Conflict-sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding: A resource pack

This resource pack seeks to document current practice, available frameworks and lessons learned on the relationship between programming and conflict.

Over the last decade there has been a growing realisation that humanitarian assistance sometimes feeds conflict rather than alleviates it, and that development aid sometimes exacerbates tensions. This has led to the development of tools to understand the relationship between programming and conflict.

At the heart of this resource pack is the concept of ‘conflict sensitivity’ – the notion of systematically taking into account both the positive and negative impact of interventions, in terms of conflict or peace dynamics, on the contexts in which they are undertaken, and, conversely, the impact of these contexts on the intervention.

The project has made great efforts to reach out and raise awareness on conflict sensitivity, as well as to record indigenous and international practice. Through this work and the partnerships it has engendered, the project has provided a bridge between North and South, involving southern agencies not as mere recipients of conflict sensitive knowledge, but as shapers of the conflict sensitivity agenda.