Conflict Sensitivity Hub (CSH) in DRC

The DRC is a country trapped in a vicious cycle of conflict, poverty and poor governance, especially in the Eastern provinces. Despite efforts to coordinate humanitarian, development and peace interventions, aid in DRC is still rather fragmented and its impact is often dispersed. While conflict sensitivity (CS) is not a new concept, there is increasing recognition that all aid programs executed in the DRC could be more impactful if they were more conflict and gender sensitive. The DRC Conflict Sensitivity Hub (CSH) will be a center for quality conflict analysis (providing targeted research as well as concise syntheses with recommendations for follow-up) and conflict and gender sensitivity support (through capacity building, accompaniment, and creating a meeting venue to exchange on conflict and gender sensitivity). The CSH will act as CS expertise center for the whole aid community in the DRC . It will aim at strengthening the understanding of and capacity for conflict and gender sensitivity and sustainable peace among humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding (HDP) implementing agencies (including (I)NGO, UN, local partners and donors) through enhanced technical capacity, effective knowledge sharing, and stronger coordination. It will be implemented in 5 provinces of DRC (Kasai, Tanganyika, Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu) with the ambition of becoming a national Hub by the end of the project. It is a three year project. The project's ultimate objective is to contribute to improved aid delivery and effectiveness in DRC through increasingly conflict and gender sensitive humanitarian, development and peacebuilding programming. This will contribute to poverty reduction because more conflict sensitive programming allows for more precise targeting of interventions, increases community engagement, take up and buy in, and contributes to long term transformation in implementation areas. The CHS project builds upon the project “Piloting a Conflict Sensitivity Hub in the Democratic Republic of Congo” funded by FCDO and hosted by International Alert from April 2021, until March 2022. Consultations during the pilot phase have shown that there are clear priority conflict and gender sensitivity needs in the country, in particular in the East. In line with these consultations, the CHS will mainly focus on Eastern DRC in year 1 with eventual ambitions to expand nationally by the end of the three-year project. During the first year, International Alert will play a strong role in assisting the Hub set-up and managing its activities (especially the first 6 months) while looking at potential partners to strengthen its governance modalities and ideally form a consortium. The CSH should be a multi-organizational initiative supported by a wide range of actors to guarantee its relevance, credibility, inclusion, and transparency. To that end, the CSH will spend a significant part of the inception phase building on the conversation started during the pilot phase to garner support from international and national practitioners and donors.