Project Approach and Methodology:
Conflict Prevention and the
National Application Prototype Process
Overview
The broad, rich and multi-faceted debate, over the past decade (at least) on peacebuilding, peacemaking and
peacekeeping has generated four or five main themes related to peace, conflict and development cooperation:
– conflict prevention, management, and transformation
– human security and the culture of prevention as emerging donor / foreign policy themes
– early warning (indicators, structural factors, triggers, accelerators) and response; and
– vulnerability and risk assessment.
These themes have different origins and have each brought together several different disciplines and political
perspectives. Each theme brings to bear upon PCIA different sets of language and theoretical underpinnings often
aimed at describing similar or related peace and conflict dynamics. These themes are also united in a lack of
comprehensive understanding of what works, and what doesn’t and when, why and how. Guidelines and decisionsupport for policy makers and practitioners are lacking. Important insights into these questions, and possible
answers, have, however, been derived from the disciplines of programme evaluation, monitoring, and design.
Early Warning, Early Response, and Conflict Prevention
Michael Lund has written extensively on early warning, response and prevention of violent conflict and has argued
cogently for more emphasis on and investment in efforts to understand the impacts of preventive / response
measures. In his article for the SWP-CPN Yearbook (1999-2000, pp. 63 – 88) he outlines the five essential
elements to be found in a complete conflict prevention planning and decision cycle (p.64, the following is a direct
quote):
(a) Conflict Diagnosis: What are the distinctive factors that are increasing the possibility of violent conflict
in the particular situation, and what capacities already exist there that might manage these factors without
violence?
(b) Response Identification: What are various appropriate methods and actions that can reduce these
particular sources of conflict and/or improve the functioning of the existing conflict management
capacities?
(c) Prior Appraisal (prospective evaluation): Which of these responses is likely to actually be effective and
implementable?
(d) Implementation: What tasks and actors are required to implement them?
(e) Monitoring and Evaluation (retrospective evaluation): What have been the effects of the actions that
have been taken?
Element (a) begins with a thorough understanding of existing local capacities as well as deep historical
understanding of the roots of the conflict. This means that local civic organizations and their capacities for nonviolent conflict resolution need to be central to the process of conflict analysis. Elements (c) and (e), prior
appraisal and monitoring and evaluation (PCIAs) build on this and are intended to provide guidance on (Lund, p.
64)
the effectiveness and implementability of preventive responses, either prior to, during, or following
a preventive intervention. If preventive action is going to be taken more often in the future, it is
imperative that reliable advice be provided to decision-makers as to what is likely to happen if they
adopt a certain course of action in given situations. So far, very few existing analyses of specific
conflict situations try to, or are able to, back up what they recommend to policy-makers with a
sound or at least plausible analysis of whether the recommended actions are likely to work and
why. Such advice will never become an exact science and that policy prescription always must rely
heavily on informed judgement. Nevertheless, policy advocacy that is based on evaluating past
actions and their results in given contexts would be an improvement.1
1
See also the footnote, no. 15 on page 73, and pp. 76 – 84 on measuring the effectiveness and understanding
attribution and causality of preventive interventions.
In this model, as the five key elements interact and inform each other cyclically over time, preventive measures or
responses feedback knowledge to early warning systems through PCIAs. Situating PCIA in this manner shows
that it is indispensable to learning.
Best practice retrospective (ex post) PCIAs should shed light not only on preventive programme / project
design, but also on needed improvements in early warning indicators and systems; knowledge will also be
accumulated on the effectiveness of preventive response measures in different contexts and at different levels
(local, national, regional, global).
Best practice prospective (ex ante) PCIAs should improve the design (timing, scope, resourcing) of
interventions linked to signals from the early warning system. PCIAs are made up of processes, devices and
methods and as these are employed as part of a national application as described below, their very use can help
to increase confidence among parties to a conflict by enabling clearer understanding of differences through shared
language.
While it is theoretically possible to imagine that PCIAs could be conducted on the entire range of possible
preventive measures or response instruments identified and listed by Lund2, PCIAs for the purposes of this project
will focus specifically on ODA as a preventive measure. In other words, PCIAs will be refined and improved so
that ODA builds peace in a positive sense, going beyond the absence of violence to the development of capacities
and the attainment of political goals that can support and sustain improvements in livelihoods, the alleviation of
poverty, etc...
Casting PCIA in this preventive mode does not mean that we propose to work only in contexts where conflict has
yet to emerge. Preventive measures can also be directed at situations where conflict continues, and where the
objective, then, is to ensure it does not escalate and also to reduce its intensity and prevalence.
Whose PCIA is Being Conducted?
There is another crucial aspect to the manner in which PCIAs have evolved. To date, the process has been driven
largely by northern academics, researchers and practitioners. The extent of integration and inclusion of southern
perspectives has been limited. To develop PCIAs further without compromising their utility and basis in reality
requires more systematic inclusion of multiple and diverse views on conflict and peace of those in the affected
societies themselves. Steps in this direction have recently been taken by the PCIA Unit in cooperation with other
organisations.
For example, in a Consultative Meeting on Integrating Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention into Development
Practice3, southern practitioners made it very clear that PCIAs must include methods and processes that actively
seek out these perspectives. They are vital to, among other things, (a) understanding the nature of competing
claims that are in conflict, (b) the extent to which social justice, equity, governance and other very political aims of
conflict are being acknowledged as legitimate, and (c) in determining how ODA can have positive peacebuilding
impacts.
The National Application Prototype Process
Definition:
A national application is an open-ended process which encourages, applies and assists:
a.) Peacebuilding and conflict prevention considerations in assistance
b.) Understanding of impact on development in conflict
c.) Change by government and all other stakeholders in affected sections of society
(There needs to be a statement of principles / ground rules upon which this process is predicated.)
Objective:
2
Michael Lund “A Toolbox for Responding to Conflicts and Building Peace” in Peacebuilding: A Field Guide, edited
by Luc Reychler and Thania Paffenholz, 2000, p. 16 – 20.
3
Organized by IDRC PCIA Unit, International Alert and Saferworld, November 2000 (for meeting report, see
http://www.bellanet.org/pcia )
Improve sustainable peacebuilding and conflict prevention impact of development assistance, regardless of
source. Sources include domestic as well as external actors.
Requirements:
Tolerance for a high degree of ambiguity and readiness for the risks and opportunities inherent in open-ended
locally-owned and driven processes of consultations.
Process:
This process is dynamic and participatory. It is an open question as to whether all steps would be completed. For
example, it may be necessary to start and restart a step several times, or repeat one or two steps before moving
on. After the first iteration, the content of the steps may change, or there could be several levels (for example,
local / community and district or provincial) on which the steps are proceeding.
Accompany a process that may involve the following four steps (the inputs to each step need to be defined):
Step1:
Identification of who might be interested in joining this process, in being involved, in discussing in some detail
what they are doing in this area and trying to identify what else is going on, and acknowledging the range and
diversity of ongoing activity. This can involve several interactions and meetings, formal and informal,
structured and not between different groups of actors at different levels: e.g. national and local, etc...
Output
Core group of catalysers, energizers and change agents operating at their level in the given context and
situation. Knowledgeable about the various types of tools and approaches including PCIA, and extending also
to conflict transformation approaches, early warning and early response indicators and frameworks of analysis,
and conflict analysis approaches including vulnerability and risk assessments. This group may actually engage
in performing several of these analytical exercises, or react to such analyses prepared beforehand and
presented to the group.
An open question, perhaps for this group as it comes together and understands itself: “When are we done?
When can we proceed to Step 2?” Or, “Do we keep on doing parts of Step 1 as we proceed with Step2?”
Step 2:
The creation and construction of locally-owned approaches and tools. The existing types of tools and
approaches are deconstructed as part of Step 1, and this step will try to build new ones that contain locally
relevant language, inputs, data, validation, perspectives and knowledge.
Output:
Localized tools and approaches, knowledge and capacity on how to use these, where they come from and why
(values), and refined outputs from these tools, e.g. some tentative or draft conflict analyses, programme
analyses. A number of applications are designed, where the localized approaches could be piloted and
applied.
Step 3:
Conduct local application(s). The groups or teams pilot and apply the approaches that have been developed in
concrete peace and conflict analysis exercises, programme design or evaluation exercises, or programme
monitoring exercises.
Output:
Several different (possibly) perspectives on whether an intervention is effective, has been important to building
peace and resolving conflict, or the contrary, some indications as to why, some sense of the path that these
interventions will take if not altered or changed, and ideas about the effects of the interventions, direct and
indirect, developmental, and political, social and cultural.
Step 4:
Feeding back the results. The national applications, what ever depth or level they are able to attain in the
circumstances, will generate the outputs identified in Step 3. These need to be synthesized and
communicated, and critical reflection is required on the localized tools and approaches used. The actors and
individuals that came together in Step 1 could be reconvened to be informed of the results.
Output:
Accumulation of knowledge about processes and approaches and their limitations, the improvement or
refinement of the localized approaches, perhaps by looking again at the existing body of knowledge and
literature first exposed in Step 1, and refinement of the tools and instruments that can be used effectively by
different local actors.
This describes one iteration of the process. These four steps could be done relatively quickly the first time around.
Further iterations may take place at a macro level or be restricted to a sector (health, education, water and
sanitation, employment, natural resource management and land use planning, etc...) in a particular area or region.
Source: “Consultative Meeting on Integrating Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention into Development Practice:
Toward a Global Applied Research Network”, Draft Report, p.34 (available at http://www.bellanet.org/pcia/ )
Flowchart for Conflict Analysis and Decision-Making and the Project
The flowchart on the following page presents the anticipated linkages between the project, its activities and
objectives, and the external information flows required to sustain relevant and grounded conflict analysis and
decision making.
Network
Management
and
Coordination
Applications
National
Synthesis,
refinement
and matrices
Secretariat
/
PCIA Unit
Project
Advisory
Committee
FEWER and
other
Networks /
Practitioners
CPRN / DAC
Task Force
Structural Links and Information Flow
Governance
Capacity building and
technical advice
Project Activities
Conflict Analysis and Decision Making
and the PCIA Project / Network
Conflict
Analysis
and
Decision
Making