How to guide to conflict sensitivity

This guide offers a framework for integrating conflict sensitivity into development and humanitarian programs.

It addresses the M&E stages of conflict-sensitive program cycles and provides guidance on applying conflict sensitivity in M&E during emergency responses.

This guide, produced by the Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, provides a comprehensive framework for integrating conflict sensitivity into development, humanitarian, and peacebuilding programmes. It is designed for practitioners working in conflict-prone and fragile environments, outlining practical steps to ensure that interventions minimise negative impacts on conflict dynamics while maximising positive contributions to peace. It is suitable for both newcomers and experienced practitioners, offering guidance on integrating conflict sensitivity at all stages of the programme cycle.

Key features

• Conflict analysis: The guide emphasises the importance of conducting a structured conflict analysis, understanding conflict drivers, and regularly updating this analysis throughout the programme cycle. This ensures interventions are grounded in the specific conflict context.
• Conflict sensitivity in the programme cycle: It provides step-by-step guidance on integrating conflict sensitivity into needs assessments, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Each phase includes detailed considerations for ensuring that the intervention does not exacerbate tensions and that it promotes peace where possible.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation stages: The guide places significant emphasis on the monitoring and evaluation stages of the programme cycle to ensure conflict sensitivity. During the monitoring stage, it advises practitioners to track not only project outputs but also the effects of interventions on conflict dynamics. Ongoing, participatory monitoring with community feedback helps identify unintended negative consequences and enables timely adaptations. In the evaluation stage, the focus shifts to assessing the broader impacts of the intervention, including both intended and unintended outcomes on the conflict. The guide recommends using conflict-sensitive indicators to evaluate the project's effectiveness in mitigating conflict risks and contributing to peacebuilding goals.
• Key issues for conflict-sensitive programming: The guide explores several critical issues such as targeting, procurement, relationships with communities, partners, and governments, and the importance of establishing feedback and accountability mechanisms to ensure interventions are both effective and conflict-sensitive.
• Emergency responses: A dedicated section outlines how to apply conflict sensitivity in emergency settings, focusing on preparedness, assessment, design, implementation and monitoring, and evaluation phases of humanitarian interventions.
  • Implementation and Monitoring, and Evaluation phases: In emergency contexts, the implementation and monitoring phase requires rapid adaptation to shifting conflict environments. The guide advocates for setting up systems to continuously monitor the interaction between humanitarian activities and conflict dynamics, ensuring that staff can identify risks and adjust accordingly. During the evaluation phase, it is important to review whether the project maintained conflict sensitivity throughout its duration, assessing how it contributed to or hindered peacebuilding efforts. Evaluations should consider both short-term impacts and long-term implications for peace and stability, offering insights for future emergency programming.
• Institutional capacity: It provides tools for assessing and building an organisation’s capacity for conflict sensitivity, offering self-assessment tools and benchmarks for mainstreaming conflict sensitivity into institutional practices.

How would you use the resource?

M&E practitioners can use this resource to design and evaluate programmes with a conflict-sensitive lens. It can be applied to both development and emergency response projects, ensuring that all phases—from needs assessment to evaluation—are informed by a deep understanding of the conflict context. The guide also provides practical tools like conflict analysis frameworks and self-assessment tools, which can be used to enhance both project-level and institutional conflict sensitivity.

Why are we recommending it?

This resource is particularly useful for M&E practitioners in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCV), as it offers practical guidance on how to minimise the negative impacts of interventions and maximise their contributions to peace. Its detailed approach to integrating conflict sensitivity across the programme cycle ensures that interventions are responsive to complex and evolving conflict dynamics.