Peacebuilding organisations may find it particularly difficult to acknowledge the need to be conflict sensitive. This may be for a number of reasons, but mainly because their mandate to build peace leads them to assume that their activities are bound to contribute to the creation of peaceful environments. This assumption may lead to a non-systematic analysis of the context in which the organisations operate; a lack of planning when implementing peace- building projects; an uncoordinated or non-integrated approach to peacebuilding; as well as dubious claims of success based on assumptions about peacebuilding project achievements that are premised on questionable cause-and-effect scenarios.

While it may be difficult for peacebuilding organisations, just as with humanitarian and development agencies, to accept that they can exacerbate conflict, there is strong evidence that they can do so. For instance, raising expectations about the resolution of outstanding grievances can trigger or accelerate conflict when those expectations are disappointed – as they often are when there are vested interests in maintaining the status quo or where there are not enough resources in the short term to implement agreements adequately. There is also growing evidence that international agencies providing non-sensitive support to local peacebuilding organisations can create a “peace market”, which contributes little to peacebuilding as the organisations’ main focus is on gaining access to the generously resourced peacebuilding funds of the international community.

Nor are peacebuilding organisations at any level immune from the prejudices, party politics, or systems of patronage that fuel conflict. Just as with humanitarian and development agencies, it is of the utmost importance that peacebuilding organisations also take responsibility for their potential impact by adopting conflict sensitive approaches.