Operationalizing pathways to sustaining peace in the context of Agenda 2030

FAO

Operationalizing pathways to sustaining peace in the context of Agenda 2030

A how-to guide

Year of publication 2022

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 64 p.

Author FAO

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Book (stand-alone)

ISBN 978-92-5-136650-9

Full item page

Synopsis (short abstract) Violent conflict has increased in recent decades. The number of people worldwide who live in settings where conflict and violence are a daily occurrence is increasing. By 2030, it is estimated that more than half of all people living in poverty will be found in countries affected by high levels of violence. These conflict dynamics have a negative impact on households’ food security. Agriculture, natural resources, food security and nutrition can be sources of peace or conflict, crisis or recovery, tragedy or healing. Underpinning this is ensuring that the Organization’s projects and interventions are conflict-sensitive so that all stakeholders understand the dynamics of the diverse contexts in which FAO works. Especially in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, we need to make sure that our work avoids contributing to divisions, disputes and violent conflict, and does no harm. All that we do – both by ourselves and through partnerships – should follow this approach. We can also identify where FAO can positively contribute to social cohesion and peace – and these efforts must be rooted in robust theories of change. FAO is placing increasing emphasis on ensuring that our interventions make a positive contribution to peace – an objective shared across the United Nations system, and increasingly a requirement of our partners and donors. The focus of this how-to guide is to elaborate the pathways through which the Organization can optimize deliberate contributions to peace, and inform the design, adaptation and impact measurement of its interventions. In recent years, FAO has developed corporate tools, guidance and training on conflict sensitivity and context analysis. Operationalizing pathways to sustaining peace in the context of Agenda 2030 – A how-to guide is another crucial document in that series, developed through collaboration between the FAO Conflict and Peace Unit and Interpeace in the context of a wider partnership between the two Organizations. Following broad consultation across the Organization, this document provides operational guidance and inspiration to FAO project and technical staff on how our work can enhance FAO’s contributions to peace – and how to measure those contributions. It is part of an ongoing process, which complements FAO’s efforts through its Strategic Framework to support the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems, for better production, better nutrition, better environment and better life, leaving no one behind.

Cite this content as:

FAO. 2022. Operationalizing pathways to sustaining peace in the context of Agenda 2030 – A how-to guide. Rome.

https://doi.org/10.4060/cc1021en

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Language English

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Global crises are becoming the new normal. From climate change to the contemporary food price crisis, vulnerable populations – and especially rural people – are facing increasingly difficult odds of flourishing. Such challenges are even more pronounced where there is conflict, whose multidimensional nature demands to direct more attention to its drivers and impacts. Over the past decades, social protection has contributed to development outcomes, such as those related to poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, and gender equality. Besides, social protection systems have proven to be effective also in addressing covariate shocks, as exemplified by the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. There has instead been limited operational research regarding social protection’s contributions to peace. In order to start addressing this gap, this paper discusses how social protection can sustain peace efforts by understanding peace not as an outcome but, rather, as an ongoing process. The paper argues that the contributions that social protection can make to peace can be divided between two overlapping scenarios: “working in conflict” and “working on conflict”. While the former refers to efforts aimed at offsetting the impacts of conflict, the latter relates to interventions that intend to deliberately address its underlying drivers. The working paper also recognizes that social protection interventions in a conflict-affected context can potentially be harmful and fuel social tensions in the absence of adequate consideration of local power dynamics. It therefore calls for social protection strategies and programmes to be conflict-sensitive – beyond the “do no harm” – to make explicit contributions to peace.
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In 2018 FAO approved its Corporate Framework to Support Sustainable Peace in the Context of Agenda 2030, committing FAO to a more deliberate and transformative impact on sustaining peace, within the scope of its mandate. The foundational element for FAO supported interventions to - at a minimum - do no harm, or to identify where they may contribute to sustaining peace, is to understand contextual dynamics and how they could interact with a proposed intervention. This is essential to effective conflict-sensitive programming. The Guide to Context Analysis is a key step in operationalising this, being an accessible and practical learning tool for non-conflict specialists in FAO decentralised offices to document and institutionalise their knowledge of the local context, and thus inform conflict-sensitive design of FAO interventions. The wider objective is to minimise the risk of any negative or harmful impacts, as well as maximise any positive contributions towards strengthening and consolidating conditions for sustainable local peace. The Guide to Context Analysis is sufficiently flexible to suit a variety 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 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 a facilitators’ and participants’ guides).
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