The learning process of the Local Capacities for Peace Project

If aid is found to support a war effort, should aid agencies and practitioners continue to give it? The resounding answer given by aid workers all over the world is that the needs of suffering people are too important to ignore and, further, that there can be no justification for not assisting suffering people. But how can one provide aid in the context of conflict without exacerbating the conflict? The Local Capacities for Peace Project (LCPP) was formed in 1994 to learn how aid and conflict interact in order to help aid workers find a way to address human needs without feeding conflict. This paper will discuss how the learning process of the LCPP was designed, the results gained at each step, and how the results were fed back to the participating organisations.