This planning module has predominantly used an implementing agency’s perspective in describing the various elements involved in conflict-sensitising a planning process. Donors of course do planning too. The following paragraphs address the unique challenges donors face in conflict-sensitising their planning processes, and outline some of the issues governments and NGOs need to consider in interacting with their donors on issues of conflict sensitivity.

Many donors rely on a tender process where the donor plans the project – sometimes down to specific details like how many days one particular type of technical advisor will spend supporting the intervention – and organisations bid by submitting an implementation plan and associated budget.

This planning module has argued that a project plan must be tied to some sort of conflict analysis. If donors do not undertake a conflict analysis, do not tie the project plan to the analysis, but instead design the plan based on an assessment that is then imposed on bidders, then ensuring a conflict-sensitive intervention will be highly problematic. Further, the time required by most donors to conceive of an initial intervention idea, design it, secure the necessary internal funding, and then proceed through all steps of the bidding process means that any initial assumptions about conflict dynamics are often outdated by the time project implementation finally begins. Even if the initial project planning incorporated key elements of conflict sensitivity and was developed in a timely manner, many tenders necessitate a level of inflexibility that is at odds with conflict sensitivity: forced partnerships, restricted timing, specific location, and detailed specifics about the intervention itself.

Donor-funded projects that do not use a tender process also face challenges related to conflict sensitivity. While DFID (UK) has recently untied its aid, some donors still require that funding favour goods and services from their respective countries. The clearest example of tied aid and its potential for negatively impacting conflict is monetisation. Recipients are offered a product from the donor’s country in lieu of cash. The recipient then sells the commodity in the country in which they operate and uses the revenue to fund an approved project. Monetisation can undermine local production and distribution networks and fuel corruption, patronage and other root causes of conflict.

Whether or not aid is tied, donors that wish to conflict-sensitise their funding relationships could request applicants to include conflict analyses with their proposals in addition to the gender and environmental impact assessments most currently demand. A conflict sensitive end-of-project evaluation should also be required. In both cases, donors should provide the resources required to support these additional components.

More broadly, donors can conflict-sensitise their funding relationships by conducting their own broad conflict analysis and then evaluating projects on the basis of how they fit into the conflict dynamic (in addition to the regular criteria). The conflict assessment required from funding applicants should be seen as complementary to the conflict assessment conducted by the donor agency itself, and cases of contradiction should be seen as opportunities to learn more about the complexity of the conflict dynamic. Box 6 illustrates a tool used by one agency to analyse incoming proposals against the likelihood of their negatively impacting on conflict dynamics (the agency,CARE, is usually considered a generalist international development NGO, but in this case was acting as a donor, being responsible for funding grants and evaluating project proposals submitted by other organisations).

Accepting funding from some donors may imply political support or an affiliation that could jeopardise the implementer’s conflict sensitivity. Both peacebuilding and human rights work are premised on the political independence of the implementing agency. This has boosted the involvement of civil society during the past twenty years, often structured into NGOs, unions and religious groups. The limited number of donors and the multiplication of sophisticated fundraising actors – and thus increased competition for scarce funding resources – have led to the emergence of a real quandary for planning the development of such activities: should implementers remain small but independent, or should they align with public funding priorities and grow?

Some tools, such as the Clingendael Conflict and Policy Assessment Framework (see Chapter 2, Annex 1, item 9), advise using a cost-benefit analysis to define the true cost of a particular objective in conflict prevention in relation to other objectives. Such analytical tools help decision-making not only regarding project activities at the implementation level, but also on wider programmatic issues, such as aligning with external funding objectives, at all levels of an organisation.