Conflict Prevention:
Analysis for Action (CPAA)

Since 1998 the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) in partnership with the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) has been involved in a joint training project entitled “Early Warning and Preventive Measures: Building UN Capacity” (EWPM), whose main aim was to provide UN Staff and its partners with skills in conflict analysis for the prevention of violent conflict. In the period 1998 – 2006, the EWPM project carried out more than 58 training activities and trained over 1800 people belonging to the UN System, UN affiliated Organisations, Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Civil Society.

In February 2007, a Strategic Review Meeting on the EWPM project was conducted in order to identify lessons learned and align the programme with recent developments in the field of capacity building for conflict prevention within the UN System. This event brought together experienced EWPM facilitators/trainers from different UN entities (DPA, UNDP, UNHCR, DGO, OCHA), Non Governmental Organisations (Swisspeace), DfiD as long-standing financial supporter of EWPM, and the Academic world (London School of Economics and Political Science). A thorough analysis was conducted on the methodology, content and structure that the future version of the EWPM training would require in order to respond to the new needs of the UN System in the field of conflict prevention. The fruitful discussions undertaken, led to the conclusion that nowadays within the UN System there is a strong demand to assist the UN Country Teams and other related members of the UN family in integrating conflict sensitive development into the UN planning and programming process, and or conflict sensitive strategies.

It was agreed upon that the new EWPM training curriculum should eventually focus on bringing the conflict lens to the different UN planning and programming processes (e.g. CCA, UNDAF, PCNA, Strategies etc…). In order to highlight and emphasise the new direction and objectives of the project the name was changed to reflect this process more accurately: “Conflict Prevention – Analysis for Action” (CPAA).

Most of 2007 was spent on designing and developing the training package involving a wide range of resources: gender expert, academia, non governmental entities as well as the UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action and its Expert Reference Group (ERG).

In New York in April 2008, UNSSC presented the new CPAA curriculum to the members of the UN Interagency Framework Team for Preventive Action including its Expert Reference Group and other UN interested players in order to receive feedback and note concerns, suggestions and ideas for applicability of the CPAA in the future work of the UN System in conflict prevention.

As a result of this event and further discussions between UNSSC and its UN partners, it was decided that the CPAA project would mainly focus its activities on:
  • Offering standard skill building workshops on conflict analysis for prevention to the UN System;
  • Supporting the Inter-agency Framework for Preventive Action (FT) conflict prevention strategy development in countries
  • Mainstreaming conflict prevention into UN Planning & Programming processes in CCA/UNDAF & Transition countries;
  • Responding to ad hoc inter-agency requests leading to broader UN engagement

 See also...
EWPM Project page
EWPM Alumni Platform