Governance and crisis states
Conducting conflict assessment: a framework for strategy and programme development
DevA framework for assessing conflicts
Authors:
USAID Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance; USAID
Publisher:
[publisher information not available], 2004
This document presents a framework to assess conflicts. The framework comprises diagnostic tools that are designed to:
- identify and prioritise the causes and consequences of violence and instability that are most important in a given country context
- understand how existing development programs interact with these factors
- determine where development and humanitarian assistance can most effectively support local efforts to manage conflict and build peace.
The importance of the factors identified in this framework will vary across countries. An issue that has great relevance in one country, for example ethnic tension, may have little or no relevance in another.
By presenting all of the possible factors, the framework attempts to be both comprehensive and flexible in its design and is intended to serve as a general guide for analysis in very different country situations. The team conducting the assessment should therefore adapt the generic variables presented here to the specific situation, and add or delete variables as necessary.
The assessment framework also places strong emphasis on identifying interaction effects among different factors linked to violence. Conflict is extremely complex. Even if many individual causes of conflict are present in a given country, the risk of violence will remain fairly low if they exist in relative isolation from each other. It is only when multiple causes come together and reinforce each other that conflict will emerge.
Therefore a key challenge for the assessment team will be to identify places - regions, demographic groups, or moments in time - where this has occurred or is likely to occur.
The framework also looks at how development assistance is linked to the causes of conflict. It
provides an example of how to 'map' existing programs against identified causes and includes a discussion about possible interventions
