Conflict Sensitivity Integration and Peacebuilding Effectiveness
CDA is a thought leader and trusted partner to improve the relevance and impact of peacebuilding through better evidence, analysis, tools, capacity, programming, and strategy.
Conflict Sensitivity/Do No Harm (DNH) in Development, Humanitarian & Peacebuilding Practice
This special issue of the journal Development in Practice features reflections from CDA’s founder and author of the 1999 seminal book Do No Harm: How aid can support peace – or war, Mary Anderson, and analysis from CDA’s Siad Darwish, Ruth Rhoads Allen, and Maureen Moriarty on conflict-sensitive environmental peacebuilding.
In 1993, CDA embarked on the Local Capacities for Peace Project – later known as the Do No Harm program – to help aid workers find ways to address human needs in conflict contexts without making the conflict worse. We developed a framework for analyzing the impacts of aid on conflict – and for taking action to reduce negative impacts and maximize positive impacts – based on the experiences of hundreds of aid agencies and more than 1000 practitioners from all over the world.
Looking back to look forward
30 years after the launch of the Local Capacities for Peace Project, CDA founder Mary Anderson reflects on the history of Do No Harm and its relevance to today’s challenges. She says that it is high time to start thinking about long-term sustainability. We have to accept accountability for how our work has an impact on conflicts today and in the future.
How do we do this?
“The answer is through serious broad-based efforts to gather experience and uncover patterns that enable us to work accountably both today and tomorrow. The ‘tomorrow’ for which we save lives today is also partially our responsibility. The impacts of our aid on the long term is central to responsible aid assistance.”
Necessary complexity in the Anthropocene: New approaches in socio-ecological systems thinking, Do No Harm, and fragility integration
Climate change is having devastating impacts on communities around the world, particularly in places already grappling with conflict and fragility. Yet CDA sees a pathway to hope and resilience.
Siad Darwish, Ruth Rhoads Allen, and Maureen Moriarty discuss how conflict sensitivity and systems thinking can support the localization of environmental peacebuilding:
“Conflict sensitivity of any kind is impossible to achieve without seriously engaging with the operational context – ideally, through prolonged and continuous analysis and engagement with those people most affected by both environmental change and conflict. Indigenous knowledge, and other forms of local customary knowledge, will be essential to understanding layered vulnerabilities and senses of peace and security.”
Environment-Fragility-Peace
Climate change is seen as a “threat-multiplier” in violent conflict, exacerbating existing conflict drivers by putting pressures on livelihoods and economies, amplifying resource competition, spurring migration, and contributing to habitat loss – and practitioners and policymakers are struggling to respond to these challenges together.
In contributing to the growing knowledge base on the environment, fragility, and peace nexus, CDA is developing practitioner-centered, evidence-based tools and assessment frameworks through a rigorous and long-tested collaborative learning approach that has been adapted to purpose.
Business and Urban Fragility
In much of the world, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the primary providers of employment and livelihoods. This is particularly true for large cities in LMICs – places that will host an increasing share of the world’s population. Many of these same cities are also affected by significant violence and insecurity.
CDA is part of a consortium researching the ways in which violence affects SMEs and how SMEs affect violence. It compares these dynamics in seven cities struggling with different forms of violence: Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia; San Salvador, El Salvador; Caracas, Venezuela; Beirut, Lebanon; Kampala, Uganda; and Cape Town, South Africa.
Click to view all of CDA’s work on responsible business operations.
Collective Impact
Between 2007 and 2012, CDA conducted 16 case studies to investigate how multiple peacebuilding efforts “add up” to progress towards sustainable peace, then developed the first draft of the “Framework for Collective Impact in Peacebuilding” in 2017.
In 2018, CDA began research into the conditions under which peacebuilding networks, consortia, coalitions, and alliances contribute to impact at the Peace Writ Large (PWL), providing insights to practitioners, policymakers, and donors on the role of collective impact in enhancing peacebuilding effectiveness.
Reflecting on Peace Practice
At its heart, Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP) is about questioning assumptions, coupling analysis to everyday work, and demanding that we work toward a concept of peace that is greater than the success of individual programs.
The experience and lessons gained through the years of RPP’s operation are the foundation of CDA’s peacebuilding strategy. CDA continues to promote learning in this field through learning partnerships and ongoing collaborative learning efforts.
Key Resources
