How can post-conflict needs assessments (PCNAs) be enhanced? Generally, PCNAs are jointly carried out by the UN and the World Bank, sometimes in conjunction with other key donor agencies. This guide aims to support current efforts among these agencies to further enhance their engagement in the PCNA by learning from available experience. It draws strongly on material from recent needs assessments in Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Liberia.
Over the last decade, donors have attributed increasing importance to providing timely and substantive support to post-conflict recovery and peace building. A large part of this assistance is mobilised via international reconstruction conferences, at which donors make pledges based on an overall assessment of post-conflict recovery needs. Thus, the post-conflict needs assessment (PCNA) has recently become a key entry point for conceptualising, negotiating and financing post-conflict recovery strategies.
PCNAs are complex multi-stakeholder processes, which routinely take place under extreme time constraints.
This guide treats the PCNA both as a methodology and a process:
- As a methodology, the PCNA involves the technical assessment of recovery needs and development of a post-conflict transition strategy.
- As a process of consultation, negotiation and analysis, the PCNA provides a platform for national and international actors to agree on joint priorities, define their commitments and prepare their activities.
This guide aims to help make PCNAs more effective by systematising the analysis and suggesting more efficient processes. In particular, it contributes to:
- The definition of common minimum standards regarding quality, reliability and inclusiveness of the assessment.
- A fast-track professional response by the international community when recovery planning becomes feasible.
- Lowering the costs of PCNAs by promoting systematisation and standardisation.
In terms of value added, the following results and impacts can be expected from a PCNA of the type proposed in this guide:
- Provides donors, national authorities, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other stakeholders, with a comprehensive and fairly objective estimate of needs.
- High international visibility resulting in more substantial financial pledges for recovery and reconstruction.
- International consensus on recovery priorities leading to less program overlap and more coherence between donors.
- Early focus on the roots of the conflict and measures to help overcome them in the context of recovery and reconstruction.
- Increased political momentum and support for the peace process and increased legitimacy of the national authorities (conflict parties).
- Establishment of a conceptual basis for an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP), as well as World Bank and UN country strategies.
