5. Conflict sensitivity: evaluating in the contexts of violent conflicts
Date:
Friday 17th May, 12:30 to 14:00 (TBC, please check back)
Speakers:
Ms Lucia Montanaro – Saferworld, Head of EU office and EU advocacy manager
Ms Montanaro has over 25 years of experience working on peace, security and conflict issues, including peacebuilding, mediation, conflict sensitivity, governance, security, armed groups, organised crime, early warning, early response, conflict and systems analysis, risk and threat assessment, resilience and recovery. She has worked for the UN, EU, NATO, League of Arab States, Ecowas, OSCE, ASEAN and other organisations in numerous fragile and conflict-affected contexts across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe.
Mr Marco de Gaetano – consultant with FAO
Mr de Gaetano is an economist with over 10 years of experience in managing food security and rural development programmes with several NGOs throughout East Africa, South America and South East Asia. In October 2015, he joined FAO and has since been working in South Sudan and Myanmar as a Natural Resource Management specialist focusing on the design and implementation of livelihood and conflict mitigation interventions in protracted crisis areas.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Development Economics from the University of Naples Parthenope, a Master’s degree in Food Security and Rural Development from the University of Architecture in Venice and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Naples Parthenope.
Mr André Kahlmeyer – Conflict Management Consulting (CMC), Director
Since 2007, Mr. Kahlmeyer has worked on monitoring and evaluation in fragile and conflict affected states, initially as Senior Planning Officer - Peace and Conflict for GIZ (2007-2010), as the EU CSDP Missions Monitoring Officer in Iraq (2010-2011) and as Director and Founder of Conflict Management Consulting (CMC) since. André has led several dozen monitoring, evaluation and training assignments for the EU, UNDP, USAID, DFID, SIDA, DANIDA, GIZ and other international actors. With the CMC team, he currently works in 15+ conflict-affected states in MENA, Africa and Asia on data collection, M&E and external evaluations, integrating conflict sensitivity approaches into the design, implementation and evaluation of projects/programmes at every stage. Mr. Kahlmeyer has degrees in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science, and War and Conflict Studies.
Description
Conflict Sensitivity is the ability of an organisation to:
- understand the context in which it is operating in, to understand local conflict dynamics such as relations between stakeholders, the “divisive” issues with a potential for conflict, and the “connecting” issues with the potential to mitigate conflict and strengthen social cohesion;
- understand the nature of an intervention;
- understand the interaction between the intervention and the context, and;
- act upon that understanding, in order to avoid unintentionally feeding into further division and conflict dynamics, and to maximize the potential contribution to strengthen social cohesion and peace.
During this conference, Ms Montanaro and Mr de Gaetano will share the current state of thinking on conflict sensitivity, deepen its understanding of what it means in practice and they will present their experience in implementing and advocating for conflict sensitivity. They will share how lessons can be used to ensure the conflict sensitivity of an intervention and discuss whether this can be integrated as a further criterion to be considered when evaluating in situations of violent conflicts, at risk of violence and in situations of post-violence.
Mr Kahlmeyer will present his experience in integrating and measuring conflict sensitivity into evaluations of projects and programmes in fragile and conflict affected areas.
Introduction: Mr Andrea Alfieri - DEVCO, Head of Sector ‘Results, Monitoring and Evaluation’, Unit ‘Evaluation and Results’
You can watch the video recording of the conference here:
As well as a video presenting the Abyei project (FAO), focus of the presentation of Mr Marco de Gaetano