Resources

This paper describes a game and a story that were presented during the workshop to show how PRA can "help people to address and resolve conflict". The TASO game (described in the appendix) was used to illustrate current HIV transmission rates in Uganda. The story showed how PRA exercises conducted by Redd Barna in Zimbabwe brought out women's and men's different views of a proposed irrigation scheme. The potential for PRA to help resolve such conflicts is the emphasis placed on "the value of good communication skills". Development workers need to learn "facilitation and arbitration skills" in order to deal with, rather than "glossing over" conflict and "failing to acknowledge the political dimensions to all our interventions". Psychological stress (particularly in relation to HIV and AIDS) also needs to be recognised as "a valid development issue".

This article explores constraints encountered when using PRA on an ODA-funded natural resources project in a tribal area of Western India. It was particularly evident that women's participation in the PRAs was minimal. The reasons for this were practical (women were not available collectively for long periods of time & there were few women fieldworkers as the project had just begun), social (PRA activities tended to take place in public places where women felt awkward) and methodological (women respond to PRA activities in different ways, sometimes feeling bored and "communicating by singing instead"). The author argues that an organised PRA "gives privilege to certain kinds of knowledge and representation and suppresses others" : the emphasis given to formal knowledge and activities tends to "reinforce the invisibility of women's roles". However, once the formal and public nature of PRA is perceived as a problem, it can become a means by which "women's knowledge and activities.. can be transferred from the informal to the formal arena of project planning", thereby increasing women's profile. Suggestions for encouraging women's participation in PRA include: making non-public contexts (since women are more used to the "private sphere"), using women's knowledge and ways of communicating (songs, sayings, proverbs). There are constraints: the "production of observable outputs (maps, diagrams of PRA) have more status for fieldworkers" than scribbled songs or informal interview notes and women's expressed needs (eg a flour mill) "don't fit easily into established categories of natural resource development".

This short report written by the Research and Policy Programme on behalf of ACORD examines three different areas of the agency's work in Africa; i) conflict resolution, ii) monitoring and evaluations systems and iii) work on gender. In a workshop that was held in accordance with Birmingham University on the theme of Development in Conflict a number of important issues and decisions emerged in relation to ACORD's continued work in conflict ridden areas. These included; firstly that ACORD's ability to respond to armed conflict or turbulent situations will depend on improving the quality and relevance of it's work in the North. Secondly, that there is a need for greater anticipation and preparedness of conflict situations and thirdly, that decisions to continue work in turbulent areas should reside with project staff and not head office. Lastly, that the nature of turbulent situations requires teams to be able to respond flexibly. In relation to the M&E systems utilised by ACORD, the emphasis was on strengthening the capacity of programmes to use participatory techniques in order to involve communities more in the monitoring of their own work. The findings of each workshop is briefly discussed. In relation to the work of ACORD on gender issues, moreover, a Gender Analysis Matrix designed by UNIFEM is discussed as a tool which is utilised to identify the changing roles of men and women in response to programme activities.

This paper analyses the different approaches taken by three NGOs working in Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal, to incorporate women and refugees into their organizational structures. The impacts the different strategies had on both programme activities and women are examined.