Age and Gender-Sensitive Conflict and Peace Analysis (CPA)
This guide provides a framework to design and implement a WASH relevant conflict and peace analysis (CPA).
Purpose
This guide provides a framework to design and implement a WASH relevant conflict and peace analysis (CPA). It complements UNICEF’s Peacebuilding Programming Framework (Step 1 – Designing and implementing an age and gender sensitive Conflict and Peace Analysis), which outlines the overall approach to a mandate-relevant CPA, as well as UNICEF’s Guide to Conflict Analysis. It outlines a WASH-centred process and set of tools to support data gathering and analysis by UNICEF WASH Teams and partners, including specific guidance for adolescent and youth participation that integrates a gender and age sensitive lens.
This guide identifies opportunities to leverage existing and established UNICEF processes and tools typically available to WASH teams and implementing partners at country and field office levels to collect and/or triangulate WASH-relevant conflict data to facilitate integration of the findings into programming. The focus of this guide is very much on the practical, to encourage and equip WASH staff and partners to carry out and/or lead the planning, design, and implementation of a CPA to support their work. This Guide includes a Toolkit with four practical tools to support the process of planning, designing, and implementing a CPA.
“At the center of any organization’s ability to be conflict sensitive is a robust conflict analysis carried out at the level of program implementation, and the ability to adapt programs and practices accordingly. In the WASH sector this weakness is particularly pronounced as analysis is approached from a very technical engineering standpoint that does not systematically take into account socio-political dimensions. This lack of analysis – formal and more informal – is a major impediment to improving the uptake of conflict-sensitivity within country programs.”
Interpeace for UNICEF: ‘Evaluative Review of UNICEF’s Approaches to Peacebuilding, Social Cohesion, and Conflict‑sensitivity’ (Internal), 2020, p. 11
UNICEF-relevant age and gender sensitive conflict and peace analysis (CPA)
CPA is the systematic study of the causes, actors, and dynamics of conflict and peace. For UNICEF, a CPA focuses on the social dimensions of conflict, the impacts of conflict on children and young people as well as their particular role in conflict and peace, protection issues, and equitable access to social services. A principled approach places gender, age and conflict sensitivity at the core of the analysis process to uphold a ‘do no harm’ approach. Such an approach also highlights opportunities to use the enquiry to begin to ‘do more good’ or adopt peacebuilding approaches, framing the conflict and peace analysis as an integral part of any intervention it seeks to inform.
A CPA serves two overarching and strategic purposes in UNICEF supported programming:
- To ensure that the design and implementation of programmes do not exacerbate conflict dynamics, through a conflict-sensitivity lens (‘Do No Harm’).
- To identify opportunities for specific peacebuilding interventions that can increase capacities (at the national, community and individual levels) to transition out of fragility, build social cohesion, reduce violent relapses, and achieve better and more sustainable results for children (‘Do More Good’).
Resource boxThe legal dimensions of conflict UNICEF and its partners intervene in diverse conflict affected contexts where different types of conflict interact with WASH in relevant ways – from highly localized disputes between communities around access to WASH services or management of water resources, to international armed conflict where attacks against water infrastructure or transboundary water issues are salient. Developing and implementing effective programming in fragile and conflict-affected contexts (FCCs) may require an understanding of the relevant and applicable legal framework to identify entry points for interventions to protect and promote the rights of children to WASH. It is beyond the scope of UNICEF staff and partners or indeed this Guide to provide a legal framework to analyse conflict, but engaging legal expertise and/or sector partners such as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will ensure that this important dimension of conflict is adequately captured in a CPA. Additional resources on the legal dimensions of conflict and WASH can be found here: Geneva Water Hub - The Geneva List of Principles on the Protection of Water Infrastructure |
WASH-relevant age and gender sensitive conflict and peace analysis (CPA)
‘Do More Good’ through a WASH CPA
Participants in a CPA could be engaged during programme implementation through a platform where conflict issues and interactions with the WASH intervention can be collaboratively discussed and addressed. The participants can become a powerful ‘peacebuilding asset’ that can be engaged to support the design and implementation of a programme.
A CPA is an integral component of any intervention it seeks to inform, and as such, it can be leveraged to begin to build the foundations of a conflict sensitive and peacebuilding intervention. The implementation of the analysis (e.g. as part of a needs/context assessment) may be the first meaningful interaction between programme staff and
partners, and the communities participating in a given intervention. A well-designed and carefully implemented participatory CPA can build a positive foundation for a programme by strengthening trust and relationships with key stakeholders around issues of great importance to the lives of those affected by conflict. In some cases, the participation in the analysis of key groups in a community may provide opportunities for empowerment and inclusion – this must be carefully managed and potentially leveraged to promote the agency of key constituencies e.g. children, adolescents, youth, women, minority groups. These are valuable opportunities to ‘Do More Good’ that can already be identified and actively pursued through the CPA process, supported by the following key considerations:
- Conflict and peace analysis must be conflict sensitive and not fuel existing or new conflicts.
- It must be gender sensitive and actively promote the inclusion and meaningful participation of women and girls to ensure their perspectives and experiences of conflict are captured in the analysis.
- It must be age sensitive and actively promote the inclusion and meaningful participation of children, adolescents, and young people to ensure their perspectives and experiences of conflict are captured in the analysis.
- It must be participatory and inclusive to ensure it captures diverse perspectives and experiences of conflict amongst targeted communities, including minority groups
- It must be accountable to affected and engaged populations – build in opportunities to present, validate, and share the findings with participants so they can benefit from their engagement.
The below links provide the steps to implement an age and gender sensitive conflict and peace analysis, provide suggestions and resources to support the decision-making for the development and implementation of a CPA, and is structured around the ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘how’, of such a process.
Each of the six sections explore options and decision-making pathways available to staff, illustrate relevant actions with examples of existing and emerging practices in the field, and provide links to relevant resources.
