Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War
This is a book about how aid and conflict interact. Based on broad experience of providing international assistance in conflict settings, it is neither theoretical nor speculative. The data are facts gleaned from past action and what has been learned from that action.
When international assistance is given in the context of a violent conflict, it becomes a part of that context and thus also of the conflict. Although aid agencies often seek to be neutral or nonpartisan toward the winners and losers of a war; the impact of their aid is not neutral regarding whether conflict worsens or abates.
When given in conflict settings, aid can reinforce, exacerbate, and prolong the conflict; it can also help to reduce tensions and strengthen people’s capacities to disengage from fighting and find peaceful options for solving problems. Often an aid program does some of both: in some ways it worsens the conflict, and in others it supports disengagement. But in all cases aid given during conflict cannot remain separate from the conflict.
Translations of the book are available in English, Bahasa, Japanese and Nepali.
Suggested Citation: Anderson, Mary B. Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999.
Based on collective experience of thousands of aid workers, donors, and communities, the following six lessons of Do No Harm were seen to be universal:
- When an intervention of any kind enters a context, it becomes part of that context.
- All contexts are characterized by Dividers and Connectors.
- All interventions will interact with both Dividers and Connectors, making them better or worse.
- Interventions interact with Dividers and Connectors through organizational actions and the behavior of staff.
- The details of an intervention are the source of its impacts.
- There are always options.
Related Publications
Do No Harm Guidance Note: Developing Options
Do No Harm Guidance Note: Gender and Do No Harm
Do No Harm Guidance Note: Peacebuilding and Do No Harm
Do No Harm Guidance Note: Using Dividers and Connectors
Do No Harm Workshop Participant’s Manual 2016
Do No Harm Workshop Trainer’s Manual 2016
Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience
The Do No Harm Chain: Linking Analysis to Action using both Do No Harm Frameworks
