Conflict sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peace building

Next: 6.3 External policy drivers and commitments

6.2 Advocacy and awareness raising

Conflict sensitivity is an approach that different organisations will adopt for a variety of different reasons, depending on their organisational culture. But it is important to ensure that it is not relegated to a set of “sterile and tokenistic ‘tools’, useful to make superficial adjustments rather than profound, long-lasting transformations.”³

Awareness raising seeks to build support for mainstreaming by helping other organisations, or other parts of one’s own organisation, to experience a conflict-sensitive approach and understand how it relates to them. All the tools and processes mentioned in this chapter will support awareness raising by helping staff answer questions such as:

what is the organisation’s objective?
how should the organisation interact with the conflict dynamics?
what processes and procedures support the organisation’s actions?
to whom is the organisation accountable?

Box 8 below provides an example from Kenya on one approach to raising awareness.

Box 8: Awareness raising with district commissioners in Kenya
The conflict-sensitive approaches programme, in collaboration with the Office of the President, supported and facilitated a Kenyan district commissioners’ workshop on conflict-sensitive approaches to development. The workshop, which was organised by Africa Peace Forum, aimed to introduce and raise awareness on conflict-sensitive approaches to development, humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding work among 86 Kenyan district commissioners. As civil servants representing the government at the local level, district commissioners play an instrumental role in the implementation of development and peacebuilding programmes, and were therefore identified as a key audience for institutional awareness raising. Although the workshop focused on raising awareness at the district level, good linkages were established with the Office of the President which provided participants as well as being co-organiser. The workshop introduced the tools and concepts of conflict analysis to the participants and presented them with ways of incorporating conflict analysis into programming and project cycles. The discussions drew on the district commissioners’ experiences in identifying the root causes of conflicts in their areas, and the stakeholders involved. These discussions gave participants the opportunity to share experiences of successes and failures. They expressed great interest in following up the workshop with more targeted training, and including additional districts.

In contrast to awareness raising, advocacy is used to effect a specific action or response based on a specific argument. Like awareness raising, advocacy is often conducted with individuals or organisations that do not yet support a conflict-sensitive approach.

Awareness raising and advocacy can be most effective when used together to promote mainstreaming of conflict sensitivity. One principle of both advocacy and awareness raising is that if people are to support an approach, it needs to be built on their language and experiences (and those of their organisation) so they are able to see its relevance to their work. When first introduced to conflict sensitivity individuals or organisations are often hostile for fear that it just means more work for them. People tend to be much more receptive when they understand how conflict sensitivity can be used to increase the sustainability and impact of their existing and future initiatives.

Next: 6.3 External policy drivers and commitments