WHAT Decisions

From Peacebuilding

Contents 1 Note 2 Purpose 3 Time 4 Participants 5 Materials 6 Process 7 Handout 1: Food 8 Handout2: Shelter, Land, Settlement 9 Handout 3: Water 10 Handout4: Health

Note

The process for this activity is divided in two parts. Facilitating both parts in one session can be demanding in terms of time and participants’ energy; thus you can decide to separate the parts in two separate sessions during the workshop.

Purpose

• To explore how decisions about what goods and services to provide can impact on inter-group relations and exacerbate conflict;
• To design scenarios that illustrate problems connected with WHAT decisions;
• To devise ideas and strategies in order to do better with WHAT decisions.

Time

xxxxx

Participants

At least 12 participants - if you wish to form triads or larger groups working on the four different handouts. Alternatively, with fewer participants you can assign groups to work on more than one item (ex. one group working on food and shelter).

Materials

• Copies of handouts 1, 2, 3 and 4;
• Papers;
• Pencils;
• Flip chart papers;
• Markers.

Process

FIRST PART

I) Introduce the activity with a short presentation on how decisions about WHAT to provide can impact on inter-group relations and exacerbate conflict. For the content you can refer on Anderson, Mary B. (ed.), Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2000, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/options_for_aid_in_conflict_lessons_from_field_experience.php pp. 51-54.

II) Divide the plenary into four work groups and distribute copies of one handout to each group. Announce the handouts introduce issues connected with specific aid inputs – namely food, shelter, water and health.

III) The groups’ task is to design a scenario that illustrates the issues introduced in their handouts. This scenario can be an example taken from reality, slightly changed or invented. Furthermore, each group will have to be ready to present the issues introduced in their handout to the plenary.

IV) Distribute papers and pencils for participants to write down their scenarios; assign sufficient time and start group work.

V) After group work, return to the plenary and invite each group to present their scenario and the issues introduced in their handout to the plenary.

SECOND PART

VI) Based on issues introduced in the handouts and the groups scenarios, facilitate a short brainstorming session (5 min.) on the following question: What can be done in order to mitigate the negative impact of WHAT decisions?

VII) Take note of participants contributions on the flip chart, make a bulleted list.

VIII) Distribute three Post Itä to each participant. Ask them to come to the paper(s) with participants ideas and assign their preferences by sticking one or more Post Itä on the ideas they think better.

IX) Identify the most voted ideas and prepare a list of top-three (5, 10) ideas. Make sure to follow up by writing down the list and giving it to participants.

Source

The background materials for this activity are from Anderson, Mary. B. (ed.), Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons From Field Experience, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2000, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/options_for_aid_in_conflict_lessons_from_field_experience.php pp. 51-65.

Handout 1: Food

Food is an aid resource that is as useful for militaries as for civilians. It is thus highly likely to be stolen or diverted for military use. Communities that receive food are often targeted and attacked by militias. Authorities very often manipulate where food may be delivered as a way of determining where people live. The control of food prices provides a source of income for financing warfare and this means militaries often try to control food supplies, including those delivered by aid agencies.

Thus, it is particularly difficult to provide food aid in conflict settings without feeding into conflict. Yet surplus food is the commodity most frequently provided by donor countries and is often needed by civilians in war areas.

The PILOT IMPLEMENTATION PROJECTS found that the quantity and quality of food aid are of particular importance in determining its impact in conflict settings. Large quantities of food stored in warehouses are subject to raids by militia (especially in countries where the payment of salaries to the military is sporadic). High quality food brings high profits when sold which often prompt theft. Furthermore, when programmes are driven by the availability of food and the need to move it out of the warehouses, rather than considerations of need coupled with local intergroup relations, many distortions occur and conflict can be reinforced.

In general the PILOT IMPLEMENTATIONS PROJECTS found:

• While it is important to assess needs in all areas accurately, it is especially important in relation to food aid;
• When food is supplied, method of selecting recipients, storage, transport and delivery, become particularly important. At each point, food is susceptible to manipulation and theft.

Source:

Adapted from Anderson, Mary B. (ed.), Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2000, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/options_for_aid_in_conflict_lessons_from_field_experience.php pp. 55-57.

Your Task:

Design a scenario illustrating the issues introduced above. Your scenario can be taken from reality, slightly changed or invented.

Furthermore, be prepared to present the issues introduced in this handout to the plenary.

Handout2: Shelter, Land, Settlement

Aid programmes that deal with where people live raise special problems. Wars cause displacement and redistribute property (including housing). Large movements of people into new areas can create new or exacerbate old frictions. Land related issues (ownership, use, settlement and resettlement) are particularly loaded in conflict situations.

Housing is a target in intergroup warfare. Therefore, aid to rebuild houses often re-excites TENSION and becomes a flash-point for renewed intergroup violence. Because housing is owned by individual families who are usually identified with one subgroup, and neighborhoods also often reflect subgroup identities, rebuilding undertaken area by area favors some families and some groups over others.

Aid programmes can easily become involved in population movements and attempts by different groups to dominate particular locations. Aid can be used by local authorities to move civilians for military reasons. Aid may result in investment in property that is occupied or disputed, thereby making return or compromise difficult. Initiating post-conflict housing programmes before all groups have been able to return to an area can lock in one group’s dominance of that area.

Given the impacts of aid related to housing and land on conflict, one PILOT IMPLEMENTATION PROJECT adopted a policy of supporting no new settlements and no new housing construction. In addition, they established a series of protocols to determine legal ownership before they provide aid of any sort and, where settlement is involved, developed contractual arrangements with beneficiaries stipulating temporary custody and responsibility for property pending the return of the original owner.

Although there is no certainty that such arrangements would be legally binding, the NGO felt this policy established a system for dealing with future disagreements and sent an important message.

Source:

Adapted from Anderson, Mary B. (ed.), Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2000, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/options_for_aid_in_conflict_lessons_from_field_experience.php pp. 57-59.

Your Task:

Design a scenario illustrating the issues introduced above. Your scenario can be taken from reality, slightly changed or invented. Furthermore, be prepared to present the issues introduced in this handout to the plenary.

Handout 3: Water

In arid areas, water is the single most valuable resource. Control of water sources can, therefore, represent both wealth and power. Water often becomes a contested resource in conflicts.

Aid programmes that address water availability can exacerbate conflict in several ways. Every running water source has "upstream" and "downstream" users. When an aid programme facilitates access for some groups along a river, this always affects the access of people downstream. Furthermore, water is also important for militaries. In one situation, when an international NGO brought in a manual drilling rig, the first place they were told to drill was at the army garrisons. When they refused to do so, the rig and its vehicle were "borrowed" for a while.

Water has become a source of grumbling between the two regions where we are working. The name of one of these districts means "plenty of water" while the name of the other means the opposite, so our egalitarian, even-handed approach has not been unanimously accepted. The sector is problematic also because the several agencies involved have needed time to develop a coordinated approach but this has given room for local authorities to manipulate these decisions.

Source:

Adapted from Anderson, Mary B. (ed.), Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2000, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/options_for_aid_in_conflict_lessons_from_field_experience.php pp. 59-60.

Your Task:

Design a scenario illustrating the issues introduced above. Your scenario can be taken from reality, slightly changed or invented. Furthermore, be prepared to present the issues introduced in this handout to the plenary.

Handout4: Health

In many of the PILOT IMPLEMENTATION PROJECT areas, health services represented an actual (or potential) CONNECTOR. In war situations, many people seem to believe that all sides should have access to health care. However, some aspects of health programming can exacerbate intergroup DIVISIONS.

In addition to the perception of bias in our food distribution, there are aspects of our health interventions that also create an impression of preferential targeting to one community. To respond to the health needs of the displaced, several NGOs established clinics in the areas where IDPs had congregated. In other areas of the city, the existing health system continued to function and the NGOs did not provide support. However, clients in the state-run clinics were required to pay a fee for medical services while, at the NGO clinics, both the services and the medicines were provided free of charge. In the hospital this contrast is particularly sharp as we provide free medicines to the inpatients, who are overwhelmingly of the displaced group, while the outpatients (who live in the town and are of the other group) pay for medicines and consultations. The recognition that our assistance had become an item of competition between the two groups is not, in the eyes of most of our staff, an argument for abandoning the principal that aid should go to those most in need. However, we need to search for operational strategies to provide health services to those who need them in ways that lessen the sense of exclusion among others.

Source:

Adapted from Anderson, Mary B. (ed.), Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience, Cambridge: CDA Inc., 2000, http://www.cdainc.com/publications/dnh/options_for_aid_in_conflict_lessons_from_field_experience.php pp. 60-61.

Your Task:

Design a scenario illustrating the issues introduced above. Your scenario can be taken from reality, slightly changed or invented. Furthermore, be prepared to present the issues introduced in this handout to the plenary.