Making Aid Build Peace (Integration)

From Peacebuilding

This Resource Kit is broken down into four modules which explore specific aspects of the interaction between aid and conflict. After a short introduction, each module provides offline and online content resources and a number of training activities that have been specifically designed for the content introduced. In addition to these, see our Activities to Process Content, which are facilitation techniques you can use to introduce new content to your group.

Less experienced facilitators might find the sample agendas provided at the bottom of this page useful.

Contents 1 1st Module – Existing Frameworks: I) Do No Harm 2 2nd Module – Existing Frameworks: II) PCIA and Conflict Sensitivity 3 3rd Module - Aid, Conflict and Security - A Critical Analysis of Trends 4 4th Module: Exploring a Church Perspective 5 Sample Agendas

1st Module – Existing Frameworks: I) Do No Harm

The Do No Harm framework derives from a project launched at the beginning of the 1990s by Collaborative for Development Action (and also involving a number of international NGOs) focused on learning how aid given during conflict interacts with it. The experience shows that development and relief programmes can worsen conflict in two ways: i) by feeding inter-group tensions, strengthening dividers and supporting local capacities for war; and ii) by weakening inter-group connections and local capacities for peace. Conversely, they can help peace by weakening inter-group tensions and feeding connections. The Do No Harm approach provides a framework for:

i) identifying dividers, tensions and war capacities and assessing their importance;

ii) identifying connectors and local capacities for peace and assessing their importance; and

iii) analysing the aid agency and its programme and assessing their impact on dividers, tensions, war capacities and connectors and capacities for peace.

2nd Module – Existing Frameworks: II) PCIA and Conflict Sensitivity

The Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) – or Conflict Impact Assessment (CIA) – is a planning and management framework that aid agencies can use to analyse a situation and identify strategic opportunities to help prevent conflict and build peace. It provides a framework for: assessing the conflict environment; identifying conflict parties and peace builders; defining programme objectives and activities; and inputting analysis into a planning framework.

This framework, together with the Do No Harm and other less known approaches, have been fed into the conflict sensitivity framework. The latter does not offer new tools but presents broad recommendations on conflict-sensitive practice. In a nutshell, conflict sensitivity for an organisation means:

i) understanding the context where it operates;

ii) understanding the interaction between the organisation’s intervention and the context; and

iii) acting upon this understanding in order to maximise positive impacts and minimise negative impacts. Conflict analysis is a central element of this framework.

3rd Module - Aid, Conflict and Security - A Critical Analysis of Trends

The content and activities in this module are especially relevant when working with policy and decision makers at agencies’ headquarters, as well as with Church leadership. However, some of the activities can be adapted for field managers and staff.

The frameworks developed for understanding how aid interacts with conflict – presented in the first and second modules of this Resource Kit – are aligned with a policy shift in major international institutions and donors. Two trends seem to emerge:

i) A progressive shift from reaction to conflict prevention

ii) A progressive radicalisation of funding for development that tightly links development assistance to security concerns.

Why are donor countries interested in conflict prevention?

What happens when donors link development funding more tightly to security concerns?

What potential do development programmes have to condition national/regional social, political and economic evolutionary trends in the South, and how?

This module proposes a critical analysis of relevant documents by the World Bank, the UN and the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee.

The DAC’s document Helping Prevent Violent Conflict is vital in illustrating the alleged donors’ shift. In addition, the DAC’s Security System Reform tackles the topic from a different perspective, focusing the debate explicitly on security.

The World Bank’s document Breaking the Conflict Trap focuses on civil/internal war as a trap for development, and explains why the World Bank is interested in conflict prevention. The UN’s Human Security Now and A More Secure World set the debate at a higher level – with a sophisticated rationale – but they both seem to complement the other documents presented. Professor Duffield’s article proposes a sceptical critique for exploring the link between development assistance and conflict, or security.

Most of the activities are concerned with interpreting these documents. They try to foster an understanding of development and security trends that goes beyond uncritically following the latest trends and buzz words. They help workshop participants to go further than a superficial understanding of the documents and delve deeper, in order to explore connections, trends, interests and less obvious rationales.

4th Module: Exploring a Church Perspective

As a pastoral and social agent of the Catholic Church, Caritas needs to explore and develop its original understanding of the relationship between aid and conflict, rather then just replicating frameworks developed by donor governments and secular agencies. Existing literature and applied models are useful sources from which to learn, but the development of praxis for making aid sensitive to peace needs to stem from the very identity of Caritas and the Church’s social teaching.

This module is more concerned with asking the right questions than with giving answers. Caritas agencies throughout the world and national Churches have “lived through” the relationship between aid and conflict; they’ve developed their own approaches. A necessary step toward developing a Caritas way of making aid more sensitive to peace is to elicit experiences and draw meaning from existing praxis.

Sample Agendas

This Resource Kit is structured as a toolbox. The content and activities are designed so that you can choose what to draw on and decide how to use it. However, if you’re not an experienced facilitator, you might need a little help on how to use these resources. You can find a few sample agendas for this purpose below. Please bear in mind that these are just a few of the many possible examples of how to organise the tools provided.

1-Day Workshop - Introducing the Do No Harm Framework