The Do No Harm Project began in 1993 with a question.

How may assistance be provided in conflict settings in ways that, rather than feeding into and exacerbating the conflict, help local people disengage from the violence that surrounds them and begin to develop alternative systems for addressing the problems that underlie the conflict?

In other words, how do we make sure that the wellbeing of the people we are trying to help is the focus of our efforts to help them? How do we do no harm, as the principle demands of us? Over the past twenty years, we have answered that question in ways that went far beyond what we imagined at the outset. We know how.

A number of international and local NGOs, UN, and Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies collaborated to learn more about how assistance that is given in conflict settings interacts with the conflicts. The collaboration was based on gathering and comparing the field experience of many different programs in many different contexts. Through this, we were able to identify some common and very clear patterns that hold across complex circumstances showing how interventions and conflict interact.

These lessons and patterns apply to all interventions and can be used by any of those who “intervene”: humanitarian, development, peacebuilding, advocacy, diplomatic, military, government, international, and, most important of all, local.

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Related Topics
The Practice
Where does this Guide come from?
Brief History of the Do No Harm Project
Collaborative Learning Methodology