Conflict analysis and conflict impact assessments - an NGO perspective
Ms. Anna Åkerlund, Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation
Preliminary remarks
First of all, I would like to say that it is a true honour to be here, and I thank the organizers for
inviting me.
Let me then start by giving you an idea of where I come from and what I represent. SweFOR,
the Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation, is the Swedish branch of an international inter-faith
peace organization, International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Members of IFOR are, like
SweFOR, faith-based peace organizations.
SweFOR draws upon the international experiences and contacts of IFOR, but also upon the
vast experience of international work that churches and Christian aid organizations have been
involved in for a long time. In development work and humanitarian assistance around the
world, aid workers are in close touch with local authorities, police, military – local or in some
cases in the form of international interventions.
Personally, I have previously worked with development organizations, in projects related to
capacity-building for doing work in conflict areas. I have no personal experience of “combat
conditions” (referring to the title of this morning’s panel), but I have been involved in two
major international projects for joint reflection and information-gathering from NGO:s and
agencies around the world, who, indeed know what it is like to work in conditions of violent
armed conflict.
I would like to underscore the “from an NGO perspective” – part of the title of my
contribution. All of what I have to say is reflective of experience within the NGO community.
It is from an NGO perspective that I will share a few of my experiences from working with
conflict analysis and PCIA (peace and conflict impact assessments). In doing so, I will also
give a glimpse from my experience with civilian-military exercises.
The role of civil society
First of all, let it be clear that aid does not cause peace or war. The contributions from outside
actors can never absolve political stakeholders and the primary parties from their
responsibilities. On the other hand, what NGOs can do is to improve the prospects of peace by
supporting organisations that work for peace – morally, financially or through support for
human resource development. They can also create scope for these forces to act by lessening
the violence with the aid of an international preventive presence. They can make resources
available for a local peace process, for example by hosting peace talks, establishing thinktanks that produce suggestions for the resolution of conflicts, or contributing to the
implementation of a peace agreement. They can identify and support local structures for
peace, factors that unite parties over dividing lines, conflict management mechanisms etc.
They can learn to identify direct and indirect (structural) causes of armed conflicts and can do
something about them.
And apart from that direct contribution to peace, civil society organisations of course work to
save lives and alleviate suffering, caused by violent conflict, through humanitarian action or
engage themselves in more long-term development work.
Conflict analysis and PCIA and intelligence gathering
A Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment is a systematic way to analyze the impact of your
programme or project on a given conflict setting. I have become aquainted with a framework
to assess the impact of aid on conflict, that has been developed in the so called Local
Capacities for Peace Project (LCPP) of the Collaborative for Development Action (often
referred to as the “Do No Harm” framework).
Along with conflict analyses (trying to reach a deeper understanding of the conflict as such),
we do these analyses because we want to increase the effectiveness of our work and because
we are accountable to the people, the most concerned. Whether we are working on conflict or
simply in a conflict environment, we are going to have some kind of influence on the context
of conflict. We want to make sure that we do not lessen, but rather that we increase, the
likelihood for peace through our presence.
Is aid being given in ways that legitimize war-related individuals (giving them more
international attention, power, prestige…)? Does the aid agency rely on arms to protect its
goods and/ or workers? Does the aid agency’s publicity and/or fund-raising approach
demonize one side of the war? Is aid provided in ways that benefit one group over others?
These, and more questions like these, need to be addressed. It is always the details that count.
(As in one example when an organization started an agricultural support programme and
decided that in order to get the best people to run it would be to recruit staff at the agricultural
college. Only later - a couple of years into the programme - did they realize that that decision
resulted in a pretty much mono-ethnic programme in an area where there was a violent
conflict that coincided with ethnic dividing lines – and where land tenure and therefore
agriculture was a very hot issue. By then, they were already in trouble with their programme).
By being and working in a conflict you influence the conflict – often in ways that you will
have difficulties to foresee unless you use some kind of tool for systematic analysis of your
impact on conflict before you go there. And this is in pretty small-scale projects that do not
aim to influence conflict. How much more is it not then possible to influence the conflict
context – for better or for worse – when actors actually set out to influence the conflict! PCIA
helps you to trace those impacts. (N.B. It is not prescriptive.)
This is not the time to explain the tool. Instead I shall focus on a few questions, as they relate
to information gathering.
Who does the information gathering? In PCIA you look at your own project, what you are
going to do, but also your own organisation’s mandate and funding. Are you a third party?
But what if you are linked to a secondary party? This is very much debated right now, when
many people witness to an increasingly dangerous environment for humanitarian workers, due
to a blurring of the line between humanitarian and military objectives.
From whom does the information originate? Credibility. Double-check with various sources.
How is information gathered? How is it accepted or verified?
With whom? It is highly recommended that you do the analysis together with your partner
organization and representatives of your target group. As close as possible to the target group.
What information? It is impossible to know everything. You have to make priorities: what is
the most vital information? Also: how do I learn to ask the right questions? Unless you ask the
question, you are unlikely to get the answer – or recognize it as an answer.
When? Monitoring. Not once and for all, but continuous.
Why? It has to do with mandate. What are your indicators of success? (In a workshop I once
co-facilitated in Melbourne, a couple of Australian military men taught me the useful word
“mission creep”: when your mission is diverted into something else, almost without you
knowing it).
Do you only collect information about the context or do you also gather indicators of your
own performance, information by which you hold yourself accountable?
Development and humanitarian organizations have, of course, always done risk analyses
before entering a areas of crisis or conflict. The question in those instances is: how can the
conflict effect my project? What are the risks? With PCIA that question is reversed: how will
my project, my programme, my presence influence the conflict?
I am drawing towards the end of my presentation, but before I close, I would like to share an
anecdote with you from my visit to the joint civilian-military exercise, Viking 01. SweFOR
has taken part in civilian-military exercises since Nordic Peace 1998 (Viking 99, Nordic
Peace 02, Viking 01 and Viking 03). My visit in 01 was my first encounter with these. The
fictitious conflict (in “Bogaland”) was described to me, and it was apparent that it was a very
violent conflict. Yet, I also learnt that there were no casualties since the beginning of the
international military intervention there. Finding this a little bit unrealistic, I asked questions
about it. Only after several minutes of discussion (and, I must admit, confusion) I realized that
“casualties “ in this case meant “military casualties”!
Apparently civilian casualties were not considered relevant information in that setting. And
yet, the UN-mandated mission was in principle there to protect civilians, or was it not?
(According to the scenario, this was a PSO during time of preparation for elections and
disarmament). The answer I got, was that this had something to do with the distinction
between military and civilian roles. While I totally respect the strict upholding of that
distinction – and, indeed, I think it is really important – my question is: what exactly is then
the relation to the political goal, the goal that after all should be overriding? And that question
remains with me. I found that whole conversation a sort of a culture shock for me and a great
challenge and maybe an eye-opener too. For me, the experience was a major revelation about
what information was deemed relevant, and what part of reality the exercise (and possibly
operations of that sort) choose to relate to. And - turning now to PCIA and its annoying but
important questions about unintended negative impacts - if the presence actually decreases
the security of civilians, would you even know it? The kind of questions, that you ask
yourself, shape the information, that you choose to gather – and this enterprise is not neutral.
It tells us something about yourself, I believe.
Therefore, I do appreciate the opportunity to come here and talk about intelligence gathering
and sharing, realizing that intelligence mean very different things in our different settings.
The following scibbled notes is what I noted for use in the open discussion, that followed
upon our interventions:
What we should talk about is intelligence gathering with the objective to avoid ever having to
deal with “rendering assistance in combat situations” – simply because there will be no
combat… In other words: focus on prevention.
SweFOR goals for participating in joint civilian-military exercise:
1. To highlight the peace building capacity of the civil society, before and during violent
conflicts and in post-war situations
2. To contribute to the perspective that the local civil society is more than a victim in violent
conflicts and can also act as an agent of change in peacebuilding
3. To enhance knowledge of the participants as to the role of religion and the religious
community in conflicts with violent components, with special emphasis on the peace building
capacity of religious communities, representing different parties
4. To highlight the concept of nonviolence as an instrument of analysis and as an alternative way
of acting in violent conflicts
5. To contribute to the discussion on preventive action in relationship to Peace Support
Operations and to distinguish between curative and preventive measures in this respect
6. To enhance the capacity of civil organisations to participate in peace support operations, based
on the concept of nonviolence and a culture of peace
7. To disseminate the experiences made through the various civil-military exercises that
SweFOR has participated in, to other civilian organisations, on national as well as
international level