Conflict sensitivity
This means the ability of your organisation to:

• understand the context in which you operate;
• understand the interaction between your intervention and the context; and
• act upon the understanding of this interaction, in order to avoid negative impacts and maximise positive impacts.

Note: the word ‘context’ is used rather than ‘conflict’ to make the point that all socio-economic and political tensions, root causes and structural factors are relevant to conflict sensitivity because they all have the potential to become violent. ‘Conflict’ is sometimes erroneously confused with macro-political violence between two warring parties (as with a civil war between a national government and a non-state actor).

Context
This refers to the operating environment, which ranges from the micro to the macro level (eg community, district / province / region, country, neighbouring countries). For the purposes of this Resource Pack, context means a geographic or social environment where conflict exists (see Introduction for a description of the various elements in the conflict spectrum). It comprises actors, causes, profile and dynamics.

Sectoral approaches
Sectoral approaches involve a partnership between donors and governments based on a government-led national poverty reduction framework, within which there are programme priorities for specific sectors (eg health, education). Donor assistance aims at helping the government to improve its performance generally, or the performance of a specific sector or sectors.