Vertical Integration of Conflict Sensitivity in INGOs
Project Overview
As an organization that has been working to improve the practice of conflict sensitivity for twenty years, CDA is interested in examining the “vertical integration” of the Do No Harm framework for conflict sensitivity, from donor policies to INGO headquarters and country office policies and practices to field- level project implementation.
Donor policies often require and support conflict sensitivity in principle, but there is little guidance about what it means to incorporate it into organizational practice. Organizations face challenges building conflict sensitivity into their strategies and programs. Headquarters-level policy makers find it challenging to monitor and evaluate conflict sensitivity application in their programs. Organizations often fail to incorporate conflict sensitive thinking into the development of their organization-wide or country-level strategies. Sometimes field-level project implementers have difficulty incorporating conflict sensitivity into their daily work and routinizing its use over the life of a project, especially in humanitarian response.
The Vertical Integration Project collected data on how organizations have integrated conflict sensitivity, what the impacts of that integration have been, and what good practice in policy, practice and program level conflict sensitivity integration looks like.