Skip to main content

Guide to context analysis informing FAO decision-making: Approaches to working in fragile and conflict-affected contexts

Countries
World
Sources
FAO
Publication date
Origin
View original

Introduction

The Guide to Context Analysis is intended as an accessible and practical learning tool for decentralised offices to document and institutionalise their knowledge of the local situation or setting, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

A structured context analysis can contribute to the prioritisation of interventions and potential programmatic entry points while also informing project design, implementation and the monitoring and evaluation framework. Importantly, a comprehensive contextual understanding is integral to conflict-sensitive interventions. For interventions with explicit objectives of contributing to sustaining peace, a context analysis also identifies causality and the drivers of conflict that the intervention seeks to address.

For the purposes of this Guide, conflict is broadly defined as irreconcilable or opposing positions by two or more groups. Conflict ranges from non-violent disputes over access and management of natural resources to intensive armed violence between or by organised groups. The approach laid out in the following pages borrows from aspects of political economy and livelihoods analysis while also being compatible with the United Nations (UN) common system guidance on conflict analysis.
Conflict, in particular, often impacts rural areas disproportionally affecting the means of agricultural production, undermining livelihoods and rural employment while contributing to the exploitation rather than the management of natural resources. Harm to civilians and forced displacement are some of the more visible manifestations, though more indirect effects include deepened rural inequality, damage or neglect of rural infrastructure and the accentuated vulnerability of women and girls.

This Guide is intended to provide non-conflict specialists with an accessible and structured methodology to analyse and document a specific context. The Guide’s structure is sufficiently flexible to suit an array of potential audiences or reporting formats including a rapid context analysis for a specific project, an area-based intervention, joint programming with other UN agencies, as well as a standalone strategic analysis to inform decentralised office planning.
The Guide can be read both as a standalone instructional aid on context analysis, as well as an essential precursor to FAO’s Programme Clinic approach to design conflict-sensitive interventions (comprising both facilitators’ and participants’ guides).