An important part of conflict intervention and, even transformation, is the assessment. Yeah, being in the heat of an ongoing protracted conflict or a violent interaction may seem like a thrill, but let me share something from experience.  Entering a conflict without a clear-as-you-can-get understanding of the actors, the background, and dynamics and sources of the conflict causes more harm than the so-called good.  The desire to end a violent interaction as quickly as possible is simply not enough; the outward events may de-escalate, but the conflict will re-emerge somewhere in the field at sometime.

There are basically two approaches to assessing conflict.  One is situational.  This kind of conflict assessment tool can be useful to people, groups, and institutions that are experiencing on-going disputes or overwhelming violent patterns of behavior.  To understand the life of an on-going conflict, insights are needed to see how the conflict spirals from its core to touch almost everyone and everything around it and to see how it unravels. An understanding of the dynamics of a conflict can expose windows of opportunity for assessing possible strategic interventions.  I have found some very interesting work being done in this area, for example Dr. Cathryn Q. Thurston’s SSAGE framework (Rand Corporation and George Mason University).

Another kind of conflict analysis tool understands conflict as the context where an intervention project happens. 

The word ‘context’ is used rather than ‘conflict’ to make the point that all socio-economic and political tensions,root causes and structural factors are relevant to conflict sensitivity because they all have the potential to become violent. ‘Conflict’ is sometimes erroneously confused with macro-political violence between two warring parties (as with a civil war between a national government and a non-state actor) (conflictsensitivity.org).

Framing conflict as context is the basis for conflict sensitivity.  Conflict sensitivity must be incorporated in all stages of an intervention project from the planning stage to the implementation stage and all the way through to the evaluation and monitoring stages.  I have been looking at many international conflict analysis frameworks:  Conflict Sensitivity Consortium (www.conflictsensitivity.org); SIDA (Swedish development cooperation) and various World Bank and USAID manuels.

My challenge is to design a conflict analysis framework that is relevant to cities and inner-ring suburbs in the United States.  I am developing a framework that I can use to examine the context of decaying and changing suburban neighborhoods bordering urban communities lined with dilapidated housing, domestic structural and protracted violence in small cities and municipalities, and first suburban school systems that are seeing street culture becoming the norm.

The framework I am designing will measure conflict sensitivity in the following areas:

Construction of identity

• People shift roles and try out multiple identities throughout their daily living; they desire to have the freedom to express their own meanings and identities without obstructions imposed upon them by external systems or communities.

Allocation of resources

• People allocate resources (wealth, knowledge, experience) according to membership in systems and communities, punishments and rewards, and perceived threats and promises of gain.

Order of things

• People make sense of the world and their part in it according to frames of references defined within a social context which involves controlling processes and discursive and institutional continuities.