Conflict sensitivity: Topic guide

This guide introduces conflict sensitivity and provides tools, approaches, and frameworks to help practitioners understand and mitigate unintended negative impacts of interventions in conflict-affected areas.

It covers conflict-sensitive M&E processes and offers sector-specific strategies.

In this guide, Haider (2014) provides an in-depth examination of conflict sensitivity, highlighting key concepts, tools, and approaches that ensure interventions in fragile and conflict-affected settings contribute positively to peacebuilding and avoid exacerbating tensions. The guide outlines practical tools such as the “Do No Harm” framework and Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) while exploring sector-specific applications, including humanitarian aid, stabilisation, and economic recovery. It is designed for practitioners seeking to integrate conflict-sensitive approaches into their work.

Key features

• Approaches and tools: The guide introduces, outlines benefits and barriers, and provides links to case studies and additional resources for the following:
  • Do No Harm: A framework for analysing how aid can reinforce social divisions or support local cohesion.
  • Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA): A tool designed to anticipate and evaluate the impacts of development projects on the prospects for peaceful coexistence and the risk of violence, emphasizing mutual learning, grassroots empowerment, and the use of indicators.
  • Aid for Peace: An approach that prioritises identifying peacebuilding needs and tailoring interventions to address them.
• Sectoral applications: The guide provides insights on integrating conflict sensitivity into specific sectors, such as humanitarian response, security sector reform, economic recovery, and natural resource management.
• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E): Emphasises the need for conflict-sensitive M&E processes, incorporating both objective and perception-based indicators. The guide outlines how M&E should be integrated early in programme design, ensuring that programmes are adaptable and responsive to conflict dynamics. It discusses how M&E should not only track progress but also assess unintended impacts.
• Gender sensitivity: Recognises the importance of considering gender impacts within conflict-sensitive programming.
• Challenges: Discusses barriers to implementing conflict-sensitive practices, such as funding constraints, inconsistent application, and political pressures.

How would you use the resource?

The guide is designed to be used at multiple stages of intervention design, implementation, and evaluation. M&E practitioners can apply the frameworks and approaches outlined to assess both the intended and unintended effects of aid programmes in conflict zones. Frameworks and tools like Do No Harm and PCIA are particularly useful for incorporating conflict sensitivity into the M&E process, ensuring that interventions do not exacerbate existing tensions. This resource is also practical for those working across sectors like security, development, and humanitarian aid, providing sector-specific guidance on how to apply conflict-sensitive approaches in each context.

Why are we recommending it?

This guide is recommended because it provides practical frameworks for embedding conflict sensitivity into aid programmes, which is critical in FCV settings. Its emphasis on conflict-sensitive M&E processes is especially relevant.