Strengthening institutional capability to adopt conflict-sensitive approaches: five lessons from the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility in South Sudan

There is growing recognition of the interaction between aid and the drivers of conflict. In South Sudan, the scale and nature of this international assistance make it inevitable that aid will affect the economic, social and political drivers of conflict for better or worse. This has led to increased interest in and support for promoting more conflict-sensitive approaches to the design, delivery and management of aid.

This paper explores the challenges associated with promoting more conflict-sensitive approaches in humanitarian situations such as South Sudan. It draws on the experience implementing the pilot phase of the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) in South Sudan between 2016 and 2018, and presents five lessons to inform future initiatives by donors and other aid organisations. It emphasises that building organisations’ capacity to adopt conflict-sensitive approaches must involve systemic organisational change that goes beyond commissioning context analysis, ad hoc training and toolkits.

Read or download the report on the CSRF Research Repository here.

Read CSRF’s related blogs on capacity building – such as on turning ‘local knowledge’ into ‘collective intelligence’ and the meaning of ‘capacity’ and the localisation agenda.

The CSRF pilot phase was implemented by a consortium of NGOs including Saferworld, swisspeace, and CDA and funded by the British, Canadian, Dutch and Swiss Donor Missions in South Sudan. The current phase is due to run until December 2023.

Our cookies

We use cookies, which are small text files, to improve your experience on our website.
You can allow or reject non essential cookies or manage them individually.

Reject allAllow all

More options  •  Cookie policy

Our cookies

Allow all

We use cookies, which are small text files, to improve your experience on our website. You can allow all or manage them individually.

You can find out more on our cookie page at any time.

EssentialThese cookies are needed for essential functions such as logging in and making payments. Standard cookies can't be switched off and they don't store any of your information.
AnalyticsThese cookies help us collect information such as how many people are using our site or which pages are popular to help us improve customer experience. Switching off these cookies will reduce our ability to gather information to improve the experience.
FunctionalThese cookies are related to features that make your experience better. They enable basic functions such as social media sharing. Switching off these cookies will mean that areas of our website can't work properly.
AdvertisingThese cookies help us to learn what you're interested in so we can show you relevant adverts on other websites and track the effectiveness of our advertising.
PersonalisationThese cookies help us to learn what you're interested in so we can show you relevant content.

Save preferences