Conflict Risk Assessment
When is conflict-risk assessment undertaken?
Conflict Risk assessment is relevant at various stages of Strategy and Activity development, although the approach or framework used will vary at these different stages.
Partner country national, sector and sub-national planning frameworks and processes.
Particularly in countries emerging from conflict or where there is a perceived risk of conflict taking place, NZAID should encourage partner governments to consider a conflict-risk assessment as part of the development, reform or review of its:
- national policy framework, including national development strategy, macro policies and public expenditure programme;
- sector policies, strategies and programmes
- sub-national plans and programmes
Partner led processes can have advantages, including increased ownership and a greater likelihood that findings will be acted upon in key national planning documents. Depending on the context, there can also be risks that the assessment itself will be perceived as biased by some important actors. Where donors support (or accept the findings of) the assessment, it can help build a common understanding of the context and priority issues to be addressed. This is a useful step towards developing a coherent response.
The role of NZAID in supporting a partner-country to undertake conflict-risk assessment at these levels will depend on a variety of factors, including:
- the history of the country concerned, including recent conflict, and the perceived risk of future conflict
- the availability and quality of existing conflict analysis and relevant information
- the interest and capacity of the partner country to undertake it
- the political situation and the willingness of the government to act constructively on the findings
- the interest and capacity of regional organizations or other development partners to support the assessment
- NZ’s relationship with the country concerned, and perceptions about NZ’s role in the conflict
- the potential to inform existing or planned NZAID policy engagement and programming and influence whole-of-government processes.
NZAID Country Programme Strategies and Sector Strategies
NZAID’s Guideline for Developing a Programme Strategy sets out the expectation that conflict prevention and peace-building will be considered in all country programme strategies. The type of conflict analysis and conflict-risk assessment, its comprehensiveness, and detail will vary from programme to programme. As a minimum, you should use Screening Guide for Mainstreamed and Other Cross-Cutting Issues and the risk screening indicators in the first stage of the World Bank’s Conflict Analysis Framework (CAF) as tools to help your programme team decide whether a detailed conflict-risk assessment is required. These Risk Screening Indicators are attached as Annex One. (These risk screening indicators do not identify potential regional or inter-state risk factors.)
If your programme team decides that these screening tools, or other factors, indicate that a more detailed conflict-risk assessment is needed, you will need to source appropriate and up-to-date conflict analysis (for example from other development partners). If existing conflict analyses are deficient, and NZAID is a significant donor in the country concerned, there might be a strong case for NZAID supporting some original analysis of conflict as part of the country strategy development process. This analysis will be most useful if completed in advance of the strategy development process so that there is time to utilize the analysis in the conflict-risk assessment which informs the development of the programme strategy.
The country programme strategy should set out clearly the assessed level of risk of conflict for NZAID’s programme strategy, how NZAID will respond, expectations about the use of conflict assessment as a part of future Activity identification and design, and indicators to measure progress in conflict prevention and peace building.
Chapter 4 of the resource pack Conflict sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peace building: Tools for peace and conflict impact assessment provides an excellent overview on “Integrating conflict sensitivity into sectoral approaches”. This should be read by staff involved in planning a country strategy or sector strategy development process in conflict-affected or at-risk countries. Staff will also find useful DfID’s Conducting Conflict Assessments: Guidance Notes.
NZAID Activities
Depending on the country context, the findings of the conflict analysis, and any conclusions in the country programme strategy, different approaches to conflict-risk assessment will be appropriate for programme or Activity identification, design and planning, implementation and evaluation.
In determining whether to undertake a conflict risk assessment of an Activity, the determining factor should be whether the Activity will take place within an area at risk of conflict, rather than whether the activity itself has a conflict reduction or peace building objective.
Conflict risk assessment at Activity level is best applied at the identification and design phases of the activity cycle, and thereafter built into ongoing monitoring and evaluation. The depth of assessment and analysis appropriate to each, will be determined by the country context as well as the size, scope, modality, timeframe and nature of the defined outcomes of the proposed Activity.
In countries with a low risk of conflict, it will not be necessary to include time-consuming conflict risk assessment at the Activity level (although you may still wish to consider incorporating some sort of political-economy analysis such as “drivers of change” analysis in these programmes).
All NZAID supported activities in conflict-risk areas (including activities carried out as part of NZAID regional or thematic strategies) should consider the relevance of the three conflict related questions in the Screening Guide for Mainstreamed and Other Cross-Cutting Issues:
- How might this programme or Activity impact on existing and/or potential conflict dynamics (eg domestic, community, intra-state)?
- Will the benefits of the programme or Activity decrease disparities and/or inequities?
- Will the programme or Activity help address the causes and/or impacts of conflict?
If one or more of these questions are relevant to the particular Activity and they are not adequately addressed by existing sources of information or analysis, a conflict risk assessment for that Activity should be considered. There are several tools which can be used at the Activity level. Kenneth Bush’s Working Paper A Measure of Peace: Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) of Development Projects in Conflict Zones is a useful source for appraisal questions that could be adapted for the environment in which you are working.
If you are still not satisfied that the Activity is sufficiently conflict sensitive, you may wish to include resources in the Activity design budget to undertake a conflict risk assessment. Both CDA Collaborative Learning Projects’ The Do No Harm Handbook and Chapter 3 of the resource pack Conflict sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peace building: Tools for peace and conflict impact assessment have useful guidance on approaches that can be used at the project level.
Rather than undertake a full conflict-risk assessment:
you may decide that it is more appropriate to integrate aspects of conflict analysis into other forms of analysis such as poverty analysis or gender analysis (see the References for several tools for gender-sensitive conflict analysis, reflecting the often very different impacts of conflict on men and women). This may be an effective and efficient approach in some circumstances. Section 4 Chapter 2 of the Conflict sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peace building: Tools for peace and conflict impact assessment resource pack provides some (limited) guidance on how this can be done.
It will be particularly useful to consider this approach where partners already feel inundated with studies and analysis and may be reluctant to undertake a conflict-risk assessment for this reason.