
• Clientelist patronage systems
• Legitimate elections, power-sharing
• Dispute resolution mechanisms (informal and
formal)
• Leaders’ conciliatory gestures
The Other Side of the Conflict Equation
Whether latent conditions erupt into violence or
not depends on whether capacities of peace
outweigh the causes of conflict
This balance is vitally affected by the actions,
views, interests, and relationships of the main
parties and other stakeholders
ROOT CAUSES
Background
Conditions that feed
conflicts
Youth Bulge
Economic
deterioration
Recent history of
violence
PROXIMATE
CAUSES
Situational
Circumstances
Flawed Elections
Inter-religious
Tensions
Crime
Unemployment
POSITIVE INTERVENING
FACTORS/
DE-ACCELERATORS
Strong social net
Uniting history
TRIGGERS
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NEGATIVE INTERVENING
FACTORS/
ACCELERATORS
Increased human rights abuse
Sharp economic decline and price rice
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Group Application:
Apply the concepts and an assessment tool to the case-study to
answer these questions:
• What are the various main sources of violent conflict?
• How and where are they combining?
• What stage of conflict is apparent?
• What are capacities for peaceful management of conflict?
• What parties and other stakeholders will affect the likely course
of the conflict?