The experience gathered from the field by the Local Capacities for Peace Project suggests that aid, brought into a conflict environment, is seldom neutral in terms of the conflict. That is, it either has a positive effect on the conflict (helping people to disengage from fighting, providing space and voice for non-war attitudes and actions, institutions, systems etc.) or a positive effect on the conflict (providing flashpoints, increasing competition, hatred and mistrust, deepening divisions, etc).
There are at least two ways that aid has negative effects on conflict: through resource transfers and through the implicit ethical messages that are sent by the way that aid is delivered.
Resource Transfers
There are 5 ways that bringing aid resources into a conflict environment can make that conflict worse:
Theft
Very often aid goods are stolen by warriors to support the war effort either directly (as when food is stolen to feed fighters), or indirectly (as when food is stolen and sold in order to raise money to buy weapons).
Market Effects
Aid affects prices, wages and profits and can either reinforce the war economy (enriching activities and people that are war-related) or the peace economy (reinforcing "normal" civilian production, consumption, and exchange).
Distributional Effects
When aid is targeted to some groups and not to others, and these groups exactly - or even partially - overlap with the divisions represented in the conflict, aid can reinforce and exacerbate conflict. Aid can also reinforce connectors by crossing and linking groups by the ways it is distributed.
Substitution Effects
Aid can substitute for local resources that would have been used to meet civilian needs and, thus, free these up to be used in support of war. There is a political substitution effect that is equally important. This occurs when international agencies assume responsibility for civilian survival to such an extent that this allows local leaders and warriors to define their roles solely in terms of warfare and control through violence. As the aid agencies take on support of non-war aspects of life, such leaders can increasingly abdicate any responsibility for these activities.
Legitimization Effects
Aid legitimizes some people and some actions, and weakens or sidelines others. It can support either those people and actions that pursue war, or those that pursue and maintain non-war (peace).
Implicit Ethical Messages Sent by Aid
The Do No Harm initiative has identified seven types of negative implicit ethical messages in its conversations with aid workers:
Arms and Power
When aid agencies hire armed guards to protect their goods from theft or their workers from harm, the implicit ethical messages perceived by those in the context is that it is legitimate for arms to determine who gets access to food and medical supplies and that security and safety derive from weapons.
Disrespect, Mistrust, Competition Among Aid Agencies
When aid agencies refuse to cooperate with each other, and even worse "bad mouth" one another (saying things such as "we don't work the way they work; we are better and they get it wrong...), the message received by those in the area is that it is unnecessary to cooperate with anyone with whom one does not agree. Further, you don't have to respect or work with people you don't like.
Aid Workers and Impunity
When aid workers use the goods and support systems provided as aid to people who suffer for their own pleasures and purposes (as when they take the vehicle to the mountains for a weekend holiday even when petrol is scarce), the message is that if one has control over resources, it is permissible to use them for personal benefit without being accountable to anyone else who may have a claim on these resources.
Different Value for Different Lives
When aid agency policies allow for evacuation of expatriate staff if danger occurs but not for care of local staff, or even worse, when plans call for removal of vehicles, radios and expats while local staff, food and other supplies are left behind, the message is that some lives (and even some goods) are more valuable than other lives.
Powerlessness
When field-based aid staff disclaim responsibility for the impacts of their aid programmes, saying things such as "You can't hold me accountable for what happens here; it is my headquarters, or the donor, or these terrible warlords who make my aid have negative impacts," the message received is that individuals in humanitarian emergencies cannot have much power and, thus, they do not have to take responsibility for what they do or how they do it. And, of course, this is what is heard from people involved in civil wars - "I can't help what I do; someone else makes me do it."
Belligerence, Tension, Suspicion
When aid workers are nervous about conflict and worried for their own safety to such an extent that they approach every situation with suspicions and belligerence, believing for example that these soldiers at the checkpoint "only understand power" and "can't be trusted to be human," their interactions with people in war zones very often reinforce the modes and moods of warfare. The message received is that power is, indeed, the broker of human interactions and it is normal to approach everyone with suspicion and belligerence.
Publicity
Finally, when NGO headquarters use publicity pictures that emphasize the gruesomeness of warfare and the victimization of parties, they can reinforce the demonization of one side in a war and, thus, reinforce the sense that all people on that side are evil while everyone on another side is an innocent sufferer. This is seldom the case and undermines the humanitarian principle. This, too, can reinforce the modes and moods of warfare rather than helping the public, or the agency's own staff, find an even-handed way to respond to those on all sides who seek and want peace.
For more information on "Do No Harm" and the findings of the LCPP, please visit the project website at www.cdainc.com, or see Mary B. Anderson, Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - Or War, Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner, 1999.