The handbook builds from on-going conversations and collaborations with a wide range of friends and colleagues around the world. It is written for individuals, communities and organisations that are working in, or planning to work in, areas affected by violent conflict (or that are at risk of becoming violent). It has been written to help practitioners “do” an assessment that: (i) identifies and assesses the ways in which the peace and conflict environment may affect an initiative or project; and (ii) identifies and assesses the ways in which an initiative or project may affect the peace and conflict environment. The process is as applicable for pre-initiative review as for monitoring impacts/relationships during the course of an initiative.
This handbook was designed for partners involved in PEACE III (the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Region of Ireland). However, it may be used in different ways by different kinds of stakeholders.
Key Findings:
PCIA is not about introducing or imposing foreign or abstract peacebuilding techniques, it is about identifying, supporting, and most importantly, systematising existing peace and conflict-sensitive practices that have grown from very specific conditions (social, political, economic, military, organisational and so on).
- PCIA is a process–not a tool. While some people would like a ‘PCIA Tool Kit’ that can be applied everywhere to fix everything, PCIA will not make a difference unless it challenges and changes the way work is done in conflict zones. PCIA challenges practitioners to rethink all of their work in areas prone to violent conflict.
- PCIA helps us to understand the specific rather than the general. PCIA helps to show when, why and how a particular factor in a particular situation is likely to contribute to peace or violent conflict. As importantly, PCIA helps practitioners to change initiatives to improve the likelihood that they achieve both their developmental impacts and peacebuilding impacts. Indeed, often reaching development goals is dependent upon a positive peacebuilding impact.
- PCIA is not static. PCIA is an on-going and dynamic approach taken before, during, and after a particular intervention in a conflict-prone region.
- PCIA needs to be transparent, shared, and people-centred. The real experts of PCIA are the people living in conflict zones. If they are not centrally involved in peace and conflict analysis and interpretation, then the exercise will fail, or worse, will disempower communities—that is, it will remove them from decisions that fundamentally affect their lives.
- It is all about ownership, control and capacity. Undertaking PCIA is a sensitive and potentially conflict-generating exercise—and this is when it is done properly! However, to ensure that any PCIA initiative will have a positive peacebuilding and developmental impact, it only needs to be able to answer “yes” to the following two questions: (1) Is the initiative increasing the capacities of participants—particularly those on the ground to (a) identify the real and potential peace and conflict impacts of an intervention; and (b) formulate and implement their own solutions non-violently and effectively? (2) Is the initiative built on a partnership that leads towards the genuine ownership by partners on the ground?
- Building peace includes ‘un-building’ the structures of violence. Just as the removal of the structures of violence does not automatically bring peace, neither does the simple adding (or strengthening) of peace capacities automatically stop violence. For this reason, peacebuilders must strategically consider how to un-build the structures of violence as well as to build the capacities for peace.
- Neither Development nor peacebuilding on their own will magically create peace. Development and peacebuilding activities can make important positive contributions to peace and unity (or they can increase existing tensions). However, on their own they will not create peace. Full, genuine and lasting peace requires substantive and on-going efforts by a wide range of actors (local, national, regional, international) in a broad range of activities (military, trade, development and humanitarian assistance, diplomatic, and so on).
- Haste makes waste – PCIA takes time. Despite the time pressures that always affect the planning and implementation of a project or initiative, there needs to be time for genuine dialogue, learning and capacity-building. A rushed PCIA is a doubtful PCIA.
