Conflict-sensitive development

We believe that sensitivity to conflict needs to be integrated into all development, humanitarian assistance and peace-building projects, from national strategies to local projects. We give technical and practical advice to development agencies, governments, donor organisations and civil society to help make their work conflict-sensitive and increase the chances of peace and security.

Development work often involves changing power dynamics in host societies through the provision of technical assistance combined with human and financial resources. Conflicts often revolve around issues of power - fighting, for instance, over which groups will have access to political, economic and social resources. Consequently external assistance challenges existing power relations and, in contributing resources in a polarised environment, may inadvertently fuel conflict.

An increasing number of international agencies have recognised this and adopted a conflict-sensitive approach which involves scrutinising the potential positive and negative impacts of their work on the conflict context and vice-versa. Based on this understanding, agencies should then take steps to ensure that at a minimum they do no harm and, ideally, they have a positive impact on the contexts in which they work.

However, despite increasing acknowledgement of, and policy commitment to, the importance of conflict-sensitive development, uptake in practice remains limited. This is particularly evident in post-conflict recovery situations, where many international agencies are still operating to short timeframes, required to address long-term conflict transformation in short-term programmes and struggling to match funding instruments with the realities of post-crisis contexts.

Saferworld seeks to strengthen the capacity of donors, national and local governments and civil society to pursue conflict-sensitive development programmes through a combination of targeted analysis and learning, training and accompaniment work in a number of focus countries, with lessons and guidance shared internationally.

Currently we are working with the European Commission in Sri Lanka, Irish Aid in Uganda and a range of donors in Georgia to strengthen the conflict sensitivity of their assistance. We are also playing a leading role in the Conflict Sensitive Approach Project - a consortium of 10 development and peacebuilding agencies - which aims to improve and mainstream conflict-sensitive approaches in participating agencies and partners.