International Alert training - Conflict sensitivity for development and humanitarian organisations

Conflict Sensitivity for Humanitarian and Development practitioners

Upcoming course: 29 September – 2 October 2009
Organisations’ fee: £600 per participant
Individuals’ cost: £400

Non-residential course. The course fee includes lunch and tuition. International Alert can make suggestions for accommodation options to Participants coming from outside London. Any accommodation will be at the participant’s own expense.
Location: The course will take place at the International Alert London office, in Stockwell, London, UK.

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Overview
This highly practical course is designed to help humanitarian and development practitioners include the ‘conflict’ dimension into their work. The course will not only seek to help participants minimize the possible negative interaction between their presence and activities with conflict but also uncover opportunities which can strengthen the positive effects of their programming on peace building and conflict transformation dynamics. Beginning with an examination of the original ‘Do No Harm’ approach, the course will explore new approaches and theories around conflict, conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding. The course will draw heavily on real examples of conflict sensitivity practice in a range of settings and will, with participants’ own personal experience, adapt the theories and approaches to concrete programming outcomes.
Conducted by trainers with practical experience of both humanitarian, development and peacebuilding programmes, this course will bring together individuals and organizations involved in both development and humanitarian programming to exchange on their analysis and learn about conflict specific tools for analysis.

Who is it for?
This training is designed for organizations and individuals involved in development and humanitarian work. As the activities will largely draw on participants experiences, we ask that participants have at least two years of professional or volunteering experience in this sector, with some experience of field work.
To ensure a high level of contribution in participatory activities, we ask for participants to be fluent in English.

Desirable outcomes:
The training seeks to challenge both the perspectives and current practice of participants. The learning objectives of the training are:
- Develop skills for conflict analysis
- Develop skills for analyzing the interaction between a particular development or humanitarian initiative with conflict dynamics
- Enable participants to think through mitigating measures that minimize the negative impact and maximize the positive impact of interventions on conflict dynamics
- Enable participants to develop programming options that can support peacebuilding outcomes.
- Enable participants to monitor and evaluate conflict sensitivity elements of their interventions.

Methodologies
This will be a highly interactive training course which will use a mix of teaching and participatory methodologies.

Lessons from previous development or humanitarian experiences will be brought in to illustrate the theory and participants will bring a wealth of comparative knowledge and experiences into the discussions throughout the week.

Different perspectives, constraints, realities and opportunities will be brought together through practical group work.

Participants will be able to take back to their various workplaces a set of up-to-date techniques, literature, tools, ideas and approaches to put into practice in their daily work.

Trainers
Fleur Just is the acting manager of International Alert’s Training and Learning Team where she delivers trainings on conflict analysis and conflict sensitivity. Fleur is also responsible for setting up a Sudan program for International Alert, focusing on facilitating dialogue between Sudanese transformative thinkers from across the many conflict divides in the country. Before joining Alert in 2008, Fleur worked for CARE International in Sudan as a Peacebuilding Advisor. Prior to joining CARE, Fleur worked in Ghana and Liberia as manager of a project aimed at bringing refugee Liberian tribal leaders together in a reconciliation dialogue. As a basis for her peacebuilding work Fleur worked as an international human rights lawyer for the Australian Government and, before that, in psychological practice. Fleur holds an MA in International Relations, an LLB (with a specialization in international law) and a BSc. (with a specialization in psychology).

Aurélien Tobie is programme officer within International Alert’s Training and Learning Team. Having worked at Peaceworkers UK and International Alert since 2004, Aurélien has designed and delivered a large number of thematic trainings and workshops for a variety of organizations such as the EU Civilian Crisis Management personnel, King’s College London, or the Belgian Technical Cooperation. Since the beginning of 2009, he has been working on a capacity-building project for local organizations in Eastern DRC. Alongside the implementation of training programmes, Aurélien is in charge of research projects under the European Group on Training. Aurélien holds an MA in International Politics.


Oliver Chevreau is a Programme Officer within the Training and Learning Team and delivers training on a number of BA and MA programmes at UK universities, the UK Government and NGO’s on conflict sensitivity and skills-building for practitioners. Oliver holds a BA in Peace Studies from Bradford University and has a background in conflict resolution training for young people and community mediation.