Clues in the Labyrinth

As noted in my previous post, during the coming weeks I will be travelling in the Balkans focusing on civil society development from an organization development perspective. I will be looking at peace and human rights organizations, that have grown from an initiative into a mature and sustainable organization.

The issue has been on my mind for a long time. In recent years there have been several studies over the impact of civil society development initiatives and support programmes. Here are some examples:

• The upcoming publication evaluation of the civil peace service programme carried out for the German federal ministry for economic cooperation (link as soon as published)
• The Hivos Vision Paper on Civil society building
• Thania Paffenholz, Civil Society and Peace building
• Martina Fischer, Civil Society in Conflict Transformation: Ambivalence, Potentials and Challenges
• The evaluation of the EU CARDS programme, carried out in 2006.

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Original uploaded to Flickr
by: michaelknights83

In May I will travel once again in the Balkans to implement a research project related to civil society development from an organization development perspective. I will focus on peace building and human rights organizations.

My main question: what is lost and what is gained, when a peace building initiative makes the transition from a small scale initiative to a larger sustainable organization?

Peace building projects are often related to civil society development. The idea is simple: if you have an idea for change, you organize yourself to get it done. To implement it and to create some impact you need more people. For building bridges in society, it is most effective to work with people that are organized and represent some clear interests: networking is a key component of peace building initiatives.

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It is a rare situation when you have the opportunity to be able to check, discuss and reflect on the different perspectives of organizations during a humanitarian intervention. I got myself an interesting chance to do so.

As far as I know, there is not much knowledge about how international and local actors interact in a post-war region on the meso and micro level. In university settings a lot of thought goes into larger scale political and sociological processes. In the humanitarian scene there is a vast amount of practical knowledge, and does get reflected from a more project oriented point of view, like the local capacities for peace approach and the relfecting on peace practice. Still, there is not much of a bridge between the large scale views and the project oriented views from current practice.
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Not too long ago I asked Fatmira if I was allowed tell her story. She told me I could, provided I present it anonymously. Fatmira is not her real name, the organisations mentioned do not exist. The tale, however, is real.

After the international military intervention, Fatmira worked for DST for several years. As the engaged person she is, she rapidly climbed the internal organizational ladder to become manager of the department for peace initiatives. But, after some good years the inevitable happened: DST left the country and the local staff was destined look for another job.

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Can international and local businesses actively engage in peace building when they decide to establish themselves in post-conflict regions?

Several sources debate the possible role of corporations in peace building, but it is largely an unexplored field. The debate does take place within some international institutions and NGOs. Unfortunately the main actors, the businesses themselves, are mostly absent. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine possible reasons: fear for the public image or concerns for the safety of international staff amongst the first ideas that come to mind. But even these reasons are hardly known for sure.

On the other hand, a company with good practices and experience in this field, may have something to gain from involving themselves in the debate. One way would be the good image, others relate to the merging practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Several developments exist, e.g.

• UN Global Compact, initiated by Kofi Annan, calls for standards in business practice in conflict sensitive areas;
• The Triple Bottom Line approach ask for an assessment of projects not only on a basis of financial criteria, but also criteria related to the environment (second bottom line) and people (the third bottom line);
• The Global Reporting Initiative is developing reporting methodology and reporting practice related to so-called corporate footprints like these environmental and people criteria.

Looking at conflict and business is mostly done on the level of adhering to standards. Wether these standards are voluntarily agreed upon or set as a (semi-)legal requirement, it is the lowest level of conflict sensitivity. See the lower level of the box below.

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