Luc Zandvliet and David Reyes
May 2006

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The violence of March 2004 prompted many agencies to reflect on their peacebuilding programming throughout Kosovo. What had gone wrong? Could they have done better? In some communities, however, there was little or no violence. This study was undertaken in response to a request by CARE International, with other NGOs, to understand what went right in those communities, and what lessons to be learned from those experiences to improve the effectiveness of peacebuilding programming in preventing violence in the future. The study was funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, CARE UK, CARE Austria, and CDA's Reflecting on Peace Practice project.

The purpose of the study was to understand whether and how peacebuilding programming contributed to communities’ lack of participation in violence, especially that which occurred in March, 2004.1 The questions we have focused on are:

What have been factors that have enabled communities to avoid, resist or not to participate in inter-ethnic violence?

To what extent has peacebuilding work contributed to these factors?

This report, along with the community case studies on which the findings are based is being edited for publication in book form. In the meantime, you can download this preliminary draft here: Has Peacebuilding Made a Differnce in Kosovo?>

This article reviews the status of RPP efforts in relation to conflict analysis, one of the key areas for focused collaborative learning. RPP has been working with groups of peace practitioners in the Balkans and Central Africa, trying out a variety of methods for joint conflict analysis and moving from there into program strategies. The goal of these activities, as with all of RPP’s efforts, has been to increase the effectiveness of peace programs. Preliminary results show promise for incorporating systems thinking into more traditional methods of conflict analysis. RPP is continuing to work with groups on making the link between good analysis and effective program strategies.

http://www.cdainc.com/publications/cep/unocal_bangladesh.php Unocal Bangladesh

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Luc Zandvliet and Emma Nikki Owiredu
November 2005

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Luc Zandvliet
September 2005

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Luc Zandvliet and Ana Paula do Nascimento
June 2005

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This paper is collected in the Do No Harm Handbook.

In conflict and post-conflict situations, assistance workers (whether humanitarian or development) need to take several things into account. Among these are the impacts of their programmes on the context with regard to the conflict and the issues surrounding the conflict. Also among these, and especially important in conflict situations, is how their programmes address the human rights concerns of the people in the situation.

International Humanitarian Law clearly lays out the responsibilities of those in authority to their constituencies, while also dealing with the rights that people should expect to be able to exercise. International assistance must work within this framework, supporting both the efforts of the authority to meet its responsibilities and of people to exercise their rights.

Human rights, and the implications of assistance programming on the human rights situation, cannot be ignored.

The Do No Harm Framework was developed to analyze and review the impacts of assistance on the conflict. It was not developed to explicitly deal with human rights and, as such, it is not the human rights tool. There are other, better, tools for addressing the totality of the legalities regarding human rights.

Nonetheless, human rights are included in the DNH Framework. Human rights clearly and regularly arise in the Context Analysis section (Dividers and Connectors). On the positive side, human rights appear as shared values and experiences that connect people. They appear in the cultural and governmental systems and institutions that promote non-violent attitudes and actions and non-violent ways of resolving disputes. They appear in certain occasions and in symbols that people use to promote connectedness.

On the negative side, those elements of a society in conflict that are actively engaged in attacking human rights are Dividers (whether a discriminatory legal or education system, a particular warlord or militia, or direct attacks on officials responsible for human rights, for example).

The merit of the DNH Framework as it addresses human rights is that it looks at human rights in an immediate and operational fashion. What do people do to demonstrate their support for human rights? How do they promote rights? What do people do to denigrate and undermine human rights? How do they attack them? Where and when do they attack them?

In the DNH Framework, “human rights” is not a concept to be considered in the abstract. The actual impacts of a conflict on people and on their human rights are taken into account in order to develop good and effective programmes.

CDA will continue to work on the implications of human rights within the context of the DNH Framework.

One particular finding of our recent efforts to think more explicitly about human rights in the context of the DNH Framework intrigues us. The DNH Framework encourages us to think more systematically about potential responses to human rights violations. What are the options for dealing with violations? DNH does not pre-judge, nor does it prescribe a single response, but instead it deals with actual situations and examines options for accountability on the basis of existing and identified connectors.

We have been struck by the range of options that people and nations use to address violations of human rights that occur in their conflicts. People are simultaneously extremely creative and forgiving. They know what systems of forgiveness and punishment will and will not work in their communities and they almost always work to promote activities to heal their societies. This strikes us as profoundly hopeful, and also, as outsiders to these societies and the direct effects of their conflicts, extremely humbling.

This paper is collected in the Do No Harm Handbook.

We need to identify clear and consistent ways to understand the impacts of assistance on conflict.

The DO NO HARM PROJECT first thought of developing a list of “indicators” of impacts. However, we quickly changed our approach to adopt, instead, the terminology of “indications” of impact. There were two reasons for this. First, because “indicators” is a term commonly used to refer to scientific precision, we knew that, in the context of assistance in conflict, we did not want to mislead our colleagues into believing in—or even seeking—such “proof” of the single, identifiable source of causation. Second we found that, while it is extremely challenging to imagine how to trace cause and effect of assistance and conflict in a theoretical framework, when we are actually in a given field location, the ways that assistance and conflict interact can be fairly clearly observed. It was the latter reality that we want to highlight and observe.

It is important to remember and recognize both the limits and the power of our roles in conflict settings. There are three types of events in a conflict setting to consider when thinking about the impact of assistance:

1. Some things happen in conflict settings that bear no relation to assistance and on which assistance has no effect. Even if we applied all the lessons of past experience and carried out “perfect” programmes, wars, for example, would still happen.
2. There are also things that happen in conflict settings to which assistance is connected and on which it has an effect. These events would happen whether assistance existed or not, but because assistance is in the context where they occur, it has an impact on them.
3. Finally, there are events that assistance, itself, causes to happen.

As we increase our awareness of the impacts that assistance can have on conflict, it is critical that we remember to focus on the second and, particularly, on the third type of event where assistance has its greatest impact.

Through careful attention to the mechanisms whereby assistance has an impact on conflict, through RESOURCE TRANSFERS and IMPLICIT ETHICAL MESSAGES, we are able to identify the following indications of whether assistance is having a negative (worsening) impact on conflict. The following questions highlight

Indications of Negative Impacts [A “yes” answer indicates a negative impact]:

• Are assistance goods stolen, especially by those connected directly to a warring side?
• What are the market impacts of assistance in the given area? Specifically:
  • Are prices of goods connected to the war economy rising?
  • Are incentives for engaging in the war economy rising?
  • Are prices of goods connected to the peacetime economy falling?
  • Are incentives for engaging in peacetime economic activities falling?
• Is assistance provided in ways that benefit one (some) sub-group(s) over others? Does the assistance agency employ people more from one group than others? Do material goods go more to one group than others?
• Is assistance providing a sufficiently significant amount of material to meet civilian needs that:
  • More local goods are freed up to be used in warfare/by armies?
  • Local leaders take little or no responsibility for civilian welfare? [What are the manifestations of this?]
• Is assistance being given in ways that “legitimize” war-related individuals (giving them more power, prestige or access to international attention or wealth)? Is assistance being given in ways that legitimize the actions of war (for e.g. reinforcing patterns of population movements that warriors are causing; linking to divisions in the society thus reinforcing them)? Is assistance being given in ways that legitimize war-supporting attitudes (for e.g. rewarding those who are most violent; being given separately to all groups in assumption that they cannot work together)?
• Does the assistance agency rely on arms to protect its goods and/or workers?
• Does the assistance agency refuse to cooperate or share information and planning functions with other assistance agencies, local government or local NGOs? Does it openly criticize the ways that others provide assistance and encourage local people to avoid working with other agencies?
• Do field staff separate themselves from the local people with whom they are working and do they frequently use assistance goods, or the power they derive from them, for their personal benefit or pleasure?
• Does the assistance agency apportion its institutional benefits (salaries or per diem scales; equipment such as cars, phones, offices; expectations of time commitments to the job; rewards for work done; vacation, R & R, evacuation plans) in ways that favor one identifiable group of workers more than others?
• Do the assistance staff express discouragement and powerlessness in relation to their staff superiors, home offices or donors? Do they express disrespect for these people but often cite them as the reason why something is “impossible”?
• Are assistance staff frightened and tense? Do they express hatred, mistrust, or suspicion for local people (any of the local people)? Do they frequently engage their local staff counterparts in conversation about violence, war experiences, the terrible things they have experienced (thus reinforcing the sense that these are the things that matter)? Does the agency promote or in other ways exceptionally reward staff members who have served in more violent places/situations?
• Does the assistance agency's publicity and/or fundraising approach demonize one side of the war? Does it treat one group as always “victimized” by the other?

Note: If the answers to these questions are consistently “no” and, furthermore, rather than doing the things described in the questions, the agency and its staff are actively pursuing alternative approaches, it is important also to assess the significance of this in relation to the conflict. Is the alternative approach recognized and commented upon by community leaders or large numbers of local people with appreciation? Are incidences of violence between groups or of lawlessness among warriors dropping? Can any of this be attributed to a change in climate to which the assistance agency's approaches have contributed?

• Has the assistance agency actively sought to identify things in the conflict area that cross the boundaries and connect people on different sides? Has it designed its programme to relate to these connectors?
• Is the assistance delivered in ways that reinforce a local sense of inclusiveness and intergroup fairness? Are programmes designed to bring people together? Are they designed so that for any group to gain, all groups must gain?
• Is the assistance delivered in ways that reinforce, rather than undermining, attitudes of acceptance, understanding and empathy between groups?
• Is the assistance delivered in ways that provide opportunities for people to act and speak in non-war ways? Does the agency provide opportunities for its local staff to cross lines and work with people from the “other” side?
• Does the assistance respect and reinforce local leaders as they take on responsibility for civilian governance? Does it provide rewards for individuals, groups and communities that take inter-group or peace-reinforcing initiatives?
• Do assistance agency staff reinforce the attitudes of their friends and counterparts as they remember, or reassert, sympathy and respect for other groups?

Again, in addition to answering these questions with a “yes”, those involved in the implementation pilot projects must try to assess the significance of these actions in relation to the conflict, or its mitigation. The Local Capacities for Peace Project, as a whole, will be engaged in refining ways to make this assessment in different settings and circumstances.

Reflecting on Peace Practice Handbook in PDF

These materials assume a background in the Framework and are often used to supplement training programmes. The Handbook is not a good entry point to Do No Harm.

The Handbook was last revised in November 2004.

Do No Harm Handbook in PDF