Options for Aid in Conflict: Lessons from Field Experience

Ed. by Mary B. Anderson
December 2000

Following is the Introduction to what we call the "Options Manual". The full text is available in PDF.

Introduction

"The most useful thing about the Do No Harm approach is that it gives us a way of thinking about programming options. We knew some of our work fed into conflict. We just did not know what to do about it. Now, we have a way of thinking of new approaches." - Field Staff involved in LCPP Pilot Implementation Projects

This is a lessons-learned Manual. It is written by and for aid workers in conflict areas. Drawing on field experience, it is meant to help the field staff of international aid agencies to understand their working contexts better and to develop programming approaches that support peace rather than war.

Where Does This Manual Come From?

Beginning in the early 1990s, a number of international and local NGOs collaborated through the Local Capacities for Peace Project (LCPP) to learn more about how aid that is given in conflict settings interacts with the conflicts. We knew that aid is often used and misused by people in conflicts to pursue political and military advantage. We wanted to understand how this occurs in order to be able to prevent it.

The collaboration was based on gathering and comparing the field experience of many different NGO programmes in many different contexts. Through this, we were able to identify very clear patterns regarding how aid and conflict interact. These lessons are reported in the book, Do No Harm: How Aid Supports Peace - Or War.

Knowing how aid and conflict interact is not the same as doing anything about it, however. It is difficult to translate lessons from the past into proactive, operational guidelines for the future. This is especially true because it is in the nature of conflicts to involve the specifics of histories, contexts and personalities and to be constantly in flux and unpredictable.

Ideas to Action - the Pilot Implementation Projects

The challenge of translating the ideas of Do No Harm into action was taken up by a number of the NGOs collaborating through LCPP who agreed to pilot the implementation of these ideas in the field. These agencies agreed to apply the DNH Framework in their ongoing programmes in twelve conflict settings over a three year period in order to determine whether it is practical and usable and, if so, whether the approach makes any difference to programme outcomes.

From late 1997 through fall 2000, from Kosovo to Congo, in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, Liberia and northeastern India, and elsewhere, aid workers providing both humanitarian and development assistance have been using the Do No Harm Framework for Analyzing Aid and Conflict. They have redesigned and monitored their programmes seeking to find ways to work that do not inadvertently feed into and worsen intergroup conflict but, instead, support and reinforce intergroup connectors and local capacities for peace.

We learned a lot! This Manual reports the lessons of these three years for use by other aid workers in other conflict zones.

Some Fundamental Lessons

In all of the Pilot Implementation Projects we found:

  • It is possible - and useful - to apply Do No Harm in conflict-prone, active conflict and post-conflict situations.

    • And, doing so:
  • Prompts us to identify conflict-exacerbating impacts of aid much sooner than is typical without the analysis;

  • Heightens our awareness of intergroup relations in project sites and enables us to play a conscious role in helping people come together;

  • Reveals the interconnections among programming decisions (about where to work, with whom, how to set the criteria for aid recipients, who to hire locally, how to relate to local authorities, etc.);

  • Provides a common reference point for considering the impacts of our assistance on conflict that brings a new cohesiveness to staff interactions and to our work with local counterparts;

    • and, the most important single finding:

  • Enables us to identify programming options when things are going badly. In fact, many people involved in the Pilot Implementation Projects say that for some time they have been aware of the negative impacts of some of their programmes but that they thought these were inevitable and unavoidable. Do No Harm is useful precisely because it gives us a tool to find better ways--programming options--to provide assistance.

How To Use This Manual

There are no "how to do it" prescriptions in this Manual.

Instead, there are many quotations from the reports of the Pilot Implementation Projects and from conversations with people involved in applying Do No Harm. These describe programming challenges, capture lessons learned, provide a window into the analysis and suggest programming options. These quotations form the core of this Manual because, during these three "testing" years, we have found that it is this kind of sharing of experience that has provided the grounding that leads to good programming options.

Most of the Manual deals with the range of programming decisions that international aid agencies face when they initiate and implement aid programmes in conflict settings. These include decisions about targeting aid's recipients, about staffing, partnering, programming inputs, delivery, and working with local authorities. Each of these "categories" of decision-making contains numerous other sub-decisions. It is through the details of aid programming represented by these ongoing decisions that aid has its impacts--negative or positive--on conflict.

The Manual is organized into ten SECTIONS.

SECTION ONE summarizes the Do No Harm Framework for Analyzing Aid in Conflict. The details of how this Framework was developed and the field experience that lies behind it are more fully provided in the Do No Harm book. (See reference in Preface.)

The next five sections take up critical programming decisions involving the WHO, WHAT and HOW of aid. SECTION TWO examines issues of WHO to work with and for (Recipients); SECTION THREE deals with issues of WHO to hire (Staff); and SECTION FOUR deals with issues of WHO to work through (Partners).

SECTION FIVE turns to the WHAT of aid, dealing with how the decisions about which goods and services to provide (and their quantity and quality) can affect conflict. This section also provides specific lessons learned about food, shelter, water, health and trauma programming. SECTION SIX then addresses the HOW of aid, specifically focusing on options for aid delivery, and SECTION SEVEN gathers what has been learned about the difficult issue of how to work with local authorities without legitimizing their control or violence.

Each of these sections sets out the lessons learned about how these programming decisions can inadvertently reinforce conflict and each offers ideas tried by field staff to avoid negative impacts and, instead, build on and reinforce intergroup connections. There is some repetition among the sections because all programming decisions are interconnected and because some lessons about how to do better apply across all areas. However, the many quotations from project reports that illustrate the impacts of each decision and possible programming options continue to add layers of understanding and insight.

Part II of the book includes two additional sections. SECTION EIGHT reports what has been learned about how to use Do No Harm, including the processes for disseminating and spreading the approaches, areas of resistance or difficulty, and other practical USE issues. In the final SECTION NINE, we turn to impact assessments, that is, what has been learned about how to trace and assess the outcomes of using Do No Harm.

A CONCLUSION reflects briefly on additional steps that remain for learning more about working effectively to lessen conflict and promote peace. The APPENDICES - which you should read! - include a number of "tools" for using DNH in the field developed by field people involved in the Pilot Implementation Projects. These are a rich resource for anyone initiating the use of DNH elsewhere.

Why Try To Do No Harm?

Although it is clear that, by itself, aid neither causes nor can end conflict, it can be a significant factor in conflict contexts. Aid can have important effects on intergroup relations and on the course of intergroup conflict. In an LCPP Pilot Implementation Project area, for example, one NGO provided 90% of all paid local employment in a sizable region over a number of years. In another, the NGO estimated that militia looting of aid garnered US $400 million in one brief (and not unique) rampage. Both of these examples occurred in very poor countries where aid's resources represented significant wealth and power.

At the same time, giving no aid would also have an impact - often negative. The LCPP has thus chosen to focus on how to provide aid more effectively and how those of us who are involved in providing assistance in conflict areas can assume responsibility and hold ourselves accountable for the effects that our aid has in worsening and prolonging, or in reducing and shortening, destructive conflict between groups whom we want to help.

Conflicts are never simple. Do No Harm does not, and cannot, make things simpler. Rather, Do No Harm helps us get a handle on the complexity of the conflict environments where we work. It helps us see how decisions we make affect intergroup relationships. It helps us think of different ways of doing things to have better effects. The aim is to help aid workers deal with the real complexities of providing assistance in conflicts with less frustration and more clarity and, it is hoped, with better outcomes for the societies where aid is provided.