Small
Peace Research GrantsSMALL PEACE RESEARCH GRANTS
GRANT AWARDEE: Zahid Shabab Ahmed, Pakistan
"Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA):
The Analysis of International Development Interventions in Pakistan"
During the last decade many concerns have been raised as a result of lessons learned during peace-building and development interventions, and now this all has raised the questions of how effective all the different local and international efforts have been to build peace? In result, the concept of Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) has evolved rapidly, especially during the course of last five years. Its basic principle emphasizes that the development agencies should conduct conflict analysis at key points during and before entering into their development project cycles, especially in conflict-prone areas. Even in the beginning, these concerns had been accepted by the 36 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) member states and by the UN, as well as by many other international development agencies. As a result of this global acknowledgement, several PCIA tools have been designed and are being tested. This research was aimed at providing a critical analysis of PCIA and related approaches adapted by the international development actors in Pakistan, primarily, to open a discussion on this very important tool. Such discussions are vital in this context so to extensively introduce PCIA and related concepts and tools. This research depicted that mostly the concept of PCIA gets a lot of appreciation in the circle of international development agencies, but only when it is seen in the papers. However, when it comes to the application of PCIA, then the entire scene of admiration takes a negative shift, and it is labelled ‘irrelevant’, ‘complicated’, ‘costly’ etc., and this happens not only in the conflict-prone Pakistan but also in many other similar contexts. Nevertheless, there is a need to develop user-friendly versions of PCIA, which will reach people who work at the grassroots level so to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of the conflict sensitive tools. Finding of this research were compiled in the form of a scientific paper, which is yet to be published. However, it is planned and wished to share finding at some of the international conferences on humanitarian and development issues.
Bio: Mr. Zahid Shahab Ahmed (M.A., UN University for Peace, Costa Rica, 2006 & M.A. University of
Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan, 2003) is a PhD Scholar at the School of Humanities, University of New
England, Australia. His doctoral research focuses on the issues of interstate conflict, regionalism and
regional security in South Asia. He has worked on peacebuilding and human rights projects in South Asia,
and has actively been researching and publishing on similar issues. He co-authored a study titled "Attitudes
of Teachers in India and Pakistan: Texts and Contexts" (WISCOMP, 2007, New Delhi).