Participatory Community Peace and Conflict Assessment - PCPCA - Main Users / Purpose

In order to be able to initiate a process for conflict transformation, the importance of local actors is paramount. Peace-building activities need to be conceptualised as a form of engagement involving the entire society. As conflicts take place within societies, it is within the conflicting societies that peace-building measures must be rooted. Strengthening and fostering the potentials of local actors with an active interest in addressing peace building needs to be seen as key principle of civil conflict management. Experience has shown that such activities are of greater impact and more sustainable if the process is led from within the communities with some degree of external support if and where necessary.

While all desire participation, the process of how to achieve it remains a challenge. The demand for local ownership from the perspective of those belonging to conflict regions is geared as much towards finding longer-term policy solutions as it is to question patronizing top-down attitudes. However, it is important that follow up measures and support, including necessary finances and personal, is guaranteed by those initiating the whole assessment.

The method outlines an approach for involving key stakeholders in the conflict assessment, describes how the process could be organised and provides a basic guideline for undertaking such an assessment. The difference between the approach being advocated in the method and typical conflict assessments lies in the participatory community based focus and scaling-up of the results to an area-wide conflict assessment.

Photo 1: Participatory Community Peace and Conflict Assessment means involving all stakeholders