Conflict Sensitivity: Overview

Conflict Sensitivity is important in all development work, especially in Peace Projects that are geared towards addressing conflict, reducing violent conflict, and building long-life peace paths.

How Important is an ACTIVE SYSTEM That Monitors Conflict Sensitivity?

Conflict Sensitivity looks are intended/ unintended impacts of peacebuilding or development interventions, and develops mechanisms that minimize the negative effects of such a project whilst increasing the positive impact of those projects.

It is not enough for a development worker, peace worker, project manager, peace and conflict consultant, program coordinator or any other facilitator of community process to just have a ‘good attitude’ when assessing conflict situations and planning peace/ development projects.

Every personnel working in the peace or development field must actively assess all the planned activities (intervention) and their possible (un)intended impacts.

Planned activities, informed by a sound Conflict Analysis. should have more positive impact that negative impacts.

Planned interventions that have the possibility of not only affecting the project implementation but also polarizing a community to a point of violent, prolonged conflict should be re-assessed, adjusted accordingly or abandoned.

Conflict Sensitivity should be an ongoing process/ mentality that should run throughout projects, but more so during the initial Conflict Analysis where different variables in a conflict context are assessed.

What is Conflict Sensitivity?

Conflict Sensitivity refers to the level of awareness that development workers ought to have regarding the intended/ unintended impacts that their projects/ intervention might have on the community actors, the environment, etc.

Conflict sensitivity is, therefore, not, as presumed, a feeling, but rather the conscious efforts that are geared towards capturing, analysing, and processing the intended and unintended impacts of an intervention (whether in peace work, conflict work or development work).

Conflict sensitivity is geared towards maximizing the positive intended/ unintended impact of a project/ intervention, and mitigating the negative un-intended impacts of such an intervention.

Conflict Sensitivity Tools

DNH (Do No Harm), RPP (Reflecting on Peace Processes) Matrix, and FFA (Force Field Analysis) comprise some of the tools that peace workers can use to examine potential activities whose engagement may result in counter-productive impacts.

The tools look at:

• The dividers (issues that polarize the conflict actors and fuel the conflict) and
• The connectors (issues that bring the peace actors together and reduce conflict).

Dividers and connectors can be attitudes, behaviours, systems & structures, and the actors.

Read more on the Conflict Sensitivity Tools here and how to use them