In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the publication of Do No Harm by CDA founder Mary B. Anderson and the recent special issue of the journal “Development in Practice” marking that milestone, CDA Board Chair Neil Levine and Advisory Council member Irene Santiago reflect on where we have been over the last three decades, and what needs to happen next to continue building sustainable peace. The DiP special issue features a reflection essay from Mary, as well as articles from current CDA team members Siad Darwish, Ruth Rhoads Allen, and Maureen Moriarty, and from former CDA colleagues Anita Ernstorfer and Michelle Garred. You can access the special issue here.
Irene: As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the publication of Mary B. Anderson’s book, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War, I am awed by the usefulness of the Do No Harm (DNH) framework in many important spaces in our socio-economic-political systems at local, national, and international levels. Originally directed at international NGOs doing humanitarian and conflict-related programs, Do No Harm has now become a powerful framework for addressing the major crises affecting our world.
Neil: I met Mary Anderson more than a decade ago when she headed CDA and I was director of USAID’s conflict office. I was struck by both the clarity of her analysis and her bravery in following evidence, wherever it led. That’s why her essay “Looking Back to Look Forward” is so important. Mary’s always plain-spoken observations and poignant questioning continues to spur the best thinking by practitioners, academics, and donors — now as it did when the work of DNH and Reflecting on Peace Practice first came out.
In her most recent essay, Mary issues a twin challenge to our community – how do we better operationalize our approach to conflict sensitivity in a way that is more accountable to people in their communities and to the broader aid community?
Siad, Ruth, and Maureen (in Darwish et al) do an excellent job of placing CDA’s newest collaborative learning effort in the context of its nearly three decades of learning. Their contribution traces the application of CDA’s learning and tools – systems analysis, adaptive management, the DNH framework, Reflecting on Peace Practice – to building and adapting that work to the emerging field of environmental peacebuilding. I was most impressed by how the authors’ explored the relevance of CDA’s foundational work, and then moved beyond it to identify what is required to understand the different nature of environmental peacebuilding and the challenges or “trigger warnings” that have emerged from CDA’s learning. These include an even greater emphasis on appreciating local context and knowledge, understanding and addressing often-gendered power relations, and the disproportionate impact of conflict and climate change on those at the margins of economic and political life of a community.
I also found Ernstorfer et al perhaps most responsive to Mary’s challenges. Their call for “peace responsiveness” struck me as particularly relevant for donor agencies. The framework for considering individual, programmatic, organizational, and systemic domains is a great place to begin this discussion within donor organizations. And it finds an echo in Darwish et al – a call for work in the environment, in particular, to be scaled across those domains from the local to the national and international.
Irene: In my opinion, the barriers that need to be addressed in working for social change are three: conceptual, technical, and political. The conceptual barrier is often quite formidable as it dictates how “it has always been done.” History is a very heavy weight to unload. Breaking out of the script is often the first barrier to be overcome. And often, it takes science to lessen the load; Mary did just that with her evidence-based framework. The technical barrier is brought down by developing the skill sets needed to flesh out the new script, often called “capacity building.” Fortunately, once the framework is set, the skills needed are easy to identify and develop. The political barrier is the one that enables us to influence the change that we need to achieve. This is often forgotten as we tend to think in terms of “projects” instead of a process to bring about social change. “Projectizing” peace does not address the inequality that is at the root of most violent conflicts. Equalizing power is a process of people finding their own voice as they try to influence the direction of decision-making in development that affects them.
In my recent experiences in addressing protracted social conflict in the city where I live in the Philippines, I have combined what I learned from Do No Harm and Reflecting on Peace Practice, two outstanding pieces of work by CDA. In the process, I have come to the same conclusion as Mary:
“As I look at the challenges today, I propose to factor long-term impacts explicitly into assessments of Accountability. Do No Harm focused (rightly at the time) on providing the life saving assistance in open conflicts without adding to the conflict and, where possible, even reducing the tendencies toward conflict. It is now time not only to do no harm in relation to exacerbating tensions, it is time to do so in ways that last. We must accept accountability for how our work has an impact not only on the sources of tensions today but also in the future.”
You must be logged in in order to leave a comment