Using 'Indications' of Impact from the Do No Harm Framework

From Peacebuilding

Contents 1 Note 2 Purpose 3 Time 4 Participants 5 Materials 6 Process 7 Source 8 Handout: “Indications” for Assessing Assistance’s Impacts on Conflict

Note

This activity provides a framework for assessing aid’s impact on conflict. There are several ways to use this tool in a workshop: when participants work in the same agency or programme, you can invite them to work together and apply the framework to their agency’s work. When this is not the case and there are participants from different programmes/agencies, you can invite them to form groups according to their programme/agency. When all participants are from different agencies/programmes you can facilitate this activity as individual work. The process described below provides help on how to facilitate the activity for individual work.

Purpose

To understand and apply tools (from the Do No Harm framework) for assessing aid’s impact on conflict;

Time

At least 90 minutes. The framework can lead to several days of in-deep analysis.

Participants

Any number

Materials

• Copies of the handout “Indications for Assessing Assistance’s Impact on Conflict”;
• Papers;
• Pencils;
• Flip chart papers;
• Markers.

Process

I) Introduce the activity with a short presentation of the “indications” developed by the Do No Harm Framework for assessing aid’s impact on conflict. You can use the first five paragraphs in the handout for the purpose.

II) Distribute the handout, additional blank papers and pencils, to participants and assign their task: to apply the questions included in the handout to their work (or to their agency’s work or the programme they work on). Make sure the task is understood and provide clarification if needed.

III) Start individual work; assign sufficient time.

IV) After individual work ask participants to form triads. Ask them to discuss their findings based on the following questions:

• What have you found by applying this framework to your work?
• What have you learned by applying this framework to your work?
• How would you change this framework in order to better respond to your needs?

V) Distribute flip chart papers and markers to each triad and ask them to take note of their discussion. Assign sufficient time.

VI) After group work ask triads to hang their papers in a specific section of the room and invite the participants to walk the gallery – i.e. to go and see each others’ work.

Source

The text in the handout is reproduced from CDA Inc., Do No Harm Handbook, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2004, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/do_no_harm_handbook.php pp. 20-22; thanks to permission from CDA Inc.

Handout: “Indications” for Assessing Assistance’s Impacts on Conflict

We need to identify clear and consistent ways to understand the impacts of assistance on conflict. The DO NO HARM PROJECT first thought of developing a list of “indicators” of impacts. However, we quickly changed our approach to adopt, instead, the terminology of “indications” of impact. There were two reasons for this. First, because “indicators” is a term commonly used to refer to scientific precision, we knew that, in the context of assistance in conflict, we did not want to mislead our colleagues into believing in—or even seeking—such “proof” of the single, identifiable source of causation. Second we found that, while it is extremely challenging to imagine how to trace cause and effect of assistance and conflict in a theoretical framework, when we are actually in a given field location, the ways that assistance and conflict interact can be fairly clearly observed. It was the latter reality that we want to highlight and observe.

It is important to remember and recognize both the limits and the power of our roles in conflict settings. There are three types of events in a conflict setting to consider when thinking about the impact of assistance:

a. Some things happen in conflict settings that bear no relation to assistance and on which assistance has no effect. Even if we applied all the lessons of past experience and carried out “perfect” programmes, wars, for example, would still happen.

b. There are also things that happen in conflict settings to which assistance is connected and on which it has an effect. These events would happen whether assistance existed or not, but because assistance is in the context where they occur, it has an impact on them.

c. Finally, there are events that assistance, itself, causes to happen.

As we increase our awareness of the impacts that assistance can have on conflict, it is critical that we remember to focus on the second and, particularly, on the third type of event where assistance has its greatest impact.

Through careful attention to the mechanisms whereby assistance has an impact on conflict, through RESOURCE TRANSFERS and IMPLICIT ETHICAL MESSAGES, we are able to identify the following indications of whether assistance is having a negative (worsening) impact on conflict. The following questions highlight Indications of Negative Impacts [A “yes” answer indicates a negative impact]:

• Are assistance goods stolen, especially by those connected directly to a warring side?

• What are the market impacts of assistance in the given area? Specifically:
  • Are prices of goods connected to the war economy rising?
  • Are incentives for engaging in the war economy rising?
  • Are prices of goods connected to the peacetime economy falling?
  • Are incentives for engaging in peacetime economic activities falling?

• Is assistance provided in ways that benefit one (some) sub-group(s) over others? Does the assistance agency employ people more from one group than others? Do material goods go more to one group than others?

• Is assistance providing a sufficiently significant amount of material to meet civilian needs that:
  • More local goods are freed up to be used in warfare/by armies?
  • Local leaders take little or no responsibility for civilian welfare? [What are the manifestations of this?]

• Is assistance being given in ways that “legitimize” war-related individuals (giving them more power, prestige or access to international attention or wealth)? Is assistance being given in ways that legitimize the actions of war (for e.g. reinforcing patterns of population movements that warriors are causing; linking to divisions in the society thus reinforcing them)? Is assistance being given in ways that legitimize warsupporting attitudes (for e.g. rewarding those who are most violent; being given separately to all groups in assumption that they cannot work together)?

• Does the assistance agency rely on arms to protect its goods and/or workers?

• Does the assistance agency refuse to cooperate or share information and planning functions with other assistance agencies, local government or local NGOs? Does it openly criticize the ways that others provide assistance and encourage local people to avoid working with other agencies?

• Do field staff separate themselves from the local people with whom they are working and do they frequently use assistance goods, or the power they derive from them, for their personal benefit or pleasure?

• Does the assistance agency apportion its institutional benefits (salaries or per diem scales; equipment such as cars, phones, offices; expectations of time commitments to the job; rewards for work done; vacation, R & R, evacuation plans) in ways that favor one identifiable group of workers more than others?

• Do the assistance staff express discouragement and powerlessness in relation to their staff superiors, home offices or donors? Do they express disrespect for these people but often cite them as the reason why something is “impossible”?

• Are assistance staff frightened and tense? Do they express hatred, mistrust, or suspicion for local people (any of the local people)? Do they frequently engage their local staff counterparts in conversation about violence, war experiences, the terrible things they have experienced (thus reinforcing the sense that these are the things that matter)? Does the agency promote or in other ways exceptionally reward staff members who have served in more violent places/situations?

• Does the assistance agency’s publicity and/or fundraising approach demonize one side of the war? Does it treat one group as always “victimized” by the other?

In addition to deciding if an assistance agency’s programme deserves a “yes” answer to the above questions, people involved in these projects must also assess the degree to which any of these actions, attitudes or situations actually matters in the given context.

The question to ask in this regard is: Does this impact directly relate to events that are effected by or caused by assistance?

Note: If the answers to these questions are consistently “no” and, furthermore, rather than doing the things described in the questions, the agency and its staff are actively pursuing alternative approaches, it is important also to assess the significance of this in relation to the conflict. Is the alternative approach recognized and commented upon by community leaders or large numbers of local people with appreciation? Are incidences of violence between groups or of lawlessness among warriors dropping? Can any of this be attributed to a change in climate to which the assistance agency’s approaches have contributed?

Again, following what LCPP has learned about connectors and local capacities for peace, the following represent the questions that reflect the Indications of Positive Impacts (i.e. lessening tensions and/or supporting local capacities for peace):

• Has the assistance agency actively sought to identify things in the conflict area that cross the boundaries and connect people on different sides? Has it designed its programme to relate to these connectors?

• Is the assistance delivered in ways that reinforce a local sense of inclusiveness and intergroup fairness? Are programmes designed to bring people together? Are they designed so that for any group to gain, all groups must gain?

• Is the assistance delivered in ways that reinforce, rather than undermining, attitudes of acceptance, understanding and empathy between groups?

• Is the assistance delivered in ways that provide opportunities for people to act and speak in non-war ways?

• Does the agency provide opportunities for its local staff to cross lines and work with people from the “other” side?

• Does the assistance respect and reinforce local leaders as they take on responsibility for civilian governance? Does it provide rewards for individuals, groups and communities that take inter-group or peace-reinforcing initiatives?

• Do assistance agency staff reinforce the attitudes of their friends and counterparts as they remember, or reassert, sympathy and respect for other groups?

Again, in addition to answering these questions with a “yes”, those involved in the implementation pilot projects must try to assess the significance of these actions in relation to the conflict, or its mitigation. The Local Capacities for Peace Project, as a whole, will be engaged in refining ways to make this assessment in different settings and circumstances.