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Topic Centre for Civil Conflict Management South Asia

[overview] [Conflict sensitive project management] [Practice toolkit for conflict transformation]

Overview

The Topic Centre for Civil Conflict Management South Asia was initiated as a project of the regional cooperation programme South Asia in 2003. The centre is part of FES’s effort to strengthen crisis prevention and conflict transformation within its work and to integrate conflict sensitivity as a key-standard its political cooperation programmes. The objective of the centre is threefold:

First, in cooperation with the FES offices in South Asia, the centre supports the development of methods and instruments for conflict analysis, conflict sensitive planning and conflict related impact monitoring. Its work fosters an integrated, systematic and practice-oriented approach to conflict sensitive project management.

Second, the centre is continuously identifying and validating FES’s experience in conflict transformation in South Asia with the aim of defining lessons learnt and good practices. In order to capitalise on past experience, it is currently developing a practice toolkit for civil conflict transformation in socio-political cooperation.

Third, the centre makes instruments and knowledge in its area of competence accessible to FES offices and its partners and assists the application of instruments in practice. Moreover, it links FES cooperation offices with important discussions and actors in this field.

The centre collaborates closely with the FES in-house Working Group on Crisis Prevention and Civic Conflict Management through which it is linked to the Working Group on Development and Peace (FriEnt) in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).Other Important partners includes Swiss Peace Foundation, the Berghof Research center for constructive conflict management, conflict prevention partnership and GTZ crisis prevention.

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Conflict sensitive project management

In order to make conflict sensitivity a key-standard of its project cycle management, FES developed two manuals which explain the necessary processes and instruments that need to be applied from the initial planning phase to the evaluation of a project.

The Manual for Conflict Analysis explains the necessary process and activities from the planning stage of a conflict analysis to its implementation and to the development of options for intervention. Conflict analysis is the starting point for any project aiming at conflict transformation and peacebuilding and it builds the basis for the conflict sensitive planning of projects working in conflict zones. Conflict analysis is the systematic study of the nature and causes of a conflict, of the actors involved and of conflict lines and dynamics. Furthermore, a conflict analysis determines escalating factors and triggers as well as existing potential for conflict transfor­mation and peacebuilding. It defines peacebuilding needs, identifies relevant sectors and areas for intervention and potential partners.

The manual for conflict related impact monitoring is available in German.

The Manual for Conflict Related Impact Monitoring encompasses the conflict sensitive planning, conflict monitoring and conflict related impact monitoring of projects. This manual is now used in a test phase in FES programmes in Afghanistan and Pakistan and will be revised up to 2006.

Besides the regular examination of actual outcomes during the implementation of an intervention, monitoring of projects which are working in conflict zones needs to focus on the interaction between the intervention and the conflict context. Conflict sensitive monitoring always consists of two components: conflict monitoring and conflict related impact monitoring of an intervention. While the conflict monitoring examines the changes in the conflict context during a given period, the conflict related impact monitoring tries to attribute observed outcomes and impacts of a project to these changes. Based on this analysis, the relevance of the project strategy can be assessed and implementation activities adjusted if necessary.

The Manual for Conflict analysis is available in German and English.

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Practice toolkit for conflict transformation

In 2005, the topic centre systematically collected and analysed existing experience in conflict transformation in FES’s projects in Sri Lanka and Nepal. In these countries, FES is executing conflict transformation projects since the late 1990s and disposes of a lot of expertise in this field.

As a result, the topic centre produced a toolkit with the aim to provide practical support to the design and implementation of FES-projects working in conflict zones. The toolkit gives introductions to relevant steps in the conflict sensitive management of projects, it shares good practices and lessons learnt from FES-projects and provides direct links to all instruments developed by the FES Working Group on Civil Conflict Management. To support its applicability, the structure of the toolkit follows the classical project cycle.

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