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Contributions from
the Column
Studies and reports
Afghanistan: coupling security and reconstruction?
“US NGOs are having a hard time with the present government”
Crisis prevention in Africa – promising progress
Cooperation – The path to successful peace work
Scant progress so far in the fight against bribery
12/2003 |
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[ Working Group on Development and Peace Workshop ]
Cooperation – The path to successful peace work
According to Mary B. Anderson, the president of the consultancy agency Collaborative for Development Action and inventor of the “Do No Harm” approach, there are two surefire ways of reducing the efficacy of a peace effort: first, do something that is not relevant to the transformation of a conflict situation; second, work in isolation. In other words: cooperation and coordination are essential for effective peace work. And what is essential for the efficacy of strategic partnerships in peace work is cooperation between organisations with access to different groups in society. That realisation is one of the things that prompted the formation of the German Working Goup on Development and Peace (FriEnt), an alliance of eight German government and non-governmental peace and development organisations. At a FriEnt workshop at the end of October in Bonn, Anderson summed up some of the findings of her research project “Reflecting on Peace Practice”. Cooperative peace work, she said, needs to ensure that broad sections of the population and key individuals are involved. To achieve that, partners need to be sought outside the development community as well as within government and international organisations.
Three cases discussed in Bonn – the network opposed to the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, the group of German organisations cooperating in Eastern Congo and the South Caucasus Dialogue Project – showed that the first step towards successful cooperation does not necessarily have to be joint conflict analysis. Even so, Anderson believes at least three questions need to be asked. First, are there any links between conflict parties which offer a starting point for peace work? Secondly, which actors profit from a conflict and need to be stopped. Thirdly, what are a conflict’s regional or even supraregional ramifications?
Whether the best way to achieve effective conflict management lies in a close cooperative arrangement with clearly defined roles and responsibilities or whether it lies in an informal network depends, among other things, on what the cooperation is supposed to achieve. Where the objective is to lobby, for example, in order to prevent or modify certain developments, a network may be more appropriate; for implementing projects, a closer form of cooperation is preferable. What is certainly not necessary, however, is to spell out in every detail the common goal of cooperative peace work. The project objectives of individual organisations may easily be subsumed into a higher goal (such as stopping violence). Where attempts are made to secure cooperation partners’ agreement to details, there is a risk that important time may be lost in wrangling over wording.
What is imperative, however, is mutual respect and appreciation of cooperation partners’ contributions – especially where cooperation is between governmental and non-governmental organisations. The expertise, experience and views of all those involved in a project – both those who furnish the money and those who receive it – need to be considered in project planning and monitoring; transparency and mutual trust are very important here. If this is ensured, cooperation in no way means relinquishing independence, as many organisations fear. Katrin Matschke
More information is available on the Internet at www.frient.de
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