NEPAL

Conflict prevention project supports UNDP's development of new peacebuilding intiatives and the operations of its Peacebuilding and Recovery Unit.

Background

The lack of consensus-based decision making and collaborative leadership is a serious challenge to good governance in Nepal. It has resulted in chronic political instability as inter- and intra-party feuds and the failure of coalition governments have seen an average of a new government a year since 1990. This non-constructive partisan politics has characterised the functioning of many areas of society including civil society and local government with politics often being pursued through strikes, shut downs, and violence rather than constructive negotiations.

The lack of consensual and constructive decision-making has resulted in prolonged political stalemates that have obstructed agreements on constitutional reform, the adjustment and rehabilitation of the Maoist army, the reform of public administration and policy and other key issues.

This fractured political environment and the strong local competition for resources has also prevented many development programmes and government interventions from achieving their goals. An important reason for this has been that such initiatives have gone ahead without sufficient attention to the local social and conflict dynamics in which they operate.

Project details

The project

In 2010, UNDP launched a five year programme to support the prevention, mitigation and management of conflicts at central and local levels. UNDP’s Conflict Prevention Programme (CPP) is working on the two complementary pillars of promoting collaborative leadership and dialogue amongst Nepalese leaders and institutions, and mainstreaming conflict sensitivity and the ‘Do No Harm’ approach into development programmes. A third pillar on the reduction of armed violence may be introduced in 2012.
This is an ambitious initiative that faces many challenges in addressing deep-rooted governance and social issues. The success of the project in its first two years will see it scaling up in its years 3 to 5.

Pillar 1: Collaborative leadership and dialogue

Objective — The aim of this pillar is to promote a culture of dialogue towards preventing conflict and building social cohesion. It will work for this by building collaborative leadership and dialogue skills and other constructive capacities amongst Nepal’s leaders and institutions at central and local levels, focusing on leaders from politics, civil society, government, young people, women and ethnic groups.

Design — This pillar was designed through a multi-stakeholder process involving a steering committee of representatives from 7 major political parties and 3 civil society organisations. This process promoted national ownership. The committee continues to be involved in implementation in an advisory role. The design process also generated a multi-stakeholder dialogue space among mid-level leaders at a time when political consensus was difficult to achieve due to the fragmentation of the national and local level polity.

Main achievements — During 2011, 60 political leaders, facilitators and youth leaders (50% women) from across the country and a further 60 young leaders engaged in youth and social issues were trained on collaborative leadership and dialogue as key skills for carrying out their roles.

A project-supported assessment of collaborative capacities across 13 sample districts identified central and local level organisations and individuals who could support collaborative leadership and dialogue. In addition to establishing a baseline for measuring collaboration, the assessment also identifies strategic areas of focus for the project. These include encouraging meaningful inclusion, targeting key change agents such as women and youth, and creating a critical mass of leaders to promote collaborative leadership and dialogue. Its findings and recommendations are being used to inform and refine the design of project activities in line with local level realities.

Upcoming focus — In 2011/12 the project will train more young leaders on collaborative leadership and dialogue and related skills like mediation, negotiation and consensus building. It will also begin training personnel from the National Planning Commission (NPC), Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC) and the Ministry of Peace and Reconstruction (MoPR) and representatives from seven political parties on these skills. This work will go ahead at the central level and in Dhanusha and Banke and their surrounding districts and possibly in Morang and surrounding districts. The project will also finalise a media strategy to support collaborative leadership and dialogue through the print and broadcast media. A pool of facilitators will be established to encourage dialogue around key peace and governance issues at both national and local level.

Monitoring — An M&E framework is being continually refined. Regular focus group discussions and interviews with project stakeholders will be used to identify positive changes related to project activities.

Pillar 2: Mainstreaming conflict sensitivity

Design — CPP’s second pillar is an interagency initiative of UNDP, UNICEF and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators Office (UN RCHCO). It aims to promote conflict sensitivity and the Do No Harm approach (see main principles in box) into the design, implementation and monitoring of development interventions. An important outcome will be development initiatives that have their potential impact on local conflict and contextual dynamics built into their design and implementation. This will happen by increasing inputs that connect and increase cooperation between groups and reducing ones that exacerbate tensions to maximise peacebuilding impacts.
The work on this pillar has gone ahead in 2011 with the seven UN projects, programme and initiatives shown to the right. The project expects to start work with the government counterparts NPC, MoPR and NASC in 2012.

The 7 step Do No Harm approach

• Understand the context
• Analyse dividers and tensions
• Analyse connectors and local capacities for peace
• Analyse the planned or on-going programme
• Analyse the impact of programme resource transfers and implicit messages on dividers and

connectors.

• Consider and generate options for maximising connectors and minimising dividers
• Test programming options and if necessary redesign

Participating initiatives in CPP’s conflict sensitive working pillar (2011)

• the four 4 regional field coordination office of UN RCHCO
• UNDP Monitoring and Evaluation teams
• Unicef’s Schools as Zones of Peace programme
• Unicef’s Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups initiative (CAAFAG)
• Unicef’s paralegal committees programme
• UNDP’s Livelihood Recovery for Peace project (LRP)
• UN Interagency Rehabilitation Programme (UNIRP)

Achievements — UN staffs have been trained on the Do No Harm approach to development. Alongside this a Nepal-specific training manual has been developed with parts translated into Nepali for use by national partners. The other main achievement has been reviewing the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF — 2013–2017) for conflict sensitivity.

Impacts — the activities have resulted in:
The five participating projects and programmes analysing their impacts on dividing and connecting factors and subsequently making adjustments to how they operate. Early results of this include (under UNIRP) schools and communities more openly accepting discharged former Maoist combatants as students and local peace committees becoming more involved in supporting the rehabilitation of ex-combatants.
UNDP’s M&E team starting to use a checklist to monitor the conflict sensitivity of projects and programmes; and
RCHCO’s field coordination offices now being in a position to coordinate context analysis exercises with other UN agencies and conduct small-scale do no harm sensitization workshops.

Importance of this project towards achieving the MDGs

Conflict-vulnerable countries such as Nepal make much less progress on achieving the MDGs than non-conflict affected countries. More collaborative leadership and dialogue will transform decision making at all levels of society into a more constructive exercise that promotes sustainable and inclusive governance to enable the achievement of the MDGs across all social groups. This transformation will involve a long term commitment to establishing efficient and legitimate institutions that can prevent repeated violence — the aim of CPP.