So the CHS, the Core Humanitarian Standards for Quality and Accountability is really essential to how we improve our quality effectiveness of the aid delivery to better serve the people affected by crisis. There's two ways that I would highlight this. The Core Humanitarian Standard itself has nine commitments it makes to affected people. So the first point I want to make is really that the commitment of the Core Humanitarian Standard is to the effected people themselves. The ideal of the Core Humanitarian Standard is that the people themselves know what quality or accountability they have in the aid that they receive and can start to turn that wave of holding organizations to account to their delivery. I think the ultimate aim is that we all are putting the people affected really at the center of our work. This is something that we talk about, but the CHS, the Core Humanitarian Standard really turns that into commitments that organizations are making to the people. So I think this CHS is really important in the divide between disaster, conflict, where we get the multiple of different effects that are making people vulnerable, because what it does is it puts the person at the center. That's a term that's been maybe overused, but if you start to focus in on the person rather than the response and many of the issues that they're facing are the same, whether it's from the conflict or whether it's from the disaster, they've just been felt in a different way by that person. But ultimately, what we want is that person has the means of getting back on their feet better and quicker, that the response is localized, or that person is treated with respect and dignity. Those are what the Core Humanitarian Standard is setting out in its commitments. So by putting the person and then trying to work out what our response should be, in some ways, it doesn't matter whether it's a conflict or whether it's a natural disaster if you put the person at the center. One conflict substantive tool that we can share is the conflict tree analysis. It's a really powerful tool to explore all situations perceived to lead to conflict, not only to observe which are the situations, but also the causes and effect that the situation may have. So in simple, for example, the root of the tree will symbolize the causes, and the branches will symbolize how this conflict may generate different impacts. I remember how disaster risk reduction project was about the river floods and project was about the construction of protection walls. Before the implementation of the project, this tool was used to analyze all the possible sources of conflict but also because where the wall was about to be built at, it might affect also the amount of water available for other communities by the end of the river or in other parts of the river. So this tool was quite effective to really understand all the possible conflicts that may arise, but it's also interesting that this tool in this sense not only allows you to understand which are the possible conflicts, also to understand or to explore the conflict already present in the project, around the project, or in the place of what the project will be implemented. We think that it's very important to use do no harm policy. Cordaid has developed such a policy, and it includes three key elements. First, the important is that you know the context in which you operate, the second one is that you know the impact of your program and the relation of your program in that context, and the third element is then to ensure that your program will not have negative impact on that context. So how do you go about understanding the context? How do you do that practically? We have developed a tool for conflict risk analysis to really understand the context according to the conflict and fragility issues, and that conflict risk analysis contains different elements to study. One element is really to know what type of conflict you talk about, what level of conflict, and other issue is to know the actors, so which are the key stakeholders involved in the conflict? Third element is to know the causes of the conflict which can be political, economic, or otherwise, and the fourth is to analyze the trends of the conflict over time. Then when you have all that information, you can make an analysis of the risk of the conflict and then adjust your programming according to the risks that you see. Yeah. Okay, you give us one concrete example of how you use these tools in the field? By now Cordaid is piloting this conflict risk analysis tool in Northwest Uganda, where you have a situation of South Sudanese refugees coming to settle there, and there are some issues with the host communities. So by analyzing those issues, we can ensure that our program will really target those issues and not make conflicts worse between host communities and refugees, and even ensure there are good relationships, so you also work on conflict prevention. Yeah, my dearer program is mostly a very long-term program. So you have to really look into other things that are related to how you do your disaster risk reduction. There are so many underlying issues when you look at disaster risk reduction. One of them is issues on let's say poverty. These communities, what kind of socioeconomic status of this community, you have to look at issues on conflict, what are the conflict switch this communities have been facing or are facing, and that will be able to have an holistic understanding. Under the partners for resilience program which Cordaid is implementing, we're actually looking at principles behind how you develop a dearer our program but in an integrated way. We call it an integrated risk management. So when you are looking at disaster, you are not just looking at disaster risk reduction, but you're also linking it to with climate change because it happens that climate change has also impact on these disasters. You are looking at issues of environmental degradation. This is where the communities actually benefit from those ecosystem services for their own livelihood. So these three approaches are very much interrelated and it's very important to understand the underlying issues which actually varies from one community to another. The tool I know work in my experience is the stakeholder mapping. It's actually very efficient to use to map the whole stakeholders and the parties who are related to the project. By using the stakeholder mapping, we can reduce the conflict and also we can see the sources of the conflicts. For example, the power imbalance and other problems we can see it when we use the stakeholder mapping. Who are the stakeholders typically? Actually, many people they have it in their mind about the beneficiaries as a main group, and UN staff and other NGOs staff, but not forgotten, the authorities. The local authorities, the state authorities, and also the private sector. For example, if you bring in food, some private sector who are selling food, they can be also affected, and that is not actually the aim of helping people. So how do you avoid that then? It's actually we listen to them, they come with their ideas and we involve them in project. It can be very important to take into account connectors and dividers in project planning and to adapt projects and conflict prone areas because conflict between groups might be prevented, and projects can be better implemented with a better environment for the rest of the project. Based on experience, for example, in Afghanistan, there was a project on sustainable agrarian livelihoods that was aiming at reducing the risk of droughts and floods, natural disasters like that. The practitioners have actually used a tool of connectors and dividers and have identified potential risk factors of conflict and adapted the project taking that into account, and they possibly reduced risk of conflict in an area where this is really a problem. Those who were some great tips for how you can integrate conflict into your disaster policies, something that is highly relevant considering the fact that do no harm approaches and conflict sensitivity are currently underutilized in disaster risk reduction intervention design, delivery, and monitoring processes. You're now ready for your first two reflective assignments. This week, you have been introduced to five different tools that can help you in developing and implementing conflict sensitive policy making. We're now going to use one or more of these tools in an assignment. If you want to re-read what was just said, check out the reports and files in Resources section about the tools and use that information for the end assignment.
