Conflict-Sensitive Operations

Conflict-sensitive business practice encompasses the following principles:

• Identify the root causes of tensions and potential triggers with the aim of understanding the conflict. This should include contextual factors, such as the characteristics of a country or region that can affect conflict, as well as the real and perceived grievances that can drive conflict.
• Map the main actors in the conflict and their motives, capacities and opportunities to inflict violence. Actors include affected stakeholders, parties to the conflict and ‘mobilizers’—people or institutions using grievances and resources to mobilize others, either for violence or for peaceful conflict resolution.
• Identify and anticipate the ways in which the businesses’ own operations, products or services impact existing social tensions and relationships between the various groups and/or create new tensions or conflicts. Integrate a conflict analysis in the company’s human rights due diligence.
• Companies that wish to act responsibly and demonstrate leadership could aim to go beyond ‘do no harm’ and make positive contributions to peace and stability. The ways in which this can be done depends on the context. However, the priority must first and foremost be to avoid harmful impacts. Examples of different contributions to peacebuilding by business and other guidance can be found in: Local Business, Local Peace: The Peacebuilding Potential of the Domestic Private Sector (International Alert 2006).

Key Resources:

• Business, Human Rights and Conflict-Affected Regions: Towards Heightened Action (UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights 2020)
• Human Rights Due Diligence in Conflict-Affected Settings (International Alert 2018)