Some organisations will use the conflict analysis to define their intervention, ie they begin with no pre-conceived ideas of what the intervention will be and use the analysis to decide on the objectives, by looking in particular at the scenarios generated by the analysis, and seeking to understand the possible key causes of conflict and how these may develop over time. For instance, if the analysis shows that water scarcity is expected to be a major source of conflict in the near future, improved water supply could be selected as the project objective.

Other organisations will have a pre-determined programme / project, and will use the conflict analysis to plan it in a conflict-sensitive way. For example their mandate may be to construct wells, and they will use the conflict analysis to determine where, when, how and for whom they will do this, usually through a process of prioritisation of causes and goals. Typical questions include:

• which issues (eg water, health care) or aspects of an issue (eg pastoralists competing for scarce access to water) appear to be most important?
• how does this choice relate to the context?

To be sensitive to an existing conflict, each question will have to be related to the conflict analysis (profile, actors, causes and dynamics) to see how the objective can be achieved in a way that will minimise unintended negative impacts on any of these four elements, and maximise positive impacts. This means trying to forecast the impact of the intervention. The scenarios developed in the conflict analysis (see Chapter 2 section 2.4) should help. The key is to consider the possible interaction between the proposed intervention and these different future contexts.

Either way, part of the design and strategy will be closely related to the logical framework analysis. Thus the logframe should include not only the overall objectives but also a description of the proposed contribution to improving the conflict situation (see Box 2).

In order to understand the limitations, and the potential areas where the intervention can have the greatest impact, four further questions need to be asked:

• what is my mandate?
• what is my capacity?
• what are other actors doing in this area?
• what is their capacity? (See next section)

At the planning stage, the framework of ‘control’ versus ‘assist’ versus ‘influence’ can help individual organisations to understand the degree to which they can contribute to changes in any operational context. Organisations need to understand which factors and issues they control, which they can assist, and which they can influence. They need to be honest as to what an intervention can be expected to deliver – raising high expectations and failing to deliver can cause tensions and ultimately lead to conflict. Furthermore, understanding the joint impact of programming and interdependence with other actors will help outline where common approaches with complementary actors are necessary, or alternatively where a new intervention could be counterproductive to existing work.