Episode #2: Conflict Sensitivity

In this episode we’re exploring conflict sensitivity with leading peace and conflict advisor within the aid and development sector, Summer Brown. Join us as Summer guides us through the complexities of this hidden art and shares insight from a career forged in some truly challenging locations.

Information about this episode and other industry news and insight can be found here on our blog, the Trubshaw Tribune. If you'd like to be kept up to date about future episodes, please subscribe to our newsletter.

Audio Transcription

[00:00:48] Sean: Hey Summer, thank you so much for joining us on our podcast. How are you doing?

[00:00:52] Summer: I'm doing great. Thank you, thank you for inviting me.

[00:00:55] Sean: Fantastic. Listen Summer, you are one of those people that has just a truckload of experience in some really interesting environments, in some, interesting situations. Tell us a bit about it.

[00:01:08] Summer: So I've been working in the international aid sector my whole career so that's getting on about 25 years now, and it really has been quite global. I've been quite privileged to work all over the world in unfortunate conflict contexts. I would say most of my most recent in-country experience has been in various places in Africa - Nigeria, Burundi, Rwanda. So, a bit all over the place in terms of Africa and then global experience in terms of the advising organisations and, national local donors really quite globally. So, I work a lot at the moment on conflict sensitivity, peace building, the humanitarian development nexus, and the humanitarian development peace building nexus, which is a way to draw together various types of interventions to hopefully deliver a more holistic approach for communities.

I would say one of the things that really drives me is effective and efficient programming. How do we make programmes more effective and efficient and deliver what we need to to communities to improve their world basically? And, how do we do so in a secure, conflict sensitive way.

[00:02:19] Sean: Conflict sensitivity is a topic that, I kind of stumbled upon really, after speaking to you, a few years ago, and it's one of these things that, some of our listeners might not actually know it, but they will intuitively see the need for it. Tell us a bit about conflict sensitivity and peace building and how it relates to development as well.

[00:02:39] Summer: Great. Thank you. That's a really good, question to start off with. I think often when I talk about conflict sensitivity, the feedback I get is, yes, this is just common sense. And I say absolutely, but we're not doing it. So, it, it's a reflective way to think about programming. In a nutshell, conflict sensitivity is primarily made of three components, which do overlap quite a lot in some instances with security and risk management. So the first component is about understanding the context in which the engagement or intervention is going to take place. And you can do that in a number of ways through assessments, through speaking to community members, through speaking to your national partners, to speaking to your national staff. You can do a conflict analysis, a context analysis, economic analysis, gender analysis. There are many analyses that one could do so really it's about choosing which ones will give you the most information that you need to understand the context in which you work. So that's the first component. The second component is about understanding and acting on that knowledge. So how you build programming that takes that knowledge into account. So for instance, if you know there's a regular outbreak around, or environmental issues such as a drought. So, you know, during a drought, the herders might move their cattle in a different direction, you know during the seasonal changes that that might mean outbreak of violence between those who are agriculturalists and the pastoralists. So that's one thing you might take in account into your programming, or another thing you might take into account is you know there will be elections coming up. You know that generally there's violence around those elections. So how do we plan around that? But also it's really about understanding. Me and my role as an organisation - I'm going into that community. That community is going to have an effect on me as a person and my programming, but also me as a person and the programming I'm going to do is going to have an effect on that community. So it's really about that reflective process.

[00:04:38] Sean: While you're talking, it strikes me that, you know, in a slightly separate, parallel industry, say the extractive industry, over the last few years there's been this huge talk about social license to operate and getting consent and they're almost reinventing the wheel, but really what they're talking about it's exactly what you're talking about. You know, this is stuff that is bread and butter for the development industry, but really anyone that is going into community where, I mean, using that example that you had where, and I imagine if it was say a mine in an arid area that is also, practicing pastoral farming, a great big pit that once was a grazing area, just that alone can create, even if they have the best intentions in the world, that can create tremendous amount of conflict arising from that. Sorry, that was just my kind of tangent, but it's really, it's nuts and bolt type of stuff. And as you say, common sense stuff, but not everyone is doing it.

[00:05:34] Summer: No, I think that the point about the extractives is a really important one, because it brings up an issue. If a community doesn't want you there, do you leave? So, conflict sensitivity would say, yes, we should leave. Or we should look at a way of negotiating with the community of what they want out of this relationship. And I think when it comes to specifically extractive companies or businesses, but also international development, if you say you're going to work in a community and then the community doesn't want you there, are you going to back down, are donors going to allow you to back down? Are you going to lose something from backing down? Are your stakeholders going to get annoyed that you're not up. So, I think it brings up a lot of ethical and moral dilemmas that are really important. And if we're thinking about serving the needs of communities, then if they don't want us there, we should probably leave. So even though companies don't often leave. And I mean, you have a number of cases in Latin America where companies don't leave and they cause issues and conflict. So that's a case of where conflict sensitivity asks you on one side to do no harm or to avoid harm to the extent possible. And also build on the positive things that are happening, whether those are intended or unintended, because sometimes the programmes we deliver they do positive work, but it's outside of what we would call the log frame or intended deliverables. It does something totally unintentional but positive. So, are we adaptable enough to build on that? I think from a security perspective, the real overlap is around risk management and how we understand risks and manage them.

[00:07:11] Sean: Fascinating. So, let's look at that whole notion of acceptance and consent of working in the community, and we'll put extractive aside and keep on the development aspect because the principles apply. There's such an ethical and moral dilemma because especially if you're wanting to say, do disaster recovery or aid you should be having a net positive, but if there's a rejection or pushback from the community, that sort of conflict might be, producing a net negative. So on the one hand, I know this is good for you, but the other hand it's a case of you don't want it, is it a case of poor engagement or is it a case that we've just haven't really understood the context or maybe all of the above? What have you seen when you've been engaged in these type of things?

[00:07:58] Summer: So, I think what you've said is quite important. We know this is good for you. We don't actually know. We can't make that assumption. Right? And I think we often make that assumption because we so want to hopefully do good. I think communities are probably pretty smart on how international engagement works. Right? They know they will most likely get something out of it whether that's, let's say travel money to attend a workshop, right? Whether that's seed distribution, whether that's food or non-food items that they get for humanitarian interventions. Personally, I think the more engaged we are about having the discussions with communities throughout the process from the beginning to the end and the flexibility of our programming to deliver what they say they need and what we think they need and finding some kind of balance is extremely important. I don't think we know completely what's right or they know what's completely right. I think it's more of a process where we negotiate and we figure it out together.

Personally, I think our biggest fault is aid delivery is we make assumptions of we understand the needs of communities and that comes from wherever you sit. You know, I can never understand completely what you as a person needs. Therefore, even if I'm in the community, I can never understand the needs of every single person in my community so how do we meet the needs of the whole. And in countries at conflict so South Sudan is a good case. You have communities who have IDPs in their communities, you have maybe returnees coming back from Uganda. You have internally displaced people, and then you have host communities. You have all those people in one community. And so how do we build this holistic programme that we tell the donors we're going to meet all these needs and, and it's going to be wonderful after we leave. How do we actually do that with a limited amount of money and time? It's incredibly difficult. And so, I think the clearer we can be in articulating what we plan to do in a realistic way and our engagement with community at different levels and even what we're not planning to do and having those discussions with communities. I think it would be wonderful if we could go to a community and say, we want to work in agriculture with you. We hope the intended outcomes are these, but we also know the potential downside are these.

[00:10:22] Summer: And really being honest with communities, they know that most programmes are not going to deliver what they say. They know after a programme leaves the government isn't in a place to sustain those developments. If you look at building roads, for example, I think it's something a feeder road delivered by WFP. They know it's at most going to last five years because the government and the communities aren't going to be able to maintain it. Right? So, that's an incredible, one might say, waste of money or a temporary fix, a plaster.

[00:10:49] Sean: That dialogue that, transparent, good points, bad points. Let's look at it, from the reflexivity of the conflict sensitivity aspect. When we had been chatting previously, we mentioned that it's not just about the security of the aid and the giver in it but also of the community. Tell us a bit about that, help us understand what that means when you're talking about the security of the community. Surely we're trying to help them by improving the food security or the medical health security and all of these different things. What do we mean?

[00:11:20] Summer: So, this might be a little bit off tangent to your point, but it is about security. So you have a large project and it has national level partners. Right? What we see often in a budget is that most of the security money goes to the international partner and does not actually get to the national partner who's operating in communities. So there's a huge imbalance between protecting our international organisation versus protecting our national partners. In communities that have national organisations or local organisations working in them, that means their staff are at risk when we send them into different areas that have outbreaks of conflict frequently, banditry on the roads, loads of security issues. And so I also think when we ask in our programme’s community beneficiaries to work with one another. These are people who have had grievances with one another, perhaps for decades, right? Maybe even more than decades ethnic conflict. What, what have you, and I think asking them to reconcile their differences is a big ask.

I'm American, some of my family members may have voted for Trump and I may not have voted for Trump and I couldn't talk to them about it. Right. That's not a genocide. I couldn't talk. And I'm asking someone who killed their family by their neighbours to reconcile like us. That's crazy. So we bring them together. We bring them together, asking them to do what we're not able to do ourselves. That creates incredible security risks for those people. If something goes wrong. And I think with peace building specifically, it's incredibly sensitive work and peace building programming is sometimes three years, rarely five years. So we're asking for this level of societal change, which is prone to conflict and violent conflict. I think we like to say that that conflict can be quite useful for bringing points to the fore and being able to discuss things. Obviously we want to avoid violent conflict.

I also think, let's say you have an education programme and it's helping, let's say girls and not helping boys. So what does that do? That creates this conflict of very vulnerable people, regardless of their sex or gender and, you're building a system that is not whole. So another example was in Rwanda. This is a while ago now. An education programme was providing extra support to the victims of the genocide, the children of the victims of the genocide. So these children had not lived through genocide. Their parents had, and you have actually similar situations in Northern Ireland. And so what you did is you created this discrepancy and this anger between children who had never lived through the genocide. Because one group was getting one thing and the other wasn't and they didn't really understand why one group was being helped and not the other, right. Except for this history of genocide. And that I would say was a huge conflict sensitivity issue. Luckily those implementers and the donors realized that after, you know, three or four years, that that was happening and were able to balance the scales a bit and provide support to both sides. So it's a conflict issue. If you look even at IDP camps or refugee camps, and then the host communities, there is this tension as potentially violent outbreaks that happen because one group is getting something that looks to be more than another group. And there's not this understanding about why one group is getting something and the other group not. So I think when we talk about security and risk management, we have to look at those really tough issues of how we're choosing our beneficiaries and how we're communicating why we've chosen those beneficiaries, because that jealousy and envy of the other is I think, a very human characteristic that we do not want to necessarily build on or make worse.

[00:15:16] Sean: No. Absolutely. not only is that fascinating, but that's complex and it's such a moving target. I guess the question I have then is, if we're starting from the bottom up, how well is the industry structured? How well are donors placed to be able to take this into account, because it's almost as though this is done post fact, you know? Okay, well, we've designed a programme now we're going to go in, oops, it's South Sudan, my goodness such a violent place. I think I've heard of something called sick complex sensitivity. Yeah, let's bring these people in. But really should this not be at the forefront of the donor's mind and should they not also be thinking about their own conflict sensitivity or building that reflexivity into their programmatic plans as well? Is this a thing? What is it like these days?

[00:16:03] Summer: I think it is a thing. The good thing is the concept is more well-known than it was, let's say five, even 10 years ago. So there is this understanding of what it is. I think when you mix donor funding with politics and aid it's usually problematic. Right? For instance, the UK government, they massively cut their aid budget. They cut programmes midway through. And, personally, I think that's unethical. They had already delivered contracts and then they reneged on them putting loads of people and beneficiaries at risk, national organisations at risk, the people who really need that funding and support at risk. And so, that was absolutely not conflict sensitive but that was driven by politics.

I also think when you have aid budgets, donor aid budgets tied to political cycles, I don't think that works for long-term development. I also think the focus on short term humanitarian relief, while absolutely important and necessary, I think it needs to also think about long-term sustainability and how that transition from humanitarian to development could work knowing that you're going to go back and forth in these days, because most conflicts are unfortunately protracted and last for a very long time. So the way the aid system is currently set up is not as effective as it could be. That said there are many governments trying to think about how they use more adaptive approaches to programming. So how they can go from short term to long term programming under one financial umbrella. I think they're probably struggling with it because they usually have two different departments and two different budgets. So you have the emergency relief budget and then the long term development budget.

[00:17:45] Sean: Yeah. Interesting. I mean, it's easy to poke holes, but you know, this is inherently complex topic, that a lot of smart people are working at, and invariably you're going to get things right and you're going to get things wrong as well. So if we take it down a notch then at the country level, programmatic level, let's look at something like say South Sudan because it's such a volatile place and they use a lot of subcontractors, local national operators there. What have you seen when you've needed to do work and to bring organisations along to be able to understand conflict sensitivity and build it into their programmatic planning? What have you needed to work on with programme leaders?

[00:18:22] Summer: I think there's two sides or at least two sides. So one is the international organisation who oversees the full contract, right? There are lots of communication and transparency needs to take forth with national partners. I think that's one area that always needs attention because we are so pushed to deliver that we often lose track of all the pieces or communicating with all the pieces of the puzzle. So all the partners. And I just think that's incredibly complex as you've pointed out. It's not easy and something that always needs attention. And I think something that always, well, it's useful to have an outsider saying, hey, did you think about this? Hey, did you think about that? As a reflection point. I think with national organisations, who are the implementers of many international projects, what really needs to happen is just an open discussion about the context. What issues are they seeing? And just making sure that there's a process in place for reviewing the context, the contextual changes, the risks.

Planning around those risks and how they think about it regularly. For me, one of the most important things about making sure conflict sensitivity is taken forward is ensuring that there's regular discussions happening in teams, because what I've seen when we've done a context analysis or done various context exercises, stakeholder mappings, for instance, is that every person has loads of information in their head. Right. It's in their head, but they're not necessarily discussing it as a team or as a consortium. It's just in their head. And that's how they operate day to day. And so taking it out of the head into a discussion point makes me understand that, oh, you've had this issue. Let's say you've had issues entering X community because it's held by the gorillas, for instance, but I found a way around that because in my instance, I've been able to negotiate a neutral agreement that we can enter as long as we do not have the government with us. So there's all these little tricks or work arounds that I think most people have found in trying to deliver the day to day. And So, once you share those tricks, I think that makes a programme stronger.

[00:20:36] Sean: So, are you saying that that communication and collaboration within organisations within an implementing partner, or also between implementing partners, because often there's more than one implementing partner.

[00:20:47] Summer: Yeah. So that's, that's where I think it gets tricky because I think it needs to be with all the pieces, but you can never do all the pieces. Right. Because it's so complex, as you've pointed out, between implementing partners. Absolutely. In the same context between different organisations, that's where your cluster systems come in. But I think in cluster systems, you often have the international voice coming out more strongly because they're more confident or they just feel they have more authority over national organisations. That's not across the board, but in general you have this timid approached by many national organisations because they don't necessarily feel they have the power to push back because they don't want to lose the funding. And I think that set a key issue around the power imbalance between international and nationals. Nationals don't want to push back. They know there's another national partner that might deliver. So if they push too hard there's that fear that they will lose their livelihood. Right? They will lose their organisation's livelihood because they haven't delivered what the international donor has asked them to deliver. And so that for me is a conflict sensitivity issue and I think it hinders a lot of the learning that could be happening across the board in terms of how projects are being implemented in a conflict sensitive way and how programmes are managing risk.

[00:22:03] Sean: So really, if organisations approach conflict sensitivity, and security in a deliberate way, they could potentially force their subcontractors to be risk seeking, to take on more risk than they would normally take on purely because they don't have a mechanism to communicate what they're seeing or share work arounds and fixes with other parts of the organisation. So is it realistic to say to an implementing partner, you need to do this, you need to do that? I mean, what about resources and institutionalizing practices? I mean, this is kind of difficult stuff to do sometimes.

[00:22:39] Summer: Yeah, that's a very good point. So having recently been in South Sudan doing interviews for my PhD research, what I found is in most implementing partners, I would actually call them subcontractors, they're not partners. They're subcontractors. They're called partners because that's what the donor wants to hear. That's what we'd like up to think. That they're really partners. Right. But they're delivering on a contract and in some cases, there could be more sharing and learning as a partnership, as one would imagine a more equitable partnership. I forgot your question though,

[00:23:09] Sean: Sometimes I do that too. It was about is it realistic to assume that these organisations can just organically do it themselves?

[00:23:24] Summer: Yeah, No, I don't think so. I think they need support. They need clarity on what they need to do and how they need to do it. Some organisations obviously across the board are stronger than others. What I've seen a number of times in various countries is that the international donors or the international organisations and their staff are not, even if their local staff are, not allowed to go to a certain area.

What do they do? They send their national partner without the security support. Without having a proper security plan in place. So I think this is a big issue. In my opinion, one should not ask someone else to do something without the proper resources, if they're not willing to do it themselves. It's I mean, what, it seems quite obvious, right?

[00:24:07] Sean: Mind blowing. Yeah, no, absolutely, But I mean, so chatting to you and people, I kind of get the sense that it's almost a bit of a false economy where you think that, okay, well, I don't have enough money to resource the security management and the conflict sensitivity management of this so I'm only going to provide, you know, a small budget for it or no budget for it, but really it's a false economy because your delivery anecdotally drops and anecdotally your incidence rates increase. And so you're paying for it somewhere but what we are saying is that if you're forward thinking, you'd be doing this really right from the start and kind of resourcing and giving a budget to your subcontractors for this as well. How much of this is really a duty of care as well?

[00:24:51] Summer: Oh, I think it is absolutely a duty of care. I think it's a necessary duty of care. The ideal would be that people understand conflict sensitivity and risk management and security and are just doing it. It's embedded. You essentially, for us, we would not have a job because people were already doing it. But there isn't this. And because it is something outside of the box of project delivery, I mean, we always say it's harder to prove that we've avoided a conflict or a situation versus, you know, one has happened. So it's really hard to prove our effectiveness. Impossible, in fact, to prove that we've prevented a conflict. So I think that's part of the problem of the false economy that we've created. I mean, on, on the upside, a lot of organisations know that this is important. And are working towards improving on it, regardless of how small the budget actually is to do it. They know it's important. They've seen how it can help. They see how it can build staff and partner capacity. And for me, every time I speak to somebody about risk management, security, conflict sensitivity as a whole, it's about improving awareness of the situation they're going into. And I think baseline for me, that has to be enough. and if it's just one person, you know, one person is better than zero. It's a slow, slow process. An essential one and with lots of complexities and flaws, but it's like international aid, right, we have to keep trying.

[00:26:17] Sean: Yeah, absolutely. Step by step standing on the shoulders of others.

Summer, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your input. I found that absolutely fascinating. and I suspect that we'll have several more chats in the months and years ahead. But just a wealth of knowledge and experience there so thank you so much for joining us.

[00:26:36] Summer: Thank you so much, Sean.