Local Conflict Assessment

The fields of conflict analysis, management, resolution, prevention and transformation continue to expand beyond NGOs into university departments, religious organizations, media professionals and governments. In the years since 2001, governments around the world are developing conflict assessment frameworks to complement their other needs assessment and intelligence gathering processes. This handbook assists planners from a variety of different sectors to design better programs to support peace and security. The handbook contains 1) conflict assessment exercises; 2) self-assessment exercises; and 3) peacebuilding planning frameworks. Conflict assessment exercises help to map the factors increasing conflict and the factors supporting peace. Self-assessment exercises help narrow priorities and assess abilities of those planning peacebuilding. Peacebuilding frameworks offer a range of program options. Through its synthesis of a wide range of conceptual frameworks into a convenient and logical framework useful for practitioners such as NGOs developing projects, journalists wanting to write conflict-sensitive stories, or government/military agencies designing large scale efforts, this handbook is an essential scholarly and practical tool for the study and implementation of peacebuilding efforts.

Based on the swisspeace annual conference 2012, the publication examines the delicate balance between external interventions and locally-led initiatives. It addresses the question of what “local” means in the peacebuilding and development context; which actors on the ground actually represent the local level and how external actors choose their partners from amongst them. Moreover, it examines how local ownership - emerging as key criteria for any external intervention - is constituted: does this concept only imply local participation or is local control from the outset a must? Finally, it assesses the potential of locally-led initiatives and local conflict resolution mechanisms and their interaction with external interventions. Several authors provide insights on these questions and nuance our thinking about both local ownership and external interventions. As such, the publication aims to encourage critical reflections on this topical debate in peacebuilding and development.

"The notion of empowerment has been more often deductively claimed than carefully defined or inductively assessed by development scholars and practitioners alike. The authors define and assess empowerment through an in-depth examination of the extent to which a large community development project in rural Indonesia empowers participants (especially members of marginalized groups) through building their capacity to manage local conflict. Although the project induces conflict through its deployment of a competitive bidding process, the authors argue that, when well implemented, it can also enable otherwise unequal groups to more peacefully, equitably, and effectively engage one another. Using a mixed methods approach, they compare cases from otherwise similar treatment and control villages to shed light on the chief components of villagers' capacity to manage local conflict ..."--Page 2 of cover.

The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate further. Recent studies on large-scale quot;headlinequot; conflicts have tended to exclude the systematic consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that. Barron, Kaiser, and Pradhan evaluate a unique dataset compiled by the Indonesian government, the periodic Village Potential Statistics (PODES), which seeks to map conflict across all of Indonesia's 69,000 villages/neighborhoods. The data confirm that conflict is prevalent beyond well-publicized quot;conflict regions,quot; and that it can be observed across the archipelago. The data report largely violent conflict in 7.1 percent of Indonesia's lowest administrative tier (rural desa and urban kelurahan). Integrating examples from qualitative fieldwork, the authors assess issues in the measurement of local conflict for quantitative analysis, and adopt an empirical framework to examine potential associations with poverty, inequality, shocks, ethnic and religious diversity/inequality, and community-level associational and security arrangements. The quantitative analysis shows positive correlations between local conflict and unemployment, inequality, natural disasters, changes in sources of incomes, and clustering of ethnic groups within villages. The institutional variables indicate that the presence of places of worship is associated with less conflict, while the presence of religious groups and traditional culture (adat) institutions are associated with conflict. The authors conclude by suggesting future areas of research, notably on the role of group inequality and inference, and suggest ways to improve the measurement of conflict in the village census.This paper - a product of the Public Sector Governance Division, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network - is part of a larger effort in the network to evaluate decentralized/local governance and service delivery.

The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate further. Recent studies on large-scale "headline" conflicts have tended to exclude the systematic consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that. We evaluate a unique dataset compiled by the Indonesian government, the periodic Village Potential Statistics (PODES), which seeks to map conflict across all of Indonesia's 69,000 villages/neighborhoods. The data confirm that conflict is prevalent beyond well publicized "conflict regions," and that it can be observed across the archipelago. The data report largely violent conflict in 7.1 percent of Indonesia's lowest administrative tier (rural desa and urban kelurahan). Integrating examples from qualitative fieldwork, we assess issues in the measurement of local conflict for quantitative analysis, and adopt an empirical framework to examine potential associations with poverty, inequality, shocks, ethnic and religious diversity/inequality, and community-level associational and security arrangements. The quantitative analysis shows positive correlations between local conflict and unemployment, inequality, natural disasters, changes in sources of incomes, and clustering of ethnic groups within villages. The institutional variables indicate that the presence of places of worship is associated with less conflict, while the presence of religious groups and traditional culture (adat) institutions are associated with conflict. We conclude by suggesting future areas of research, notably on the role of group inequality and inference, and suggest ways to improve the measurement of conflict in the village census.

Conflicts of interest in both the public and private sectors have become a major matter of public concern world-wide. The OECD Guidelines define a conflict of interest as occurring when a public official has private-capacity interests which could improperly influence the performance of their official duties and responsibilities. However, identifying a specific conflict of interest in practice can be difficult. And resolving the conflicting interests appropriately in a particular case is something that most people find even more challenging. The Toolkit focuses on specific techniques, resources and strategies for: Identifying, managing and preventing conflict-of-interest situations more effectively; and Increasing integrity in official decision-making, which might be compromised by a conflict of interest. This Toolkit provides non-technical, practical help to enable officials to recognise problematic situations and help them to ensure that integrity and reputation are not compromised. The tools themselves are provided in generic form. They are based on examples of sound conflict-of-interest policy and practice drawn from various OECD member and non-member countries. They have been designed for adaptation to suit countries with different legal and administrative systems. FURTHER READING: Managing Conflict of Interest in the Public Service: OECD Guidelines and Country Experiences