Conducting a conflict assessment: a framework for strategy and program development

Methods for conducting more effective conflict assessments

Produced by: USAID Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation / USA Agency for International Development (USAID) , 2005

This conflict assessment framework (CAF) is a companion document to a series of toolkits being developed by USAID's Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation. Together, the assessment framework and toolkits are designed to help relevant USAID mechanisms and implementing partners gain a deeper understanding of the forces driving violence and to develop more strategic and focused interventions in high risk environments.

The framework offers a synthesis of over a decade of recent research on the causes of internal violence. It presents the main causal arguments for why certain factors, such as ethnicity or natural resources, are linked to violence and explores interaction effects between variables.