Need help using Insight on Conflict? Below are some frequently asked questions relating to the project. Should you still have any queries, please use the feedback form.

Who is ‘Insight on Conflict’?
What do you do?
What is the aim of Insight on Conflict?
Who is Insight on Conflict funded by?
Who is the website for?
What makes Insight on Conflict unique?
What use is Insight on Conflict to me?
What information can I find on the website?
Why do ‘grassroots peacebuilders’ matter?
Where does your information come from?
How can you guarantee that the information provided is unbiased?
I disagree! Why have you said this?
How do you define conflict?
How do you choose which conflict areas to cover?
How do I find my way around the site?
What do the headings mean?
What are ‘topics’?
Definitions: can you explain ‘….’?
I’ve come across a word that isn’t in your glossary, but which I don’t understand. What does it mean?
Why are there inconsistancies of style and person in the initiatives and organisations pages?
Why does some information not appear for some initiatives/organisations?
How often is the information updated?
How do you ensure the safety of your local correspondents?
What kind of policy do you hold concerning data protection/confidentiality?
How can I help
Where can I find more information on these areas, initiatives and organisations?
I know about a peace initiative. How can their profile get put on the website?
Where can I give feedback?

Who is ‘Insight on Conflict’?
We have a Local Correspondent and Conflict Expert in each Conflict Area and a team working from Peace Direct’s offices in London, Great Britain.

What do you do?
Insight on Conflict is a database of grassroots peace-builders, it lists their organisations across selected conflict areas, and gives details of the initiatives run by those organisations.

What is the aim of Insight on Conflict?
Insight on Conflict was designed to raise the profile of grassroots peace-building organisations – who very often pass unobserved under the spotlight of international attention – and to allow them to make contact with one another across conflict areas both to gain mutual support and to spread best practice in peace-building.

It was also designed for those outside a conflict area with a particular interest in it (perhaps as a policy maker, a researching academic, a member of the media, or even as a concerned individual). By detailing those ‘home grown’ peace initiatives, Insight on Conflict does exactly as its name suggests: provides an insightful view of a conflict area which is not normally accessible without being there.

▲Top▲

Who is Insight on Conflict funded by?
So far Insight on Conflict has been funded by Peace Direct with some donations from charitable trusts.

Who is the website for?
This website is ‘for’ anyone interested in peace, peace-building, or those conflict areas that we profile.

That said, it does have particular target audiences in line with its aims. Because the site aims to spread best practice in peace-building, it is designed with practitioners and academics in mind. Because the site aims to support the spread of peace by raising the profile of effective grassroots peace-builders, it is also designed to be useful to the media and policy makers.

What makes Insight on Conflict unique?
Insight on Conflict is unique because of the service it strives to offer. We attempt to provide any user with an easily-accessible, free, well-researched, and impartial database of information that would only normally be accessible from within a conflict area itself. We hope that not only will this spread best practise in peace-building but that it will also raise the profile of successful peace initiatives across the international community.

▲Top▲

What use is Insight on Conflict to me?
That – unsuprisingly – depends on what your interest in peace building is.

For practitioners we hope that Insight on Conflict will help you to see what has worked elsewhere, will give you fresh ideas on how to address the conflict that you are facing, and will provide you with contacts – possibly even a network of contacts – in peace-building that will help you bring peace to your area. By publishing on our site, you might allow other people to contact you and you raise your profile in the international media and with international policy makers.

For the media and academics, Insight on Conflict is a ready-made research tool that will – literally – give you a fresh insight into the conflicts we profile. It may provide you with contacts in a conflict area whose experiences and efforts are both deserve being publicised and will add value when they are.

For policy makers, Insight on Conflict will help you access and see those intiatives that, although highly sucessful, are neither internationally visible nor easily accessible.

For anyone in the general public who is interested in and concerned about international peace or the specific conflicts that we profile, Insight on Conflict gives you access to a unique library of stories and information relating to conflicts across the world.

▲Top▲

What information can I find on the website?
There are three types of information provided by Insight on Conflict:

• Brief overviews of the conflicts in the areas covered.
• Information about the organisations/individuals leading the initiatives: an overview including the organisation’s description, aims and achievements, number of people involved, funding resources, contact details, area of operation, and services provided.
• Information on the initiatives focusing on a peaceful resolution of the conflict. In particular: a description and location, aims and objectives, how the initiative is articulated, achievements and learning points, number of people involved, funding resources, and contact details.

It is possible to search the information on initiatives and organisations by name, by conflict area, by level of operation, by area of interest and by target group.

▲Top▲

Why do ‘grassroots peacebuilders’ matter?
We believe that grassroots peacebuilders are an often overlooked, but hugely sucessful part of the larger peace process in conflict areas and post-conflict areas. Not only are those from a community often best placed to understand the drivers of conflict and cultural mores which operate in that community; but the diversity of conflict (in both cause and effect) means that applying a universal peace building model will be less sucessful than ‘locally grown’ peace initiatives.

Where does your information come from?
Our Local Correspondents research peace building initiatives and organisations in their conflict area, they then compile a report in forms similar to the layout seen on our website. This report is then sent back to our London office where the team check through it. If the London team feel it would be good to have more information on a specific point, the research is sent back to the Local Correspondents so that they can provide it. When the research is complete, it is then collated and uploaded onto the website by the London team.

How can you guarantee that the information provided is unbiased?
Impartiality is extremely hard to achieve in complex, polarised conflict areas, but we do everything we can to minimise the subjective input of our staff. Conflict Experts, who write the area profiles and direct the research, and Local Correspondents, who are responsible for the field research, are carefully chosen as reasonable, dispassionate and well-informed individuals after a process of consultation and recommendation. We ask for measured views of the conflict and a selection of initiatives that is representative of the range of work being done by organisations of different political, religious, or ethnic affiliations. We remain in close contact with our Experts and Correspondents, and try to keep the information we provide as free as possible of analysis and evaluation. Nonetheless, all information must come through an individual with his or her own perspective, and the descriptions of conflicts, initiatives and organisations on this website aim to be informative and balanced rather than objectively true. If you have any comments or questions, please contact us via the feedback form.

▲Top▲

I disagree! Why have you said this?
We understand that the essence of conflict is contest and that views, opinions, and analysis on conflict will necessarily be contested. We do, however, strive for impartiality in the information we provide. If you think we have failed in this, please use the feedback form to contact us and let us know how we can improve.

We would also stress the fact that, whilst we do everything possible to be impartial, we try to act as an information conduit for the grassroots peace builders who we profile. As such, the analysis on this site is largely theirs and may well differ from yours as a result of their proximity to the conflict.

How do you define conflict?
Please see conflict areas in the glossary.

How do you choose which conflict areas to cover?
Our initial selection of areas was driven by the need to test the feasibility of the project. We chose areas which would provide challenges in terms of the availability and accessibility of information and of the security of the individuals involved were the information to be published. As the site develops momentum, our decisions will be guided by the following considerations:

• Insight on Conflict should have the potential to increase understanding of the situation. For example, in some conflict areas the identification of peace initiatives may enable a more systematic approach for policy makers and funders; provide the media with that additional perspective on the conflict to enhance their reports; or offer practitioners a better chance of success by raising their profile.
• Insight on Conflict will be useful in areas which are on the “radar” of the media and policy makers, where conflict is likely to re-erupt and/or where the learning may be relevant to other conflicts.
• Insight on Conflict can only operate in areas from which it will be relatively easy to seek cooperation (including identifying the local correspondent), without jeopardising the security of people involved.

▲Top▲

How do I find my way around the site?
You can navigate around the site using the headings at the top.
There are three levels of information stored on this site: conflict area profiles, information on organisations and information on initiatives. The bulk information is in organisations and initiatives (as we seek to give insight on the conflict area through the peace building activities that are conducted in it, rather than through esoteric analysis of the conflict area as a whole).

Each level is linked to and accesible from the others (organisations are sorted by their conflict area and initiatives are sorted by their parent organisation) and you might choose to navigate through the layers by clicking on the links to the left of the pages on each level. You may also choose to search initiatives thematically by selecting ‘topics’ and seeing all the initiatives working in a certain topic area (sorted by ‘level of operation’, ‘target groups’, and ‘areas of interest’)

▲Top▲

What do the headings mean?
There are three sets of headings in Insight on Conflict

The headings on the organisations page are as follows:

• Overview: a description of the organisation.
• What services are provided: what the organisation provides through its initiatives.
• Geographical area of operation: the geographical area within the conflict area where the organisation operates.
• Funding resources: where the organisation draws its funds from.
• What further information would you like: an open field which allows organisations to make appeals for information.
• What new contacts would you like: as above, but specifically pertaining to personal and organisational links.
• Associated organisations: those other organisations which the organisation referred to is linked with, or co-operates with.

If any of these headings do not appear it is because we do not have that information, or because that information is not relevant to the organisation concerned.
You will also notice that there is additional information in the ‘call out box’, this is largely self-explanatory and looks to give a brief summary of the organisation, including the intiatives it runs and the organisation’s contact details.

The headings on the initiatives page are as follows:

• Description: a brief description of the initiative and the context in which it was set up.
• Aims / Objectives: what the initiative seeks to achieve, this may include details of who the initiative is targeted at.
• How it is Articulated: here we try to put as much information about the actual workings of the initiative as is possible. Our aim is to allow other organisations to note approaches of interest, and to make the workings of the initiative as transparent to other users as possible.
• Achievements / Learning Points: at this point the organisations are invited to share particular challenges, lessons learnt, or major achievements that have arisen from or been caused by the initiative.
• Geographical Area of Operation: the geographical area within the conflict area in which the intiative runs.
• Funding Resources: where the initiative is funded from.
• Organisations Involved: other organisations that may have taken part in the initiative.
• Stories: all of the initiatives have transformed lives, some of them have particularly poignant or interesting stories to share; we invite those involved in an initiative to tell these stories to our Local Correspondent for us to post here.

If any of these headings do not appear it is because we do not have that information, or because that information is not relevant to the intiative concerned.
You will also notice that there is additional information in the ‘call out box’, this is largely self-explanatory and looks to give a brief summary of the initiative. You may note the ‘Areas of Interest’ heading, under which we group those themes which are pertinent to the initiative concerned (for further elaboration see “What are ‘topics’?”).

The headings under ‘topics’ are explained in “What are ‘topics’?”

▲Top▲

What are ‘topics’?
The ‘topics’ are themes by which the initiatives on Insight on Conflict can be grouped. They relate to the level at which the initiative operates, the groups which the initiative targets, and the areas of interest which the intiative is concerned with.

The areas of interest are divided into five themes (1: Awareness raising, mobilisation and empowerment; 2: Dialogue; 3: Governance; 4: Human Security; and 5: Security). These five themes are then further sub-divided for clarity.

Definitions: can you explain ‘….’?
Please refer to the glossary.

I’ve come across a word that isn’t in your glossary, but which I don’t understand. What does it mean?
Firstly, apologies for the descent into jargon. Insight on Conflict tries hard to avoid over-using the technical terms that abound in peace-building in order to make the site as accessible as possible; however sometimes technical terms are the best terms to describe a practice or situation accurately. Also, Insight on Conflict’s glossary does not pretend to be a complete dictionary of peace-building terms, it is rather there to assist the casual reader with unfamiliar words, or those which have a specific meaning in the context they are used on the site.

Secondly, please tell us about the missing word via the feedback form, we will endeavour to put it in our glossary as soon as possible.

Finally, to find out what the word means before we put our definition up, we would recommend that you either refer to Wikipedia, or alternatively try searching the web.

▲Top▲

Why are there inconsistancies of style and person in the initiatives and organisations pages?
You may have noticed that some of the pages use the first person, others the third person; you may also notice that style is not consistant across the site. This is because – whilst we do check the information we are given – much of what we write up is in the words of the organisation involved. Further, although Insight on Conflict is an English-language site, English may not be the first language of our Local Correspondents, this naturally leads to differences in style across conflict areas.

Why does some information not appear for some initiatives/organisations?
There are two reasons why there are blank areas. It may either be due to issues of confidentiality for the initiative’s own security or because the information is not available or has not been provided.

How often is the information updated?
We aim to review the information displayed every 6 months and update it once a year. The review concerns basic details such as contact details as well as critical information.

▲Top▲

How do you ensure the safety of your local correspondents?
The safety of our local correspondents is of paramount importance to us, we would never ask them to put themselves at risk and take every precaution we think sensible to guarantee their safety.

What kind of policy do you hold concerning data protection/confidentiality?
Contact details for experts, correspondents, initiatives, organisations, and individuals are made available only with their consent. Any information published is also vetted by those concerned. If there is even the smallest possibility that publishing details of any kind will put people in danger, the information will be withheld from public viewing.

How can I help?
If you like Insight on Conflict and believe – as we do – that it has the potential to become a hugely important tool of potentially international significance and want to help, please contact us.

Perhaps the easiest way for you to help would be to use the feedback form to tell us what you think works and what you think needs improving on our site. We do not pretend to be the final word in any of the – incredibly complex – conflicts that we cover (or, indeed, the final word in web design and site lay-out) and so we welcome input from anyone on how we can improve.

▲Top▲

Where can I find more information on these areas, initiatives and organisations?
For each conflict area there are links to sites containing further information, other organisations working in the field and specific contacts for journalists. The initiative and organisation pages contain links to any websites that the local peacebuilders considered relevant to their work. We also have a separate links section which contains links of interest in the more general field of peace studies and peace-building.

I know about a peace initiative. How can their profile get put on the website?
Please contact us via the feedback form giving us as much detail as possible and we will get in contact with you.

Where can I give feedback?
Please complete the form to be found here.

▲Top▲