Resource information
Water projects have, arguably, the greatest potential to create conflict in development programmes. Not only is water central to health, sanitation and agrarian livelihoods but it can contribute to other conflict dynamics such as land or grazing rights. Applying conflict-sensitive programming to water projects, therefore, seeks to minimise the potential for fuelling conflict whilst looking to maximise the potential positive impact of the development. This paper details the experience of applying conflict-sensitivity to two water projects in Uganda. It highlights the lessons learnt and seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of how these approaches can be used by development actors. The authors detail a number of key lessons, including:
Conflict Sensitive Approaches (CSA) bring different benefits to different stakeholders - local government in the project areas saw it as a useful tool to improve the quality of community participation and ownership of the district-provided water and other services
CSA can be a tool for deepening beneficiary participation - sufficient ‘space’ needs to be created for a wide variety of community members to air their views and to address their concerns as much as possible. This is vital to avoid the risk of dissatisfied stakeholders sabotaging the scheme
the timing of undertaking conflict analysis and making sure it feeds into project design, implementation and monitoring is crucial to conflict-sensitising projects
adopting a conflict-sensitive approach meant an increase in costs, since the schemes had to be expanded and more funds requested from central government. However, they are likely to work better due to the quality of the process, thus potentially saving other costs in future.
The research asserts that experience from this project has shown that applying conflict sensitivity to the water projects generated benefits in terms of:
higher quality beneficiary participation
beneficiaries themselves appreciating the opportunity to discuss what issues divide them and how planned interventions could mitigate or aggravate these
increased understanding by outsiders (district authorities, private sector actors and CSOs) of beneficiary communities, and the actors and dynamics that influence them
increased sense of responsibility on the side of the service providers about the impact they could potentially have through the decisions they make and the way they work.
