Focus Areas
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Children at play with Russian military
personnel inKurchaloy, Chechen Republic,
as part of a USAID project to promote youth
tolerance. |
Development programs can impact the potential for conflict
both positively and negatively. The Office of Conflict Management
and Mitigation (CMM) was therefore created to work with USAID's
missions and partners to integrate or "mainstream" best practices
in conflict management into more traditional development work.
The following paragraphs provide a brief overview of the
interconnections between development sectors and conflict.
Follow the links to more detailed descriptions of these dynamics
and examples of what USAID/CMM is doing to address them.
Democracy and Governance
Countries with corrupt or unaccountable governments are more
likely than others to descend into violent conflict and state
failure. USAID works to support the strong, democratic institutions
needed for sustained peace and development through its Democracy
and Governance programs. While this is the goal, the current
reality is most of the world’s democracies are newly
emerging and remain extremely vulnerable to violent conflict.
CMM works to adapt the Agency’s Democracy and Governance
programs for conflict environments.
More >
Economic Growth
Economic forces play a powerful role in shaping potential
for violence. Poverty, stagnant or negative economic growth,
gross economic inequality, and widespread unemployment can
all feed into a strong sense of social grievance. CMM is working
to help Missions become more sensitive to the obstacles that
instability places in the way of effective economic development,
so that missions can design programs to surpass those obstacles
more effectively. We are also exploring new partnerships with
the private sector – both local and multi-national corporations
and businesses. Together with USAID Missions, CMM is supporting
the work of local business associations that are looking for
ways to discourage the use of violence and promote stability.
More >
Natural Resources
Violent conflict often stems from failures related to natural
resource management. Conflict may be driven by land scarcity,
struggles to control natural and economic resources such as
water and oil and uncontrolled and unsustainable population
pressures. Efforts to manage wildlife populations and protect
the ecology, economy and sustainability of a region are instrumental
to securing peaceful and healthy communities, and to mitigating
and managing potential and actual conflict. CMM provides technical
expertise to understand and assist in the development of conflict
sensitive programming for natural resource and land interventions
at its country missions around the world. More
>
Security Sector Reform
Developing countries face an enormous variety of challenges
to their security environments. These include weak or ineffective
police or military forces, lack of civilian or democratic
systems of oversight, inequitable access to justice, the prevalence
of arms in post-conflict settings, loose or no border controls,
and threats from domestic and transnational criminal organizations
and terrorist groups. Failed and failing security structures
greatly contribute to instability and conflict – threatening
lives and reversing gains from years of development. CMM is
helping to ensure that USAID incorporates conflict-sensitivity
in its policies and programs addressing reforms of the security
sector.More >
Social Development
The development of healthy social institutions, services,
and relations are essential to a stable society. Accordingly,
development assistance has long included programs that focus
on social issues like education, youth, health care and gender
development. However, unbalanced or inequitable social development
can create tension and exacerbate the potential for violent
conflict. To avoid these complications, aid programs need
to incorporate conflict sensitivity into their design.More
>
Peace Building and
Conflict Management Open conflict introduces
a series of highly destabilizing, competitive dynamics into
the development context. It leads to heightened levels of
fear and hostility between communities, psychosocial trauma,
forced displacement, and zero-sum competition over available
resources. The first step in moving toward sustainable peace
and long-term development is to address the negative and immediate
consequences of violence. CMM supports a broad range of crisis
response and conflict mitigation activities that respond directly
to overt violence or the imminent threat of violence. More
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