The Conflict Sensitivity Community Hub (CSC-Hub) is a global network of organizations and individuals working on conflict sensitive approaches in their field. It was founded when over 40 leading international conflict sensitivity experts from NGOs, donors, academia and think tanks identified a need for increased awareness, capacity, funding and advocacy for conflict sensitivity, as well as exchange and networking among the scattered CS community.
Vision & Mission
The CSC-Hub aims to bring together actors in the fields of development, humanitarian, peacebuilding, security, research and business using conflict sensitivity at policy, organizational and programmatic level. The Hub is to become the “center of gravity” for conflict sensitivity. Building on efforts of existing networks and initiatives, it identifies synergies and facilitates collaboration and coordination among organizations dealing with conflict sensitivity.
The CSC-Hub is centrally steered, with a secretariat that promotes and coordinates conflict sensitivity related activities jointly agreed and run by Hub members.
Theory of Change
The CSC-Hub aspires to improve the overall impact of development, humanitarian, peacebuilding, security and business actors through joint and collaborative efforts that strengthen the application of conflict sensitivity on policy, organizational and programmatic levels, from the local to the international level.
By adopting Conflict Sensitive approaches in the aforementioned fields, stakeholders will support interventions that are more efficient, effective and strengthen local capacities for peace.
The CSC-Hub contributes to the aspirations above by ensuring that:
- Evidence on the effectiveness of CS is gathered and disseminated;
- Resources, research and guidance on CS are elaborated and shared among practitioners, private sector, and policy-makers;
- Profile of and accountability for CS policy is raised across sectors and actors.
Focus areas of the CSC hub:
- Developing a strong community of practice through joint analysis, evidence building, monitoring and evaluation, exchange and information sharing;
- Convening organizations on local, national, regional and international level, creating synergies between the local and the global;
- Promoting cross-sector conflict sensitivity guidance with a range of actors;
- Enabling advocacy and policy dialogue through awareness raising, active engagement in existing policy fora, and accountability.
>> What we do
The CSC-Hub member organisations work together in order to build their capacity related to Conflict Sensitive Approaches (CSA), create evident on CSA effectiveness and influence policy.
Capacity Building
The CSC-Hub supports the capacity building of its member and stakeholders of the wider CS community through trainings, webinars, workshops, online and offline exchange. New opportunities are published here.
Evidence
The CSC-Hub provides space for its members to share evidence of effectiveness of CSA, best practices, and lessons learnt. Our members are active on a wide range of fields, thematic areas and geographical regions; therefore, we rely on a rich pool of experiences and practices. As a Hub, we have the opportunity to exchange and draw learnings and evidence from our members’ work, strengthening our commitment to conflict sensitivity at all levels. As a result, joint case study, publications and conflict analysis are often produced by Hub members.
Policy
The CSC-Hub engages with decision- policy-makers in order to raise awareness to the importance of adopting policies, guidelines and programmes that take into consideration the principles of conflict sensitivity. That includes advocating for policies that do not cause potential harm, interventions that are informed by conflict analysis, and practices that strengthen local capacities for peace.
The CSC-Hub engages with stakeholders working on development, humanitarian, peacebuilding, and security sectors and, whenever possible, takes part and policy-making processes through consultations.
>> Our members
>> Our History
Before the creation of the CSC-Hub, several of the original members initially came together under the project “The Practice of Conflict Sensitivity – Concept to Impact“, between 2008 and 2012. The project strengthened the practice of conflict sensitivity throughout and beyond a broad consortium of humanitarian, peacebuilding and multi-mandate development NGOs.
Funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), this Conflict Sensitivity Consortium comprised 37 agencies working in 4 countries – Kenya, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and the UK. Since then, conflict sensitivity has spread more broadly in part due to the consortium’s work together and separately, but also due to a number of other organisations’ (including donor governments) recognition that we can and should be doing better in the way we design and deliver our specific interventions across the board.
>> Membership
The Conflict Sensitivity Community Hub welcomes new members – both individuals and organisations. Members are part of an active community of practice that shares resources, best practices and opportunities for engagement and capacity building, such as trainings, conferences, exchanges, etc. Moreover, members develop and implement joint activities and publications.
To learn about about the different modalities and conditions of membership, please contact us.
> Contact us
For enquiries on membership, services and others, please contact us.
The CSC Hub is coordinated by Oxfam for the 2023/24 period. To contact us, please email John Ahere through: john.ahere@oxfam.org