The impact of external development assistance on the dynamics of poverty and conflict is often ambiguous.

Development assistance can contribute to stability when states use it to address human security needs, the political economy of conflict, and inequality and discrimination, and also for debt servicing and paying the state bureaucracy. However, development assistance can also exacerbate conflict, for example, through supporting corruption or helping to perpetuate an unjust status quo or by putting too much emphasis on debt servicing. Additionally, conditionalities attached to development assistance (eg structural adjustment policies) can increase tensions, particularly where, without compensatory measures, they require lay-offs in the public sector and cuts in state subsidies for basic consumer goods.

The first principle for aid policy makers – as set out in the OECD-DAC Guidelines on “Helping Prevent Violent Conflict”¹²– is “to do no harm and to guard against unwittingly aggravating existing or potential conflicts”, as well as effectively addressing the underlying causes of poverty and conflict. Effectively ensuring that development assistance does no harm will improve the impact of assistance on poverty mitigation. It clearly demands conflict sensitivity.

When conflict sensitive aspects of development assistance (such as promoting human security, and addressing the political economy of conflict, and addressing the sources of inequality and discrimination) are taken into account, development assistance can help mitigate violent conflict. Because conflict and poverty are inextricably linked, decreasing violent conflict will also serve to address many of the underlying causes of chronic poverty. Making development assistance sensitive to conflict should improve its overall impact on development goals and objectives as well as on decreasing violence.